Christmas Tune Up

Last December, I had a plan. I was going to embark on the most gigantic Christmas music shopping spree that any man has ever embarked upon. I knew that by the time that I was finished collecting all of the music, Christmas 2006 would be over, but I was planning for the future. I wanted Christmas 2007 to be more Silver Belly than ever. And as far as my January 2007 self was concerned, this plan was deemed a huge success.

It was only this month when I realized that last year, I had only procured a Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra CD, in addition to importing my copy of New Wave X-mas into iTunes. This was disheartening. I had honestly fooled myself into believing that I had already cornered the market on Christmas music.

So, I quickly ran out and bought an Elvis and Dean Martin Christmas CD to try to make my Christmas spirit feel better. Well, it helped a bit. But not a lot.

So, on Friday night, I pushed an internet button that would fetch over 9GB of Christmas music and drop them onto my Macbook. Like, total legal stuff. Well, Monday night, the download was complete and I had like 130 new Christmas albums to decide if I wanted to keep or not. There's plenty of no-brainers in here. Kenny and Dolly. John Denver and the Muppets. Sesame Street. Doris Day. Merle Haggard. Chris Isaak. And a lot of stuff that I had never expected to be bundled. Like the Belle and Sebastian Christmas Peel Session or the R.E.M. Christmas Fanclub album or the compilation of Japanese Christmas songs.

I could get snobby about the bit rate being too low on some of this stuff, but I won't. I'm appreciative that this internet button allowed me such a collection.

Now, here's my conundrum. Will I offend the internet by deleting out all of the junk? No offense to the fans in the audience, but I don't really care to have the 98 Degrees Christmas Album...or Charlotte Church...or Skinkhead Xmas. I've given plenty of benefits of doubt. Alan Jackson? Alright. Barbra? Yeah, you can come along too. Star Wars Holiday Album? Okay, but I'm going to have to put you on "Skip When Shuffling." And don't tell anyone this, but I gave Amy Grant a fifteen minute window of opportunity.

So, I've sorted out the great, the guilty pleasures and the awful. Now, I'm left with 60 or 70 albums that I still need to figure out. There's an oodle of compilations, and I'll have to be careful to avoid having too many duplicate instances of the same song. And then I have to decide how I feel about Mannheim Steamroller and whatever that other band is called that sounds just like them. But what's more intriguing are the 15 or so albums by artists with a lot of odd characters in their names. At first glance, they look Scandinavian and I'm happy.