Entertainment For Lively Minds
Christmas music
I love Christmas music. I can't wait until December when I can dig out my Christmas records. They make me happier than most other music I own while also tugging at the heartstrings.
I've got no time for most alternative Christmas stuff - such as the Killers, that bloke from the Editors or that Bonnie Prince chap with a voice like a rusty gate - I mean the proper 70s and 80s Christmas music that brings happy nostalgic tears to my eyes and provides a direct link to my childhood, a more innocent time.
I have a Christmas amnesty for artists I usually steer well clear of, so the only song I have on my iPod playlist from the following bunch is their Christmas hit.
These include:
Shakin' Stevens 'Merry Christmas Everyone', Jonah Lewie 'Stop The Cavalry', Mike Oldfield 'In Dulci Jubilo', Greg Lake 'I Believe In Father Christmas', Elton John 'Step Into Christmas', Paul McCartney 'Wonderful Christmastime', Chris De Burgh 'A Spaceman Came Travelling', Wham 'Last Christmas', Mariah Carey 'All I Want For Christmas Is You', the Pretenders '2000 Miles' and (ahem) Gary Glitter 'Rock and Roll Christmas'.
Plus contributions from my more favoured artists:
John Lennon, Pogues, Eartha Kitt, Ronettes, Slade, The Crystals and errr The Waitresses.
Does anyone else get a warm, fuzzy glow from Christmas music?
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anyone else get a warm, fuzzy glow from Christmas music?
...I imagine people who work in shopping malls probably don't, Chimster. But I suppose the old (roasted) chestnuts do provide a vaguely comfortable feeling of normalness in an insecure and perilous world. But I draw the line at Glitter and De Burgh (and Elton's one was always rubbish)...
it's funny you should say that
I worked at Burger King for four years cleaning tables - while there I was exposed to Christmas songs on a constant loop from 1st - 24th December for eight hours, six days of the week.
The rest of the year they would play Stereo MCs. For some reason I still love all the Christmas songs, but can't bear to hear 'Connected'.
Gosh...
...I'm not sure I could bear to listen to any of it now given that level of exposure/association. I have a distant, barely recalled memory of some Christmas job I must once have had in a warehouse or somesuch (I honestly can't remember) and 'Getting Away With It' being on the radio every hour. I must recall that because it felt like the only half decent piece of music being played, and it must have appealed to my innate melancholia and gloom at the way life was at that time... but I couldn't listen to it now.
Ooh, by gosh, by golly
As a bookseller and bookshop manager I dwelt for 17 Christmases in the belly of the yuletide beast, and only now, on my 7th Christmas as a civilian, am I starting to decompress and even (just slightly) enjoy this time of year.
The very worst Christmas song which I ever heard on rotation went 'Ooh, by gosh, by golly! It's time for mistletoe and holly!',and had the world's most grating key-change towards the end. I could easily Google it and provide further deatils, but fear being drawn into its grasp once more. Even as I type I am humming to myself, 'Ooh, by gosh, by jingle! It's time for carols and Kris Kringle!'
Join the Christmas Club
Another one recovering from over-exposure. Last place of work was a car showroom with piped music on constant rotation; even with occasional updates to the playlist, tracks got very old very quickly, and never more so than at Christmas.
The seasonal ennui was not helped by the fact that the person selecting the music was under the impression that "the run-up to Christmas" began the instant the last firework had been launched on November 5th.
'tis not Christmas
..until I've heard Chris Rea's Driving Home for Christmas, which I do every year and is the highlight of the holiday before it all goes downhill...
Big favourites are Waitresses - Christmas Wrapping and Freiheit's Keeping the Dream Alive, which is by far the best Non-Xmas Xmas song....
Confession
I do actually put Driving Home For Christmas on in the car on my last day at work when I'm, er, driving home for Christmas. When he sings "I take a look at the driver next to me" I always imagine two drivers at the lights clocking each other, giving a mock surprised look and a knowing smile (perhaps with a wink and a finger pistol gesture). This year I plan to try it.
Yoko - "Listen, The Snow Is Falling"
Christmas Wrapping...
...is the best Christmas single ever. A worthy inclusion, Chimney. I really love this, too:
("Christmas Time (Don't Let The Bells End)" by The Darkness).
Just what a Christmas single should be: stupid, cheesy and impossible not to grin to. It's great. I love Christmas, I love Christmas music, and although I draw the line at anything Yuley before December, once the month arrives I'm all over it, and grinches can stick their humbugs up their arse.
C'mon Kids
Went to see The Darkness two weeks ago and how surreal was it to hear Justin Hawkins singing 'C'mon Kids' to a bunch of 30-50 somethings during the singalong !
Love it
I like Christmas music. Not just the traditional Phil Spector/Slade variety either. My favourite Christmas album is the Ze Christmas Record (that the Waitresses song first appeared on ... and that's not even the best track!).
I have a huge collection of Christmas tracks so a playlist will last a good 10 hours without repeating a track.
The music, for me, is the only saving grace for Christmas. I would happily do without everything else associated with Christmas.
Phil Spector's - A Christmas Gift for You.
esp Frosty the Snowman -
On December 1st I can dust it off and bring it back out of the garage into the lounge.
Also - The Eagles - Please Come Home From Christmas. Love it.
All Xmas records must be preceded by a viewing of either Planes, Trains and Automobiles or Home Alone with the kids.
Where do we stand...
...on the Jethro Tull Christmas Album? *
(* at this point it might be an act of seasonal kindness to shield Dave Amitri's eyes and ears from this thread)
Have a guess
Where I stand?
I took my Mum for a cup of tea and a bun at the garden centre yesterday and whilst browsing the crap shop "Ring out Solstice bells" came on...set me up for the afternoon!
Splendid stuff, Twang...
...we'll form a thin blue line and keep friend Amitri back for his own safety ('Move along there... Nothing to see... etc').
Funny how garden centres always have a 'crap shop' and a tea'n'buns facility isn't it? I wonder what proportion of such places' customers actually go there for gardening materials?
Quite near hell
Nothing about that would have filled me with any joy... Garden Centre? Not at any time of year thanks, cup of tea? yuk. Jethro Tull? ...Run! (with hands over ears).
masterful
I absolutely love Tull's Christmas album. 'Jack Frost And The Hooded Crow' is probably the best Christmas song ever on the best Christmas album ever! I've actually bought it as presents for 3 different people and they've all loved it too.
So I stand behind it all the way.
In which case let's celebrate with...
...the Christmas Album version of 'Jack Frost...' (remade from its Broadsword-era version):
Plus, of course, the Tull's final appearance on TOTP with this perenniel gem (and no, I don't mean 'Diddy' Dave at the start):
Chimney, you are in fact me
...and I claim my £5.
My covers band has a gig on December 23rd. In fact it'll be my final gig with them as I'm taking time out to rest my voice for a bit. Great opportunity to bow out with some fun chrimbo numbers I thought, but no: the rest of the band hate the idea. At this rate I'll be leaving the band due to musical differences (main difference being that I want to do the Shakey number and they don't).
The sour pussed Killjoys!
Sit on your stool and do an acoustic version of Merry Xmas Everybody and Last Christmas leaving the band time to get to the bar....
...which is EXACTLY what we are doing
I play guitar and share vox with a female singer (the only other pro-xmas song person in the band). The others have grudgingly allowed us to do a couple of acoustic chrimbo numbers - Fairytale of New York etc - before they come back in for a halfhearted full band version of the Slade song.
I actually think the Lennon one has a great melody that even Yoko can't spoil. Replace 'christmas' with any other word and I reckon our grumpy drummer would like it.
But the thing is, Joe...
...not even SHAKEY wants to do the Shakey number! I have some friends who were house band on a BBC NI TV show around this time of year a few years back and Shakey was booked. He'd agreed to do his Christmas thing if he could also do one from his new album. You can imagine the booking conversation. 'Yes, yes, Shakey, love to hear it, love to hear it...' etc. And then the phone goes down and the researcher tells the producer 'Yep, he'll do The Christmas Number'.
Showtime came and (of course...) some item about bin collection issues in the Ballymena area, or somesuch, overran and Shakey never got doing his new song - having already mimed, begrudgingly, with local backing band (earning an easy few quid apiece) behind him.
The drummer was intrigued when Shakey had arrived and said to him, 'Is my album in the shops?'
'Er, I don't know... I suppose I could find out...' said the drummer, thinking it's only 5 mins walk to the local city-centre HMV.
Shakey - not the brightest spark - had assumed he was a record label flunkey.
Actually
John....ahem....borrowed the melody from that old 'Stewball was a race horse song.'
Chimney is not you (he appears to be my wife!)
A disturbing image I think you will agree. First the Christmas cd's come out, plus her Christmas piano book. She is no doubt planning to start brain washing the daughters as we speak.
Having said that and she's not listening I am partial to "driving home for Christmas", Fairytale of New York and Noel Gallagher's version of Slade's "merry Christmas". (And the original to be fair) just don't tell Mrs C.
Christmas in the heart
Dylan's gift of yuletide joy. Thanks Bob.
I adore these two
Jonah Lewie 'Stop The Cavalry'
Wizzard 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday'
and love anything Christmassy.
I'm a sucker for all of them.
I also rather like the excellent Bob Rivers parodies. Walking Round In Women's Underwear is a nailed-on classic.
Here it is. With a slightly odd Anime backing.
(Memo to self: When doing a Google Video Search for "Walking round in womens' underwear" next time remember to put "Bob Rivers" in it as well. Please excuse me whilst I go dunk my eyeballs in Jeyes Fluid)
You need.....
Smooth Christmas - a new, for December only, digital radio station from, er...Smooth FM. No chat, no news, traffic or weather, just continuous Christmas classics 24/7. Go on, re-tune your DAB radio. Personally, I love it. Been on in the kitchen all week and finally, finally, they played The Waitresses this morning!
me too
But I also like the alternative stuff, so I'm happy to keep up the theme for the whole month. This year's downloads both with a retro feel
Emmy the Great & Tim Wheeler
She&Him
My favorites
These are best enjoyed with a stiff drink in hand before a nice fire:
Dean Martin: I've Got Your Love to Keep Me Warm
Nancy Wilson: What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?
Billy May and His Orchestra: Rudolph Mambo
Lou Rawls: Christmas Is
Bruce Cockburn: Early On One Christmas Morn (actually his whole Christmas album is good)
Boris Karloff: You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch
Beach Boys: Little Saint Nick
Julie London: I'd Like You for Christmas
Miss Piggy: Christmas is Coming (the goose is getting fat)
The only Christmas music I get tired of is The Nutcracker Suite as my daughter dances in that ballet and I have to hear that music constantly on repeat during the rehearsals and then during 4 to 6 shows. You get nutcrackered out after a while.
Enough!
I just wish there were some new ones to refresh the whole stale reheated turkey tiredness of the lot of them. We didn't used to have the same ones every year, we got three or four annual replacements. Why did this stop? Is it just down to Cowell's malign involvement? There are some less over played ones I guess. The Phil Spector album is great. I did get a few years of retail overkill though. I can't abide that Darkness knob of a singer either.
It's way too early for this but it sums up for me the new year feeling and is both uplifting and bleak in a typical touching and profound Abba way: Happy New Year!
Some new
Actually, the last few years have seen some notable new additions, last year we had the Futureheads and before that Julian Casablancas, The Raveonettes, Slow Club, Aimee Mann and the New Pornographers all in the last 5 years.
Not exactly
troubling the top forty or likely to be troubling the customers in Sainsbury's though
Neither
Neither of those criteria normally carries much weight round these parts though.
Well yes and no
The point is that it's the usual suspects in the OP list that you do hear all the time everywhere and it would be nice if they got refreshed and updated regularly - that's all I'm saying.
No different
I guess it just parallels the rest of the year. There are so many places that we consume our music from these days that the top 40 is even less of a consensus than it ever was. If it's a good christmas record then it once was likely to get into the top 40, these days, that's not the case. ...and I've just checked and even The Waitresses christmas song didn't get in the top 40 when it was released, I think it's only really reached a larger audience as a result of more recent radio plays and it's presence on every christmas compilation album.
Christmas Vacation
by Mavis Staples, produced by Prince, is an absolute belter.
Lennon's is my all-time favourite though.
Wow.
Really? I can't stand that Lennon song. Crackerjack sentimentality is fine, but when it's trying to be serious? Yuk.
Love his voice,
the production and the soaring choruses. Does it every time for me. Not embarrassed.
Oh, I'd never suggest you should be embarrassed!
God knows I've got some music taste which plenty on here would think was eminently shameful! I just don't like that particular song, but then I don't like much of any Beatle's post-Beatles stuff.
I s'pose it's that my personal image of Lennon, which is not favourable, clashes so much with the song's message. Here's a man who did quite a bit of conflict in his time, and went out of his way to be pretty awful to people who loved and depended on him, preaching about world peace. It always sticks in my craw, that.
Understand where you're coming from,
but I suppose I compartmentalise.
I do love 'Plastic Ono Band' and 'All things Must Pass' from post-Beatles.
Saint Etienne
Much overlooked, I find, is Saint Etienne's Christmas album: A Glimpse of Stocking.
Xmas music...
.....great.
See 60s Tamla, HJHs flexis, James Brown, Elvis, Beach Boys' LP, Spector, Mark Lamarr's Xmas Day show on Radio 2 (now no longer.....well done, Beeb!!!).
Indeed, a whole lot apart from all the usual over-played 30/40 songs, most of which were mentioned at the top of this blog which are ho-hum instead of ho-ho-ho!
Humbug
Although I'm a bit of a miserable git about xmas, only liking the 70s xmas songs because I grew up with them (wizzard, Mud, Greg Lake, Elton, and so on) I have to admit for a huge fondness for Mariah Carey's song.
This year is a bit different though, because I discovered the emmy the Great album on Spotify last night. 'Zombie christmas' indeed!
Got to be fountains of wayne
for an alternative track it's got to be Fountains of Wayne
However for a classic it's always been Lennon's that's summed up the spirit of Christmas ( and especially Boxing Day ! ) for me !
Fountains Of Wayne
Are they really alternative? Not in my house... and it did make it into the top 40.
FOW
All I meant was alternative in the sense you won't hear it in Marks & Sparks for instance - I agree with you that in my home too my wife and son love them almost as much as me after years of brainwashing !
Marks & Spencer
I was in M'n'S last week for longer than I would have liked and I got the distinct impression that everything is alternative as far as their christmas music choice was concerned. I got the distinct impression that they played specially sourced music possibly in a bid to avoid paying any further royalties. It was pretty horrible so I don't know what other excuse there could have been.