Unpopular Christmas 2019

Here we a Christmas offering for you. It comes in four sections - A kind of straight-up jazz set, then a few medieval through baroque choral pieces, which leads us to some "derangements" of some overly familiar songs, and finally some small-scale, intimate, perhaps introverted even, renderings of some more staples. This exercise of hearing these familiar songs on unfamiliar, even irreverent settings can perhaps help us appreciate the original musical intentions of the songs.



Rest ye merry! (and remember, the comma comes after "merry," not "ye.")

See the playlist after the break...

Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for December 22, 2018

On a grey and drizzly Saturday before Christmas, we bring you a set of Unpopular Christmas music, at least not what they're playing at the mall. It's been a couple of years since I've done a full Christmas program, and now I remember why - Christmas songs are short! There's a lot of pieces to put together.



The program is bit more broken up by genre than is typical. We start with jazz a, as usual, but there's also a sort of Americana set, a bit more jazz followed by an upbeat set, before we bring you, on what is often a busy run-around day for may people, a bit of a chill-out, or contemplative set in the middle of the second hour.

See the playlist after the break...

webcast info for December 24, 2016

No live webcast today as the SCATV compound is closed, and I'm off to the homestead regardless.

If all systems go there will be a rebroadcast of the December 19, 2015, last year's Unpopular Christmas episode, which had some technical disasters issues resulting in (at least) the first mic break not getting recorded, and one selection I instantly regretted, so it is highly edited (as promised) with some bonus material at the end.

If that's not enough, there is also the Unpopular Christmas episode from December 20, 2014.

Christmas preparations

I've known the version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town from downloading the Holiday Freakout collection quite some time ago, but I only just recently became aware of this Christmas album from the piano duo Ferrante and Teicher. I was familiar with the duo from easy listening versions of pop songs and movie themes, "Theme from Exodus" and the like, so the obvious use of prepared pianos á la John Cage caught me off guard.

Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for December 19, 2015

And so this is Christmas...

We present you an assortment of Unpopular Christmas Music, hopefully not what you were listening to in line at the register. Along with some festive jazz, pop and R&B numbers we do have a serious set as well. And also, a contemplation of the cruel and fickle parameters of jazz legendry where a long, healthy, creative, and productive life lacks the glamour of living fast and dying young.

Ho, ho, ho.

Unpopular Music - December 19, 2015 by Unpopularfred on Mixcloud

Playlist after the break...