Category: Christmas

December 5: Christmas message 1964/I Feel Fine

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

I’m busking this whole affair, as you can no doubt tell, so my apologies for not having realised sooner that the solution to the Christmas message records not having much music on them is to make them share a spot with whatever Beatles song happened to be in the charts that Christmas. So here for your pleasure is the 1964 Christmas message (which is one of the better ones, in that it’s not (a) entirely baffling or (b) full of late-period rage), plus that year’s Christmas number one, I Feel Fine, which is enlivened here by the addition of jaunty Spanish subtitles. Feliz Adviento!

December 4: I Wanna Hold Your Hand

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

Not an actual Christmas song, this, but it was Christmas number one in the UK in 1963, so it definitely counts (and wait till you see some of the tenuous stuff I have lined up for you later in the month!). This live recording from The Ed Sullivan Show is more fun if you watch the video, since the audio is slightly shonky but the live aspect makes up for that, especially when the camera pans across to Ringo and the drums suddenly get louder, either because there was a mic attached to the camera or because he noticed they were focusing on him and started to bang harder. I hope it’s the latter.

December 3: Ding Dong Ding Dong

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music2 Comments

“Excellent audio”, says the description of this video, and it’s just as well because the picture quality is pretty dire. Nonetheless, you HAVE TO WATCH THIS VIDEO because it’s AMAZING. Apparently this is the first promo video George made for any of his solo singles, and he puts as much earnest effort into it as he did into everything else, with dazzling, and ocasionally dazzlingly peculiar, results. Released in 1974 this is technically a new year song rather than a Christmas song, but it sounds Christmassy, which is partly because it manages to sound both glam rock-esque and Wall Of Sound-esque, and those are both Christmassy sounds.

I’m not going to tell you what my favourite bit is because the minute you see it, you’ll* know.

I had to work really hard to stop myself from writing “yule know” there, although on further examination I discover I appear to have done it anyway.

December 2: Little Drummer Boy

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music, Uncategorized3 Comments

Like me, you’ll be delighted to discover that of all the Beatles, the one who has recorded the largest number of Christmas songs is Ringo. Some of them are good, some of them are not, some of them are awesome, and then there’s this, which I think is actually the best version ever recorded – sorry, Bing and David – of the Little Drummer Boy, because it has SO MUCH DRUMMING. Like, imagine as much drumming as you can, and then double it, and that’s still not as much drumming as this song has. Make sure to listen all the way through, it would be a tragedy to miss the drum solos (yes, multiple), and the key changes (also multiple), and the bagpipes (just the one, although I suppose bagpipes by definition come in the plural).

December 1: The Beatles Christmas record, 1963

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music, Uncategorized3 Comments

Let’s start at the very beginning, as D:Ream once said. The thing is, you have to like the Beatles A LOT to enjoy their Christmas EPs, released every year between 1963 and 1969, because they are only really interesting anthropologically, and only then if you are a Beatles fan, although it is always cheering to remember how funny they were, at least while they were still all friends, which in 1963 they were. There isn’t a great deal to recommend this musically, though, which is why every time I have to share what is essentially five minutes of rambling with you, I am going to balance it out with an alternative that is either less Christmassy or less Beatles-y, but never both and always good. Welcome to advent 2016, which has to recommend it that by the time it ends it will nearly be 2017, and as Julie Andrews once said, things can only get better.

And here’s your less festive alternative:

 

 

Advent 2016: The Festive Four

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

There very nearly wasn’t a gladallover musical advent calendar this year, because awful things kept happening (I am referring to world events more than celebrity deaths, mostly, though one or two of the latter knocked me for six a bit), and then last month I resolved that in the face of awful things it is essential to still have nice things, and in a rush of inspiration I decided on a theme that would be a fitting celebration of what I thought would be the tenth annual gladallover musical advent calendar, (but turns out to be the ninth, because I can’t count).

And then, just last week, I lost a friend unexpectedly (to me; he and his family knew he was ill, but he didn’t want it widely known), and then I thought I couldn’t possibly go ahead with frivolous Christmas nonsense, until a subsequent Facebook conversation between friends of his resulted in a long list of songs to play at the wake, music being one of the things we all had in common and late nights with Sweeney playing the guitar while the room sang along a memory we all shared. And if you knew Sweeney you will know that there’s only one theme that we can possibly go with in his honour, and it’s The Beatles, and so that’s what we will do, which is a challenge because there aren’t that many Christmas Beatles songs and of the ones that there are, some of them are rubbish, but we will employ some poetic license and see where it takes us, and if I run out of songs we can have some jokes instead. See you tomorrow.

sweeney 2.jpg

Carol for Christmas Day: O Come All Ye Faithful

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music, Reasons to be cheerful

Yes I know you can’t have an advent song on Christmas Day, but you can have a Christmas Day song, which is what this is, and you didn’t really think we were going to have a month of carols from King’s and not include O Come All Ye Faithful, did you?

What’s interesting about O Come All Ye Faithful is that nobody really knows who wrote it, or when. It’s just merged into the general consciousness over the years, which is what all the best carols do. And like all the best carols, this has an indeterminate number of verses depending on who is singing it and when, and very probably the best descant line of all (starting in this video at 02:20 and reaching its giddying climax at just after three minutes).

In Cambridge they all like to go home to their loved ones for Christmas so they have to sing this on Christmas Eve, but the internet has given us the luxury of listening to it whenever we like, and when we like to listen to it is today, because the last verse begins Yea Lord, we greet thee, born this happy morning.

So have a happy morning, and see you back here in the new year.

Advent Carol for December 24: Hark The Herald Angels Sing

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music, Reasons to be cheerful

Well, they always finish with Hark The Herald, so we will too. I mean, you can’t not really, can you? It’s just clearly the biggest and best carol of all. No nuances or subtlety in this one; it starts big and stays big, and then gets bigger, and each time you think the descant has reached the dizziest height it can, it hits a higher one. Are you at work? Wherever you are, turn up the volume and sing along (but don’t break your voice on the descant).

Happy Christmas!

Advent Carol for December 23: O Little Town Of Bethlehem

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

This has always been my favourite, partly because it’s pretty, partly because it’s sweet and partly because it’s the first carol I learned to sing the alto part for, which means it is the reason I started to enjoy singing carols rather than simply listening to them. The alto part isn’t at all complicated, which is probably why it’s the first one I learned, but it is pretty.

And the words are pretty too, which I always forget because like the Lord’s Prayer or All You Need Is Love I’ve known it for so long that I never think about what I’m singing. But you can’t beat a line like Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by, can you?

Also, you get to sing the “How Silently” verse quietly, and then get louder, and that’s never not fun, and it has another perfect third-verse descant. Sing along with this one, why don’t you?

 

Advent Carol for December 22: Torches

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

Another twentieth-century classic today, written in 1951 by John Joubert, who is still with us at the age of eighty-eight and has an eclectic collection of music to his name. I sang this with a choir in about 2006 and what I remember most is the feeling that you don’t really get to breathe – you just launch into it and keep singing right through until the end. The arrangement is striking but it’s the rollicking rhythmical headlong style of it that I really like. There is also a story, told by my parents, of me as a small child, old enough to read the title “Torches” but certainly not old enough to read the music (I would struggle now, if I didn’t already know it), singing this carol with the music propped up in front of me, upside-down. I’m afraid I failed to fulfil the prodigal promise of my early life, but I still like the song a lot.