A Smoking For Two Christmas

Back in December of ’98, Greg Beemster recorded an a cappella rendition of  “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.” Greg’s vocals had always sounded like a slowed-down Karen Carpenter, and indeed his interpretation of this seasonal classic owes more than a little to the Carpenters’ take on the song, which can be heard on the Christmas album that they recorded in 1978. Greg’s good friend, Thymme, who documented the solo vocal performance, decided to add some pitch-shifted pianos to the mix…   and then some trumpet… and so an idea was born: For the next ten holiday seasons, Thymme would take Greg’s original vocal track and add different instrumentation (while erasing the previous year’s music). The two friends would then hand out copies to people they knew in the form of store-bought, pre-recorded cassettes. (They would record over the first four minutes of, say, a Peter Frampton or Madonna or Judas Priest or Pearl Jam release, leaving the rest of the album intact.) After a few years, the tradition evolved as they began to occasionally include an audio Christmas letter (by an anonymous acquaintance of theirs) and then switched from cassette tapes to CDrs. (Not as fun, but the letters definitely compensated…)  Anyway, what we have here in 2013 is every year’s recording on one purchasable CDr, which can be acquired by going here:  cheer-accident.com/merch/                                                                                              enJOY?