music

Kevin Mason's Holiday Playlist

Holidays On The Hi-Fi Playlist

After a lengthy career in radio, I honestly have a love/hate relationship with Christmas music. I played a LOT of it over the years, and in all honesty most of the songs I played lacked something. For a long time, I couldn’t figure out what that something was. I tried to blame it on the fact that I played ‘Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” waaaaaaay too many times, but that wasn’t it at all.

Then back in 2003 or 2004 when I was involved in running the legendary WAKR radio in Akron (the station where Alan Freed actually coined the term Rock N’ Roll) and there I finally realized what the problem was. The music I loved during the holidays was truly the good ole songs. Today they’re called Christmas standards, but back when I was growing up Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, and Perry Como were everywhere during the holiday season. In the mid 2000’s WAKR was catering to an older audience and playing those standards during the holidays and memories came flooding back.

Last year in my spare time I sat down during the holidays and attempted to create the ultimate Christmas playlist. I wanted to create a list of songs that you could play during a holiday party and even during Christmas Dinner. So this year my gift to you is a playlist I call Holidays On The Hi-Fi. And thanks to Bop.fm you can enjoy these songs no matter where you listen to music online. Happy Holidays!

Audio

Chinese Democracy

I’ll be the first to admit, that I was never really a Guns N Roses fan.   Yeah, I think I have all of their albums (most are probably on cassette), but let’s be honest…. the release of this album is AN EVENT!  C’mon….it’s an album that’s 14 years in the making.

I know that I can go to their MySpace page and listen to the whole thing, but it’s not the same.  I’m still an old school kinda guy.  I’ve got to hold a copy in my hands a read through the liner notes.

I do need to check with my local Best Buy to see if they’re going to stay open til midnight on Saturday so I can get mine the minute it goes on sale.  Just like the old days…..