Recently in Housekeeping Category

Nice Guy Eddie has converted his Christmas rock blog into Rotten Christmas, with a focus on punk rock holiday records. Judging by his screen shots he's pushing stuff he has or has found on vinyl. And he's definitely found some holes in our coverage here, so check him out once more.

Just happened upon a mention of Record Store Day while tiptoeing around Facebook (as my legal self, haven't set up a Facebook page for Rudolph, at least not yet) and the event, normally in mid-April, has added a Black Friday edition this year. As usual, there's a list of releases only available at indy record stores, and you should peruse it to see if your favorites are taking part with anything special. For the readership, there are two vinyl entries dedicated to the holiday: Fear, with a 45 version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," b-side "Another Christmas Beer"; and acoustic duo The Civil Wars have a 4-song 10-inch EP with two holiday songs, one of which is "Tracks in the Snow," also the title song of the mini-collection. (Unless there's another way of getting them, I won't be posting them here, as I'm getting out of the vinyl business personally.) Guys, frighten your significant others and tell 'em you wanna go shopping on Black Friday. Gals, well, you were going out anyway, right?

I always wondered why friend of this site Martin Johns didn't have his own site, as he was always a step ahead of all the other Christmas music sites (including this one) in knowing what was new and wonderful. He did maintain a shadowy presence at a couple of sites, and his tips and corrections have always been welcome here. Now, finally, it's his pseudonym on the shingle at Stubby's Christmas and if you like this place, you should definitely bookmark his as well. It's only been up a short time, but he already seems to have the hang of blogging. (I'd also like to mention that, although I haven't tried it myself, the Web platform Stubby's is built on, Weebly, looks pretty cool, if you'd like to build a site of your own and don't feel like spending the next two years at a tech school learning how to code.) UPDATE: On the topic of new websites, Nice Guy Eddie likes him some rock 'n roll Xmas as long as it's on vinyl. Stop by his place and check out the goodies.

I'm a little late getting started with the new season's postings for personal reasons, but not to worry, I should have some goodies for the kids within the next week. Also, the progress report on the site upgrade is that most of the material from the old site is now packed inside the current site. The exceptions: all the rock 'n roll from the old site's 1990s and 2000s pages, all the stuff from the two compilations categories on the old site, the miscellaneous section and the old site's letters and the "Yule blog." With the introduction of comments, I thought the letters section had become obsolete, but some folks have still been sending letters anyway, so under categories I created a "Letters to Mistletunes" section. It's still not populated with the old site's letters, but it eventually will be. Recent letters since the site upgrade are there, however. So if you want to nose around the old site, once again, the link is here.

This redesign of our much-loved Christmas rock music site is a work in progress -- much of the original content remains at the old site, so if you can't find what you like here, go over there and sniff around. Read more about the changes in the extended entry. 

Some of you folks are fans of Internet radio, so I'm passing on this bit of news from AccuRadio, which has announced a veritable feast of Christmas-themed channels, including rock, r'nb, Latin and many others. The press release notes holiday-themed Internet radio channels currently available on the AccuHolidays.com website cover genres like rock, pop, country, jazz, classical, r'nb, and Latin, focus on various themes (such as "Old-Fashioned Christmas"), and even play nothing but many different renditions of a single song, like a "Chestnuts Roasting" channel which features hundreds of versions of the classic tune "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)." By early December, the website will offer a total of over 40 different channels, according to site officials.

Now that the training wheels are off the all-new, all-singing, all-dancing Mistletunes, it occurs to me that the ability to attach comments to every single piece of business on the site might be a little intimidating to visitors. So I'm going to steal a blog tradition and post this open thread. Click on the link under the headline where it gives the number of comments and put up a few words relating to Christmas rock 'n roll, ideas for this site, or something else pertinent. Really good ideas might just turn into site posts or even site features. Have at it, and be excellent to each other, as Bill 'n Ted might say. UPDATE: I've had a couple of messages from folks who tell me attempts to register via TypePad/TypeKey are failing. I've only done limited testing but I've yet to duplicate any problem. But I went rooting around in site preferences and discovered I could enable logins from OpenID, LiveJournal and Vox in addition to Movable Type and TypePad. I've heard it's possible to set this blog up to enable Facebook logins as well, but I'll have to do some research on that point. Anyway, here's a little something to inspire comment, our pal Lord Weatherby's "Santa Claus Is Freaking Me Out": 

Suggestions are always welcome for music to review at Mistletunes. I'm in the process of acquiring goodies for this year's run-up to the holidays, but I thought I'd take a moment to note that I won't be bothering with this year's A Very Special Christmas 7, as it is built mainly around tween-age performers and former American Idol contestants. (You'll note I wasn't too proud to put up an Amazon affiliate link, of course.) Anyway, you can click on over and check out the samples if you're so inclined. Hopefully there will be a future VSC disc that will feature more rock-oriented performers once more, and we'll be watching for it here.