My favorite Christmas song ever

  This is without a doubt my absolute favorite Christmas song of all time.

 Progressive rock (read Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, etc.) was my biggest thing during my early audiophile days. I think I was probably 12 or 14 when it all started, FM had just become available (I'm dating myself, I know).

WCMF was one of Rochester's first FM stations, and when you looked at the FM program listings in the newspaper they listed WCMF as "progressive rock". This was always humorous to me, as progressive simply meant one song played after another, one song progressed into another. But at the time, this was the music they were playing, so it became labeled as progressive rock.

 I had subwoofers back when no one knew what they were, and the Moogs and pedal notes were so deep it just rocked the room. I have almost every ELP album still, I think Lucky Man actually took out one of the subs! Genesis- The  Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and of course Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon. Pink Floyd music has survived much more so than ELP or Yes, but I still love to pop on these lps, dim the lights and go back in time to my junior high years.

 I visited WCMF back in the day, and saw two guys sitting on a carpeted floor in an unfinished room with two turntables (probably Technics)  and a microphone (long before Beck) and thought it rather anti climactic. They supplemented their station by doing equipment repairs, and I think I was there to pick something up.

 Nonetheless, these songs were an average of 20 minutes long (a typical album side), and were sometimes referred to as concept rock, or art rock. Try to interest the 20 somethings of today in something that long and profound! There were no drum machines, samplers or digital edits, strictly talent and a lot of creativity. The sound quality and production values were first rate. I would put them up against a lot of the stuff being recorded today.

 And it was all analog! Glorious analog!

Just lit my Christmas lights.......

 Just lit my Christmas lights, thinkin' I need a few other colors besides orange. Purple? Not good. Emissions leak. Green? Not good either,also a leak and ready to explode. Red? way too late. Call the fire department.Also remember these have between 300-500 or more volts running through them. If Santa urinates on them he will go up like a Tiki torch! Nice for keeping the house warm on this 20 degree night, though.Put a baking rack above a triode amp and the cookies came out perfect. Rumor has it that Rudolph's red nose came from attempting to sniff one of these.........