Kalin Krohe, a couple weeks back said to me, “You know what you should do with that blog of yours? Post all the Christmas shows you’ve done over the years.” I have to admit that’s a good use of this space. What I didn’t realize is how difficult it would be! For some reason, WordPress (or my domain host, one of the two) doesn’t cotton to me posting hour and two-hour long wav files in the blog. So I upgraded my SoundCloud account–yes, I actually paid money to do this! But it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while.
If you’re friends with me on Facebook you may have noticed me advising friends not to register their grievances about my station’s flip to all-Christmas. I know some people love it and some people hate it; I don’t need to hear it. But please don’t read this as an aversion on my part to work with Christmas music a bit early. I’ve been doing that for years. Heck, I worked for 4 summers at Santa’s Workshop, where the same 90 minutes of Christmas Muzak® played on a loop. In July!
And for many years I produced an elaborate Christmas special each year for KCOW, usually beginning work on it in October and finalizing it well before Thanksgiving.
The very first KCOW Christmas Special exists in its finished form only on a cassette. Finding one cassette in my apartment is…well, two shades shy of impossible. But many of the elements from that first show appear in later specials; I have Frankensteined (or would that be frankincensed?) my own work over the years because A) it’s a pity for something I’ve put a lot of work in to only air once and B) two hours is two hours.
The earliest special I have is “Home For Christmas”, which runs three hours and doesn’t have a lot of original content. Just some Santawatch updates (those are posted separately below) and lots of songs and vignettes. I did have Pastor Martin Schnare of the Alliance Immanuel Lutheran Church recite bible verses telling the Christmas story. The narrator for this show, and many of the specials, is Brandon Bell…Brandon worked at KCOW in high school and college and he is kind enough to voice things for us directly from sunny California.
In 2006 I did a special depicting an office Christmas party at the ol’ K-Cow. It features lots of interactions with former KCOWers like Kevin Horn, Jennifer Schmid, the late Dennis Klinker and more. It also includes Bob S. Bestos and me in a retelling of “Gift of the Maji”, with supporting roles by part-timers Mike Stewart and Doug Kimball. It’s also special to me because it was the last one of these yuletide productions to feature Mike Garwood. Mike does a cameo recorded over the phone; he was homebound at the time dealing with medical issues that would take him from us the following December.
In 2007 I did “KCOW’s Cross-Country Christmas Special”, which featured the largest cast of–well, of anything I’ve ever done. The first hour is skits of me flying home for the holidays featuring Kent Bleisch, Chris Obershaw, and the late Chuck Biegler as an accordion-playing entertainer at Denver International Airport.
The second hour is “An Alliance Christmas Carol”, which starred the late Jim Joule as Ebenezer and 35 or so other actors including Steven Crabb, Bill Graham, and many others who performed the same roles in our Main Street Players stage version of “A Christmas Carol.” This show also features “civilians” making cameo appearances including Brad Williams, Bob Neville, Dave Pearse, Mick McCarthy, Gordon Hoff and a pack of KCOW part-timers.
“Santawatch” updates were something I did for a few years. One year my pals Pat Adriance and Bri Larkin were along for the ride; one year Misty Graham (then Cheek) was our on-the-spot reporter; and finally, I took a crack at it with Kevin Horn adding his usual decorum:
For all of these shows I wrote the scripts and cast myself pretty heavily, doing my Danny Kaye-esque voice cracking at heightened moments. I’ve also had tremendous support from Mike Glesinger, Kalin Krohe, Kevin Horn and lots of other people who were willing participants.
We’ve done a variety of Christmas radio projects over the years…a Bob S. Bestos Christmas show, calls to the North Pole during “Cinnamon Bear”, and the like. I’m gonna post these too at some point, because hey–unlimited SoundCloud baby!
As for the big, elaborate 2 or 3 hour extravaganzas posted here…I stopped doing them several years ago. For one thing, with the addition of KCNB-FM to our station portfolio I found myself with a lot less free time. Also, for each of these specials I had to spend one, sometimes two Saturdays at the office (ask anyone who works in radio and they’ll tell you–the fewer people in the building, the more work you get done). And in my semi-middle age spending 12 hours at the office on a Saturday doesn’t hold the same appeal it did when I was in my late 20s/ early 30s. In recent years I’ve taken to Halloween as a chance to do some radio theater, on a much smaller level.
So here they are, the KCOW Christmas specials. I am glad I have them. They are a snapshot of life at the radio station during the time they were produced. The march of time is brutal, as evidenced by the number of people I’ve had to refer to as “the late..” in this writeup. It’s nice to hear their voices again.