20 Days In

Apparently the Winter Solstice begins tomorrow. So we finally reach the shortest day of the year and then the days start to get longer for us in the Northern Hemisphere and shorter for all my wonderful friends in the Southern Hemisphere. You win some , you lose some. Still we get the cold , rain and drizzle and in the Southern Hemisphere you have wonderful sunshine and warmth so everyone has some good news. I always concentrate on the good news and positives, not the bad , negatives.

At this point in the post I haven't a clue what to days song or music piece will be. I had considered The Goons "I'm Walking Backwards For Christmas"  but don't really think it fit's in with what I want, then I remembered the Glasvegas Christmas EP, so chose this lovely sounding , if very slightly depressing, song by them. I remember this was very expensive when I tried to get hold of it , but eventually found a copy. You can still pay £30 for it though the download is a more reasonable fiver.

Anyway , it's cold , but we can make it warm in our hearts. Be nice to everyone, show compassion , and enjoy your pre-Christmas weekend, and keep on smiling.

Not Quite Christmas Eve

This may have appeared on some compilation or other, but although it's not quite "Oiche Nollaig" (Christmas Eve), Micheal O Suilleabhain's short piano piece it certainly uplifting and enjoyable though possibly trawling jazzy waters.

John Cooper-Clarke once said he complained the the hotel manager about teh roof in his room:

Manager: What's the problem
JCC: I'd like one!

Remember this Christmas there will be a lot of people , homeless and freezing so if you can help, so so , in any way you can. Shelter always need help, especially with the spiteful lot running the country at the moment, so until the revolution comes, help your fellow man if you can. Here's a link for the homeless in the North East.

If you are lucky enough to be employed , have a roof over your head, enjoy yourself , be positive, be compassionate and have a brilliant time. Be positive and look forward to the new year.

All I Want For Christmas ....

...is a Dukla Prague Away Kit, but actually I already have one. Half Man Half Biscuit documented a lot of boyhood memories in this song including Subbuteo, Scalextric and the fact that the damned thing hardly ever worked. Kids these days don't know they're born. I remember the smoking transformer and smell of electrical burning, as well as fragility of Subbuteo.

The title is a play on "All I Want For Christmas is A Beatle" by Cilla Black a play on "All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth" by god knows who , but the less said about those the better.

Anyway I need to sort out my Christmas Cards (hopefully if Moonpig will play ball), so everyone have a great night and I hope that Christmas is brilliant for you. I now need to track down a song for tomorrow.

Christmas Spirit

A very long day so a short post. I'm actually thinking of writing a seasonal song myself as this was a difficult one to come up with. Full of pertinent points from Ian Anderson , Jethro Tull's "Christmas Song" and a brilliant and worthy addition to the list, they're the first band to have two in my list.

Christmas Spirit should not be just what you drink.

Santa Bob

I'm off to work very soon but this is just a quicky. Was listening to Cerys Matthews on 6Music yesterday and she had a guest on playing Christmas novelty records and they played Bob Dylan's "It Must Be Santa" . He got a lot of press for this mad manic polka but, he's Bob , he can do anything he wants, and if he wants to do a Christmas album why not. Remember you don't have to like like it or buy it. But the song is ful of fun and joi de vivre and should not be taken too seriously.

Just enjoy it, and have a great start to the week.

There's No Lights On The Christmas Tree Mama, They're Burning Big Louie Tonight

Another unexpected prompt from a Facebook group I subscribe to called  "I Used To Go To Newcastle Mayfair" and someone started a thread about the Sensational Alex Harvey Band and posted "There's No Lights On The Christmas Tree Mama, They're Burning Big Louie Tonight" a song that you have to love just for the title, and is brilliant to listen and sing along to as well.

I remember when the had a hit with a cover of Tom Jones' "Delilah" and Tony Blackburn was absolutely disgusted , "How dare the call themselves 'Sensational' he spat out as they came on,and it was their biggest hit , delivered with panache and a brilliant sense of humour. If Tom Jones had any objection then, I bet he loves it now.

I couldn't find the Top of The Pops performance so an Old Grey Whistle Test One will have to suffice, but it's still good.

Well looking out my back window the sky is blue with a few pink and white clouds, looking better than yesterday, so have a great Sunday everybody.

The Fear Of God

I always thought it was odd that the devil was the bad guy and god was the good good guy but sometimes he was painted as loving and caring and other times as the classic "dies irae" , angry , vengeful, and fearful . so we had to toe the line , go to church on Sundays and basically be scared of him (oh and yes he was a white man). The sequence in Monty Python's Holy Grail gave be a decent slant on this (where he complains about how depressing psalms are).


The thing is if a being is omnipresent and omnipotent then that being will not be concerned with human emotions and motivations , in fact if you can do anything , then pretty soon you would get very bored , well I would. Part of the the joy of living is the uncertainty if things and striving to achieve goals and not knowing what's going to happen next. Yes there are certain things in place and the sun tends to rise and the seasons are reasonably predictable (though still waiting for The Daily Mail & Express's ice ages and tsunamis), so you have reasonably solid foundations to build on when you want to do something.

If there is a god , and I'm hedging my bets by being agnostic, I believe that the god would want us to tho live our lives to the best of our ability, and be kind to every living thing. The insecurity of life is demonstrated in the TED talk below which I found difficult to take in just because of the concepts including the Higgs-Boson particle , and in a tangential move away the seasonal song is "I Smell Winter" by the Housemartins, which I don't think has appeared on any Christmas compilations.

Also the fact I'm doing a seasonal song a day and tagging it with Christmas , means that Christmas is now one of my most common tags on here , soon to outstrip Apple and iPhones! It's quite funny that some of my most used tags are about things that I don't particularly care about , a bit like on Twitter , where if you want your tweet to go viral usually it's a complaint , which surely is not what our god would want if that god were on Twitter.

Oh and I do follow God on Facebook here , he is very good and I can live with this God's existence. Have a brilliant weekend everybody.