..And that is pretty much it. Your Christmas starts as mine ends. I'll update the blog periodically over the next day or so with festive photos but, song wise, that's it for another year.
Many thanks to everyone who suggested songs, sent emails or contacted one way or another. It may not seem like it but I always listen to very suggestion and they all go on a list.
Deity of your choice willing, It will all kick off again for the 10th time next December.
In the meantime Merry Christmas and a very happy 2016 to everyone - even the miserable gits - and have fun.
As I like to remind everyone every year; the Calendar isn't a 'Best of' or a 'Countdown' and track 25 may just be selected on the day out of a handful of songs. Sometimes something nudges the final track in a particular direction though and this year it was a fantastic coincidence.
Alexander O'Neal's Christmas offering from 1988's 'My Gift to You' album was always one of the tracks I had on a list and I was on YouTube a couple of days ago looking for the best download and I found that a good Internet friend Vinny - a fellow West Ham blogger who has helped me out at times on ESPN and who'd I'd emailed just a week ago - had actually put this up in 2007. He'd never mentioned it and I never knew.
Even better, further investigation revealed Vinny used to run a web site and My Space page for O'Neal. The chances of this are wonderfully remote, it confirmed 'Our First Christmas' as this year's Christmas Day track and you can find Vinny's download here Vinny's YouTube Download .
Although ultimately, just to spoil the story a little bit, I decided to go for a version that just showed the vinyl going round on it, that was eventually pulled by YouTube in one of their odd purges so I'm proud to present Vinny's download here.
It sometimes feels as if I worked alongside Charles
Babbage on his Analytical Engine and I’ve convinced myself I did some coding
alongside Alan Turing; I certainly played some games on Prestel – the forerunner
of the World Wide Web - and I once won the League for West Ham on a Sinclair ZX
Spectrum; so it shouldn’t come as any great surprise when I get a message via
the Internet - but the fact is it occasionally does.
When an email arrives from Calgary, Canada some 4300
miles away – sent by someone you don’t know and are never likely to meet - telling
you how much he enjoys your half-baked attempt to post a Christmas song every
day over Advent, you can feel kinda humbled. Either that or your head turns
around and smoke comes out of your ears like a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
I got such an email early in November pointing me to
this husband and wife duo who I might otherwise have never known about. Over
the Rhine seem ideally suited for Christmas Eve; Slow, sultry, smoky with
dangerously romantic overtones, you don’t so much listen to this as sink into
it like a 15 tog duvet.
Strings
of lights above the bed / Curtains drawn and a glass of red / All I ever get
for Christmas is blue / Saxophone on the radio / Recorded forty years ago / All
I ever get for Christmas is blue
With this in mind - whether you go out or stay in this
most wonderful of nights – make sure you enjoy whatever it is you do with
whoever you chose to be with. It’s Christmas, you're alive and the other options aren't anywhere near as good.
From far back in the mists of time - 1953 (Gulp!) actually - comes this festive slab of Doo-Wop with a searing sax line and a wonderful vocal. For hep cats everywhere.
Arabella Dorman’s artwork 'Flight' was hanging in St James's Church Piccadilly for yesterday evening's ever wonderful 'Carols for Shopper's' concert. 62 people arrived in Lesbos in this dinghy designed for 15. My beliefs are secular but the comparisons between the story being told in the service and the major news of 2015 were undeniably poignant.
It might just be me but it was the annual Christmas Carol for Shoppers concert at St James's in Piccadilly tonight, 'Love Actually' is on the TV, the Heston mince pies are out, I'm in a most almighty Christmas groove and there's a festive something in the air; Scouting for Girls seem to have captured the mood perfectly.
Did you ever think "You know that Weather Girls 'It's Raining Men' song - well, I'd really like to hear that but with a Christmas theme?" Well, think no longer - here it is!
From 1983 - what the hell were we all on? - come Izora Armstead and Martha Walsh with that shouty disco thing for which they became briefly famous. Worth visiting for the slightly surreal video.
'Joy to the World' is an English hymn by Isaac Watts, based on the second half of Psalm 98 and first published in 1719; Aretha Franklin is the Queen of Soul and could pretty much sing the Highway Code and make it sound good. The result is incendiary. A fast Gospel tinged tour-de-force to make your hair stand on end.
There's a live version available from a Rockefeller Centre concert but Aretha seems to be lip-syncing through it so I prefer the recorded version here. Either are worth checking out regardless.
In my nine years of doing these Calendars I doubt there's been a single year where someone hasn't suggested this track, many citing it as their favourite Christmas song and most wiping away a tear along the way.
It tells the story of Joe, ringing his brother Dan from prison to tell him how sorry he is he won't be there for the festive season. Joe reminisces as he wishes the family well, advises his brother on how to make the gravy for which the incarcerated man is renowned and, as an aside, asks Dan not to get off with his wife when he's dancing to Junior Murvin.
But you know what? Try as I might, I just don't get it. Is it an Antipodean thing? I can be as lachrymose as the next big blubbering baby at Christmas but this goes right over my 6ft and rising head.
Still, if this Calendar does nothing it at least throws the net wide so this is for everyone who loves it and Merry Christmas to ya too.
It's the second party Friday of the Calendar and what better way to kick start it all than with this blinding cover of Kay Starr's '50's hit.
Kay Starr
UK based listeners will have heard this a lot this year as it's been the soundtrack to the Boots the Chemist advertisement on TV but that doesn't diminish the joy a bit.
Original singer Kay is now a sprightly 93 - good on her! Treat yourself and check her version out too.
Again? Well, following on from two songs on the Calendar with the same name - Day 13 Year 4 by Charles Bowen and Day 22 Year 8 by the Soul Searchers - we have another sad, slow deep soul thang. Johnny and Jon were John Wilson and John Wessler and this appears to be their only ever track, released in 1966 on Jewel Records at the height of the war. Lyrics are what you might expect - 'I'm in a foxhole, baby' - but it shouldn't hide the fact that this is a moving bit of '60's soul and the situation these two find themselves in is still being played out by men and women all over the world this Christmas.
A brief bit of explanation is called for here, I think: Joseph Spence was born in Andros in the Bahamas in 1910 and earned the name 'Folk's Thelonious Monk' for the unique way he sang utilizing a series of grunts and hums. As a guitarist he is said to have influenced the likes of Taj Mahal, Ry Cooder and John Renbourn.
Never really widely known beyond the Bahamas and small parts of the U.S. Spence's style is a little...errr... odd and challenging when first heard. There's a good chance that anyone coming to this for the first time - and let's be honest a long time after - may well wonder what the hell is going on. Certainly the words to this Christmas standard seem to have got lost in translation.
And Sandy Gall? For those outside the UK, Mr Gall was an ITN Newsreader for many years.
Rumours that Spence was working on further Christmas records to include the names of fellow news presenters Alistair Burnett, Reginald Bosanquet and Gordon Honeycombe, when he died in 1984 can probably be discounted.
Alistair Burnett
Reginald Bosanquet
Gordon Honeycombe
This is a Christmas favourite of Lady B so this is for her.
Apart from 'And on Earth Peace and Goodwill to all Men' is there a more relevant Christmas message than 'Give up the dough! Give up the dough! Give up the dough on Christmas, yo!' I think not.
Not quite as wonderful as 'Christmas in Hollis' (See Calendar 1) but still better than a lot of stuff assailing your ears this Yuletide.
No snowflakes droppin' / Can't go shoppin' / Rhymes I'm a-poppin' / To keep the hip-hoppin'
Ms Love was the woman who made 'Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)' the wonder that it undoubtedly was and she returned to Christmas success in 1992 with this raucous gem from the 'Home Alone 2' soundtrack.
Blinding sax playing courtesy of the now sadly-departed Clarence Clemons and good to see Macauley Culkin looking cute again. Annoyingly, the original video has been blocked for some obscure reasons - don't you want the world to see it FFS? - so in the interim (because these things always get reviewed) here's an audio only version, but you'll need to crank the speakers up a bit.
It's the Sunday Carol and they don't come much better than this.
Sinatra sings like he has a whisky in one hand, a cigarette in the other and some dame back in his dressing room; but he still manages to saturate every note with pathos and meaning, like he's pouring his heart and soul into every word of a Carol that always seems to tug at the heart strings.
Criticising the annual jamboree that is the X Factor is really just shooting fish in a barrel and unfair on a format that represents little more than a Saturday evening entertainment show. After all, the thing has thrown up some singers and performers with a good voice and a bit of flair, but the worst that can really be leveled at it is that the name is a terrible misnomer. Has there ever been any one performer who really has the 'X Factor'?
When you listen to Sinatra you get the real deal; spine-tingling, classy and effortlessly cool.
A Christmas shopping day for many, so here's the Calendar's very own two for the price of one.
Back in 2008, Sheffield's Long Blondes delivered a Christmas Song via Elvis Costello's 'Oliver's Army' - unintentionally or not I can't tell - regaling the tragic tale of the Significant Other who left one Boxing Day to move in elsewhere only to return a year later and expect to pick things up where they left off.
The last thing I expected / Was to come and find you knocking at my door / Waiting for a treat in Christmas stockings ( how shocking) / Don't take you jacket off this is not you home / Just raise you glass to two more people spending Christmas day alone
Then in 2011, Northern Ireland's Synth pop duo The Vichy Government produced their own version of 'Christmas is Cancelled' embracing the fact that the tune really belongs to Mr Macmanus - even quoting the 'I would rather be anywhere else' from 'Oliver's Army' at one point - but adding their own stamp on the proceedings in a dystopian finale in which everyone suffers.
Of course, 'Step Into Christmas' - covered elsewhere on the Calendar by The Wedding Present - but this is what was on the 'B' side of Elt's 1973 Christmas song and I guarantee that many won't have heard it at all and the former Mr Dwight has probably never played it beyond that one recording session. I must admit I've a bit of a soft spot for it though and it was a big hit in Blagg Acres back in the day when a young Blagg Jnr.got quite excited when I slipped it onto the juke box. As you take a listen and see if you can spot the Watford reference, you'll be astonished to learn this and the A side only reached 24 in the UK charts. I suspect Elton's made his money back on it since though.
Serge Pizzorno from Kasabian - blissfully unaware that he sat opposite me in a restaurant in Speightstown, Barbados last year - joins Noel Fielding on a Christmas song that features a rap from Idris Elba. No, I've not been on the Cinnamon and Vanilla Jägermeister again. It's actually here and it's just as surreal as you'd expect.
Sophia Talvik is a Swedish Singer / Songwriter who pens
songs in the Americana style and she has been hanging around the periphery of
the calendar for a number of years. The reason? Well, ideally for us, Ms Talvik
releases a free Christmas song for download every year.
I’ll be honest I find these are of varying quality and talk
of Sofia as a new Joni Mitchell taking on themes of the everyman like Bruce
Springsteen seem a little steep to me, but some will undoubtedly be charmed by
the folky quirkiness of the songs and we all know what the Swedes are like for
a pop tune.
As the calendar often picks up older songs it seemed
sensible to use this year’s Christmas download ‘Cold, Cold Feet’ as an example
of Talvik’s oeuvre but ‘Christmas’, ‘A Carol for the Lonely’, ‘One Last Wish for Christmas’
and ‘A Berlin Christmas Tale’ – among several others – can be visited on
YouTube or from her website at http://sofiatalvik.com/
and are worth checking out.
Better still, you can visit next year and next…
See? The Blagg Calendar; the gift that keeps on giving.
Update: Keeps giving indeed! After posting the link to this song on FaceBook, the fragrant Ms Talvik contacted me to thank me for promoting her songs. Bless! At the time of writing I have heard nothing from either Elvis or Sinatra...
Graham is having trouble with sex toys that have no batteries, trees that shed their needles too early and cheap tat from Petticoat Lane that falls apart before you get home - and haven't we all been there? - on this anger strewn singalong anthem.
Pull that festive ale out and get singing.
Everybody's talkin' about / the kisses and the hugs / and all the little heartstrings that the festive season tugs / but all I see are lager louts / shoplifters and thugs / so fill mine up, 'cause Christmas is for mugs.
Regulars will know the self-imposed rule that dictates that Sunday's on the calendar need to be Christmas Carols and the first offering this season comes from the Welsh Indie outfit's 'A Los Campesinos! Christmas' EP that came out in 2014.
At five minutes this unique version of a song variously described as 'icicle folk' and 'so beautiful as to be unseemly' won't be for everybody but nobody can complain the result isn't at least Christmas-y.
From the men who bought you 'Train to Skaville' comes this 1968 'B side' - ask your parents to explain! - and there's even an opportunity to watch the Crab label serenely as you take in this slab of festive ska.
Highly influential Bluesman Jimmy Reed on a less blues-y more funky ode to the season. He's a-climbing up her chimney and is going to leave some presents - hopefully not a euphemism in the vein of Clarence Carter (Calendar 1 Day 1) but, with these legends, who can tell?
Mexican Robert Lopez - as he is known to his mother - cuts loose on Jose Feliciano's hoary old 1970 song combining it with PIL's 'Public Image' to surprisingly good effect.
If you want to see El performing the song in a PVC Santa suit then look no further:
For those with more eclectic tastes then there are some YouTube video's where he takes his top off too. I'll let you search for them.
This would have found its way onto the calendar years ago but for a bit of misdirection on an old cassette tape - there's a reference for the kids! - which led me to think this was a Green Day track. After fruitless seasons of unsuccessful hunting for the non-existent Green Day song, I eventually chanced upon the real offenders - MxPx - a Washington based band who released this track on 2009's Punk Rawk Christmas album. This excellent seasonal offering drives along in the manner you'd expect from the U.S purveyors of punk but contains a touching message around the 'A Little Goes A Long Way' chorus.
The snow outside covers the ground / And as I watch it falling down / I think of her, so far away / And how much I like to be with her / On Christmas Day Just big softies really...
The traditional Calendar opener for those who feel the whole thing starts far too early - Yes, It's the Christmas song that isn't really. With no mention of the season or the festivities at all, you could actually play this in January or February but you never would. I was never a huge fan of the output of the combined talents of Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart, but you'd be hard-hearted if this doesn't get you at least considering the idea of getting out the loft ladder. If you're still unconvinced can I suggest you pop off and watch Lennox's previous band The Tourists while you're still coming to terms with it all. It's not at all seasonal but 'The Loneliest Man In The World' is always worth a listen.
