JonathanMosen's blog

As I write this post, a warm Christmas day in New Zealand is coming to an end. Tomorrow, it’ll be the day we call boxing day, but Christmas day will still be very much happening in the northern hemisphere.

Say It With Jazz returns to Mushroom FM for a very special Holiday edition this Christmas Eve. Jeremy Hartley invites you to join him to celebrate this festive time of year with some of the finest Holiday jazz around. We'll hear from such artists as Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, George Shearing, Ray Charles and many more.

To paraphrase Alan Jackson, it’s 3 AM somewhere. So we always try to replay our shows at a time suitable for those who might have been sleeping when they were first heard.

We’ll be replaying the 2016 holiday countdown and Christmas party in its entirety on Christmas eve, starting at midnight Eastern, 5 AM UK.

We’ve had a huge amount of interest in our Christmas Castoffs show, where we featured three hours of songs that didn’t garner enough votes to make the top 100. We’ll replay this on Thursday afternoon at 1 PM Eastern, 6 PM in the UK.

All I can say is wow. I’m still coming down from the high generated by the good cheer and great company we had during our 10 hour countdown. If you participated in any way at all, thank you so very much. The friendships rekindled and established, and the great spirit, is what Mushroom FM has always been all about.

And it came to pass that there were almost 24 hours before voting closed.

And so it was that the wise men were busy at the myrrh shop buying myrrh, which is in short supply these days. In their absence, a little blind man with a funny accent emerged from the Ether and said,

"Hark!". And because he couldn't think of anything else to say, he said, "Hark!" again, just to give himself time to think.

Hark! Yes hark at once I say! Because things are really ramping up for Christmas now. So hark! I mean man! In just two weeks, I’ll be coming to terms yet again with not getting, yet again, the present I most want, yet again, a Sonos in the bathroom. Meh.

And of course in just one week, one week from this very moment, we’ll be counting down the top 100 holiday songs as voted for by you. Have you voted yet? You’d better hurry up if not, or I’m gonna tell Santa on you. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.

Christmas has come a bit early to Mosen Towers with the arrival of a new baby. Now now, we don’t want to kick the rumour mill into fever pitch, this baby is of the tiny laptop variety. It’s here it’s here. It’s powerful, the battery life is insane, it’s thin and light…and it now has all the software installed on it that I use on a daily basis. The big question is, can we broadcast live with it? Can we? Will it smoothly sail through four hours of fun, festive, unpredictable unforgettable Internet radio, or will smoke start billowing from its virtual ears?

The holidays are all about traditions and rituals. Turkey, mistletoe, Santa and more. Once again, it's time to prepare for one such special tradition.

The Mushroom FM Holiday Countdown and Christmas party is back yet again for 2016, where we're making a list, checking it twice, and presenting a 10-hour extravaganza of the top 100 holiday songs as determined by our listeners.

Today marks the anniversary of a milestone in New Zealand radio. At 11 AM on 4 December 1966, a young man named Bob Laehy pressed a button on an open reel tape deck, on which was threaded a documentary that started a new radio station.

But it wasn't any ordinary radio station. All the radio stations in New Zealand since 1936 had been operated by a government corporation, so this new venture, Radio Hauraki, was broadcasting from a ship just outside New Zealand's territorial waters in an effort to break the Government's broadcasting monopoly.

Oh mercy! Sadly, Cute Caroline's not able to be with us this week, so her meagre understudy is back with two hours of great country music.

It's December, so surely no one, I mean no one, can argue with playing Christmas music now. So we'll throw a few good cotton-pickin', finger-lickin' country Christmas tunes in the mix.

Yeah, remember those days back on the farm, where grandma would go out and shoot a turkey on Christmas eve, then get run over by a reindeer on the way home with it? Ah memories, memories.