The Resurrection Of A Surfin' Santa

"Christmas In Malibu," an all but forgotten eighteen year-old novelty Christmas song sees new life thanks to the recent explosion in online video and music retailing.

Malibu, CA (PRWeb) November 27, 2006 -- "Christmas In Malibu," a novelty Christmas song recorded nearly two decades ago, has been "reborn" thanks to the recent phenomenal growth of online video and music retailing.

The song is the brainchild of writer and producer Joe Klein, who, in the summer of 1988, wrote the catchy tune about a forlorn surfer who broke his surfboard on a rock just before Christmas and gets a surprise visit from a surfing Santa Claus. Originally recorded and released to radio in the fall of that year, Christmas In Malibu world-premiered on Los Angeles radio station KIIS-FM just after Thanksgiving and quickly spread to radio stations around the country to become the surprise novelty hit of the holiday season. In early December, MTV called Klein asking for a music video. So, he hired a crew and shot one in a single day on Malibu beach, edited it and then rushed it to New York. Within days the video was airing on the music channel and many other national video shows. The track was available as a limited release cassette single for the next couple years, but, by the mid-nineties, the song had all but faded from view.

When Napster and other file sharing programs began to emerge late last decade, Christmas In Malibu did show up in a few search results, but still lingered in holiday obscurity, long since abandoned and forgotten by mainstream radio.

Then, in December of 2005, as the new medium known as "podcasting" was seeing phenomenal growth, Klein posted the song on a new music promotion service called "The Podsafe Music Network" (http://music.podshow.com/) which had been launched a few months earlier to promote music created by independent artists. Within days, the tune started getting played on major podcasts around the world. "Christmas In Malibu" had finally resurfaced.

In the summer of 2006, buoyed by the rebirth of the track, Klein entered into a distribution deal with the Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA), a San Francisco based startup (www.iodalliance.com), to help promote and distribute the song online worldwide. IODA has in place alliances with dozens of major internet music retailers, including I-Tunes, Rhapsody, Napster, Emusic and many others.

With the distribution deal in place, Klein dug through a bunch of boxes and unearthed an old copy of the music video of Christmas In Malibu. He uploaded the video to YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FxqUVOxzLA) and several other social video networks. Almost immediately, the video started getting hundreds of views.

With the song finally available for purchase once again, and the video online, Klein, who now runs a successful online voice-over and production services company called The Podcast Voice Guys (www.podcastvoiceguys.com), took some time out to promote the song to mainstream radio for the first time in over fifteen years. Already several major radio stations have responded positively to the novelty tune and added it to their holiday play lists.

Now, as a true believer in the power of music and the internet, Klein, and the world, wait to witness the resurrection of the holiday classic "wannabe" that has simply refused to die.

The website for Christmas In Malibu can be found at www.xmasinmalibu.com. Podcasters and videobloggers can register and download the song for "podcast-safe" play at IODA Promonet (http://promonet.iodalliance.com/login.php) or The Podsafe Music Network (http://music.podshow.com/music/producers/login.php). Commercial, college and public broadcasting stations can visit the website to obtain an email address to request a direct link to download a high-quality MP3 audio file for ASCAP-licensed broadcast.

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