As a reward to myself for paying off all my debt, I recently signed up for XM Satellite Radio. It’s awesome. I love the ability to listen to loads of music that matches my mood exactly.

My top channel is XM 44 — also known as “Fred” — which plays “alternative” music from 1978-1988. We didn’t call this alternative music back then. I don’t know what we called it. Some of it — Duran Duran and their New Wave kin — found wide airplay on the radio, but most of it — The Cure, New Order, early U2 — did not. The station is awesome.

I also like channel 84 — XM Chill — which plays chill-out music. (Chill-out music is basically mellow, light jazz (not “smooth” jazz) and electronic music.) The third station that sees heavy rotation is channel 4 — the 1940s station.

I still love early American popular music. Though my plans for a site devoted to the subject are on permanent vacation, I listen to recorded music from the 1890s to the 1940s all the time. XM Channel 4 plays mostly stuff from the 1940s, but sometimes squeezes in tunes from the 1930s or even the 1920s. It’s great.

Anyhow, the whole reason I’m telling you this is that they just played a 1949 song called “Happy New Year” by Spike Jones and His City Slickers. I’d never heard it before. According to some quick Googling, this was the B-side to the immensely popular “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth”. The internet — this amazing series of tubes — actually yielded a version of the record being played on a 1956 Philco:

This song is hilarious. Enjoy!

One Reply to ““This is My New Year’s Resolution…””

  1. FRED is dabomb. On the east coast we called it “progressive” music or college radio.

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