Joey Dee’s Christmas Memories #5: Christmas In The Northwest

There is only one song that says Christmas to me. It filled the halls of the houses of my family, our cars, and it just never felt like Christmas until we heard it.

Brenda White - Christmas in the Northwest.

For years, the only copy we had of this was an old tape that my mother had. One of the first projects I did when I got into radio was to take that old tape and master it into a digital version so we would always have it. I know what you are saying "Why didn't you just buy the CD?" Well... That tape had been played SO many times that there were subtle audio "glitches" in it. We all knew where they were, and my brothers would even emulate them at certain points. I wanted to preserve those along with the music. It was actually more complicated than it sounded, because modern editing software is designed to try to eliminate these flaws in an audio track, so I had to trick it into thinking it was suppose to be there.

Now everyone in the family has a digital copy of the original tape that played through the house, and we all play it in our own houses when the holidays come around.

I haven't played it in my house yet... I'm waiting till tomorrow night when I have the family Skype'd in. It'll make it feel as close to home as I could get in my new place.