Recently in Housekeeping Category

An early kickoff to the holiday, for me anyway

| No Comments | No TrackBacks

I've historically done a Christmas Eve letter to the readership, but as with last year my real-life plans will have me far from the Mistletunes workshop on that day, so I'm going to get it in now. Thanks everybody for continuing to read this site, hope I've pointed you to some great music to soundtrack your holiday celebrations, or at least gave you some fodder to frighten your friends, relatives, or work party colleagues. Mistletunes continues to exist in a 2002 version of the internet where there's no social media and not enough bandwidth to host downloads, mainly because the software undergirding this endeavor is stuck in approximately 2009 and no longer allows me to do anything more than make new posts. (Updating the software will take much more money than I make from the Amazon affiliate fees I get from you nice folks who start your Amazon sessions by clicking a live link hosted here.) While streaming cuts into the aforementioned affiliate fees I might otherwise garner, the Mistletunes mission is still useful to folks trying to compile the most up-to-date Christmas season playlists, so I persist for as long as I'm able. So once again, happy holidays of all the various origins, religious or otherwise, that you celebrate, and enjoy this little present below.

Quick notes

| No Comments | No TrackBacks
  • Just noticed that Chris Isaak's most recent Christmas album has been reissued with four new songs, "Jingle Bells" featuring Jess Dunbar, "Begging Forgiveness," "Silent Night," and a new version of "Dogs Love Christmas Too (Rodney's Mix)." 
  • And I'll call attention to the mix disc sidebar, where my 2023 holiday playlist, There Ain't No Santos Claus!, is ready for your listening pleasure. Spotify playlist is attached at the end of the "liner notes," and you can listen there or search it directly on the Spotify app.

Quick hits for Christmas

| No Comments | No TrackBacks
  • Lenny Kaye teamed with the band Cedar Sparks to record a single, "Santa's Knee" backed with "Gathering Storm." Haven't heard it as it's only available in the vinyl incarnation from Rough Trade for 2023. If it pops up for streaming or download, I'll let you know.
  • Several out-of-print Christmas albums have popped up for 2023 as vinyl artifacts (of course), although in the streaming age some will tend to remain available that way, assuming no business restrictions pop up in the interim. Among them are Fred Schneider's Superions with Destination Christmas, Nick Lowe's Quality Street, the compilation Psych Out Christmas, the Fleshtones' Stocking Stuffer, Bright Eyes' A Christmas Album, and though billed as a new collection, Stax Christmas is just another recompilation of that label's classic soul Christmas tunes, although it advertises an alternate mix of Otis Redding's "Merry Christmas Baby." UPDATE: Stubby checks in to note Carla Thomas' "Blue Christmas" is previously unreleased, which I should have known. And, streaming only, RuPaul's Essential Christmas adds one new track to a collection of previous releases.
  • Don't want to be a jinx, but it looks like the Snowflakes Christmas Singles Club won't have a 2023 release, as there's no mention of anything on either their Bandcamp page or their blog.

New posts coming

| No Comments | No TrackBacks

Hi folks. The 2023 season of Mistletunes postings will start shortly. While I'm trying to get caught up with the current musical state of the holiday season, I'm in the process of preparing a handful of posts that will plug some historical holes in this site's archives. Bet you didn't realize I didn't have posts for the original versions of such classics as "Fairytale of New York" and "Last Christmas," did you? Those are coming, along with some more contemporary songs and performances. Thanks for reading, and don't forget that clicking through to Amazon from this site helps defray the cost of maintaining it. Amazon Prime Amazon Music

A few words on the holiday

| 1 Comment | No TrackBacks

Rudolph has to take his holiday break from the site early this year, though there will likely be more posts after the weekend. For now, I'd just like to acknowledge the folks who are still reading what I have to say about Christmas as seen through the prism of rock 'n roll, though that descriptor is becoming ever less relevant to the younger folks who remain the target audience of the music industry. Nevertheless, I press on. Given the increasing obsolescence of the software that powers this website, I'd like to note that one of my ambitions for the site has been to serve as a historical source, so if you're feeling it, or you don't have much to do because you got locked out of Twitter, try grazing the website by clicking on the date links or the genre links in the left sidebar. Since I sometimes wax topical in my posts, you might find it interesting to see what was concerning us all at some earlier time. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all. Oh, and my usual Christmas present of something that makes you go hmmm....

A little nostalgia for the old folks

| No Comments | No TrackBacks

Normally we at Mistletunes leave the old-school holiday celebration totems to other websites, but we know that many readers are old folks like Rudolph and that some of them have a sweet tooth for mid-20th century pop culture tchotchkes. With that, I'd like to note the current Car and Driver online feature, "Back in the 1960s, You Bought Your Christmas Music at the Tire Store." It's a fun feature about how Goodyear, Firestone and B.F. Goodrich used to compile Christmas albums and sell them cheaply as come-ons to bring in customers. The most interesting thing about this story is that they link to a website, Christmas LPs to CD, that takes those old albums and converts them to CD or downloadable MP3. To avoid copyright hassles, they sell actual old copies of those albums to customers and ship them with the CD, or you can download most (not all) of them. For vinyl fans, there's a hitch; they make no guarantees about the condition of the vinyl albums, they may very well be unplayable. But you have your digital copies to play. The site also has Christmas albums from Longines Symphonette, Tru Value, Disney, WT Grant, Readers Digest and more. They also have non-Christmas music available. 

Ringing the Salvation Army bell again

| No Comments | No TrackBacks

A reminder that Amazon affiliate links defray the costs of hosting this unique website. Try Amazon Prime free for 30 days here. Or sign up for Amazon Music. And the album cover graphics link to Amazon if the albums are available there. Feel free to start your Amazon shopping sprees by clicking on an Amazon link from this website. Thanks in advance once again for doing so.

Another cry for support

| No Comments | No TrackBacks

Well, my usual request to patronize Amazon affiliate links to defray the costs of hosting this unique website scrolled off the bottom, so here it is again. Try Amazon Prime free for 30 days here. Or sign up for Amazon Music. And the album cover graphics link to Amazon if the albums are available there. Feel free to start your Amazon shopping sprees by clicking on an Amazon link from this website. Thanks in advance once again for doing so.

Requesting readership support

| No Comments | No TrackBacks

Regular readers already know Amazon affiliate links defray the costs of hosting this unique website; newcomers are hereby informed as well. Try Amazon Prime free for 30 days here. Or sign up for Amazon Music. And the album cover graphics link to Amazon if the albums are available there. Feel free to start your Amazon shopping sprees by clicking on an Amazon link from this website. And thanks in advance for doing so.

Christmas is coming

| No Comments | No TrackBacks

As longtime followers of this site are aware, I typically ruminate on the state of the culture when Christmas Eve arrives, although recent entries in this series have had more to do with the state of this website and my growing estrangement from what's considered popular out in the world. For now, I'd just like to recognize that first, people are still visiting this site, and to thank them for doing so. Even though we've had some recognition in the wider culture over the history of the site, this has still been, first and foremost, a hobby for me, and one in which the readers are just as hip as I've ever claimed to be, maybe more so. So thanks once again for stopping by. When I started this site, it was as much to help me compile my annual mix cassette as anything, and then my annual mix disc.

This year I finally sloughed off physical media, although some of my correspondents still lovingly compile and design virtual mix discs with art and everything and just choose not to clog up the USPS with the actual plastic and paper versions, leaving it to the listener to do that. Good on you folks; some technological armageddon may come along in which it once again becomes cost-effective to burn discs, and you'll be ready. I've skipped ahead to simply building a Spotify playlist, which I chose because that service offers a free tier and the ability to embed the music into a website. Hopefully this covers everyone, though I'm open to suggestions. Almost forgot to note: this year's Mistletunes mix is called Don We Now Our Plague Apparel, and you can access it here.

Going forward, I'm going to do what I've always done, which is to highlight new Christmas records in the rock 'n roll realm, with a certain generosity toward covering associated genres. If I can, I hope to update the software underpinning this site to make it a more convenient historical archive at some point, but we'll call that an aspirational goal for now. Don't forget to click on Amazon from here to start your shopping sprees. And just to remind you why we're here, merry Christmas from Thin Lizzy and the Sex Pistols.

A word from our sponsor, again

| No Comments | No TrackBacks

Once again, I'm pointing out that Amazon affiliate links defray the costs of hosting this unique website. Try Amazon Prime free for 30 days here. Or sign up for Amazon Music. And the album cover graphics link to Amazon if the albums are available there. Feel free to start your Amazon shopping sprees by clicking on an Amazon link from this website. And thanks in advance for doing so.

Another sponsor reminder

| No Comments | No TrackBacks

Once again, I'm pointing out that Amazon affiliate links defray the costs of hosting this unique website. Try Amazon Prime free for 30 days here. Or sign up for Amazon Music. And the album cover graphics link to Amazon if the albums are available there. Feel free to start your Amazon shopping sprees by clicking on an Amazon link from this website. And thanks in advance for doing so.

Snowflakes Christmas Singles Club alert

| No Comments | No TrackBacks

In the past, I've reviewed the individual singles from this annual release when I could get access to them, but as they aren't posting the individual songs for sampling until after the singles ship, I thought I should call attention to them now. As they ship from the Netherlands, the various supply chain and postal issues unique to the 2020s probably mean many people won't get their copies in time for Christmas unless they already live in the EU. So I'll just note for now that this year's singles are by Swansea Sound, The Boy Least Likely To, and  The Shacks, and you should visit their Bandcamp page to order the vinyl artifacts sooner rather than later. Digital copies will post next Friday for Swansea Sound and The Boy Least Likely To, and December 10 for The Shacks.

A word from our sponsor

| No Comments | No TrackBacks

Just another reminder that Amazon affiliate links defray the costs of hosting this unique website. Try Amazon Prime free for 30 days here. Or sign up for Amazon Music. And the album cover graphics link to Amazon if the albums are available there. Feel free to start your Amazon shopping sprees by clicking on an Amazon link from this website. And thanks in advance for doing so.

It's just about that time

| 1 Comment | No TrackBacks

Hello to my faithful readers, just a quick note to advise that new posts are coming shortly. Also, this is a progress report as to the status of this lowly holiday blog. A couple of years ago we had a disastrous failure of the whole operation here, which was caused by two things: the content management software running this site was wildly out of date and simply gave up the ghost, and while I was trying to deal with that I didn't notice that the domain mistletunes.com had expired. I lost a lot of personalized touches like the banner art and my Amazon affiliate links. This year I tried to see if I could resurrect those things and discovered that I couldn't access the template files to edit them.

So what I'm going to do from here on in is to occasionally insert a post reminding everyone that the affiliate links defray the costs of hosting this unique website and provide live links to said affiliations. Try Amazon Prime free for 30 days here. Or sign up for Amazon Music. Also, most album cover graphics link to Amazon if the albums are available there.

Happy holidays and thanks for visiting

| No Comments | No TrackBacks

Hello once more with my annual Christmas Eve message. Apparently, the difficulties I had running this site back in 2019 turned out to be a harbinger for everybody else's 2020. Sorry about that, folks. The COVID-19 pandemic pretty much wiped out the livelihoods of many in the hospitality and entertainment businesses, so I was surprised to see that musicians managed to keep the new music coming, especially the new holiday music, which is what we celebrate at Mistletunes. Once again, thanks for stopping by this music enthusiast's way station, which will be here for the foreseeable future, and hopefully without any further reflections of the site's relative hipness quotient. I'll continue to point out new and unique Christmas music on this site as I've been doing for 23 years now, and when I have time I'll go back and post some info on any past holiday milestones I've missed, as I've always wanted this site to be a historical reference of significant rock 'n roll/pop Christmas tunes. Keep coming back, and please start your Amazon shopping trips here, as the ever-shrinking returns they provide still help defray this site's hosting costs. Again, thank you, and Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and happy all the holidays. Before leaving here's a double dose of things that make you go hmmm....



Housekeeping note

| No Comments | No TrackBacks

Letting everyone know that holiday posts will begin in the next few days.

This is also a personal note to those folks out there who are occasionally in contact with Rudolph via snail mail. I've relocated and my geographical address is different. Drop me a line and I'll bring you up to date.

We made it to Christmas, barely

| No Comments | No TrackBacks

As the holiday this website celebrates makes its arrival, I'd like to thank all the folks who have stuck with us, especially this year, when technical snafus threatened to kill this website outright. The problems were partly my own fault -- I let the software that runs this website go too long without upgrades, mainly because the original vendor abandoned the hobbyist market and began charging enterprise prices for their goods. Rectifying that cost me a couple weeks of posting time. Then, when I managed to successfully patch things with the last known free version of the software, I discovered my hosting plan only allowed me to write a finite number of files to the server, and I had long exceeded my limit. That cost me another week of posts until customer service simply changed my plan -- and saved me a couple bucks in the process while allowing me to get Mistletunes back on the information superhighway once more.

I'm starting to feel age creeping up on me, mainly in regard to what seems like the ebbing relevance of what I once considered to be a great idea for an underserved market -- rock 'n roll Christmas music reviews. Hell, I'm still making a physical disc of my annual Christmas mix, even as fewer people have CD players in their homes or cars. But then, I'm still listening to rock 'n roll, even as those of us who still do that are regarded by our younger peers the same way we once regarded our weird uncles with their Sauter-Finnegan records.

So while I doubt the original premise of this website would pass muster with your average focus group as a good idea, or even a comprehensible one, I'm going to keep doing it for the foreseeable future, if only to justify the amount of time I spent on hold with technical support in the past two months. If you still find this site provides you with value, please do me the small favor of routing your Amazon orders through this website. (I'll be replacing the more prominent Amazon links, and maybe even the original website banner, once I figure out what I'm doing again; webmastering skills really don't stay with a guy if you're not building new sites from scratch three or four times a year.)

In the meantime, please enjoy this bit of mash-up holiday weirdness, have a happy holiday, and don't be a stranger.


Little bulletins

| No Comments | No TrackBacks
  • Back in 2013, Dr. Dog dropped a Christmas EP, Oh My Christmas Tree, and this year they added four more songs to make it a full album, but the only way you could get it to date was to order it from Press On Records by December 20. Oh, and it's a cassette. They promise a digital release is forthcoming, but it's not showing anywhere at this writing.
  • And my annual gift to the readership, the Mistletunes mix, can be perused by linking here. When you click through, you'll find a Spotify playlist, minus three tunes because Spotify can't have everything.
  • Speaking of playlists, Paste Magazine has a free one in conjunction with its recent merger partner Noisetrade.

Sorry about that, yet again

| No Comments | No TrackBacks

Sorry to have gone missing for almost a week. A problem developed on the server end of this website causing me to be unable to upload new posts. After a couple of championship rounds with tech support and customer service, the problem has been resolved, and it even saved the site a couple of bucks. Hopefully there will be no more technical problems going forward, although I'm going to have to consider switching from Moveable Type to Wordpress since the former now charges serious money for upgrades and support, and I'm about two versions behind.

Sorry we're such a mess over here

| No Comments | No TrackBacks

Hi readers! Really sorry we haven't gotten this blog off the launching pad for 2019 yet. Until about an hour ago, your humble host hasn't been able to access the software running this site because big chunks of the content management system got deprecated due to age and my attempts to post new articles were greeted with short but confusing error messages. After lengthy seances stretching over several days with Mr. Google as my swami, I was finally able to kick-start the blog into a semblance of functionality, and that's why you are able to read this digital mea culpa. As a side effect of my having to pretend I knew what I was doing throughout this ordeal, the various design elements (colors, fonts, the site's longtime graphic banner) went AWOL, but the past 20-some years of content remain accessible and readable. Since there was a strong possibility my tinkering around under the hood could have killed the blog outright and left nothing but a smoking ruin where the URL is, I'm going to have to accept this result as the best possible outcome.

I have actually composed some new posts for stuff that's out this year, and starting tomorrow you'll be able to read them. I'd start sooner, but, well, I feel like I've spent a week picking orders in an Amazon warehouse (subtle plug for you to start your Amazon shopping sprees by clicking here), so I'm going to pour myself an adult beverage before I climb into bed. Tomorrow's coming soon enough.

Because I'm an old fart, it didn't occur to me until I'd seen dozens of posts at music websites that had Spotify playlists embedded in them that, hey, I could do that too. And that the most likely benefit to the readership is that I could post playlists based upon the annual Mistletunes mix discs, which you may have noticed lurking in the left column of the web page. So I've gone in and done them for the mixes I did from 2012 to the most recent one. I may get around to doing this with the earlier ones at some point, but I figured seven was a lucky number to start with. You'll notice that not every song in the liner notes page found its way to the playlist, and that's because not everybody is on Spotify -- particularly not the mash-ups done by the DJs on the Santastic compilations, since those exist in a gray area of copyright law to begin with. As for the rest, this is a way of sharing with readers and putting a few pennies in the artists' streaming jar. If you're on Spotify, feel free to share the playlists with friends, taste-tippers, even Fox News Uncles if you have them.

Rudolph's holiday benediction

| No Comments | No TrackBacks
Hey there everybody! Today's the day we wind up all our holiday preparations and start the celebrations rolling. For those of you still looking for some ideas to perk up your playlists, you've come to the right place. If it's unfinished shopping, well, once the stores close I'm not sure even Amazon can help you. Every year I do a Christmas Eve post as a summing up point, since we're arriving at the point where people's holiday music needs start tapering off. (Unless they celebrate Orthodox Christmas, in which case they're in for another 11 days.) This is the 21st year I've come to you via whatever version of the Internet was available in any given year, and while I'm happy to keep doing it, I do worry that being "the ho-ho-home of a rock 'n roll Christmas" is going out of style, what with the hippety-hoppers and the bro-country guys taking over the music world. Those folks are entitled to their space in the culture, but hey, so is Mistletunes and all its fellow travelers. So onward we press. Merry Christmas. And because I like to leave folks with something to make their holidays go "hmmm," check this out.

Catch-up checklist

| No Comments | No TrackBacks
  • Tyler the Creator led the new "Grinch" movie soundtrack with two Grinch-related songs, and he went further, releasing an EP, Music Inspired by Illumination & Dr. Seuss' "The Grinch." It's six tunes with a bit of Christmas to them, but not a lot; check them out for yourself.
  • Sleeping at Last has a Christmas album that came out six years ago, but the artist kept adding to it with a new song each year. For 2018, he dropped a cover of the "Frozen" tune "When We're Together," which is actually from "Olaf's Frozen Adventure." The artist bills this as the start of Volume 2, if you're interested. Free from Noisetrade.
  • If you'd like to keep up with what you've been reading on Mistletunes this season, the Paste Holiday Sampler is freely downloadable and includes a bunch of songs already reviewed here.
  • I was recently made aware of the Brantley Family Band, which has been dropping full Christmas albums every year since 2004, and they've released a new one for 2018 on Bandcamp. The current one is a greatest-hits compilation and the new song for 2018 is "This Christmas." I opted against a full review because there's a lot of "letting the kids sing" to the more recent numbers, but I noticed there were some fairly crunchy-sounding numbers in the earliest years of this endeavor, so you might want to go spelunking in their discography.
  • And for those of you hungry for a classic rock holiday reference, this post at Dangerous Minds regarding a little-known Rolling Stones Christmas number might just liven up your holiday conversations, especially if the topic turns to whether anybody got tickets to the 2019 tour.

Short list

| No Comments | No TrackBacks
  • I just encountered The Priests for the first time because they played a cover of "Christmas Wrapping" for 2018's third annual Stereogum Christmas Show. I'll have to link you to it because I can't embed the Facebook video. No plans to release this as far as I know.
  • Elton John is rereleasing "Step Into Christmas" as an EP this year. The other two songs are the original B-side, "Ho! Ho! Ho! (Who'd Be a Turkey at Christmas)," and a live version of the A-side performed with Elton's original backup band on "The Gilbert O'Sullivan Show," which I didn't recall was once a thing.

Miscellaneous ramblings

| No Comments | No TrackBacks
  • Michael McDonald's 2018 Season of Peace is a repackaging of 2001's In the Spirit with eight additional songs, "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," "Wexford Carol" featuring Amy Holland, "Christmas On the Bayou," "Through the Many Winters," "O Holy Night," "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," "Winter Wonderland" with Jake Shimabukuro on ukelele, and a funky rearrangement of "That's What Christmas Means to Me." It also deletes four songs, "Angels We Have Heard on High," "One Gift," "On this Night," and "House Full of Love," so you adult contemporary fans will probably want both.
  • Rhino grabbed the recently deceased Aretha Franklin's version of "Silent Night" and repurposed it so that she's accompanied by solo piano, the better to enjoy her sublime vocals one more time.

Here's where we are

| No Comments | No TrackBacks
  • I'm punting on Ingrid Michaelson's Songs For the Season because, rather than the indie-pop music I was expecting, this is a straight-up 50s orchestral workout of mostly classic carols. There is a version of Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" rendered in that very same style, which is fine for the folks who needed such a version but who likely are not our readers here.
  • There's not much to be said about the soundtrack to the 2018 version of "Dr. Seuss' The Grinch," as it's mainly a compilation of familiar carols from Brian Setzer, Jackie Wilson, Run-DMC, Pentatonix, Nat King Cole, and the Supremes' version of "My Favorite Things." But it does have two originals from Tyler, the Creator, "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch," and "I Am the Grinch." They're OK hip-hop workouts, but I'm not finding them to be essential myself.
  • For those of you nursing a serious PVC jones, the Christmas albums being reissued on vinyl for the first time this year are Hanson's Snowed In, New Kids on the Block's Merry Christmas, and Sufjan Stevens' Songs For Christmas, the 2006 five-disc set. Green River's "Away in a Manger" and U-Men's "Blue Christmas" are being paired on a 45 for Record Store Day, and Eric Clapton has a die-cut vinyl single of "A Little Bit of Christmas Love," a song not included on his new Christmas album, also for Record Store Day.
  • Still on vinyl, there's also a Los Straitjackets box set, Complete Christmas Collection, that brings together their two past Christmas albums and singles.

Enjoy your Christmas holiday

| 1 Comment | No TrackBacks
I've always regarded Christmas Eve as a natural resting point in the continuing existence of this blog, a time when the search for new sounds must give way to the impending holiday for which they were created. So once again, my annual benediction to you, the readers of this humble music blog.

There doesn't seem to be as many of you as there used to be, probably because the arcane art of search engine optimization has progressed far faster than have my meager web programming abilities, so Mistletunes almost never shows up on the first page of Google anymore like it used to. And it would probably help if I posted more in the off-season, too. Meanwhile, I'm not getting any younger, and it's getting to the point where I have to work to "get it" in regard to some of the stuff that should have a home here.

Still, there are plenty of folks who know we're here, and musicians who've submitted their work to the site to get the word out, so I'll be satisfied with that for now. I hope Mistletunes continues to help folks find their new favorite holiday songs and build their mixtapes, discs, thumb drives and playlists as it always has, not to mention occasionally surprise you with a new discovery or a pertinent insight.

A cursory glance at the news (or your Facebook feeds) will underline the fact that we could all use a happy distraction from the world at large, and I hope you're getting that here as well. Meanwhile, enjoy this 50-year-old blast of creativity from the first psychedelic era of rock 'n roll, and Merry Freakin' Christmas to you all.


Brief items

| No Comments | No TrackBacks
  • Chance the Rapper and Jeremih did a Christmas playlist in 2016, but it was only for streaming. You can run over to Soundcloud right now and actually download it for free. Meanwhile, Stereogum reports that the playlist is becoming an actual album with additional cuts; haven't seen it up anywhere yet, but maybe tomorrow. UPDATE: Revised version is also a free download, go here.
  • Gareth Jones, friend of the site, has a cracking podcast of Christmas music concentrating on off-the-wall covers of familiar holiday tunes, some you may have encountered reading this site and others that are at least a double bank shot off Jupiter and Saturn. Go here and enjoy.
  • Oh, and the Mistletunes holiday mix disc tradition continues with Fake Yules.
Man, life sucks. Spare a thought for the great Pat DiNizio, longtime spark plug of the Smithereens, who passed last night.

Pages

OpenID accepted here Learn more about OpenID
Powered by Movable Type 5.2.9

About this Archive

This page is an archive of recent entries in the Housekeeping category.

Hip-Hop is the previous category.

Latin is the next category.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.