Dedicated to Caterina and to Angelo and Power Pop Criminals for all the great music over the years...
Caterina's Christmas- The Summer Suns The Last Christmas (Back To Mono) 2021
Christmas Is Cancelled (This Year)- Farrah A Christmas Blog Gift For You 2006
Come On Christmas- Cheap Trick A Christmas Blog Gift For You 2006
Super Sunny Christmas- Redd Kross Another Christmas Blog Gift For You 2007
Santa Claus- Chris Von Sneidern Dreamland With The Pop Snowflakes 2008
Christmas (I Remember)- The Smithereens Dreamland With The Pop Snowflakes 2008
I Guess It's Christmas- The Wellingtons Santa Claus & The Power Pop Criminals 2009
X-Mas- Epicycle Santa Claus & The Power Pop Criminals 2009
Power Pop Santa- Pointed Sticks The Magnificent Seven Snowmen 2010
My Girlfriend (Forgot Me This Christmas)- The Click Five The Magnificent Seven Snowmen 2010
Waiting For Christmas- Adventures Of Jet Sleigh Bells In The Snow 2011
Joy Is In The Giving- Lisa Mychols The Final Christmas 2012
Christmastime in Painesville- The Deadbeat Poets The Final Christmas 2012
California Christmas- Sketch Middle Tic Tac Mistletoe 2013
(There's No War On Christmas) When Christmas Is In Your Heart- The Mockers Tic Tac Mistletoe 2013
Christmas Bells Are Ringing- The Connection Mas Christmas! 2014
A Very Sorry Christmas- The New Mendicants Mas Christmas! 2014
Do You Want To Build A Snowman- The Genuine Fakes 21st Century Santa (Christmas Special) 2015
I Must Have Been So Good- Vibeke Saugestad 21st Century Santa (Christmas Special) 2015
Kids Come Back Again At Christmas- Sloan So Long Christmas 2016
Wonderful Christmas- The Click Beetles So Long Christmas 2016
December Snow- Tommy And The Rockets Very Merry Christmas 2017
All I Want Is You for Christmas- Kimberley Rew Sad Christmas 2018
The Christmas Fit- The Charlie Watts Riots White Christmas 2019
Footprints In The Snow- Girlfriend Material White Christmas 2019
Teenage Christmas- Jacobites Christmas Rockdown 2020
Best Christmas Ever- Ronnie Spector Christmas Rockdown 2020
Christmas Morning (Yellow Canary)- The Successful Failures The Last Christmas (Back To Mono) 2021
Xmas Time Of The Year- Green Day The Last Christmas (Back To Mono) 2021
I Want An Alien For Christmas- Fountains Of Wayne A Christmas Blog Gift For You 2006
Merry Christmas Will Do- Material Issue A Christmas Blog Gift For You 2006
Peace On You-Three Hour Tour Dreamland With The Pop Snowflakes 2008
16 years! 429 Power Pop Christmas songs! 22 hours and 32 minutes of Power Pop Christmas music! This is just one facet of the legacy, the amazing gift that Angelo and his Power Pop Criminals blog have given all of us over the years. Back in November Angelo posted that he had lost hearing in his right
ear- a diagnosis that strikes terror in the heart of any music fan, myself included (and likely you as well if you are reading this). Yet, with just his left ear Angelo finished a multiple post rundown of David Bash (of IPO fame) year-end best of lists and, sense of humor intact, concluded with The Last Christmas (Back To MONO). Imagine going to see every hearing specialist you can find during the day and at night putting your remaining hearing at risk to post these final compilations (all with original artwork) for us to enjoy. It's a staggering level of commitment that is truly inspiring.
While it's my main source for music these days, I was late to the music downloading party. A lifelong vinyl record buyer, I was tentative about CD's, especially as they first came out at a list price of $17.99. Supposedly this was due to a lack of CD pressing plants in the US and prices would drop as soon as we got our plants up and running. One should never underestimate the greed and short-sightedness of the record companies however, so of course prices remained unreasonably high even when we started making CDs in America. As new releases were no longer coming out on vinyl, I was forced to embrace the cold, pristine sound and scrunched up artwork of CDs but this embrace was half-hearted at best.
On the other side of the spectrum was music file sharing- yes the songs didn't sound as good as vinyl but they were FREE. Within a week of my friend Frank telling me about the site in late 1999 I was pigging out at the Napster trough. I wasn't keen on people being able to download songs from my work computer- I never uploaded anything myself- but it was a small price to pay for free music. Especially music you couldn't get anywhere else like rarities, demos, unreleased live recordings etc. The problem was that I was lazy about things like tagging and album artwork so my iTunes library was a total mess (I'm a PC guy and had first tried using Windows Media Player but boy was it clunky!) |
| History of iTunes |
For me the cost of an Internet song download had already been established when Apple launched the iTunes store in the mid-2000's. While .99 cents a pop may have been a deal for some, it was a significant increase from the $0 for unlimited music I had been paying with Napster. Plus, if CD packaging seemed like short shrift, the idea of paying for something devoid of any tangible material was never going to fly.
Once Napster was litigated out of existence (thanks a lot Metallica!) digital music dried up for me until I found the Little Hits blog in 2005. Created by a Boston guy named Jon Harrison, Little Hits was the first .mp3 blog I discovered. Almost every day Jon would post a new song (usually from an obscure 7" single), give you some background on the artist and, here's the important part, advocate for the song's greatness, usually by sharing how it affected him personally. The blog leaned a little too indie rock for me, but I discovered many great bands there that I never would have heard of otherwise. Little Hits ended in 2009 when a band told Jon that their song had been pirated by an unscrupulous ringtone (remember those?) company from a song downloaded on the site. Virtually every .mp3 blog has some kind of message on the home page saying the music is for "sampling purposes only" but once uploaded, they no longer have any control over how it is used.
(Two quick notes about the .mp3:
- Sound quality: Yes, even at 320kps an .mp3 does not sound anywhere near as good as a CD, let alone vinyl, but I believe I may already have mentioned- THIS WAS ALL FREE MUSIC! I have several friends who revile the .mp3 format based on high-minded sonic principles but as someone who first fell in love with music listening on a crappy transistor radio and grew up spending WAY more money on records than on stereo equipment I'm willing to except the trade-off.
- Artist royalty: Yes, artists do not receive any compensation for the songs I downloaded from .mp3 blogs. I often did end up buying records by bands after hearing their downloads first, however, and I am providing some promotional support by blogging about the bands and playing them on my radio show. Whenever asked, artists have always been willing to send me downloads to play. Are these bullsh*t rationalizations on my part? Perhaps, but they have worked for me so far.)
After Killed By Death Records I found other .mp3 blogs like Good bad Music for bad bad Times!, Last Days of Man on Earth and Something I Learned Today. Like KBDR, these blogs offered individual downloads of singles or, less frequently, full albums, usually with artwork included. Downloading a full album took some time as you needed to grab songs one at a time and often had to edit their ID3 tags (which include name, artist, album title, year, genre, etc.). After making a huge, unorganized, unsearchable mess with my Napster downloads, I vowed that I would keep my iTunes library tight with all information and album covers in place for every song.
Many of the original file hosting services like RapidShare, Megaupload and Sharebeast were either too greedy or too blatantly illegal and shut down, yet several still remain and the .mp3 blog community continues to thrive. One of the great things about this community is that each blog includes a list of other recommended sites. From PVAc to 44.1 kHz I discovered Power Pop Criminals, Power Pop Overdose, Willfully Obscure, Sons of the Dolls, Ratboy '69... and from those blogs I discovered others like Shotgun Solution, My Life's a Jigsaw, Short Sharp Kick In The Teeth and the list goes on. For a while there I was like a famished 5 year old gorging myself on an all you can eat musical buffet- it took many months to actually listen to everything I downloaded in the early days. It has reached a more manageable level in the last few years though my wife might take issue with this statement. Power Pop Criminals will be greatly missed and here's hoping for a speedy recovery to Angelo's hearing loss. In the meantime, I will continue to surf .mp3 blogs, picking up obscure records I've never heard of and playing them for you on ALL KINDSA GIRLS!
Click the link below to stream tonight's show, or to download right click and "Save Link As:"
