A Christmas Yuleblog

If you're visiting us from WFMU's 365 Days Project, welcome to the yuleblog! I've posted a special entry today that goes hand in hand with my contribution to the 365 Days Project. Feel free to look around, read some entries, click on some links, and leave a comment or two. Regular postings will begin again very soon. For more info on this, click here . Thanks for stopping by and I hope you'll enjoy your time at the yuleblog! Capt

If you're a serious Christmas music collector, then you're probably familiar with this 1962 chestnut (pun intended). However, if you've never heard or seen this album before, pull your eyes away from the bodacious cover and let me explain to you several tidbits about this album. I first became acquainted with this album around 2002 or 2003 when Basic Hip - the granddaddy of all vinyl sharity sites - first offered it around Christmas time - a simple clean rip of the album and an average scan of the front cover only. BTW, that is NOT Ms. Martin on the cover. Like many adult party records of the day, an anonymous model would grace the cover with all the right body parts covered. More on Kay in a moment. As the years went by and I started to seriously collect Christmas music, I began to learn how special this album was. This wasn't an album to the Christmas music community - it was a secret handshake that gained you entrance into the fraternity of die-hard holid

Dear readers of the yuleblog, Sunday ended a very productive three month stretch of reviewing all the new additions to my personal Christmas music collection. In total, around 85 to 87 CDs were reviewed in a span of 90 days. I'm very proud of this accomplishment. As Ringo Starr screamed at the end of the Beatles' "Helter Skelter" - "I've got blisters on my fingers!" Not from drumming. From typing. I'm also extremely behind in my schedule of other projects and I am exhausted... worn out... bushed... tired... flat out done. I'm taking a month off. Maybe six weeks. Why so long? I need to recharge the batteries and get some of those other projects out of the way. I'll also be watching a few baseball games here: Not a bad view, huh? THIS JUST IN: I was slated as the stage manager of an upcoming local theater production but unfortunately no one auditioned for a part in an upcoming two man play about baseball. I was picked by the director of

This odd number comp (21 to be exact) is the FINAL disc that Martin Johns created for the 2006 Christmas season and the last themed CD from his laboratory in Greenville, South Carolina. When Martin sent his shoebox full of CDs to our P.O. Box, this comp wasn't inside. At the time, it didn't even exist. Burning the midnight oil, he quickly assembled some of the best finds via the Christmas sharity community and assembled a brand new comp. Martin first posted the covers of this comp at the wonderful world known as FaLaLaLaLa.com on December 20, 2006 and sent me a link that I could download for it. I was flattered to see several of my contributions to the 2006 Christmas downloading season on the disc. Other contributors included many longtime contributors and members of FaLaLaLaLa.com ( PDMan , Esstee , Trendbend , Mister Miller ), The King Of Jingaling himself, Lee Hartsfield of Music You (Possibly)Won't Hear Anywhere Else , and the tireless Ernie (not Bert) .

If you had told me last year that my annual look at homemade Christmas comps would have been extended into April, I would have waited for you to yell "APRIL FOOL!" Well, that's exactly what has happened and today just happens to be April Fool's Day. It also happens to be the FINAL day of our annual look at homemade Christmas comps. We have two more comps from our friend Martin Johns who sent us a jawdropping, earthshattering, astounding 21 Christmas comps - each of which has rarely covered the same ground and always manages to surprise as well as entertain. The comp you see before you deals with Christmas jazz - always a welcome sound over my speakers at the computer or on my boombox. To get some better understanding behind this stunning looking Christmas CD, here is the section that you've grown to love. It's very well known as... STUBBY SPEAKS : Like the Country CDs, there's a strong constituency for my Jazz CDs. One year, I was explainin