Dr. Christmas in search of gems in world full of lame holiday music

By Jim Lundstrom
Post-Crescent staff writer

You won’t hear Burl Ives crooning “Holly Jolly Christmas” or anyone pa rum pum pum pumming when Dr. Christmas takes to the airwaves today.

He knows you have already been bombarded by Burl and the same handful of other holiday chestnuts that are played ad nauseum every year by commercial radio stations.

That is exactly the point of his annual marathon of Christmas music on WRST-FM 90.3, the small wattage radio station on the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh campus.

What you will hear for five hours every day from today through Christmas Eve is an eclectic mix of the best holiday music of 2004 as compiled by UWO sociology professor Gerry Grzyb, aka Dr. Christmas.

“It really started out because the radio stations were playing stuff I just didn’t want to hear, the same darn stuff over and over again,” said Grzyb, who begins his 16th year behind the controls at WRST at 1 p.m. today. (A word of warning: Listeners in the northern half of the Fox Cities may not be able to pick up WRST’s signal. You will have to take Grzyb’s word for it in the accompanying review.)

Just because he’s known as Dr. Christmas, Grzyb is not necessarily a Christmas fruitcake.

“OK, having thousands of Christmas CDs might qualify that way,” he said, “but I don’t like the notion that people get that this is all I listen to.”

Nor is he a religious person.

“Some people draw that conclusion,” he said.

He prefers to think of himself as a “frustrated musician.”

“I had been a music major at one time until I realized I had absolutely no talent to carry it off,” he said. “I sort of bumped into this. Now it’s the 16th year. I look back and go, ‘How in the heck did this happen?’”

Grzyb said the work begins in early October, when the holiday CDs start coming out. Most of the CDs he receives come from small labels.

“There’s some great stuff being made by musicians who are pressing 500 or maybe 1,000 copies,” he said.

He receives, and listens to, about 100 holiday CDs every year, each with an average length of from 50 to 60 minutes.

“That’s how much listening I do,” he said.

“People always ask me how I can stand listening to this stuff, but every year I find somebody who does something new and makes it fresh, but boy do you have to wade through a lot of crap to get there,” he said. “I’m looking for those few gems.”

“He listens very carefully and likes finding new treasures every year,” said Grzyb’s wife, Linda, a reading specialist at Foster Elementary School in Appleton.

“Just about daily he tells me he’s found one I’ve just got to hear,” she said. “He usually asks me right when I walk in the door and I’m exhausted, but he’s so excited about it. It’s just such a passion for him.”

Ben Jarman, the faculty adviser at WRST, said it just makes for great radio.

“The relevance of the program is that it’s quality local radio,” he said. “Normally, without Gerry here, we would be back on network. Once the students leave (for Christmas vacation), we lose that local presence.

“From my perspective,” Jarman continued, “the extra effort to do some quality local programming that parallels the holidays and Christmas spirit, that’s the heart of what radio really can be at its finest moments and that is good local service. Gerry brings that to the area with this program.”

Next year WRST hopes to incorporate streaming, which means anyone with Internet can listen to the station’s programming, an idea that excites Grzyb.

“I love WRST. They have been incredibly supportive,” he said. “But knowing that my audience is limited is the single most frustrating thing. Putting something together like this with the potential of it being heard anywhere by anyone with an Internet connection, that is exciting to me.”

The potential of being heard around the world is so fascinating that Grzyb said he might even go beyond the original 20-year commitment he made for this project.

“I had promised my audience 20 years,” he said. “If this streaming things turns out really good, I may be juiced by that. I could go to 25 years.”

But, really, it’s the music that drives him.

“I will stop if they stop making anything new and interesting,” he said. “Every year I think, ‘The well is dry. Nobody’s going to come up with anything.’ But they always do.”

Jim Lundstrom can be reached at 920-993-1000, ext. 374, or by e-mail at jlundstrom@ postcrescent.com

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