A Christmas Gift For You 2012

This year, I am offering something both very different and far more ambitious than in the past – a complete archive of the eight Flagpole Christmas albums. (Well, nearly complete, but more on that later.) These MP3's are free to all comers, but please keep in mind that this music is very rare, long out-of-print, and otherwise unavailable for download. So, hopefully, no one should get too upset at our petty larceny. Like Phil Spector, I'm pleased to offer this "Christmas Gift For You" to get your holiday season off to a rockin' start! Randy Anthony

Flagpole Magazine is an alternative weekly magazine in Athens, Georgia that sprang up in the early 1980’s parallel to the development of a robust post-punk, alternative music scene anchored by the now-legendary band R.E.M. (read more). Many such weekly rags took root about that time, including the Austin Chronicle in my hometown. The reason we are here, though, is that Flagpole issued a series of eight Christmas albums (six tapes and two CD's) from 1990 through 1996. These albums were virtually an act of civic pride: All of them featured local bands, and the proceeds supported local charitable organizations. "We compile and release a Christmas album every year because we love doing it," explained Flagpole music editors Marc Pilvinsky and Jason Slatton, and it showed.

With the exception of the 1992 compilation, The Mother of All Flagpole Christmas Albums, however, none were widely available outside the Athens area. In fact, until recently I'd managed to secure just the two compact discs - and I spend a lot of time looking for stuff like this! But, a couple of years ago, the blog Beyond Failure posted the first five tapes as free MP3 downloads - three with complete artwork, two without. Together with my CD's that left just one - and it came up for auction on eBay this year. Guess who won?

So, here they are - cleaned up, properly tagged with restored artwork, and compressed into handy zipped files - minus the two CD's, which are still available online through Athens Music. Like I said, this isn't the "complete" collection - just the ones you can't buy. That said, on the first three releases I have substituted, where possible, the cleaner, more dynamic files from the "Mother" CD, and I have also included the rough scans posted by Beyond Failure. On all the tracks taken from tape, you may notice a little "bleed through" on the quieter portions of a few tracks. This is an unfortunate artifact of old cassettes; because the tape is wrapped on top of itself, a ghost is slowly imprinted a few seconds in advance - thankfully audible only in the quietest passages or before the song starts.

Now, I'm not going to go on at any length about these albums - not yet, at least - but let me say a word about the documentation. These are old, pre-internet albums released mostly for a relatively small, local market. The cassette liners are much more informative than most, but the dates are occasionally fuzzy - especially for the 1993 and 1994 releases, for which I have little or no documentation whatsoever. It is startling how little information there is about the Flagpole albums on the web - even the Flagpole website barely mentions them. This is something I hope to remedy starting with this post.

Have you been very, very good? Well then, you get to reach into Santa's swingin' sack one more time! Peruse our MP3 giveaways from 2003 (including Weezer and Keith Richards), 2004 (Shelby Lynne, White Stripes), 2005 (Cheap Trick, Leon Russell), 2006 (Marshall Crenshaw, Screaming Santas), 2007 (T. Rex, Turtles), 2008 (MxPx, BoDeans), 2009 (Aimee Mann, The Fray), 2010 (R.E.M.), and 2011 (Blondie, Blues Magoos).

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