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Billy Blagg 1:10 Mon Nov 23
Billy Blagg's 9th Annual Advent Calendar of Christmas Songs

You better not shout, you better not cry, you better not pout, I'm telling you why....

Don't forget you can visit all the other calendar's at:
http://blaggadventcalendarchristmassongs2015.blogspot.co.uk/

and selecting from the menu on the right.

Lertie Button 9:00 Fri Dec 25
Re: Billy Blagg's 9th Annual Advent Calendar of Christmas Songs

Many thanks Mr Blagg, a joy as always.

Billy Blagg 2:17 Fri Dec 25
9th Annual Advent Calendar of Christmas Songs

Oh nearly forgot! That's some 225 odd Christmas songs now available at http://blaggadventcalendarchristmassongs2015.blogspot.co.uk/. Don't miss any of them.

Billy Blagg 2:15 Fri Dec 25
9th Annual Advent Calendar of Christmas Songs

..And that is pretty much it. Your Christmas starts as mine ends.

Many thanks to everyone who suggested songs, sent emails or contacted via the blog. 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.

Billy Blagg 3:58 Fri Dec 25
Day 25 - Our First Christmas - Alexander O'Neal

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 fellow WHO'er Vinny Ryan 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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AoQAPcwIgs

WHU(Exeter) 12:10 Thu Dec 24
Re: Billy Blagg's 9th Annual Advent Calendar of Christmas Songs

The Handsome Family - So Much Wine

Floor filler

Billy Blagg 10:38 Thu Dec 24
Day 24 - All I Ever Get for Christmas is Blue - Over The Rhine

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyK7iXVhLEs

Billy Blagg 2:12 Thu Dec 24
Day 23 - Hey Santa Claus - The Moonglows

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3MLeeMqrFg

Coffee 8:34 Tue Dec 22
Re: Day 22 - Christmas in the Air (Tonight) - Scouting for Girls

Taking the mood to a more introspective level, here are Enya's Christmas Secrets:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_9KurUMNf4

Billy Blagg 2:22 Tue Dec 22
Day 22 - Christmas in the Air (Tonight) - Scouting for Girls

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8MPr_od_ro

Billy Blagg 1:47 Mon Dec 21
Day 21 - Dear Santa (Bring Me a Man This Christmas) - The Weather Girls

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko3yBFoTm5c

Billy Blagg 2:15 Sun Dec 20
Re: Day 20 - Joy to the World - Aretha Franklin

I LOVE that Coff - wish I had found it ("But you will Blagg, you will!")

Coffee 7:15 Sun Dec 20
Re: Day 20 - Joy to the World - Aretha Franklin

Billy, that's just infectious. Guaranteed to raise at least a little smile inside.


Here, the world's best known Christmas carol gets the Dick Dale treatment. Curiously listentoable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AINvZRauUMU&list=PLXj-W3aINjUTFtgS5ji7GfQJd0iMYGNu-&index=11

Billy Blagg 2:07 Sun Dec 20
Day 20 - Joy to the World - Aretha Franklin

'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 Christmas Tree lighting concert but Aretha seems to be lip-syncing through it, so I prefer the recorded version here. Either are worth checking out regardless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toYupOcyOnQ

Billy Blagg 1:51 Sat Dec 19
Day 19 - How to Make Gravy - Paul Kelly

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 some Antipodeanthing? 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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoJxigEuVC4

Billy Blagg 1:49 Fri Dec 18
Day 18 - The Man with the Bag - Jessie J

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.

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPrdBk28bfE

Billy Blagg 2:15 Thu Dec 17
Day 17 - Christmas in Vietnam - Johnny and Jon

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyCAIZw8VpQ

Billy Blagg 2:55 Wed Dec 16
Takashi Mike

You really should be studying them Mike as I will ask questions later

Takashi Miike 3:53 Wed Dec 16
Re: Day 15 - Santa Claus Is Coming To Town - Joseph Spence

nice one, i'll check out your lists again

Billy Blagg 1:35 Wed Dec 16
Day 15 - Santa Claus Is Coming To Town - Joseph Spence

Sandy Gall is coming to town? WTF?

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.

It's a favourite of Lady B's though so this is for her

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_jRAJZ9_y0

Billy Blagg 1:20 Wed Dec 16
Purple Snowflakes

I've got this as Day 1 on the 5th Calendar Mike but sung by Marvin Gaye. They're both good versions and pretty identical in terms of structure. Gaye's voice tips it for me though.

Takashi Miike 7:19 Tue Dec 15
Re: Billy Blagg's 9th Annual Advent Calendar of Christmas Songs

Billy, im a bit too lazy to go through your previous Calendars at this moment but have you heard this beauty?

Jessie Baylin - Purple Snowflakes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPy9DneIJNU

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