Advent Calendar 2022: Day 5 🎊

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Hello again, and welcome, as I open the fifth door on my Advent Calendar. Behind this door I found three songs, but no adverts – maybe another day for them. Two of these are regular favourites of mine making return appearances, the third is one that I’m playing for the first time.

This is the first of those making a return:

For me, it wouldn’t be Christmas without this bunch of lovable idiots. As I’ve said before, Bellowhead are the band I’ve seen live most often, and they are my favourite live act. I’ve been to many of their shows, including a Christmas one, and they really are as anarchic as the video suggests. But if one of the purposes of music is to entertain, Bellowhead do it in huge amounts: no one ever leaves one of their shows feeling short-changed. If they were moving around too quickly for you to count, they have eleven members and describe themselves as a ‘folk big band.’ This was released as a non-album single in December 2013, with a re-recorded version of Jingle Bells on the B-side, but didn’t make the charts. This one is tinged with sadness this year, as Paul Sartin – the chap doing a spot of doctoring with a trombone around the 1’40” mark – passed away recently from a sudden heart attack, at the age of just 51. The band have just completed a reunion tour and by all accounts it was very poignant for them.

Today’s second returner is one that I’ve played a couple of times before and it has always gone down well:

Patricia Büchler, aka Patty Gurdy, is German, just like Fiddlers Green, the ‘Irish’ band accompanying her in this. Her command of English is excellent, and she frequently posts in English – both speaking and in writing – on her Facebook page. She is also one of those artists who responds to comments made by fans, rather than leaving it to her ‘team’ to do the work, which is always good for brownie points from me, and she is an absolute delight. Her commitment to supporting mental health issues is to be admired, too, especially after she lost just about everything in the floods that hit Europe a couple of summers ago. She has played in several bands and has had a number of musical collaborations, including one with Faun, another band who you may have noticed that I really like. This song is the opening track on Patty’s 2020 EP Frost & Faeries: she also has another EP (Shapes & Patterns), several singles and a full length album (Pest & Power) to her name. She took up the hurdy gurdy in 2014, and is making a mark for herself with it. It is an instrument that is clearly important to German folk bands: Faun also has a hurdy gurdy player. On top of all of that she has recently released a single which she is hoping will be chosen as Germany’s entry for next year’s Eurovision Song Contest. If it is selected that might even be enough to persuade me to watch! If you’d like to hear her song, you’ll find it here on YouTube. To my ears it is a good deal better than the dross that show usually serves up.

My third song for today is the one I haven’t played before. I’ve played a couple of Ingrid Michaelson songs, but not this one:

A charming little song and a gorgeous video. The animation is incredibly good, though I would always recommend taking the teabag out of the cup before drinking! Ingrid Michaelson is a singer-songwriter and actor, in that order. Zooey Deschanel, younger sister of Emily (the Bones lady), is primarily an actor but also has a long musical career to her name, both as part of the band She And Him and also on collaborations like this. I think this is lovely, and couldn’t resist adding it in as a third song for you today. If you want to hear more like this, it was a bonus track on the deluxe version of Ingrid’s album Songs For The Season, which was released in October 2018.

That concludes today’s videos. You want a picture too? OK, here goes:

Hope to see you again tomorrow 🪅

47 thoughts on “Advent Calendar 2022: Day 5 🎊”

  1. Pingback: Friday’s Super Short Stories! | Nuggets of Gold

  2. Now who could fail to enjoy Bellowhead??? I never heard them before, never heard of them, but I love their energy, their humour! Thanks for the introduction to these ‘loveable idiots’ as you called them!!!

    I also never heard of Patty Gurdy or Fiddlers Green, but I loved this one! I recognized it as Irish with the first few notes, but would not have guessed her to be German! She sounds like a true humanitarian! And the song was great fun, a toe-tapper, but I have to ask … what is that instrument that Ms. Gurdy is playing? It looks like she’s winding it up or something.

    And it goes without saying that I LOVED the third one! The animation was great, and I appreciated the fact that closed-captioning was available! Such adorable critters. Thanks for the fun, my friend! I loved this one!

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    • I’m pleased you enjoyed these. They were a fun set for me too. Bellowhead are my favourite live band, excellent in every way and this is typical of them.

      The instrument Patty plays is a hurdy gurdy, a traditional mix of strings and keyboard. As you can see she took her performing name from it. There are several ‘Irish’ bands who are actually German – it’s a subculture there, for some reason I’ve never understood. It has been around a while: Fiddler’s Green have been going for thirty years.

      That third one is lovely, isn’t it. So much work must have gone into it!

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      • Ahhhh … I have heard of a hurdy gurdy not too long ago, perhaps it came up on one of your other posts! Thirty years … that’s a long time in the music industry! Yes, I thought the same … how much skill and talent to develop that animation … I loved it!!!

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      • Quite possibly here. I’ve played Faun fairly recently and they have one too – and they are also German. It gets played here too – I’ve seen one played in a concert, and it makes a distinctive sound as part of the mix.

        The funny thing is that I’d never heard of them until I found this one, which was a YouTube recommendation as I follow Patty there and on Facebook.

        I think that animation is amazing. Sweet little song too 😊

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  5. love the opening song – the music, the video, the antics, and the lead singer’s voice. they must be great to see in person. Sorry to hear about Paul Sartin.

    the second song is wonderful as well – it’s got Patty and fiddles – what’s not to like?

    the animation in the final video is quite good. and speaking of duets – Zooey’s singing of Baby It’s Cold Outside with Will Ferrell in Elf is one of my favorite parts of the movie.

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    • Bellowhead are fabulous in concert, brilliant musicians and loads of fun: plenty of stage antics too. The loss of Paul was terribly sudden. He was just about to go onstage with one of his other bands, collapsed and died in an instant.

      I love the Patty Gurdy one too, also very talented.

      I think that animation is wonderful.

      I know of the Zooey Deschanel version when she was in the She And Him duo, but haven’t seen Elf – Will Ferrell puts me off! Lots think of that as a Christmas song, but I don’t. After the recent fuss over its lyrics I wouldn’t play it anyway, especially as I don’t like it 🤣

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      • I just checked to see if Bellowhead might be playing in the US, but I did not see any such plans. Do you know if they’ve ever toured over here?

        I like Will Ferrell, but one of my nephews jsut told me the other day that his wife will not let him watch any Will Ferrell movies when she is around. I think Elf is a classic. And the controversy over that song i a bit odd; I wrote about it in one of my previous blog posts…

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      • I think they’ve played Canada in the past but I’m not sure about the US. They actually disbanded in 2016 but had so much fun doing an online show during lockdown that they got together for the recent tour to celebrate the tenth anniversary of their chart breakthrough album. There has been no mention on their social media about future plans but if I get the chance I’ll tell them you’re interested.

        Will Ferrell is what we call a ‘Marmite’ character – you either love or hate him. He’s starring as Elf in an ad for one of the supermarkets here this year – it’s crap, so I doubt I’ll be playing it! The controversy is one of those things where different times mean different views. The song is 80 years old and attitudes have changed a bit! I still don’t like it, though, and for me it is nothing to do with Christmas.

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      • yes, please let them know I would gladly buy tickets if they ever decide to reunite in Philly…

        I’m guessing there are a lot of songs out there with lyrics that are likely no longer appropriate, if they ever were…

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      • I don’t have a hotline but I’ll put a comment on one of their FB posts for you!

        Think Brown Sugar, which the Stones have dropped from live shows. Plenty of others too, I guess, as part of current day re-evaluation of what might no longer be deemed acceptable. Like taking down statues of slavers and Confederate generals, isn’t it.

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