The past couple of weeks I’ve been listening to the Christmas episodes of one of my favorite podcasts The Quiet Village.  There was one last year and two the year before, and they’re wonderful.  They feature Christmas songs in a Hawaiian/Exotica vein and the selections are pretty much perfect.  One of the things that I love about it is that I hear songs I never hear anywhere else unless I bust out my Ultralounge Christmas albums.

This of course gets me going on the local Christmas stations - why won’t they play any of this stuff?  It’s not like the songs are unfamiliar to people.  They’re traditional songs and no one’s going to shut off the station is they hear Les Baxter’s version of Sleigh Ride instead of Debbie Gibson’s.

One other thing, when did Dean Martin’s “Marshmallow World” get taken off the Christmas playlist at these stations?  Did someone decide that Bob Segar’s horrible version of “The Little Drummer Boy” needed to get more play?

Just like every other year Kansas City has two radio stations playing continuous Christmas music.  Unlike every other year I don’t find myself as irritated with it.    Two possible reasons:

• My oldest is four years old now and really likes Christmas music, specifically the older stuff like “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” and “Here Comes Santa Claus”
• It may be my imagination but the playlists seems to focus less on the usual limp-dick lite rock stuff and more on standards or at least stuff with some energy behind it.  That being said, I’m hearing Neil Diamond’s “Merry Cherry Christmas” (or something like that) a lot and I would probably rather listen to his covers album than hear that song again.

But I got to thinking about this - Christmas is the only time you hear people like Perry Como, Dean Martin, and Gene Autry on terrestrial/commercial radio.  Obviously these aren’t the only good songs that these people have but you never hear them the rest of the year.  I wonder if eventually some artists’ only legacy will be their holiday music (although Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra’s songs will always be around as long as there are Italian restaurants).

One other thing too…this could be my imagination also, but terrestrial radio stations play a shitload of commercials.  I had XM several years back and listen to NPR a lot since I canceled my service so that my impact my view of this.  I just find these stations unlistenable due to the frequency and length of their commercial break.  Kansas city has a great local political talk show but it seems like between the commercials, traffic, news, and weather you only get about 20 minutes of actual show per hour.  Of course I’m too lazy to actually time it so that’s just a baseless guess.

Kansas City has two upcoming Christmas shows - the Rockettes show and Trans-Siberian Orchestra.  From what I’ve heard about last year’s and this year’s show, the Rockettes’ Christmas is supposed to be a great time.  The problem is the date, November 19th.  I might end up enjoying it but I’m ot really interested in dropping the cash for a Christmas show a week before Thanksgiving.  I’m barely in the mood for Christmas after then, but a week before?  Forget about it.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra has the opposite problem.  They’re coming to Kansas City December 29th.  By then I’m already sick of Christmas and I’m disgusted by the news stories showing people exchanging their gifts so it’s not something I’m up for.  In this case at least the whole show isn’t based on Christmas so I could see myself going to this before I would go to the Rockettes’ show too early.

I realize that these shows need to make money and that they wouldn’t be coming to Kansas City after Christmas unless there was a good chance they would turn a profit.  I would just be curious about how many people attend these two shows this year especially compared to last year.

While taking my son to school I turned on one of the local Christmas stations and lo and behold they were playing Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmas Day”. I can’t put my finger on why but I despise that song so much but they just play it a ton on both stations. That was followed by some nondescript seasonal song by 98 Degrees.

I feel like I’m already turning into a Scrooge on the first week of November, but these bad and boring songs take all the joy out of Christmas. They’ve taken everything good from this time of the year and replaced it with the monotony found on the station the other ten months.

Anyway, I’m sure there’s more of me getting worked up as December 25 comes closer.

This year November 1 started the Christmas season here in Kansas City, at least on the radio.  Both of our light (or is it lite?) rock stations switched to Christmas music until…well I don’t even know when.  December 26?  December 31?

It’s easy enough to ignore at home or in my car (and I do) but the problem is that those two white bread, limp dick stations are being played everywhere so it’s tough to avoid when you’re out and about.  Even my wife’s office pipes in Star 102, including that horrible John Tesh show, which is a whole ‘nother post.

Last year I went on about my problems with these two stations and from what little I’ve heard they still stand.   They manage to play the safest, most boring stuff you can find.  Oh and what the hell, let’s add a little King Diamond Christmas action: