I'm pleased to kick-off the 2024 holiday season by posting "I Wish It Was Christmas Today!" — my 20th and latest annual holiday mix. Running just under 80 minutes, this mix contains 41 tracks dating from the 1940s to the present and reflecting a wide variety of content, styles and levels of quality. In short, there's a little something for everyone. 

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The mix opens with an excerpt from the 1954 holiday episode of The Liberace Show, one of television's first variety programs hosted by one of the medium's most flamboyant and colorful personalities. The next track pays homage to NBC's "Saturday Night Live," currently celebrating its 50th year on the air. "I Wish It Was Christmas Today" was first performed in 2000 by cast members Jimmy Fallon, Chris Kattan, Tracy Morgan and Horatio Sanz, who made the song a genuine holiday classic.

 

The rest of this mix is a typically odd jumble of tunes and comedy that runs the gamut from The Sonics' 1965 garage rock hit "Santa Claus" to the beautiful "Written in the Snow," by Ted Pandel and Bruce Haack, a Canadian composer known both for his popular children's songs and trailblazing electronic albums. There are clips from Johnny Carson and David Letterman, a stirring country ballad about the night Ronald Reagan rode with Santa Claus, and three amazing radio station promos created by Billy West and Tom Sandman during the heyday of Boston's WBCN-FM, arguably one of the best rock radio stations of all time.

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You can hear the first several tracks from my latest mix by way of the Soundcloud app to the right. Simply press the orange Play button and see what you think. Directly below that colorful link is a button that reads "Listen to This Year's Complete Mix on SoundCloud," which takes you to the SoundCloud site for an opportunity to hear the entire 2024 mix.

 

The maroon buttons that follow offer other alternatives to hear or get information about this year's mix. You can download a track listing, download the entire mix as a single mp3 file, access or download individual tracks, download the whole collection as individual files in a compressed ZIP file package or get more details about individual tracks by reviewing last fall's entries on my holiday music blog, Bells Will Be Ringing.

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Best wishes to all for peace, good health and fellowship during the holidays and the year ahead.

 

 

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