Merry Mixtapes: Introduction

Merry Mixtapes was the original name I had planned on using for the YouTube channel that eventually morphed into this podcast. The initial idea was to create YouTube playlists around a central theme: Hipster Holiday Party, Christmas at the Beach, Adopted Songs, stuff like that, then cut a video talking about the playlist and why each song made the cut.

But, before I finished my first video, I realized the scope was too narrow and there was much more I wanted to explore in the realm of Christmas music. So, the name changed to ‘Tis the Soundtrack…which in hindsight was probably too close to ‘Tis the Podcast and there was definitely a time or two early on where I caught myself in editing saying ‘Podcast’ instead of ‘Soundtrack’. Sorry Anthony, Julia and Thom.

The Merry Mixtape idea sat on the shelf…or more accurately sat in my OneNote episode planning sheet until a month or so ago when I decided to check out this hot new trend that’s been taking corporate America by storm…outsourcing.

I hit up the Christmas Podcast community and asked if there was any interest in creating a Mixtape of Christmas tunes around a central theme and then coming on to discuss. And I cannot overstate how completely blown away I was by the response - a big thank you to everyone who has been so supportive of this project.

The Merry Mixtape rules were simple:

• Guests create a holiday mixtape around a central theme of their choosing.
• There is no song limit, but the total runtime needed to stay under 74 minutes…that number representing the original recording limit of CD-R’s when they first became available.
• And that’s it!

Then we sit down (in our respective recording spaces) and talk about the tape. We cover the theme, who would enjoy listening and take a deep dive into each track and why it was selected.

The plan was to also compile the mixtapes on the popular music streaming platforms, so folks could listen along with us or play the tapes after finishing the episodes. But, as I learned while recording the first two episodes, many of these songs are not widely available on streaming.

I’ve had pretty good luck with YouTube…which kind of brings us full circle, back to the origin of this Podcast. So, when each episode drops, you’ll be able to get the mixtape track list from either the show notes or the ‘Tis the Soundtrack website and both locations will also include a link to a YouTube playlist, containing all the songs in the order they appear on the tape.

Ken Kessler from The Sounds of Christmas and Gerry D from Totally Rad Christmas were the first brave pioneers to participate and I want to give a special thanks to both of them for taking the time out of their busy lives to talk Christmas music for hours.

That’s right folks, hours..plural.

Instead of the normal 10-15 minute ‘Tis the Soundtrack episodes, with the Merry Mixtapes series, you’ll be hearing much long, in-depth conversations.

For example, I’m just about done editing my conversation with Ken and it looks like it’s going to end up north of 2 hours.

Part of the reason for this is that we completely obliterated that rule I mentioned about the 74 minute time limit. Ken came locked and loaded with 40 tracks clocking in at 148 minutes on the nose or exactly two CDs! A double-album completely stuffed full of great Christmas music, much of which you may never have heard before.

And Gerry, keeping his theme on-point, ignored the CD part completely and instead picked up a trusty Maxell UR120, maxxing out both 60-minute sides of the cassette with 32 tracks from the greatest decade…that is assuming you define the greatest decade in terms of saturation of neon or proliferation of synthesizers or maybe quantity of electronic story-telling bears or density of transforming robots…all completely valid units of decadel measurement mind you.

The other reason these episodes are so long is that it’s just such a fun topic. Getting to nerd out about obscure, personally meaningful or just plain weird holiday tunes with fellow Christmas-obsesses (yet extremely-well-adjusted) individuals is surely going to be at the top of my list of things I am thankful for this year.

And that’s it for today. The first two episodes of the Merry Mixtapes series, featuring Ken and Gerry will be dropping over the next week. And in-between building Halloween deocrations, I’ll be busy recording new episodes with some other fantastic Christmas Podcast hosts so we’ll have a steady steam of mixtapes through the end of the year.

Cheers and Merry Christmas!