WELCOME!

And welcome to our very first blog post!

Before we get started with the tunes, here's a little background as to what we're up to.

As many of you know, every year Amy and I have sent out music mixes to our friends around Christmastime. The first one, in 2000, was more or less thrown together in an hour or two, and I think the only extant copy remains with our friends Gretchen and Jeremy. Since then, ever more thought and effort has gone into the annual ritual, to the point that it's fair to say making the holiday CD is our main musical hobby throughout the year. The number of recipients (and hopefully listeners) has increased every year too. Last year we passed out nearly forty copies, using up several toner cartidges and just about destroying Amy's laptop.

Which brings us to this year's edition. In an effort to simplify matters in our iPod-dominant age, reduce trips to the post office, and maybe even reach more friends, we're trying out distributing the mix via our very own music blog!

The idea is to operate it just like an ordinary music blog, except that the 18 forthcoming posts will all be thematically linked and ideally should be listened to in sequence. Once you have downloaded all 18 tracks from the website, you'll be in possession of this year's "holiday CD." If that doesn't interest you, hard copies of the holiday mix are also being prepared and will be sent on request.

We hope this works out and that it's fun for everyone. Happy holidays!