Yuletide By the Fireside, and Joyful Memories There

It's an established tradition at In Aurem A2D to use holidays as opportunities for Surface to Air Full Circle music challenges. Our last was on Valentine's Day.

You know the drill. (Connection between our game and the WDET-FM Music Head fundraiser is in our first challenge.) Starting with a particular song, chart a path along associated metadata to create a connected playlist; but at some point, reverse course and return along a different metadata path to arrive full circle back at the starting song, in "about an hour" of running time. Bonus points if you only use songs from your personal library (as I always do).

That bonus may get harder to achieve over time, if the trend continues away from music ownership and personal libraries to music access and personal playlists via streaming services.

To celebrate Christmas in the USA, our starting/ending song is Vince Guaraldi's "Christmas Time Is Here" from the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas. After ephemeralizing my own LP copy of Charlie Brown to weightless high-res digital, I donated it to the Library of Congress in 2012.

Full-size table here. Annotated table with metadata associations here.

For the first time, a list clocks in at 60 minutes on the nose. As a bonus, we included two consecutive Everly Brothers covers that both had other relevant metadata connections and were recorded by male/female duos. Previous lists can be found in the Surface to Air 2012 Retrospective.

Merry Christmas!

            Vinyl-to-Digital Restoration #63            

Artist: Linda Ronstadt

Title: Get Closer
Genre: Rock
Year: 1982





In an earlier piece on sustainable business models, we profiled a vinyl-to-digital restoration of an example of Linda Ronstadt's mid-career collaboration with Nelson Riddle. Get Closer is a title from her earlier "rocker chick" period, the music that got her elected to the Rock -n- Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2014. Well-deserved.

© 2013 Thomas G. Dennehy. All rights reserved.