Boxing Day Supplemental: Boxing Day Blues - Courtney Barnett

Many thanks to anyone who has visited, commented or sent emails. It really is appreciated.

Perhaps we can come back and do it all again next year? Who knows?

All the best for the New Year!

Day 25 - Silent Night - Rotary Connection

There's never a year goes by here on the Calendar when someone doesn't ask a) Where do you find this stuff? or b) Why the hell do you do it? 

The answer to the first one is I spend an obscene amount of time looking - more than is reasonable for any supposedly sane person -  and the answer to the second is I genuinely don't know, although I fear there is something very wrong with me... but then... but then... I come across something like the Rotary Connection's 'Peace' album and it all suddenly makes sense.

This album came out in 1968. 1968! Over a half-century this has been out there to enjoy yet I discovered it just two weeks before the end of 2022. After unearthing it I've since found out that it figures in several august lists as one of the Greatest Christmas albums ever made. I'd probably not argue.

The whole album is superb and, in many ways, 'Silent Night' isn't really indicative of the rest of the collection but Christmas Day falls on a Sunday this year, I needed a Carol and this seemed an ideally bonkers way to go out for what has been another chaotic year.

The track starts slowly with a '60s sounding orchestral piece that put me in mind of a Moody Blues concept album, drops into a swirling Temptations psychedelic soul vocal segment, then goes into a section that reminds me of the Ray Conniff Singers that my Dad used to play (there's one for the teenagers!) and then morphs into what sounds to me like Trip-Hop (just 25 years early there) with an - understandably given the date - 5th Dimension feel before a Hendrix-style guitarist drops in to rip the whole thing apart.

And to top it all if you're wondering about the astonishing five-octave range of the female singer that's a young Minnie Ripperton making her first recordings. 

My only concern is that this is just too 'outta sight, man' and people may pass on the rest of the album but if you saw and loved (and how could you not?) the 'Summer of Soul' film from 2021, then the rest of the album is certainly worth checking out. 

I'll be back on Boxing Day for a one-off treat but otherwise Merry Christmas and, hey, 'Peace' Yea? 

Day 24 - The Light of Christmas Day - Robert Plant & Alison Krauss

I saw Robert Plant and Alison Krauss in Hyde Park this summer; one of my highlights of the year. This comes from a film I've neither seen nor feel the need to search out - although I'm happy for you to let me know if you think I've missed out. All I know is Robert gets to look more like Azlan every year - bless him - and long may he do so when he and Alison can cut through the pabulum and produce something as beautiful and shimmering as this. Just sublime.

A Winter's Tale

Tomorrow will be my fifth Christmas Eve without my Lady Blagg. This seems barely possible.

Christmas Eve 1987 under the clock on High Wycombe station (Eat yer heart out, Trevor Howard) was the first time I told Gail I loved her and it subsequently became 'our day'. Though we tried to make sure we spent every subsequent December 24th together, situations at the time dictated we were sometimes apart; though we never really were (if you know what I mean).

When we moved in together in 1994 we tried to ensure we made every Christmas Eve special but now, strangely, I find it's those missed ones before '94 - where I had all the feelings and memories but couldn't see her - that get me through every year. I get strength from those. The others rip me to shreds.

I was looking for some festive photos for this blog and I unexpectedly found this from 2014 and I've decided to post it here. We were doing our usual Christmas Eve thing; Harrods, lunch where we first met, Selfridges, Billecart Salmon Champagne in the Hix bar overlooking the designer area - watching people buying last-minute gifts that cost more than we made in a week - then a top meal after Hix (occasionally) threw us out. 

As we'd entered the store she'd found this purse. It was pure Lady B. An 'itty bitty' Ted Baker, pink and stupidly expensive. I feigned a lack of interest - not the hardest acting job I've ever had to do, to be fair - but when we stopped at the bar I made an excuse to leave and went to buy it for her. I loved buying her things like this, loved seeing her face as she opened it. She could make you feel like a king at times like that. It got good use too, it was the purse she always kept the coins in when we went abroad.

It's a lovely memory.

I hope you all make your own memories this year and cherish them forever

Merry Christmas to you all

Day 23 - We Met Bernard Sumner At A Christmas Party Last Night - Marsheaux

The perfect kiss / In a lonely place / The price of love / Truth and regret

Dreams never end

Day 22 - Christmas Train - Carey Bell

Just 'cos I rode that Christmas Train today

Photos: London Mail Rail by B. Blagg

Day 21 - The Loneliest Time Of Year - The Wedding Present

1987: What a year eh? I met Lady Blagg, bought my first Wedding Present album and saw the band live for the first time. And if you think it's an odd thing to mention the two events in the same sentence, it's because I owe frontman David Gedge a debt for something he wrote in 1989 that ensured the two events continued as they did, and they will always be inextricably linked in my mind.

The Wedding Present and I are still locked in a continuing love story and I've seen the band at least once a year since '87 - usually more - and have most of whatever they've produced on vinyl, CD or download. I'm rarely disappointed. 

This time last year the band announced a project called '24 Songs' effectively an A and B side - ask yer Granny! - for every month of the year and it was obvious if December's was seasonal it was going to find its way onto this year's calendar.

So here it is. It's a Christmas song, of course, but because David Gedge wrote it, it's about heartbreak, desire, infidelity, frustration and hurt. It starts with waves crashing, a slow build and a gorgeous piano refrain as we learn she's leaving and Gedge suggesting it be better if she stayed what with the snow falling and everything, but we all know she'll be gone by Christmas Eve. Then at 3' 30" the trademark guitars kick in and we're back in familiar lost love and desolation territory. 

It's beautiful and haunting but still, if nothing else, we'll always have 1987.

Day 20 - Alone On Christmas Day - Phoenix (with Bill Murray)

A curio this. A French pop rock band from Versailles appear on a 2015 Netflix special 'A Very Murray Christmas' with Bill Murray - yea, that Bill Murray! - and record a version of an unreleased Beach Boys song with Murray providing (frankly strange) backing vocals.

Coincidentally, when I looked up Phoenix - a band I'd never previously come across - I found their 2022 'Alpha Zulu' album was listed in The Guardian as one of the top 50 albums of the year.

Day 19 - It's Christmas - The Bonairs

Some festive doo-wop from 1954 guaranteed to get you in the mood and if the sax break at 1' 30" doesn't get you out to the kitchen and peeling sprouts then there's no hope for you.

Day 18 - Christmas Eve / Sarajevo - Trans-Siberian Express

It's Sunday and that means a Calendar Carol and though it may not look like it from the title this is a double, combining as it does 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman' with 'Carol of the Bells' - the latter composed in 1914 by Ukrainian Mykola Leontovych, the melody taken from a folk chant known as 'Shchedryk'.

The Sarajevo part of the title comes from a romanticised version of the real life story of Vedran Smailovic. In this story a cello player returns home during the Bosnian war after playing around the world with an orchestra, only to find his city in ruins. At the time the Serbs were shelling the city regularly but, rather than go to the bomb shelter, the musician took his cello and sat night after night on a pile of rubble playing Beethoven and Mozart. Some years later, the man was traced by a reporter who asked him why he did what he did and the musician said that it was his way of proving, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that the spirit of humanity was still alive in his city. 

The Ukrainian tune and the war setting, make it impossible not to think on 2022's biggest story and what's happening in another part of Europe at the moment. I'm wondering if the members of the rock band Savatage - for whom the  Rock/Orchestral Trans-Siberian fusion is a side-project - are thinking of renaming the whole ensemble.

Day 17 - Everything is One Big Christmas Tree - The Magnetic Fields

According to Spotify Wrapped, my most played track of 2022 was The Magnetic Fields 'All My Little Words' so a Fields Christmas song was bound to find its way on here sometime. With a German chorus and lines like 'If they don't like you, screw them / Don't leave your fortune to them' this is one of Stephin Merritt's  more tongue-in-cheek- songs. 

 

Photos: Gail Thorne

Day 16 - Flyin' In The Air - Newham Generals

Festive Grime comes to the calendar in the shape of Forest Gate's own D Double E and Footsie doing wonderous things to Aled's hoary old tune. Feel free to stick your arms out horizontally and sway if you must but I think you may well be missing the point. By the way, Double E was the voice on the rather surprising 2019 Ikea advert. 

This isn't available on Spotify yet but some of their stuff is and 'Burn' is worth catching up with.

Day 15 - Please Come Home For Christmas - The Eagles

Back in the olden days of 2011 the original version of this by Charles Brown featured on the blog under Day 21. So ancient was the concept of a loosely based music blog back then it was actually created on MySpace and in converting it to a web page I lost the individual page links. Imagine there was ever such a time! 

Anyway, I saw the Eagles in Hyde Park in the summer and they were magnificent so I thought it was time to re-run the song again - and this, from 1978, is by no means a poor substitute. Note how Don Henley acknowledges that 'bells will be ringing the sad, sad news' about spending the season alone, while Brown in the original from 1960 has the bells ringing 'the glad, glad news' that it's Christmas. How times change, huh?

Now actually I'll be spending the season alone but I don't want anyone feeling sorry for me 'cos at least I won't be squabbling with anyone over something puerile - well other than the cats, of course, who will once again refuse to eat the Christmas Turkey treat I got them from 'Pets 'R' Us'.

Ungrateful little buggers! 

Day 14 - Just A Lonely Christmas - Diana Ross & the Supremes

Diana Ross played the Legends slot at Glastonbury in the summer to a mixed critical reception. Perhaps some younger fans may have even wondered why she was regarded as a 'legend'. Here's 2' 25" of heartache to remind you.  

Day 13 - I Can't Have A Merry Christmas, Mary (Without You) - Jerry Lee Lewis

We lost one of the founding fathers of Rock 'n' Roll this year, Jerry Lee Lewis passing away at the age of 87. 

There's been a lot of column inches written about Lee's wild and turbulent personal life but in purely musical terms his early work marked him out as a pioneer whose contribution to the early days of rock are incalculable. Even so Lee may well have disappeared from the pages of music history following the understandable scandal that followed revelations that his third wife was actually his 13-year-old cousin once removed, had it not been for an astonishing re-invention as a Country and Western star.

Between 1968 to 1977, Lewis became one of the biggest and most bankable C 'n' W stars in the world and its from that period that this Christmas song comes.

Elf