Welcome to Episode 4 of Holly Jolly X'masu! In this episode, I discuss the granddaddy of all Japanese Christmas compilation albums: King Records’ “Merry, Merry X’mas,” from 1963. This revered classic really established the gold standard for Christmas compilations in Japan. Despite being a landmark album in Japan, it’s not well-known elsewhere. I happened upon an Ebay auction for it while looking for other albums that might interest me. It was in near mint (NM) condition and was listed for over $1100. I followed the auction just to see if it would actually sell for that much. I never found out because, after being relisted once, the seller closed the auction before it ended. However, during that initial auction, he sent me a private offer to buy it for “only” $1000. I thought he was nuts until I looked into it a little more and found that very good (VG) copies typically go for $700 or more. And that’s on the rare occasions when they actually come up for sale. Here’s the $1000 record: The CD is a little more affordable. It came out in 1991 and was packaged in an outer box/slipcase. I spent months trying to find one to no avail. The one I finally managed to get was listed in “acceptable” condition (that tends to be noticeably worse than VG) without the outer box. It was in better shape than I expected and plays fine. Just tonight, I finally found a couple listings for the CD with the box. They were both over $100, which made me feel better about how relatively inexpensive my CD was. The $20 CD: As excited as I was to review this album, I had an even harder time with this episode than the last one. We’ve been terribly busy lately so finding time to work on it was difficult. This morning, I woke up early and finally managed to get it recorded. The audio levels were fine, although there was a phantom popping sound running throughout the recording that I had to through and remove manually. After seven hours of recording and editing, I was down to adding in the last bit of music at the very end of the episode. That’s when Audacity crashed. I wasn’t worried at first because the same thing happened with the last episode. I was able to recover it then without much of a problem. This time was different. After six or seven restarts, it was clear I wasn’t going to get it back. I was certain I had lost the entire thing and would have to start from scratch. I took a break, copied all my data files to another computer, and after a couple of restarts it was able to recover it to the point that I had almost everything back. I had to edit a few songs back in, but a 10% loss is much better than a 100% loss. One thing I meant to point out last episode is that, with the exception of some special songs like “Mothra’s Song” and “March on the River Kwai,” all the incidental instrumental music I use in the podcast is also Japanese Christmas music. I try to pick something a little more obscure so it’s not readily obvious what’s playing. If you recognize one of the songs, drop me a line and I’ll mention you in an upcoming episode. Speaking of which, I’m going to try to get out a second episode this month. June 25th is Leon Day, which marks the halfway mark to and from Christmas. I’m already hard at work on the next episode, so hopefully it will be done by then. In the meantime, I’m always on the lookout for new music. I have some really great stuff lined up, and I’m hoping to add a couple other really great albums to my collection soon. Also, as mentioned in this episode, I’ve included the Japanese lyrics to “Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town” below. Any feedback on this episode would be appreciated. If you’d like to recommend an album for a future episode, drop me a line and let me know. Remember, I've added a button to my Ko-fi page. If you'd like to support me one cup of coffee at a time, a donation is only $3. Any donations received will be put towards purchasi