Wednesday 25 December 2013

Seasonal Felicitations!

And that's it again.

The good news - if you see it as such - is that if the Government declared tomorrow that January had been cancelled and we're having Christmas all over again, I have another 25 songs ready to go at a moment's notice. Failing that, they will have to wait till Christmas 2014 - God willing.

Thanks as ever for your support this year and hope to see you all next year.

Merry Christmas everybody!


Day 25 - "Last Christmas" - Wham!

Surprised? Can't say I blame you...so am I! But although I usually start off on December 1st with a vague idea of where I'm going and what I'm going to put into the Calendar, the whole thing is intentionally pretty fluid and often ends up going somewhere I wasn't expecting.
 
This blog was always intended as an addition to the usual fare we hear every Christmas and over seven years - barring the odd foray - it's pretty much nibbled at the crusty edges of the great pie of Christmas music rather than drop a spoon into the mushy centre. But it was never the intention to drive a 10-ton truck through the accepted traditions of the season and I realise not everyone shares my enthusiasm for scouring the WWW every October onwards searching for obscure festive tunes.
 
Such a person is the Good Lady Blagg who has to put up with me disappearing into the Blagg Acre offices every year, and hearing some strange noises emanating from the PC as I chase up some bizarre web site from out of Wisconsin where someone has loaded some Carols from a Tibetan Nose Flute player.
 
Never a well-woman, she's suffered from particularly bad health this year and had some further bad news yesterday. 'Last Christmas' is her favourite Christmas song and this is for her, with love.
 
As an addition, I've been able to get some stats from the blog this year I've never had access to before and I can now see where people have accessed the Calendar from. It makes from some pretty fascinating reading and - although I'm not really au-fait with the popularity of George Michael in some areas of the Far East, some Pacific Islands and Eastern Europe, I'm reckoning there may be a few people out there who've never even heard this before. Possibly.
 
Merry Christmas!
 
 

Tuesday 24 December 2013

Day 24 - "Bells Are Ringing" - Mary Chapin Carpenter

Christmas Eve: Best day of the year for me (I'm a man who prefers to travel than arrive)  and even though things get unbearably poignant at times, there is great happiness and hope in the day too - there are reasons for this but I'm not going to share them with you surly oiks - and regulars will know that, try as I might, I can't run with a dance tune on such a seismic day even if you do want to don a paper hat and act the giddy goat. So...

This is a beautiful song from Ms C - Wherever you're walking tonight / Whoever you're waiting for / Somehow by the stable's faint light / Peace in your heart is restored that will make you feel warm and comfortable as the storm rages outside. 

Peace and Goodwill to you all!



Monday 23 December 2013

Day 23 - "Gift X-Change" - Calexico

The spirit is broken. the path is overrun / You can't move forward and now nothing gets done
I hope you find some inner peace along the way / Whatever it takes, I pray you'll make it home on Christmas Day
 
Heartbreaking offering from Americana / Indie band Calexico. Turn off all except the Christmas Tree lights, pour yourself a stiff drink, crank it up loud and count what blessing you have.


Sunday 22 December 2013

Day 22 - "The Wassail Song" - The Albion Christmas Band

One of the unexpected 'pleasures' of the Advent Calendar is opening emails at Easter or in June or September and finding someone, somewhere has sent me a Christmas record to listen too.

There have been quite a few instances where I've removed sun glasses or adjusted T-shirt or logged on to check the Test Cricket score and found myself listening to a festive tune. For the first time this year though, I got a Carol not through email but from the stage - and from no lesser person than Fairport Convention's very own Simon Nichol who - for reasons I found it hard to fathom when you consider the number of albums the Fairport's have had in their history - decided to play 'The Wassail Carol' during their closing set at Cropredy in August.

"It's a warm August night, it's a Carol - must remember it for the Calendar" I thought. And here it is. There is a Fairport version on YouTube but I went with the Albion Band because I'm seeing them in concert on 23rd in Bury St Edmunds. 

"Wassail. Wassail, All over the town / Our toast it is white / And our ale it is brown". Good for you, the ale I got from Morrison's yesterday is a strange red colour...


Saturday 21 December 2013

Day 21 - "Little Drummer Boy / Silent Night / Auld Lang Syne" - Jimi Hendrix

"The tape recorder still running?" asks Hendrix as the drums strike up for this festive obscurity: it was and here's the result. Seven minutes, thirty seconds of a visceral denouncement of the season or nearly eight minutes of pointless noodling - you buys yer ticket and takes your choice, I guess.

The problem - if problem it is - with Hendrix is the man was a product of his time and the 'Last Post' echoes a couple of minutes into this, just remind us that the Vietnam War was still raging when he shuffled off this mortal coil in September 1970 and everything he did reflected the world that was going on around him at the time.

You can't help but wonder what he'd be doing had he lived. Live sets on 'Strictly' probably. Len Goodman: "Well, pickle me walnuts! I tell ya what Jimi, you still got it son". Who can say...

Update: The video and soundtrack has been pulled from YouTube. If I find an update I'll post it here. Meanwhile, I've found a link to part of the track on a Blog called 'Elsewhere' and you can gaze at a lovely summery scene as you listen. It's here at Elsewhere - Hendrix Christmas and - just in! - it's now also on Spotify.


Friday 20 December 2013

Day 20 - "Santa Claus Is Coming" - Hank Ballard and the Midnighters

A storming Rock 'n' Roll track recorded at a time that Doo-wop was crossing with R 'n' B to form it's own hybrid. In fact Hank Ballard wrote and performed 'The Twist' before Chubby Checker picked up on the whole thing, and there are elements of that in this electric performance from 1959. A wild sax solo, bells and tight harmonies make this an essential for party night.

Wonderful and as rare as those Christmas Tree crumpets that ASDA are allegedly supposed to be selling.




Thursday 19 December 2013

The Cats celebrate the news from White Hart Lane




Day 19 - "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" - Amy Winehouse

Originally written by British songwriter Tommie Connor, I'm guessing this was initially called 'I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus' but the recording by 13-year-old Jimmy Boyd  reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart in December 1952 so I guess it will always by Mommy.

Here Amy does it in her inimitable fashion



Wednesday 18 December 2013

London 2013



Photos: B.Blagg

Day 18 - "Cold White Christmas" - Casiotone for the Painfully Alone

22 year-old woman leaves home seeking independence and freedom but finds herself alone, desperate and miserable at Christmas. You'll feel in a similar mood once you've spent 5 minutes with Owen Ashworth aka Casiotone and his 'lo-fi Indietronica'.

Aunt Beth & Uncle Charlie cut a check for the graduating niece /  And you marked your independence with a signature on a lease / But home was a photograph you taped to your wall / It's gonna be a cold white Christmas in St Paul


Never mind love! Costa Coffee have got a lovely Salted Caramel Latte in this year, one of those and a mince pie and you'll soon cheer up.

Tuesday 17 December 2013

Day 17 - "World Of Love" - Binky Griptite

Come on! How could someone named Binkie Griptite not make it onto the calendar? Our Bink - if I may be so bold - has something of a solid soul groove thang going on but, oddly, he doesn't seem to have moved in terms of technology, still preferring the joys of Myspace where he has a number of festive songs under the heading 'A Very Binky Christmas', all of which are worth investigating.

Find it here: 'World of Love'


2016 update: At last, Binks has joined the YouTube revolution  


Sunday 15 December 2013

Day 15 - "We Three Kings" - The Mediaeval Baebes

I saw the Baebes last August at the Cropredy Festival and assumed then they would be good for a Carol or two and so it has proved, this is quite lovely. The fact the video also features six women in long dresses walking barefoot through the sand and into the sea has nothing to do with the choice. Now where did I put my pills…?
 
 

Saturday 14 December 2013

Day 14 - "The Last Christmas" - Brainpool

One of the unexpected benefits of producing the Calendar every year is you sometimes turn over a Christmas stone and find another life underneath to investigate for the rest of the year.
 
I’ll freely admit I’ve never heard of the appallingly monikored Indie-pop combo Brainpool, but after unearthing this Christmas single, I've discovered that this 2013 release represents something of a welcome comeback for the Swedish band from Lund; there is – to use the latest parlance – quite a lot of love and excitement out there following the release of this track, their first in a decade.
Brainpool - The Last Christmas
Following highly successful releases from 1993 on, their last 2004 release was a double-album called ‘Junk’, a rock-opera about anti-consumerism which was turned into a critically acclaimed stage show which has been playing to packed houses all over the U.S. where the band have something of a fan base. Perhaps I should be getting out more.

So what of ‘The Last Christmas’? Well, it features a cover of a cute kitten playing with a gold Christmas decoration – always a winner in my book even if the ornament is actually a hand grenade – and I’ve been singing it constantly since I first heard it. It might be my Christmas song of 2013. But I’m still struggling with that name...
Go here to hear the song and download it for free: Brainpool-The Last Christmas
2023 Update: The video has now been restricted on YouTube so you'll need to view it on site but it will open in a new window. Showing images of war it's nothing more than you'll see on tonight's news, but rules is rules and you better obey them. 


Friday 13 December 2013

Day 13 - "I Want A Hippopatamus for Christmas" - Lenny the Lion and Terry Hall


Yes, it’s that time again: Christmas party night and the sad inevitability that is the Blagg Calendar novelty record.
This year it’s a BOGOF – although you won’t thank me for it – as Lenny the Lion sings ‘I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas’ hopefully ably abetted (‘cos otherwise I’d be very worried!) by Terry Hall (NOT the one from The Specials, you doughnut) on whose arm Lenny used to sit. Following this is the original version of the song by child star Gayla Peevey linked with a later version by the 73-year-old Peevey. It just gets better and better, doesn't it?

During the late ‘50’s and into the ‘60’s, ventriloquist Hall and his lion used to appear regularly on Children’s TV, at one point having their own TV show ‘Pops and Lenny’  on which The Beatles made an early appearance.
It’s quite hard to find a recording of ‘Hippopotamus’ anywhere – unsurprisingly other than some plays on Children’s radio it pretty much sank without trace - but a fellow blogger had it on his site and that sufficed for some years. Sadly, that site has now gone so - a first here! - I loaded it onto YouTube myself. Thank me later. It’s a popular one for the kids and has been a Blagg Jnr. favourite since he was a small boy and, in fact, we played it in the car just last weekend. Blagg Jnr. is now 72.
There is a link between the Hall / Lenny song and the accompanying ‘bonus’ video though, because during a trip to the U.S. in 1958, Hall made an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, as earlier did original singer of the song, child star Gayla Peevy. In fact, Peevey’s appearance on the Sullivan show was in 1953 where she sang the song as a 10-year-old. It went on to become a U.S. hit.

Listen to Gayla sing and then marvel. Does that voice really come from that body? Scary!
There is a fascinating footnote to this whole story too. Oklahoma Zoo capitalised upon the popularity of "I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas" with a fundraising campaign to "buy a hippo for Gayla", the fund raised $3,000, and a baby hippopotamus named Matilda was purchased and given to Peevey who then donated it back to the zoo. The then 2 year old hippopotamus named Matilda spent 45 years in the Zoo, passing away at age 47 from a heart attack in 1998 while being transferred to the Walt Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
Sadly, Terry Hall passed away in 2007, while Gayla became a teacher and then run her own advertising firm. She is still going strong, aged 78 (2021). The whereabouts of Lenny the Lion is unknown, although rumours that he had to enter a drug rehabilitation clinic recently can probably be discounted. 

Thursday 12 December 2013

Merry Christmas....

...now take this bloody hat away 'for I rip yer arm off!

Day 12 - "Christmas" - Blues Traveler

I want to buy into the benevolent / And I was hoping for a miracle to hold me, wash me / Make me know what it's about

A more cynical look at the season from Blues Traveler, a band who formed in 1987 in Princeton, New Jersey and have released eleven albums, apparently, three of which have gone Gold in the US.

Save me from my righteous doubt as I watch helpless / And everybody sings / If it's Chanukah or Kwanza / Solstice, harvest or December twenty-fifth / Peace on earth to everyone / And abundance to everyone you're with

Meanwhile, my spell checker is still searching for the missing L in Traveller

Wednesday 11 December 2013

Day 11 - "Who Took The Merry Out Of Christmas" - The Staple Singers

Well, I sure hope it's no-one on this blog anyway!

Here's 'Pop' Staples with his children Cleotha, Pervis, Yvonne and Mavis on a Gospel tinged R 'n' B number. "Too busy having fun / Drinking with everyone / Showing no respect for Mary's baby son"  Ain't that the truth, brother!

Sadly, Cleotha passed away earlier this year but Mavis continues to lend her vocal weight to numerous projects and long may that continue.

Tuesday 10 December 2013

Day 10 - "Christmas (Comes But Once A Year)" - Amos Milburn

Vinyl junkies will understand it's pretty unusual to have a 'B' side with a different artist from that of the 'A' side but that's what happened with this King Records 45rpm where Charles Brown's classic 'Please Come Home For Christmas' - which featured on the Calendar a few years back (you search for it, huh?) - was coupled with this bell and bass driven cracker from Amos Milburn.
 
Check out the boogie-woogie piano and chunky ska-sounding guitar and spare a thought for Amos who had something of decent career in pre-Rock 'n' Roll R 'n' B / Jazz but who was left behind once Presley started shaking his hips and curling his lip.
 
The irony is, of course, that Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino and Little Richard would have all been influenced by Milburn, it's certain they would have heard of him, Amos having a huge string of R 'n' B chart hits leading up to the mid-50's. There was even an attempt to revive the man's fortunes in the early '60's when he cut an album with a fledgling record label from out of Detroit called Tamla Motown but, sadly, it didn't quite make it.
 
Enjoy it now though 'cos once the Government realises that Christmas comes once a year they are gonna tax the hell out of it.