Advent Calendar 2021 – Day 18 🎉

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I don’t know about you, but December really seems to be flying by for me – and I spend most of my days doing nothing! Only a week until the big day or, to put it another way, only another week until the idiot allegedly running this country realises that he should already have put us into another lockdown, and does it at the last minute (not official, just my prediction). Yesterday, I promised you a bumper edition today, with five songs. I have always tried to choose songs which weren’t chart successes as part of my mix, although the occasional hit does pop up – quite often in a cover version, though.

Given my fondness for the music of the Sixties and Seventies I thought I’d go the reverse way today: all five of these were UK chart hits in the Seventies, which for me was the time when everyone seemed to be jumping on the Christmas bandwagon. But rest assured, there are some good songs here, which probably gives you a clue that there will be no Cliff Richard in this, nor will Paul McCartney, Elton John or Shakin’ Stevens be appearing. The fun thing for me about these is that most of the five will no doubt be familiar to British readers, but none of them made even the slightest dent in the American charts. So, American friends, prepare to be entertained by our Christmas hits.

First up is one that I still like, especially for the occasionally bewildered expressions on some of the children’s faces in this:

Actually, there’s a lot I like about this one. Wizzard were a glam rock band, started by Roy Wood after he left The Move and had a short spell with the earliest incarnation of ELO. This was released in 1973, and spent four weeks at a peak position of #4 over the Christmas/New Year period. It still sounds fresh to me today!

Changing pace slightly with this next one. Close your eyes and this could be Elvis:

Mud were another of our glam rock bands, as you may have surmised from that video. This was their second UK #1 (after the brilliant Tiger Feet), and it was at the top for four weeks over Christmas/New Year 1974/5. They were a band that always played it for a lot of laughs along the way, and this was a superb pastiche of Elvis’ later recordings. Funnily enough, if you look for this song on YouTube you will find a video described as Elvis singing this, which has over 16m views. The underlying blurb does make it clear that the record is by Mud, but it seems a lot of people have been suckered in!

My third song today is one of the two which I have played before. This is a clip from Kenny Everett’s New Year Show for 1979/80, so they have changed the lyrics slightly, but it is still great. The options for showing you the original version included a very fuzzy video or one which included a DJ later unmasked as a pervert who preyed on young children. This seemed by far the best one to go with:

The Greedies were a kind of unofficial supergroup, comprising members of Thin Lizzy and The Sex Pistols. They played gigs in pubs and clubs around London, and apparently had a whale of a time doing it. This was a Christmas 1979 chart hit here, peaking at #28. Phil Lynott makes this one for me – he was such a consummate performer, and I was lucky enough to see Thin Lizzy in their early days. They were superb but, sadly, he became yet another in the annals of rock music to be taken far too young by his addictions.

My next one is the other I’ve shared before:

Mike Oldfield released this as a single in 1975: an instrumental version of a traditional carol, played in his own unique fashion. It spent the two weeks before Christmas at #22, went up to #21 the week of the New Year, and then rocketed up to #4 in early January, a position it also held for two weeks. Weird, eh?

My final song for today is one which, for British readers, has been one of the iconic sounds of Christmas ever since it was first released in 1973:

Slade were another of our glam rock bands, and that song really has become so much a part of our Christmas listening. For us, Christmas begins when Noddy Holder grabs hold of the mic stand and yells “It’s Christmas!” at us! This song blasted its way straight into the UK chart at #1 on 9 December 1973, the first in a five week run at the top. It sold over 1m copies that time round, and has since featured many times in the December charts. Since downloads were added to the charts in 2007 it has been on an unbroken annual run. The band were too busy at the time to make a video for it, so the clip I’m showing is from Top Of The Pops. They did finally get around to releasing an official video for it – last week! It’s an animation, and it is fun, but I think I still prefer seeing the real band. If you’d like to see it you can find it here.

That’s about all for today, and my mega selection of songs from 1970s UK Christmases. There were many others, of course, some of which I have already shared (Greg Lake on Day 1, for example, as well as John Lennon and Jethro Tull). But many of the others were so dire that I wouldn’t go near them, either then or now.

Looking at our current chart, some of these have made yet another reappearance: Wizzard are at #22, Slade at #30, and Mud are at #65. Quite a few of the ones I won’t go near are also there too, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be posting them. Like, ever! A couple of other re-releases which I will be sharing are in this week’s chart, so stick around…

Just time for an image of the day before I go:

See you again tomorrow for this year’s final Sunday selection of variations on Christmas Carols 🪅

28 thoughts on “Advent Calendar 2021 – Day 18 🎉”

  3. Most of these fall into the good and not great category for me. The one I liked best was A Merry Jingle. I was unfamiliar with The Greedies, but I’m a big Thin Lizzy fan. The other intriguing one was Mike Oldfield. I liked the way they did the video so that we could get a taste of the individual instruments that were playing simultaneously.

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    • I think very few Christmas pop hits fall into the ‘great’ category, Pete – I just went for ‘good.’ As I said, The Greedies were a side project, just a few mates having fun, and this video is proof of that!

      Mike Oldfield is a very talented multi-instrumentalist, and I feel that the US has undervalued him immensely.

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      • American music favorites baffle me at times, both in terms of what’s popular and what isn’t. Oh well, good thing we can pick and choose.

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      • I’ve long since given up following pop music charts and trends, which can be very different between countries anyway. That’s why I did this selection – as I said in the piece, nostalgia for Brits and ‘new’ tunes for North Americans!

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  5. some of these names sound vaguely familiar, like Mike Odlfield and Thin Lizzy and the Sex Pistols, but none of the songs.

    I liked the first one – just pure fun…

    nice job by Mud sounding like Elvis, seems like they were poking fun at Christmas songs…

    I like the classic rock sound from the Greedies..

    enjoyed the Mike Oldfield tune; clever video…

    fun final song as well – interesting that they just released the official video this week – nearly 40 years later!

    almost seems like a glam rock edition of your advent calendar…

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    • Wizzard were always fun – retro rock and roll in a glam rock style. Yes, Mud were poking fun, and laughed all the way to the bank after it made #1!

      Thin Lizzy were very much a classic rock band and fortunately their influence is more to the fore on this than the Sex Pistols, who were the lead band of punk rock here.

      Mike Oldfield began with mostly instrumental works – Tubular Bells was his first. He put out several singles like this one, also some with guest vocalists. The US has hugely underrated him.

      Christmas wouldn’t be the same here without Slade. It has actually taken them nearly 50 years for the video (numbers guys, you can’t trust them!), and if you look up Stevie’s comment you may well find the reason for it: the pension fund probably needs a top up 😂

      Nothing wrong with a bit of glam rock every so often!

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    • I’ve been a fan of his ever since Tubular Bells, and his pop chart entries are all fun, like this one. I went for ‘fun’ today, quite deliberately focusing on our singles chart for a change, so Slade just had to be there!

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