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...

Just a mere five days ago (equalling ten Christmas comps since), we brought you " Progressive Christmas V4 ", a 2005 disc based on a format that Martin Johns once had to follow in his radio days. This is the 2006 follow up CD which can, at any given moment, veer off into musical directions you wouldn't normally think of when listening to a regular comp. To quote from Martin's insight from "Progressive V4": "'Progressive' was a college radio station format I worked in. The 'rules' were... an equal balance of music 'categories' (Category 1 - Jazz / Category 2A - Soul, Blues, R&B / Category 2B - Country, Folk, Bluegrass / Category 3 - Rock & Pop / Category 4 - Classical, World Music, and everything else including the stuff that defied definition) and about 80% were supposed to be new releases. "I grew to love the format, which was generally a tough sell to DJs and listeners alike. If you were really good at it,...

If you've been reading the yuleblog for the past two weeks, you've probably seen every format under the sun created by Christmas comp master Martin Johns . Today, we head for the tropical climes of sunny Jamaica to let down our dreadlocks and kick back on some Christmas reggae. Of all the subgenres in my collection, reggae Christmas ranks very low. Currently, I have about four reggae Christmas CDs in my collection: " Reggae Christmas " (1988), " Reggae Christmas From Studio One " (1992), Yellowman's " A Very Very Yellow Christmas " and " Natty & Nice: A Reggae Christmas " , both from 1998. I was glad to see this arrive - it will point me in the right direction for some more reggae Christmas CDs in the near future. For more, we ask Martin for a special insight about the making of this comp in a segment you longtime readers of the yuleblog already know as... STUBBY SPEAKS : I dreaded this one ( CAPT'S NOTE : GREA...

This yuleblog entry will probably bring in hundreds, if not thousands of people who are looking for references to Tikrit, President George W. Bush, and the war in Iraq. I welcome you all and hope you read the mission statement above about this site. The blog community has changed the very face of American politics. More views and statements were released by politicians via the Internet in the last election than any other in recent past. Expect that trend to grow. The voice of the people finally have an outlet to express their views, their demands, their concerns, and their differences of opinion. Their voices are reaching all the corners of the United States and all around the world. I would like to stress that this yuleblog is NOT a part of that community. I only give my views and opinions on Christmas music, nothing else. If you're looking for an argument or something else politically, you're in for a major disappointment. This Christmas CD was sent to us by Ma...

One of the reasons I chose to review homemade Christmas comps is because of the personal touches each compiler brings to the table. While others dazzle with graphics, others astound us with the music. Some create comps for family and friends unlike others who create for themselves. Many are sent personally by mail while a majority post them online. However, the one constant throughout it all is the planning, the care, the execution that goes into making a comp. The personal side of the individual pushes the direction in which the comp will take shape, showcasing not only their creativity and ear for music but their very own personality as well. This Christmas comp that Martin Johns sent us via the P.O. Box is a very personal one. This one has family written all over it. For more on this, I'll let him doing the talking as... STUBBY SPEAKS : Every year, I try to work up a Country mix for my father. As it happens, there's a much larger constituency for Christmas Count...

We're still looking at comps created by Martin Johns of Greenville, South Carolina and this is the last of three comps dealing with all vinyl Christmas music. This might be my favorite cover of the whole Johns lot. Not because of the laissez-faire attitude of the record clerk. Not because of the glorious stacks and stacks of vinyl. Not because of the Arthur Godfrey album (which I now own in my vinyl collection) or "A Christmas Record" located above the record clerk's head. I love this album cover because of the PhonoLog on the counter. In this day and age of the Internet and online databases that can find someone or something with a few clicks, it's good to see those glorious yellow and gold pages awaiting someone to unearth its treasures. That and the "Help Stamp Out Opera" sign are just priceless. For more on this all-vinyl comp, we ask Martin yet again for his special insight revolving (get it?) around this one in a segment we call... ...