For those of you who are only around during the Christmas season, I'd like to point you towards a series of great compilations I make and share from the tunes I share out during July. That time of year I skip the albums and singles of Christmas music and I look for Christmas songs that are hiding in non-Christmas albums. Have you ever been listening to a random record in May and thought it odd when a Christmas song pops up? Who knows why an artist might bury a Christmas song in an odd place like that, but it happens a lot. I collect up those odd occurrences from old albums and share them here during July. And every once in a while I collect up my favorites from those shares and make a best-of collection. The one from last year is shown above and here's the link to it. Good stuff on there if you want to go download it and check it out. I promise you won't regret it. (I know this is 2024 and I did a Christmas in July this year, but there is no best-of created for it just yet. Someday... In the meantime, all the shares from this year are still active, you could probably put one together for yourself. Start here...)
%20Best%20of-2022.JPG)
And here's the collection from summer of 2022. More of the same really, but I bet there's stuff here you've never heard. Really happy with that cover, still need to revisit the museum in St. Pete where I shot the detail of a painting so I can get the name and credit the artist.
Next up is a collection of the best from 2021. Seems like just yesterday I was putting this one together but it's been a couple years now. This ornament was on a tree in the museum at the old Henry Plant Hotel. They always do an extensive Christmas re-theming and it draws in the crowds.
Next up is the collection from 2020 and this is the first one where I've changed it up a bit over the years since I first shared it. I didn't change any of the songs up but I dropped in newer rips that sounded a bit better, or may be in stereo when my original record was mono. Probably tough to tell a difference to be honest, but I felt better about it.
As expected, here's the collection from 2019. This must have been not too long after my first trip to Italy. That cover photo is a detail from a fresco I saw in an ancient church while I was there and I knew it would make a good CD cover for one of these projects. Looks like I played with the saturation a bit, but these paintings weren't cared for very well during the first few hundred years of their existence. We're lucky if there's anything left of it to restore after all this time.
I'm sure this is getting repetitive, but here's the collection from 2018. Love that old TV with the diorama built in. I'm always on the lookout for a good picture to use, but I don't think I had an album cover in mind then I saw this, I just thought it was a neat idea. I've since decided the whole thing might be fake, since the knobs don't look real and the part that should say Magnavox or Dumont instead says Merry Christmas.
What year are we on? Oh, 2017. And a picture from a trip to NYC. Imagine my surprise when I looked up and saw a sign for St. Nicholas Avenue! The only thing that could have made it better was if there had been a Christmas parade going by when I took the picture.
We skip over 2016 (long story) and land on 2015 for the next collection. I can remember shooting a quick pic of a box full of those old C7 lights at a Salvation Army store. Had no idea it would end up as an album cover, but I was very happy with this one.
We skip back three years for this collection from 2012 and a cover that I'm not particularly fond of. Needs a lot of work to brighten it up, but it's the thought that counts. Looks like this one is another redux where I've revamped a few of the shares and even worked on the cover a bit. I fell like George Lucas going back and tinkering with things that should probably be left alone.
2011 and a great cover. This little glass Christmas tree decoration is still on top of my old stereo cabinet, I don't know how it's survived all these years. And it graces a great collection that is probably my longest ever. There was so much good stuff this season that I had to put over 50 tracks in the best of.
Back to a much shorter collection for 2010, and a cover that was one of the first pictures I took with a new macro lens on my SLR. There was a string of Christmas lights on my desk at work and I focused in on the closest ones and let the others form that great bokeh. I don't think I ever took a better picture with that lens and this one was from the first day I bought it. Funny how that goes. This version has been gussied-up with a few new rips, I just feel like I should mention that.
As you'll see from here back to the beginning, I used to sub-title these collections, not sure why I quit doing that. This one takes us to the beach and it reminds me of the two hurricanes we endured this year and how bad the beaches looked afterwards. For that matter, they're still pretty rough looking two months later to be honest. But they're slowly getting the sand out of the buildings and off the streets, cleaning it, and putting it back where it belongs. It's a process. This is the collection from 2009 and once again it's been rejiggered over the years with higher bitrate recordings and stereo versions as available.
Back to the beach for 2008 and I spot that I haven't returned to for some years now. It was very near the spot this picture was made that I met my now-wife for our very first date. It didn't work out that time, or the next, or the next for that matter, but about 17 years later we tied the knot. That was earlier this year right after the second hurricane, and so far we're doing just ducky. :) (Again this comp has been augmented and improved over time.)
One more year back in time and we're in 2007. An oddly verbose title this year and a parenthetical catchphrase that seems unnecessary. The clip art is actually from the back of an LP from United Artists in the late sixties, though I forget exactly which one. They had a number of Christmas LPs in that time period and each one had a great little bit of art on the flipside like this. (Or at least the original issues did. Later printing omitting the color and just did a B&W doodle.) And the record spines shown in the picture were actually some of the records I pulled some of the track from that I used that year. Not all of them are on this best-of, but some are. And as is the case for all of my older comps, They've been touched-up over the years with newer rips and stereo versions as things become available.
+xmas+in+july+-+A.jpg)
Guess what, this is the very first collection from
2006 and the only one that I didn't create the cover for. To be honest, I hadn't given much thought to putting together a collection from all the Christmas tracks I shared in this, the first year of collecting up this type of music, but my buddy
Rob Martinez saw a great potential. He took the best stuff and put it together into this collection, grabbed some old photos that I'd posted here and there and created what you see before you. Dunno where the trees came from but I shot those fireworks many a year ago. There was also a rear cover that shows my first and only attempt at snow skiing, dunno if that's in the share anymore, but it was at one time. This being the oldest collection here, it's suffered the most revisions in the name of improvement, but there are still a few tracks that I've never seen again and the sound on those might be a little rough. Everybody starts out somewhere and this is what I was doing 18 years ago. I hope you enjoyed this little walk with me down memory lane. Don't forget to leave me a little comment if you can, either here or on those old shares I linked to. We bloggers live of those comments. :)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.JPG)
%20%C2%BFDonde%20Esta%20Santa%20Claus%20(Instrumental).jpg)
.jpg)
.JPG)
.jpg)
.JPG)
%20Best%20of-2022.JPG)
