A Christmas Gift For You

2024

Flagpole Magazine is an alternative weekly magazine in Athens, Georgia that sprang up in the early 1980’s parallel to the development of a robust post-punk, alternative music scene anchored by the now-legendary band R.E.M. (read more). Many such weekly rags took root about that time, including the Austin Chronicle in my hometown. The reason we are here, though, is that Flagpole issued a series of eight Christmas albums (six tapes and two CD's) from 1990 through 1996. These albums were virtually an act of civic pride: All of them featured local bands, and the proceeds supported local charitable organizations. "We compile and release a Christmas album every year because we love doing it," explained Flagpole music editors Marc Pilvinsky and Jason Slatton, and it showed.

With the exception of the 1992 compilation, The Mother of All Flagpole Christmas Albums, however, none were widely available outside the Athens area. In fact, by 2012, I'd managed to secure just the two compact discs - and I spend a lot of time looking for stuff like this! However, I discovered that three years prior, the blog Beyond Failure posted the first five tapes as free MP3 downloads - three with complete artwork, and two with none. Together with my CD's that left just one - and it came up for auction on eBay in 2012. Guess who won?

So, here they are - cleaned up, properly tagged with restored artwork, and compressed into handy zipped files. On the first three releases I have substituted, where possible, the cleaner, more dynamic files from the "Mother" CD, and I have also included the rough scans of the cover art posted by Beyond Failure. Tracks taken from the old cassette tapes sound like it - kind of muffled, lots of hiss, a little bumpy. You also may notice some "bleed through" on the quieter portions of certain tracks. This is an unfortunate artifact of aged cassettes. Because the tape is wrapped on top of itself, a ghost is slowly imprinted a few seconds in advance - thankfully audible only in the quietest passages or before the song starts. This is most apparent on the 1994 spoken word installment, "Soft-Spoken Beatnik Cousin."

Now, I'm not going to go on at any length about these albums - not yet, at least - but let me say a word about the documentation. These are old, pre-internet albums released mostly for a relatively small local market. The cassette liners are much more informative than most, but the dates are occasionally fuzzy. That said, after years of research, I am now quite confident of the timeline below. It is startling how little information there is about the Flagpole albums on the web - even the Flagpole website barely mentions them. This is something I hope to remedy, starting with the 2012 post and continuing with this one.

The Flagpole Christmas Album (cassette, 1990)
The inaugural volume of the series set the mold that every other would follow - a who's who of local talent performing an eclectic mix of holiday originals and covers. Artists include Vic Chesnutt, Dashboard Saviors, Vigilantes of Love, and Five Eight. Another contributing artist, the band Hillbilly Frankenstein, would later wax a complete Christmas album, Santa & The Trucker (2008), but with the demise of Athens Music, it may prove tough to find....

zip file, 116 MB (ripped from cassette tape and compact disc)

Son of the Flagpole Christmas Album (cassette, 1991)
This time out, the biggest names are Michelle Malone and Dreams So Real - both of who recorded for major labels around this time - and frequent flier Vic Chestnutt, who is sort of the annoying sitcom neighbor of the "Flagpole" series. Perhaps the highlight - and certainly the funniest moment - is the "duet" between Tom Waits and Peter Murphy on Porn Orchard's "This Holiday Season."

zip file, 117 MB (ripped from cassette tape and compact disc)

Daughter of the Flagpole Christmas Album (cassette, 1992)
We can feel a certain momentum building that, very shortly, would result in the "Mother" CD compilation below. Here, we get cuts from hard-edged singer/songwriter Marlee MacLeod, Bill Taft and Kelly Hogan of the late, lamented Jody Grind, Kevin Kinney of drivin' 'n' cryin', and - as if to prove not everyone in Georgia is a hipster - jam rockers Widespread Panic. This download also includes two bonus tracks - Bloodkin's "Christmas In August" and Flat Duo Jets' bizarro reading of "Jingle Bells" - that would appear the same year on The Mother of All Flagpole Christmas Albums (below).

zip file, 145 MB (ripped from cassette tape and compact disc)

The Mother of All Flagpole Christmas Albums (compact disc, 1992)
The name of this CD draws, obviously, on the previous three, but - lest we forget - it's also a play on Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's pledge to wage "the mother of all battles" should the United States invade his country. We did, of course, and it ended rather badly for Saddam.... Anyway, unlike the preceding self-produced cassettes, the "Mother" CD was released by Ort-Tone (the name "Ort" appears on the cassettes, as well) and distributed by DB Records. The CD booklet doesn't give a release date, per se, saying only that the music was recorded 1990-1992. And, I've seen release dates online as late as 1995 - probably because the album was, indeed, reissued in 1995 by Long Play Records, an Atlanta label. That reissue, however, is clearly "© 1992" so I think that nails it down. "Mother" was recommended in the December 1992 issue of Spin Magazine.

All but two "Mother" tracks are drawn from the previous three Flagpole volumes. I've substituted these superior CD masters in those downloads, and I've added the two new songs as bonus tracks to the "Daughter" download (above). For those reasons - and because "Mother" is widely available at Amazon, Discogs, eBay, and other retailers - I am not offering it as a separate download. You can, however, reconstruct the CD from its component parts if you so desire...

get it at Amazon

Red-Headed Stepchild of the Flagpole Christmas Album (cassette, 1993)
After the relative notoriety of the "Mother" CD, this cassette tape marked a return to the pointed, insular obscurity that defines the Flagpole series. Just the fact that it was issued on cassette tells you something, with the compact disc being the coin of the realm by the mid-1990's. Five Eight makes a return appearance, joined by Chris Stamey of the dB's, who contributes his 1985 recording, "Occasional Shivers," and a band named after Harvey Milk, the gay San Francisco politician assassinated in 1978 (what, too soon?). And then, someone named "Black Francis" - a local woman, not the leader of Boston's Pixies - performs "Big Big Sleigh," a parody of the Pixies' "Gigantic."

zip file, 119 MB (ripped from cassette tape)

Soft-Spoken Beatnik Cousin of the Flagpole Christmas Album (cassette, 1994)
The title of this edition alludes to the fact that it's (mostly) a spoken word album - hipster poetry and in-jokes that, for me at least, fail to impress. That's not to say it's not entertaining at times - perhaps most obviously on the Blondie track (a local stripper, not the band), which outlines a truly tasteless Christmas. Most of the names are obscure to me, but Murray Attaway of Guadalcanal Diary drops by for a rendition of "Up On The Housetop," and the aforementioned Bill Taft closes the set with a phone message. (Beyond Failure did not include artwork with this post, but Flagpole music editor Gabe Vodicka was kind enough to send me scans.)

zip file, 129 MB (ripped from cassette tape)

Chilly, The Flagpole Christmas Album That Could Not Love (cassette, 1995)
This is the tape I won on eBay in 2012 (best two bucks I ever spent), and it's as good and eclectic as any "Flagpole" album. Increasingly, though, no one outside the Athens zip code will have heard of these bands. One exception is the Vigilantes Of Love, who recorded a number of albums in the 90's, including three for Capricorn, and whose "On to Bethlehem (My Heart's Electric)" is the standout track. Also, Patterson Hood (Drive-By Truckers) contributes the nasty "Mrs. Claus' Kimono" and the Possibilities turn in a snarling cover of the Kinks' "Father Christmas." The album title, by the way, is a reference to a character in "Happy Little Elves," a fictional cartoon show on The Simpsons, an actual cartoon show.

zip file, 101 MB (ripped from cassette tape)

The Flagpole Christmas Album (compact disc, 1996)
Fashioned after the Beatles' "White Album," this is the only wholly new CD Flagpole ever issued (distributed by Ghostmeat Records), and turned out to be the final edition. Like the cassettes, it was never widely available, but it remained for sale for many years through Athens Music - which is now defunct. Artists of note include Anne Richmond Boston and Drive-By Truckers. The "White Album" can sometimes be found at Amazon, Discogs, eBay, and other retailers, but I am offering it for download because, well, there's no one left to stop me.

zip file, 138 MB (ripped from compact disc)

Postscript

To this day, I still do not own copies of the "Son" or "Daughter" Flagpole tapes. If anyone out there has precious cargo they'd like to part with, I will make it worth your while.

Sometime during the years following my original 2012 post, the Digital Library of Georgia posted the Flagpole archive online. This allowed me to fill in a few details and confirm the timeline, though it struck me that the magazine never made a huge deal out of the albums - an announcement or two, maybe a release party or a review. Anyway, Athens Music eventually went belly up, and Beyond Failure - while still online - became moribund, last posting in 2015. Flagpole, however, celebrated their 30th anniversary in 2017, marked by a lengthy reminiscence by the staff, wherein the Christmas albums warranted only a passing mention. "Working on the Flagpole Christmas albums was tons of fun," they said, and nothing more.

Have you been very, very good? Well then, you get to reach into Santa's swingin' sack one more time! Peruse our MP3 giveaways from 2003 (including Weezer and Keith Richards), 2004 (Shelby Lynne, White Stripes), 2005 (Cheap Trick, Leon Russell), 2006 (Marshall Crenshaw, Screaming Santas), 2007 (T. Rex, Turtles), 2008 (MxPx, BoDeans), 2009 (Aimee Mann, The Fray), 2010 (R.E.M.), 2011 (Blondie, Blues Magoos), 2012 (Flagpole Christmas), 2013 (Pretenders, Donnas), 2014 (Charles Brown, Pearl Jam), 2015 (Willie Nelson, Leroy Carr), 2016 (Neko Case, Paul Kelly), 2017 (Midnight Records, part one), 2018 (Midnight Records, part two), 2019 (Midnight Records, part three), 2020 (Butch Walker, the Vibrators), 2021 (Beautiful South, Babs Gonzales), 2022 (Noëlle Hampton, Klark Kent), and 2023 (Chrissie Hynde, Concrete Blonde).

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