Syml is the solo vehicle for former Barcelona - that's the Indie band not the football club - front man Brian Fennell.
This has a gorgeous wintry Yuletide feel and could have found its way onto the 25 days but the title made it such a shoo-in for New Year's Day '21 that I couldn't resist it. I'm hearing a spectral 'With or Without You'. You?
Anyway, I wish you all a very Happy New Year and raise a glass to your good health even though personally, I think 2020 will look like a walk in the park compared to the horrors that await us this year. After the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab is found to turn us all into zombies, those of us left will enter the wasteland of next December as skeletal mutants intent on eradicating the last vestiges of tinsel and Christmas songs. Even if I survive, I will be a marked man and hunted down like a wounded animal, finally cornered and torn limb from limb by slavering peoploids while the echoing strains of 'Fairytale of New York' play in the background.
I only loosely plan this Calendar and I often find - particularly this year - I have about ten songs pencilled in that get moved back and back and then eventually drop off.
Nevertheless, I'll have to admit this year's Day 25 was probably decided back on 13th January when I lost my mum. She loved Cliff, saw him on many occasions (once I took her), had many of his albums, books and, as I discovered in February, had kept every one of his calendars that I bought her for the last umpteen years.
Like a lot of people her age she never really understood the Internet and web sites but always asked every December 'Are you doing that song thing again?' Well, yes Doll, I am and this is for you.
A first on the Calendar - not the song itself, that was Day 24 in 2007 by The Pretenders and Day 25 in 2009 by Judy Garland - rather this is the first time I've really wanted a particular song on the list and looked for a suitable version instead of finding the song first.
Even in happier times this has always made me reach for some water to swallow something hard and jagged and this year the lyrics - new or old - seem hugely prescient. I felt strongly this song needed to feature again this year.
Actually, there's a fascinating story about the lyrics to this as they originally read 'Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas / It may be your last / Next year we will all be living in the past'. Judy Garland who was singing it in the film 'Meet Me in St Louis' objected to the tone of the song - calling it 'too depressing' - and, begrudgingly, songwriter Hugh Martin changed it to the beautiful 'Someday soon we all will be together / If the fates allow / Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow'.
Frank Sinatra later decided to record the song for his first Christmas album and asked Martin to change the lyrics again for a more upbeat outlook. Probably now realising the worth of the composition would certainly mean he and his family would never need to work again, Martin obliged a little more willingly this time and changed them to 'Hang a shining star upon the highest bough'.
Torn on which version to chose, I'm eventually going for '2 for 1' deal. Perhaps more in keeping with the spirit of the Calendar, I'm featuring First Aid Kit's stark, bitter version
But I'm also backing it up with the sumptuous, heart-melting tone of Karen Carpenter - my Go To version - for the second.
Ignoring the first draft of Hugh Martin's lyrics, I'm hoping everyone reading this embraces the second, and manages the third.
I had a beautiful Carol lined up for the last Sunday of Advent but then we had yesterday evening's news and I thought '**** it', I'm never gonna see anyone ever again, so let's rock it out with just the right amount of menace to see us all in hell.
Annoyingly, the song seems to have been pulled from YouTube but you can listen to it on Spotify. If the video reappears I'll let you know.
Neil Innes - the ex-Bonzo and Rutle man who we lost just a few days after last Christmas - with a song from 1975's Rutland Weekend Christmas special. It's very Seventies...
The exquisite Lana Del Ray joins host Kacey Musgraves on the 1943 Bing Crosby original and almost makes you forget that this is the third party Friday of Advent and you're still indoors.
I was going to take this opportunity to make some satirical jokes about Boris Johnson adopting this song for the Nation, but this is so beautiful, I don't want to contaminate it.
Little Known Blagg Fact: Blagg Jnr has a chicken named Kacey after the Grammy Award winner.
'Really Blagg? After 14 years?' I hear you cry. Well, yes, I know but listen...
Firstly there is a brand new Official Animated Video to go with the song which is really worth watching and, I think, even adds a bit of long-forgotten sparkle to a chestnut so old we've forgotten why it was great in the first place, and secondly, in this particular year I have a strange tale to tell.
It will take some time so - if you have other things to do - I'll understand and I'm happy for you to leave. However, if you want to help me get to the bottom of a puzzle that has fuddling my brain since July then stick around.
To begin with I need to explain that I have been fastidious in looking after my records since I bought my first 45rpm back when the world was black and white. I regard my record collection as I would an old photograph album, a diary or an almanac. I can chart my life through my vinyl and I have never thought of it as less than a valued collection. When I left my first marriage it was the only thing I took with me. It has never been in the loft or the garage; always in my lounge but usually hidden behind a tasteful Ikea cabinet. Bowed shelves open to dust don't figure in my world.
The next thing to understand is I put the A into Anal. All the albums are filed alphabetically but the singles are in boxes in the order in which I bought them. If you asked me if I have, say, Bowie's 'Starman', I can pull out the appropriate box and go to roughly where it is in the box and locate it immediately because I know what label it's on and what colour the sleeve is.
Yea, I'm THAT bloke! *Back behind the velvet rope please, Ladies*
When lockdown was announced in March I decided what I would do is work my way through my albums, playing them all in order. I started with ABC's 'Lexicon of Love' on 16th March and, by complete coincidence, played The Zombies 'Odessey & Oracle' on July 4th. I can't say for certain what it was that made me feel uncomfortable after I'd finished this little trial, but I couldn't shrug off the idea that I'd missed something out. Then later in July it struck me.
'The Roy Wood Story' is a double album on the Harvest label that charts the man's musical career from his days with the Mike Sheridan Lot through The Move and onto ELO, Wizzard and a solo career. To be honest, it's an album of diminishing returns with all The Move stuff being great, some good singles from ELO and Wizzard and some solo stuff of dubious quality.
On the third side however is the ubiquitous 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day' which meant that, if nothing else, the LP came out at least once a year every December. However, I now realised that this album was missing. It was certainly played at Christmas 2017, I can actually remember playing it late one evening, but following the passing of Lady B I certainly didn't feel the sentiments of the song and didn't pull it out in 2018 or 2019.
Now this is a vinyl album here; it's not a set of keys tossed in a drawer or a mislaid pen or pair of glasses. It can only be in one place and that is in my record cabinet. Except it's not. I'd played everything in order anyway so I knew I hadn't misfiled it but, of course, I pulled the whole lot out again and checked. Twice. Three times...Four - aw hell, you know don't you?
The fact is it's not there and there's no-one been in this house to take it. So bad did it get, I eventually decided I needed to replace it. Fortunately, buying a pristine copy on eBay from a bloke who obviously loves his vinyl as I do (except he sells his, of course) got me over the worst of the shakes, but it's still not dispelled the notion that there is something very odd here because I can come to only one conclusion and it's something I will never be able to check.
I have to assume for one reason or another, Lady B did something with it. Why? What for? And where is it? Even as I write it, it sounds preposterous - she never showed the slightest interest in my interest and I wouldn't have thought, had anyone asked, she'd even had known I owned it. But there's a nagging feeling I'm missing something beyond the actual album here and I fear I'll never know what it is. Help please!
And just to thank you for humouring me while I go slowly insane, here's an extra for you as the daughters of the Beach Boys Brian Wilson and John and Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas attempt a U.S. styled version of Roy Wood's opus.
Mind you, you're unlikely to thank me after listening to it.
As if you didn't love Dolly Parton enough, she then does something even more wonderful ...Wait? What's that? She donated $1m towards a Coronavirus vaccine? No, No, I'm talking about the fact that not only did she release a Christmas album but she called it - wait for it! - a Holly Dolly Christmas! How has it taken so long?
Unfortunately, that is the end of the good news as I find most of it a bit too twee - and I'm a man who likes a Christmas Twee (Groan!) - and it's rather too full of that rather tacky Vegas-style stuff including that breathy talking style that no-one really wants. There's nothing here to compare to Calendar 8 / Day 16 'Hard Candy Christmas' sadly.
So I'll leave you with 'Christmas Is' - one of the better tracks - where Ms P is feat'ed with Miley Cyrus but urge you to click on the 'Hard Candy' link too
How'd ya like to spend Christmas on Christmas Island? / How'd ya like to spend a holiday away across the sea? / How'd ya like to spend Christmas on Christmas Island? / How'd ya like to hang your stocking on a great big coconut tree?
Well, Tough!
You're in Tier 3 now m'lad so pull that mask up, put those plastic gloves back on and get inside - and I don't wanna see you outside your front lawn again until at least Good Friday.
The Maine hail from Arizona and in 2008 released an EP called '...And a Happy New Year' from which comes 'Ho Ho Hopefully'. There's an official video version but the sound is better on the EP for some reason.
'Ho Ho Hopefully this holiday will make us believe that / We're exactly where we're supposed to be'
Back in 2010 I managed to blag a couple of tickets to a recording of the Jonathan Ross show. On the bill that night were Al Green - not singing sadly, but in full Reverend mode - actor Tom Hardy, some people from 'Glee' - who knows? - and the Scissor Sisters.
It's fair to say the good lady was most impressed by Tom Hardy while I was just in awe of being in the same space as Al Green. The conversation went something like this:
Me: "Wow! Al Green? I mean, AL GREEN! Can you believe it?"
Lady B: "He was dull but Tom Hardy? phwoarr"
Me: "Oh come on he was just rabbiting on about his 'craft' - but, seriously, Al Green?"
Lady B: "I didn't come here to see a vicar. But Tom Hardy I'd travel a long way to look at"
Me: "Eh? Al Green! Al - fecking - GREEN! 'Let's stay Together'? 'Tired of Being Alone'?
Lady B: "Who cares? But Tom Hardy... oh yes!"
This continued not only all the way home but raised its head regularly over the months and years and went the full distance whenever it did.
Now it seems a tad unfair to claim a victory by dint of being the last one standing, but rest assured if I could run upstairs with this fantastic, goosebump inducing track and play it to her now, it would be:
"SEE? I told ya - Al Green!"
Still, at least I don't have to imagine what her reply would have been.
