A Christmas Yuleblog

From time to time this upcoming Christmas season, I'll be posting some amazing videos that have been rescued by people like us and posted at the mecca of all things wonderful and obscure - YouTube . I invite you to add a fun comment, witticism, clever remark, or observation in the comments section provided. Any comments deemed worthy of repeating will be included into this entry where all the world will see it. Yesterday, I posted a study guide of my annual Christmas comps over the past several years. It's interesting to look back and see how I've progressed (or regressed depending how you look at it) in the selection of my playlists from 2000 to 2008. I'm a fan of Christmas mash-ups and have written several entries about them. Two of the best Christmas mash-ups found their way to YouTube and I wanted to share them with you. The first was featured on my 2007 Christmas comp. Our friend DJ BC mixed together "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" by The Ja...

We conclude "Mash-up Saturday" with a look at he DJ whose work introduced me to the world of mash-ups and remains one of my favorite mashers. Several years ago, I was searching for a specific bootleg from the Beatles to find an quote from John Lennon. This led me to the website of Mark Vidler's Go Home Productions . I found a MP3 entitled "Beatlegs Bootles" that mashed The Beach Boys, Culture Club, and Michael Jackson into the songs of the Beatles. It totally blew my mind. A quick search of the site led me to the MP3 called "Christmas On The Block" - the merging of Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime" and Jennifer Lopez's "Jenny On The Block" and the very first Christmas mash-up I ever heard. Over the years, Vidler has contributed to DJ BC's two Christmas comps "Santastic: Holiday Boots 4 Your Stocking" and "Santastic II: Clausome". Late last December, Vidler issued this three track com...

Mash-up Saturday marches on! Our next stop takes us to that city by the bay where Adrian and The Mysterious D (aka A & D) have been holding court! Their kingdom is known as Bootie. It is a club where mash-ups are played. It is a party, the largest in the land. It is a website where some of the best mash-ups and their artists can be found. It is also the state of mind in this Christmas compilation that is still available to download at their site. Any Christmas comp that takes the Keith Haring cover of the classic 1987 "A Very Special Christmas" and adds the infamous skull and crossbones is deserving of a look! Here are the set of questions I've asked everyone whose comp has been reviewed here: 1.) When did you begin creating your Christmas compilation? I'd been collecting Christmas song mashups and remixes since 2002, but I never had enough for a full-length CD until just this past year. Yes, this CD was five years in the making! That's how l...

We continue "Mash-up Saturday" with another compilation from DJ BC. While he was compiling his excellent Christmas comp " Santastic II ", DJ BC was working on a different kind of Christmas comp. A classical radio station wanted a different sound for their Christmas and solicited DJ BC's help. The result is a total reworking of some of Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite" and Bach's "Jesu Joy Of Man's Desiring" which is still available to download at his site! Watch that traffic rise now BC! For more on this, here are those same questions I've been asking everyone: 1.) When did you begin creating your Christmas compilations? "Re:Composition" Christmas songs were first done a few at a time, over the 2004 and 2005 pre-Christmas season, and then the big push was to complete an hour's worth of material (by Thanksgiving 2006) for WBKK as they wanted to create a show around the music. 2.) Explain the process ...

Welcome to Mash-up Saturday! Today we look at four different Christmas online comps that feature the handy work of DJs and mixers from around the world to create brand new takes on your favorite Christmas music. For those not wise in the ways of the mash-up, this phenomenon may have gotten its start way back in the classical days. Composers used to rework other compositions and used the term "variations on a theme by..." Fast forward to the 1960s. Dickie Goodman was breaking new ground with his break-in records. A gent by the name of John Oswald began experimenting with fusing two pieces of music using tape and scissors. The BBC TV show " I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue " featured a segment entitled "One Song To The Tune Of Another" that featured crude forms of the mash-up. In the 1970s, Frank Zappa began picking out basslines and other samples from music into his own. Club and disco DJs began mastering the art of the mix board. A company named ...

I first became aware of mash-ups when a Google search for The Beatles Christmas album led me to the website of Go Home Productions . I found "Beatles Bootles", a clever mix of Beatles songs with other songs to create a 15 minute extravaganza. What caught my attention was "Christmas On The Block", a mash-up of Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime" and Jennifer Lopez's "Jenny From The Block". This led me into the world of Christmas mash-ups. Shortly before Christmas, 2004, I downloaded a full Christmash CD online entitled "Merry Christmash" from a now-defunct site from the UK. I also purchased a mash-up CD entitled " A Mutated Christmas ". This led me to GYBO , the holy grail web site for bootleg / mash-ups. You can probably spend around 40 hours here listening to amazing mixes of whatever musical genre you can think of. This led me to a name that I recognized from the earlier Christmas CDs. A Boston masher...