Advent Calendar 2021 – Day 13 🎊

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After yesterday’s bonus edition, I thought I’d be going back to the regular two songs today, but somehow it didn’t happen. One of these is an all time Christmas favourite of mine, the second is a version of a standard that I’ve never shared before – by anyone, as far as I can recall. Then it kinda goes pear-shaped…

The all time favourite is one of the fairly rare occasions that I dip into the pop charts. This is just so good, and the video for it is lovely and atmospheric:

I gave the background to this when I shared it last year. The song dates back to the period when just about every band was aiming for chart success with a Christmas song. Some were better than others, this being a case in point. This is described as a promotional video for the BBC, and I’m pretty sure it was shown on their Top Of The Pops show back then. It was released in November 1976 as the lead single on an EP containing four tracks, and reached the dizzy heights of #28 here. It also got to #78 on being re-released as part of another EP in 2004. The track was also included on the Songs From The Wood album, which was released in February 1977, reaching #13 in the UK and #8 in the US. Jethro Tull has also recorded a couple of other Christmas songs, which were album tracks and B-sides until they were brought together in 2003 as part of The Jethro Tull Christmas Album: this is currently their most recent release, apart from live recordings and compilations, but they have a new album – The Zealot Gene – due out next month.

I mentioned yesterday that during his visit to Hafod Hardware Prince Charles was seen to be buying an album by Andrea Von Kampen. As I have said before, she provided the music for all four of their Christmas ads, and two of those songs – White Christmas and I’ll Be Home For Christmas – were on a four track EP she released in November 2016. That was the year that she graduated from Concordia University, Nebraska, with a degree in music, and as the EP is called AVK Christmas Project I’m guessing it was part of her degree coursework. This is one of the other tracks, which you may well recognise:

Christmas Time Is Here is known as a standard, more so in the States than over here. I hadn’t realised before but it was written by the jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi in 1965, as the lead intro to a tv special – A Charlie Brown Christmas – and it has since appeared in a number of other Peanuts Christmas specials, too. It was originally an instrumental but the show’s producer, Lee Mendelson, thought that such a pretty melody deserved some lyrics, so he wrote some – in ten minutes! There have been many cover versions: notable for me are those by Shawn Colvin and Sarah McLachlan, but there have been many more. The list includes several jazz versions, plus others by Chicago, Nancy Wilson, Snorer Jones, Johnny Mathis, Kenny Loggins, and that bloody Carey woman. R.E.M. even did an instrumental version on a Christmas single for their fan club members. The song has wheels!

Due to a rather large coincidence, Foxes And Fossils, who I also featured yesterday, have included this song on their new album of Christmas songs. As a kind of bonus, I thought I’d give you their version too:

Hard to choose which I prefer, if I’m honest. Both singers, Andrea VK and Sammie Purcell, have lovely voices. Take your pick, I guess.

And trying not to overload you with bonuses, I thought I’d also give you another version of a Christmas standard that fell out of a YouTube recommendation, though probably not done in a way you’d know: the tune is recognisable, but the lyrics?…

Bob Rivers is a retired radio presenter, who also had a sideline in producing albums of Christmas song reworkings. He has released five of them, and this is a track from the second of these, I Am Santa Claus. Just so you get the idea, the title track is sung to the tune of Iron Man, by Black Sabbath, with elements of Jingle Bells added in for good measure.

Now that I’ve succeeded in lowering the tone and taking this post in a direction I wasn’t expecting, I think that’s it for today. I’ll be here again tomorrow and hope to see you again too. As is customary, I leave you with a Christmassy image:

À demain… 🎅

46 thoughts on “Advent Calendar 2021 – Day 13 🎊”

  2. I know you introduced me to Foxes and Fossils in the past couple of years. I couldn’t decide which version of Christmas Time is Here I liked better, so I called it a tie because they were both excellent.

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  4. Tull’s ‘Solstice Bell’ is a magnificent Christmas pop song and so well produced. I do think though that quite a few of the tracks on the Christmas Album are disappointing.
    I liked the last one. Will spoof Christmas records be a special category?

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    • I agree, I think the album is disappointing overall. I don’t know if it is still available but one of the CD releases included a second disc recorded at one of their St Bride’s concerts. I’ve not heard it but would be interested to find it. That last one is quite clever, isn’t it. I’m putting another one in tomorrow to gauge the reaction: I’ve been thinking of adding in some comedy, maybe clips from Mock The Week, that sort of thing, but I’ll see how the songs go.

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  5. as much as I like Jethro Tull, that first song just didn’t do it for me as a Christmas song. The music was good, the video was good, but it just didn’t seem Christmasy, and I even went out and read the lyrics to see if that would help…

    nice song by Andrea and F&F; hard to say which one I like better. I think I was most impressed that someone wrote the lyrics in 10 minutes!

    and I just saw that satire video from Bob Rivers for the first time yesterday on another blogger’s site – it’s quite funny 🙂

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  7. Clive, I am listening to “Christmas Time is Here” as I type this. The music of Charlie Brown is incredible thanks to Vince Guaraldi. Maybe Schroeder’s piano playing was inspirational. The Charlie Brown Christmas show is so very special. Keith

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    • As I’ve just said to Stevie, I think these will appeal more to American readers. I think you’ve proved my point for me, as I can’t see a British reader thinking that. We get the books and used to have the syndicated cartoons, but not the tv shows.

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