Roxanne Tellier – Ho Ho Holiday Memories

“Rockin’ around the Christmas tree, at the Christmas party hop.”  “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!” Oh NOes! Must be getting close to the holidays – the earworms are out in full force!

This will be the last DBAWIS column for 2019. Next time you see us, it will be a bright and shiny new 2020! Let’s hope that 2020 applies to our vision, rather than to our hindsight.

I’ve got a holiday gathering to go to this afternoon, and every year, it takes me a little longer to get ready to be serially hugged. But one of the perks of having written a weekly column for many years is that, now and again, we can reach back into those past ponderings and re-release them into the present, dusted off, re-edited, and ready to be digested anew.

For your Christmas reading, wonderment and wandering …. a few morsels from my past holiday tables …

Roxanne Tellier: It’s The War on Christmas, Carol

As hard as it might be to imagine holiday songs battling it out, the plain fact is … Christmas songs mean big bucks. Over and over and over again. A Number One Christmas song can mean early retirement for the writer, with a nice pension income supplemented every year in December.

Doug Thompson – DOUG’S COOL YULE – MY “12 SONGS OF CHRISTMAS” LIST

Hard to miss that’s it’s the Christmas season.  Department, drug and clothing stores have all been playing Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree”, Bobby Helm’s “Jingle Bell Rock”, Wham’s “Last Christmas” and The Beach Boys “Little Saint Nick”, along with newer Christmas ditties from the likes of Neil Diamond, Taylor Swift, Michael Buble and the omnipresent “White Christmas” from der Bingle (aka Bing Crosby) for what seems like months already.

Frank Gutch Jr: We Are the World Done Local, Mining 45s, and Notes…..

Quick!  Without searching, answer a few questions.  Who recorded We Are the World?  Who benefited?  Who wrote it?  Was there a B-side?  Were there other projects similar?  Does anyone care?  Did anyone care?

For those born after the fact, it may surprise you to know that plenty cared.  Over 20 million people worldwide bought the record.  I mean, Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie, the writers of the song, were huge at the time.  So were producers Quincy Jones and Michael Omartian, though Jones significantly more than Omartian.