Year-End Special Programming On THIS IS ROCK 'N' ROLL RADIO: A holiday, an anniversary, and then a countdown

As I write this on Tuesday morning, I've begun pulling holiday tracks for Sunday's edition of TIRnRR: The 25th Annual This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio Christmas Show. By the time you read this, Dana and I will have already set the playlist. I'll record my parts today (Wednesday), and he'll turn it all into a radio show in time for broadcast on Christmas Eve.

As always, the Christmas show will include each 'n' every one of the Beatles' Christmas messages, 1963-1969. Matches. Candles. It's what we do! Both Dana and I have a number of perennial picks we want to stuff into this sonic stocking, and the restraints of a three-hour slot will force us to leave a lot of 'em behind, like misfit toys. But we'll play what we can, and hope for another opportunity around this time next year.

We end each year with a countdown show, playing back what we played a lot over the preceding twelve months. The countdown will play on January 7th, and it is not be missed. How will the countdown shake out? The mighty Fritz Van Leaven minds our stats for us, so we don't have much more idea than you do. But it will shake. That's what it does.

There will be one more show this year, nestled in between the Christmas show and the countdown show. For New Year's Eve, we're slappin' together a celebration of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio's 25th anniversary.

25 years? Apparently, that is also what we do.

Dana and I started doing radio shows together in January of 1992, and that on-and-off exercise led to This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio # 1 on December 27, 1998. We're...still here. No, I can't explain it either. 

But we're going to celebrate. We're going to celebrate with music and banter. We've been prerecording our shows from separate remote locations since, y'know, whatever it was that happened in early 2020. And logistics say we're going to keep on doing shows that way. The 25th anniversary show will also be prerecorded...

...but--just this once--not from separate remote locations.

Dana and Carl. IN THE STUDIO TOGETHER, for the first time since March of 2020. We'll have some songs to play, and (one hopes) some things to say. A 25th anniversary celebration demands nothing less. My CD carrying case stands at the ready. It's gonna party like it's early 2020.

NOTE: Contents may vary.

So! We have three weeks of special programming poised for action and entertainment. It starts with The 25th Annual This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio Christmas Show on Christmas Eve, continues with This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio's 25th Anniversary Show on New Year's Eve, and then our razzafrazzin' TWENTY-SIXTH YEAR ON THE AIR?! commences with The Countdown Show on January 7th.

Special programming. Yeah. I guess it is what we do. Please join us if you can.

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, streaming at SPARK stream, and on the Radio Garden app as WESTCOTT RADIO. Recent shows are archived at Westcott Radio