I first laid eyes on a CD burner waaayyyy back in 1996. At the time, even a lowly 2x burner cost around $499, so I couldn’t afford my own. Thankfully, my ex-girlfriend’s mother had one, and she let me borrow it whenever I wanted.
That year I made my first “Christmas CD”. As you might guess, it was a CD full of Christmas music. But not just any Christmas music – it was “cool” Christmas music from bands like The Ramones, Cocteau Twins, Sting, XTC, Captain Sensible, and other New Wave\Punk\80s artists I love.
As time went on, I downloaded more and more of these tracks, and the “Christmas CD” became an annual tradition. Last year, I even put together a “jimcofer.com 10th Annual Christmas Compilation”, but with one twist – I didn’t put it on CD. So many people have iPods and other portable players these days that putting out a CD image for people to download seemed much more complicated that just mixing it all together into one huge MP3 file. That way people could burn it to CD if they wanted, or just dump it to an iPod… or whatever they wanted to do, really.
I’m sad to report that there will be no CD\MP3 compilation at all this year. Why? Mainly because I haven’t found any “new” Christmas songs I like. I’ve completely tapped the store of 80s\New Wave Christmas songs. If there’s a Christmas song by an 80s performer that I don’t have… well, I’d be shocked. And although I’ve looked in to songs by 90s\2000-era performers, I’m just not feeling them. These songs seem… well, “sacreligious” isn’t perhaps the best word for it. But they seem to have a “let’s see how screwed up we can make this song!” vibe to them. It’s like they’re not taking it seriously. And that leaves “traditional” Christmas songs by Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby… which are fine, but it’s just not me.
Maybe next year I’ll find some new material. Or maybe I’ll feel inspired enough to choose from the same 126 songs I’ve been using for the past 10 years. Or maybe not. This year, at least, the Christmas CD just isn’t going to happen. My apologies!