Rebooting!! Yuletide Throwdowns!!

As I suspected, it didn’t take long at all before I fell off of trying to post here nightly, advent calendar-style, during the month of December. I will make no excuses and I’m not going to worry about it. But I am going to continue to do Christmas music posts here, on some kind of regularly irregular basis from now thru New Year’s Eve.

First things first: way back in 1981 Blondie and Fab 5 Freddy collaborated on a holiday jam called “Yuletide Throwdown”. Using Blondie’s “Rapture” as the song’s foundation, “Yuletide Throwdown” is probably the only Christmas song in existence in which the singer suggests she going to take you to the “depths of hell.”

Blondie and Fab 5 Freddy had the unmitigated gall to not tell me about “Yuletide Throwdown” back when it saw limited release in 1981. Then, you’d think Debbie Harry might have mentioned it to me the November evening in 1989 that I walked her to her car, but the subject didn’t come up.

I finally learned about “Yuletide Throwdown” when news emerged that Blondie was preparing a box set in 2021, at which point the song was released as a 12” single that included the original edit and two recent remixes.

I gave “Yuletide Throwdown” some listens in 2021, but didn’t follow up when it came to actually acquiring a copy of the record. Finally though, my son and I visited Record Connection, a cool shop in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, just a few weeks ago, and I finally encountered this particular holiday grail. Rest assured, “Yuletide Throwdown” journeyed home with me that day.

In honor of “Yuletide Throwdown”, I’ve started making some holiday music playlists called, of course, “Yuletide Throwdowns”. The first of these playlists is just this enormous collection of practically every tune in my library of holiday albums, singles, and CDs.

Having created that huge general playlist, I’m starting to develop a series of smaller, thematic playlists. I’ll be talking about those playlists, while continuing to highlight some of individual albums and singles in my collection, in whatever entries I post here.

In the meantime, here’s a related message for local folks: I’ll be giving an informal talk on the history of Christmas music at Forever Changes, my friend Shawn’s record store in Phoenixville next Wednesday, December 11, at 7:00. It’ll be festive, so you ought to join us and check out a century+ worth of yuletide throwdowns!