My Christmas mixtape; Christmas Tape. Originally the tape was a giveaway from Q magazine. I obviously didn’t think much of the playlist (looking back now I think I made the right choice). Thanks to the magic of sellotape, I re-purposed the cassette and over three painstaking years I turned this piece of plastic into the perfect, memory filled, badly recorded, poorly-sounding, crazily-ordered playlist that tells me another year’s over and new one’s just begun.

For three years, each Christmas season (which started in late November, not October like now) I would run to my room at around 7.07pm (after the news and weather played), and again at 9.07, the best times for at least one Christmas song to be played and captured. I would sit on the edge of my bed – literally for that was where my stereo was positioned – and I would listen to the radio to catch a favourite Christmas song, record it, re-cue Christmas Tape, and then sit in wait for the next festive musical high to be secured. (Truthfully, as a kid, I’d run around and do kid stuff when a crap song played, and I’d come back in 3 and 5 minute bursts.)

By year three, as Christmas Tape was getting full and positions were limited, I had to load two additional tapes into the stereo – awwww yeah, I had a dual cassette set-up – Christmas Tape, and Franken-tape. Franken-tape recorded the originals, Christmas Tape made space for the choicest cuts. Until finally, when I had enough songs to fill the 60 minute tape I had to get a Surrogate Tape, reconfigure the entire playlist from Franken-tape in order to fit every precious sound on original Christmas Tape.

If you know cassettes, you’ll know how challenging it was to fill each side so as to have the song end and it just flip over to start the other side. Christmas Tape does this. Side 1 ends on Bruce Springsteen, side 2 starts on the Royal Guardsman.

I had to have Band Aid, of course, and Fairy Tale of New York. I ended up with about three versions of Walking in a Winter Wonderland – Tony Bennett, Englebert Humperdink and Frank Sinatra. Guess who’s best.

And the songs are not piled on there willy-nilly, neither. No sir! I had to make sure Snoopy’s Christmas would be at the beginning of a side so I could easily rewind and play it over and over (you gotta sing it full-force in the car, gotta know the words, and gotta know when to do the Baron’s accent for ‘Merry Christmas, mine friend’).

I’ve even got some – at the time- rare highlights, in particular is John Denver and the Muppets singing the 12 Days of Christmas. Also the live version of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band doing Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Bruce is laughing as Clarence Ho-Ho’s. Good times and real spirit (and better than the polished sounding Merry Christmas Baby, which I also have).

Sure I know now I could find all these tracks on YouTube or iTunes (maybe). But they don’t have the charm of starting too early, or finishing too soon, or of me trying to work out whether to record the song at all. Take The Eagles, Please Come Home for Christmas and its record – pause – record – pause – record – pause editing. I have no idea how it’s supposed to start, I only know the first words are ‘Ellsibe ringing’

A few years after Christmas Tape I flatted with someone who had A Cocktail Christmas and ‘New Christmas Tape’ was started. But I got cocky. It was a 90 minute cassette. Too big. Half a side ends with Nat King Cole telling me to ‘Have Myself a Merry Little Christmas’ and is followed by the theme from James Bond (which I now associate with Christmas) and then cuts to various, cuts of Soundgarden (New Christmas Tape was previously a Franken-tape).

So as I nervously wait for the tape to start if I’ve parked in the sun, and then screech out the refrain ‘war is over, if you want it’ Yoko-style, I love that tape and what it represents. I love how scrappy and imperfect it all is. My Christmas wish is that kids these days have something similarly scrappy and imperfect that they can painstakingly create for just themselves. And they should proudly sing out loud melodic christmas songs as if no-one can hear them – accents n’ all.

*Technically, I’m not listening to the tape where I am as my car in NZ has a tape player, but my car in Aussie doesn’t. This means I can never sell my car in NZ. Never. Or I need to work out how to transfer Christmas Tape to some digital format.

BTW: Featuring on my Christmas Turntable (YouTube) this year, but not on any tape, are the following gems:

• All I Want for Christmas Is You : Mariah Carey – I’m not ashamed, it’s damn catchy, and it’s only for 25 days
• Don’t Kill Me Santa Claus : The Killers – love the chorus, reminds me of Dustland Fairytale
• Walk : The Foo Fighters – not exactly an Xmas song, but damn good – play it loud!

To draw out the hidden layers for posterity:

• The cover shot was down to three options – all informed by the Worst Album Covers. This one, and this one were seriously considered.
• I had a rule that only photos sourced from our workplace were used – so there’s only one expression from me
• The orange colours were chosen from Kuler to provide print proof ideas for DMA branding
• BarrieMaster is a reference to Buckmaster.
• There is a regrettable error when I reference Mark Thompson (who thought as a child he had invented the shrug) with a ‘copyright’ when it should have been a TM
• Behzad is Peter Ducker on the back page. Only he didn’t know who Peter Drucker was. And he’s doing an MBA.
• Passiona Trick Crew was the final edition to the text after Justin told a story about the Coca-Cola Trick Team, and after I drank my first Passiona. First and last.
• “Travel well,” is a reference to Justin’s off-used ‘how are you travelling’ enquiry into progress.
• The typewriter fonts used in the headers, TIB and DMA logo were tweeted by Justin some weeks before.
• Gill Sans was to be the main font, but I went with Myriad. Gill would have been symbolic, but it wasn’t heavy enough for taking the colour from behind. A statement which itself is a reference to Gill’s dog fucking ways. Boom Boom.
• The 12 in ~$12,000 I receive for ~ use is a reference to my 12-month contract
• I really do sound like Axl Rose when I sing
• In a previous version I was also a member of Salt N Pepa N Mustard, only to be kicked out for insisting ‘Push It’ should be ‘Pull It’ because “if you wanted to ‘get up on this’ surely the force needed was one that exerts pressure in the direction of the origin.” I took it out for space reasons. Also, quite frankly, I was coming across as too much of a loser.
• Other things that didn’t make the final cut: We were going to have the line ‘This was to be [insert name]‘s defining moment” in every paragraph. We were also going to have a similar ‘We’re bigger than Jesus’ line, for a few versions ‘We’ll have more hits than Hitler appeared’ – it was wisely dropped.
• The bubble writing on the disc itself represents the two styles of classy and sans-classy. The green edge is a nod to making covers of school assignments extra classy. If I had a silver pen that would’ve made an appearance too – possibly as spots.
• I have three favourite bits: 1) Taking off My Pants to Unlock the Door (to your heart) as a song because it was the best story 2) Tying it together with the ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ reference – completely true. 3) How it perfectly encompasses four of the most uniquely genuine and hilariously cool four months of my life.

The songs on the CD were selected by Behzad and me as fitting the criteria of either:

• A song we thought we’d like Justin to hear
• A song we just liked
• A song that could relate to the Rise and Fall concept – as in epic, or humorous

We chose six songs each, with the agreed 13th being ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’. The tracks – which I ordered based on musical vibe, man, rather than content are as follows (initial indicates the picker):

1. That Look You Give That Guy – The Eels (BE)
2. Someday – The Strokes (BE)
3. EMI Unlimited Edition – Sex Pistols (ME)
4. Somewhere Down the Barrel – The Dissociatives (ME)
5. Caught By the Fuzz – Supergrass (BE) interesting note, ME also had a Supergrass song in her original selection
6. Island in the Sun – Weezer (BE)
7. Runaway – Kanye West (BE)
8. Garden of Eden – Guns ‘N’ Roses (ME)
9. Anchor Me (Greenpeace version) – various NZ (ME)
10. Hair – Lady Gaga (ME)
11. Party All the Time – Eddie Murphy (BE)
12. Invincible – Muse (ME)
13. Don’t Stop Me Now – Queen (BE, ME)

the number of songs, 13, has no meaning whatsover.

Via: DListed > CityRag > CollegeHumour

This was our mascot.

We raised $300 – impressive for a small pack of corporate-types and a smallish selection of cupcakes made and decorated by myself and some other generous wonderful people. My decorative efforts are here.

…And then I rented The Brothers Bloom this weekend (amusing, quirky, not for everyone) but what was completely delightful was in the final 11 mins the final is-it-all-a-con-is-it-not scene – crucial in any con genre film – took place in a familiar scene! (albeit from the other side). I literally did a double-take, paused it, took down the picture and proceeded to marvel at the unexpected coincidence.

I now know that it is in Romania, and it is called Constanta Casino (or Casino of Constanta), it was built between the two world wars (so 30s-40s accurate for the photo). And if someone from my Ma’s family took the photo they would have traveled thusly:

Thanks internet! And Movies!

Check out more: Foley Art Gallery

(source: @meanesttindian)