This holiday season marks the twentieth anniversary of the original release of CHRISTMAS IN MALIBU, the classic holiday novelty written and produced by New Media Creative’s JOE KLEIN in 1988. The story behind the music is as inspirational as the song itself. So, if you’re interested, read on…
It was twenty years ago last July when Joe had a musical epiphany while sitting on the beach in Malibu, California. By the end of the day, that vision had spawned a song—the first song the accomplished producer, director and voice-over artist had ever written. What’s more, it was a Christmas song he’d just penned in the middle of summer.
The song is about a forlorn surfer who has broken his surfboard and is delivered a new one on Christmas day by a surfing Santa Claus who swoops down onto the waves from the clouds above. Appropriately, Joe titled it Christmas In Malibu.
Joe couldn’t get the song out of his head over the next couple of months. Then, in the fall of 1988, his good friend, RUSS TERRANA, who was the chief engineer at Motown Recoding Studios, called him and asked him if he wanted to record the quirky yuletide composition in the famed studio, which was soon to close forever. After pondering the question for about two seconds, Joe replied, “You betcha!”
Russ then introduced Joe to MITCH DEMATOFF and DALE ECHNOZ, a couple of talented guys who had been producing publishing demos for Motown on a cutting edge, two hundred thousand dollar music production computer called the SYNCLAVIER which was owned by the studio.
After hearing a piano and voice demo Joe recorded of the song, the duo immediately went to work on the Synclavier producing the backing tracks for Christmas In Malibu. A couple of days later, they played the result of their efforts for Joe, who was totally awe struck. “This sounds exactly like the finished track I heard in my own head months ago,” he exclaimed.
With the tracks done, the next job was to find an artist to perform the song. Joe got lucky again. Just a day after hearing the finished backing track, he stumbled upon a couple of Malibu surfers, one of whom was a singer and musician named KARMA AUGER (son of British keyboardist Bryan Auger) with a fresh young voice and style that suited the track perfectly. The other surfer was a handsome young guy dubbed “The Wolf,” who was seemingly always surrounded by adoring women wherever he went. Another epiphany for Joe—and THE RAD DUDES were born.
Joe rushed into the studio with The Rad Dudes and, within a few days, the vocals for the record were recorded. A few finishing touches were added to the recording and the final mix was completed. But it was now late in October, far too late to get a record company to release Christmas In Malibu and get it into any record stores for the holidays. But Joe knew that it wasn’t too late to get the song on the radio, if he could get it to the stations quickly.
So Joe went to work, calling countless old radio colleagues and music trade magazine editors. Everyone he called loved the song and agreed to help. One of the trade magazine editors met Joe at Motown studios, heard the track and told Joe he would bring it over to KEVIN WEATHERLY, then the music director at pop radio powerhouse KIIS-FM in Los Angeles. He asked Joe if he wanted to tag along. They brought a “reference disc” made at the studio to Kevin’s office at the station. Kevin placed the needle on the record, listened for about one minute and took the needle off the record. Joe was deflated, fearing Kevin didn’t like the song. Then Weatherly began typing on his computer and remarked, “I’d like to world premiere this song right after Thanksgiving weekend, if it’s okay with you.” Joe paused and replied, “Let me think about it for a minute…..Uh, okay.”
Christmas In Malibu premiered at 9:00 PM on Monday, November 28, 1998 on the Hollywood Hamilton Show on KIIS-FM. Meanwhile, after Kevin had agreed to world-premiere the record, Joe rushed to press up 1,000 45 RPM discs of the song (which featured a ”karaoke” mix of the tune on the B side since no other tracks had been recorded).
The day of the premiere, Joe began mailing out records to hundreds of radio stations around the country. He then purchased a full page ad in Billboard magazine touting the world-premiere of the song and including quotes from a couple of powerful, well-known radio programmers that were friends of Joe. Fate entered once again. Due to the sudden, unexpected death of rock legend Roy Orbison, a full page ad for his new album was pulled at the last minute. The ad was slated to appear in the magazine’s premier spot, the page facing the Billboard “Hot 100” singles chart. As a result, the avant-garde, black and white ad for Christmas In Malibu appeared next to the Billboard singles chart in the early December issue of the venerable trade magazine.
In the days following the first KIIS-FM airing of the song, the music directors of competing stations in Los Angeles, who had heard the song on KIIS, called Joe and wanted the record for their stations. By the end of that week, Christmas In Malibu was on half a dozen stations in L.A. The following week, hundreds of stations around the country were playing it, which became the most requested song on many of them.
With all the attention and national airplay the track was receiving, Joe knew that MTV would want a video to air. So he hired a video producer, small crew and a few pretty models and, with nothing more than a few notes scribbled on a legal pad, proceeded to shoot a video on Malibu beach in a single day and night. After only a few hours sleep, Joe dragged himself into a video suite to edit the video and got in on a plane to MTV the very next day. The network agreed to air the video, so Joe made more copies and sent them to several other major national video outlets, who also aired the song that year.
Christmas In Malibu earned the ominous distinction of becoming the biggest holiday hit of 1988 that was not available in stores anywhere that year. Still, a little piece of music history had been made.
THE ORIGINAL MUSIC VIDEO OF CHRISTMAS IN MALIBU (1988)
Early in 1989, with the unprecedented success of the yuletide novelty under his belt and the hopes of securing a major record deal for the concept group, Joe recorded an additional song with The Rad Dudes, an updated version of the old Beach Boys hit “Surfer Girl.” He also began collecting additional material for the group, which included another cover tune, an instrumental from the late fifties and a some cool original songs written by fellow producers, writers and musicians he knew in the music business. Joe even came up with a unique concept for a fully choreographed stage show and a story treatment for a cutting-edge major motion picture loosely based on Christmas In Malibu.
Music CD’s were beginning to become popular at the time, so Joe put together a label design and had a few dozen promotional CD’s made with the surprise holiday hit and Surfer Girl to help promote the project.
Joe began contacting major record labels and movie studios in search of deals for the group and the movie. Although there was some initial interest and a few of the music executives liked the concept and the material, no record deal was consummated. It was probably due simply to bad timing. Grunge rock and hip hop music were the rapidly emerging music genres in 1989, and the record companies didn’t share Joe’s vision for The Rad Dudes. Ironically, they were a model “boy band” a couple years before their time, and simply considered too “syrupy-sweet” to succeed in an era of emerging Grunge Rock and Hip-Hop.
After many months of pounding the pavement in search of a deal, Joe accepted the fact that the timing for this project was simply off and, reluctantly, made the decision to discontinue his efforts on the project and move on. The Rad Dudes disbanded. However, a limited distribution deal to distribute the song as a cassette single for the holiday 1989 shopping season was negotiated and the track was available as a cassette single in some stores that year.
The song and music video continued to receive significant airplay during the holidays for the next few years. During that time, Joe made up more Rad Dudes CD’s and handed them and the remaining cassette singles out as Christmas presents. Sadly, by the mid-nineties Christmas In Malibu simply faded into the California sunset. Joe carried on with his life, changing his focus to a budding voice-over career and other media related endeavors.
It wasn’t until 2005, a decade after it seemed that Christmas In Malibu had slipped into musical oblivion, that the new medium of “podcasting” burst upon the media scene. Joe had decided to return to the voice-over and audio production business after several years with the launch of THE PODCAST VOICE GUYS. Adam Curry’s new media network PODSHOW launched THE PODSAFE MUSIC NETWORK to distribute independent music to podcasters. Joe was working with a few of the original podcasters involved at Podshow and learned of the new music network, so he posted the song online in the fall of 2005. Much to his surprise, dozens of podcasters that had garnered pretty large audiences early on found the song on the network and featured it on their shows.
In 2006, Joe entered into a distribution deal with the INDEPENDENT ONLINE DITRIBUTION ALLIANCE (IODA), a new online commercial music distribution service based in San Francisco. By the fall of that year, Christmas In Malibu was available for purchase on iTunes, EMusic, Amazon, Rhapsody and scores of other online music retailers worldwide. Joe then uploaded the old music video to YouTube, Mevio Video, Google Video, Blip.TV, Spike and several other viral video sites, where it has received tens of thousands of views. The video has been included on countless blogs and online holiday video lists and compilations, including WHOPPY AND STREAKER’S 99 CHRISTMAS MUSIC VIDEOS, an eclectic list posted by well-known music business blogger ARTIE WAYNE. Meanwhile, thanks to the promotional efforts of IODA, the availability of the track on the Podsafe Music Network and some mainstream radio trade coverage, the song stated getting significant airplay again on mainstream broadcast stations in 2006. Last year, the visibility of the song expanded further, with scores of radio stations around the country and hundreds of podcasts and blogs featuring the track or the video.
The original release of Christmas In Malibu was several years before the internet and world wide web were in widespread use and just getting the song out to the world was a huge challenge. Ironically, two decades later, the track is now available for download from scores of international online retail music sites and the video is posted on dozens of viral sites, giving the song a worldwide distribution and presence that Joe could never have even dreamed of twenty years ago.
Meanwhile, rumors persist that Santa can still be spotted catching a few waves in Malibu on Christmas day each year before getting some badly needed rest. There have even been reports of hearing old St. Nick bellowing out his classic chant as he hangs ten, “SURF’S UP, DUDES! HO! HO! HO!”
Christmas In Malibu is licensed by ASCAP for commercial airplay and a high quality MP3 download is available for a limited time here. Also cleared for online play, podcasters and bloggers can download the song for play on their podcasts or blogs from The Podsafe Music Network or IODA Promonet. (Registration is required at both these sites.)
You can listen to the track in high quality audio on the player below.
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