On the radio with Andy Cirzan!

On Friday I had the honor of doing 35 minutes of live radio with Andy Cirzan, the great archeologist of obscure holiday records who provided much of the inspiration for my own Yule-Tunes Eclectic and Inexplicable series. (I interviewed Andy a month ago for an essay about my mixtape project that ran in the Washington Post just after Thanksgiving.)

Anyway, Minnesota Public Radio's The Daily Circuit invited us both on to talk about our mixtapes and recommend some yulejams that haven't been played to death. I was afraid no one would be in the mood for this silliness when I realized our segment would follow an hour of reaction to the NRA's spectacularly tone-deaf press conference about the Newton, Conn. school shootings, which the station had carried live a little over an hour before we went on. But I thought the segment turned out well. I had a great time.

You can listen to the whole segment here.  Should it happen to pique your curiosity, my 2009-2012 yulemixes are on the Christmas Mixtapes page of this site. Finally, you can grab Andy's 2012 mixtape, Santa Soul, from Sound Opinions.

Happy holidays, everybody!

Andy Cirzan sent me his yulemix!

I'm so honored and excited I'm sweating. Yes, it's 70 degrees and muggy here in DC this December 4th, but it isn't the climate that has me -- svichting? Swatching? Whatever. It's the fact that Andy Cirzan, my yulemix-making senpai, sent me his 2012 Christmas mix CD.

When it comes to holiday mixtapes, I am a mere padawan to Cirzan's wizened Jedi master, dispensing ancient wisdom via oddly structured sentences he splashes around the swamps of Degobah. (He's from Chicago, actually.) As you may recall if you happened to read my recent Washington Post essay about my yulemix, the seventh installment of which shall drop forthwith, Cirzan has been issuing compilations of obscure and often inexplicable seasonal gems for more than 20 years.

Sound Opinions, the great WBEZ radio show and podcast that introduced me to Cirzan's noble work will -- if custom holds -- be posting his 2012 mix for free download later this month, so I won't spoil any of his selections. I will note with not a little pride, however, that two of the cuts on Cirzan's mix this year were already on my draft playlist for my 2012 mix before his collection got here today. Great minds obsess alike, or something. As always, there're some things on Cirzan's collection I've never heard before, and that I may yet steal for 2012.

Thanks, Andy.

What Potter Stewart Said About Christmas

My essay about making my Christmas mixtape is in the Style section of yesterday's Washington Post, the pullout section with Helen Mirren on the cover. I was surprised how difficult I found it to write about this silly little project that's come to claim so many tens of hours of my time and creative energy every fall.

Here's an outtake:

To ask what constitutes a Christmas song is really to ask, what is Christmas? This is a loaded question, one that recalls for me what Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said of pornography: “I really, really like it.”

No, of course I’m kidding. Stewart said “I know it when I see it.” I know a Christmas song when I hear one. Christmas is a Christian holiday, but it’s also a seismic economic event and a tradition-bound, nostalgia-spreading national art project. It’s a sparkly, brightly colored, tinsel-wrapped rorschach blot. It’s Jesus’ birthday, and if he died for my sins then it follows that it’s my party, too. I’ll put Tom Waits songs that make me cry on the soundtrack if I want to.

You can read the whole piece here. My Christmas mixtapes from 2009-2011 are posted on the Christmas Mixtapes heading by year.