Dropkick Murphys – "The Season's Upon Us" (2013)

Some families are messed up while others are fine

If you think yours is crazy, well you should see mine

Have you noticed what a big deal advent calendars have become?

Traditional advent calendars were made of paper and had little doors for each day between December 1 and December 24.  Parents would let their kids open the appropriate door for each date, revealing a Christmas-related picture.

Today, you can buy advent calendars with a variety of gifts concealed behind the doors – chocolates, toys, wines . . . even fishing lures.

Here’s an advent calendar that has a different rubber duck behind each door:

2 or 3 lines has decided to jump on the advent calendar bandwagon.  From today through December 24, we’re giving you an audio advent calendar of sorts with daily posts featuring a worthwhile record that you’ve probably never heard of.

Better yet, each of those posts will be blessedly free of all the nonsense that usually accompanies 2 or 3 lines posts.  In other words, there’ll be no tedious personal anecdotes, no offensive “humor,” no pedantic monologues, and no rants about the latest person or thing to piss me off.  

Our first annual 2 or 3 lines virtual advent calendar is 100% free of charge, but I’m giving it to you on the condition that there will be no whining in January, when the boring anecdotes, the offensive jokes, the pedantic lecturing, and the ill-tempered rants will return to my wildly popular little blog.

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I’ve previously explained that I hear most of the music I feature on 2 or 3 lines on the various Sirius/XM radio channels  while driving in my car or riding my bike. 

I hear a blog-worthy record (or two or three) almost every time I’m out and about.  But I have a tendency to forget them before I get back to the 2 or 3 lines world headquarters building.

It's just not practical to pull out a notebook and pen and make note of those songs while I’m driving or pedaling, so I do the next best thing: I grab my phone and take a screenshot that captures whatever recording I am listening to at any given time.

Each of the records that will be featured in this year’s 2 or 3 lines audio advent calendar will be selected from that list, which has grown to contain hundreds (if not thousands) of entries.  There’s no chance I’ll live long enough to be able to feature more than a small percentage of those recordings in a regular 2 or 3 lines post, so I came up with idea of doing this audio advent calendar so all those screenshots don’t go to waste.

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We’ll kick off this year’s 2 or 3 lines advent calendar with “The Season’s Upon Us,” a cheery little Christmas ditty from the Dropkick Murphys.

The Dropkick Murphys are best-known for “I’m Shipping Up to Boston,” also known as “The Massh*le National Anthem.”  It was the walk-on music favored by former Boston Red Sox Jonathan Papelbon, who is probably the biggest douchebag ever to wear the Red Sox uniform – which is no mean feat given all the other douchebags that have played for the Red Sox.  (Shoutouts to Jason Variety, David Ortiz, Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez, Dustin Pedroia . . . I could go on and on.)  

Eleven months of the year, I wouldn’t sully 2 or 3 lines with a Dropkick Murphy record, but it’s Christmas.  So in the spirit of the season, I’m declaring peace on blogs, goodwill to douchebags, etc., etc.

Click here to listen to “The Season’s Upon Us.”

Click here to buy it from Amazon.