We’re beginning to get into the Advent swing, and here are five more songs that I like. I’ve played four of these before but one is making its debut – the video is newly released so I’m showing that I’m down with the kids and keeping my fingers on the pulse of that pop music thing. Or maybe not…

This first one was newly released last year, and I played it then. It is by one of my favourite covers bands, who you will probably be seeing again in this series – they have recorded their versions of many Christmas songs, including THAT one. I even played that three years ago, but I’ve recovered from the shock and won’t be doing it again. This one is much more to my liking:

This novelty Christmas song was written by Randy Brooks and was first recorded in 1979 by the then-husband and wife duo of Elmo Shropshire and Patsy Trigg. It offers a dire warning about the dangers of staggering out into the snow while off your head on eggnog and prescription medication – one that we should all heed, I think. It has been re-recorded and re-released several times, and has a number of appearances in the US Country chart to its name – it even made the main Billboard listing in 1997, when it reached #87. There have been many cover versions, and it seems about time that First To Eleven added their take on Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer. And as their singing elf – Audra Miller – is incredibly cute I couldn’t resist this one!

I occasionally feature versions of Christmas Carols in my selections, but not usually as you might expect them. This is one such, and is a longstanding favourite of mine:

Angels From The Realms Of Glory was listed in a survey a couple of years ago as one of the top ten Christmas carols not known by 18-29 year olds here in the UK. Such a sad loss of tradition! I love this version, though. Maddy Prior has been a part of the English folk music scene since the late Sixties, and was a founder member of Steeleye Span, one of the two bands (with Fairport Convention) at the forefront of the development of our folk-rock tradition. She is still in the band but each Christmas she has also been with the Carnival Band, who do a series of gigs putting their own slant on traditional carols. This is a typical example: they have a lot of fun doing these shows, and from the roar at the end it seems our typically stuffy British audiences enjoy them too! As a side note, the fiddle player is Giles Lewin, who was a founder member of Bellowhead, my favourite live band, who you will be seeing shortly.

Time for the new one now:

That was The Pretty Reckless with Where Are You Christmas?, a new video released just three days ago in support of their EP, Taylor Momsen’s Pretty Reckless Christmas, which was released at the end of October. Where Are You Christmas? was written in 2000 by Mariah Carey (sorry, had to mention her), James Horner and Will Jennings for the movie How the Grinch Stole Christmas. In the film, it is first sung by Taylor, who played Cindy Lou Who, under the title, Christmas, Why Can’t I Find You? Carey recorded the song herself but didn’t release it – it was instead given to Faith Hill as a power ballad, for which the video featured a cameo appearance by Taylor. Her new version includes elements of both versions of the song.

Before becoming the band’s lead singer Taylor Momsen was a child actor and a model, and you can see some of that in the Jay Leno Show clip at the beginning of the video, where a very sweet seven year old Taylor bounces onto the set to promote that movie. She has since gone through troubled times but has demonstrated great resilience, and is a fearless leader of her band, for whom I have great respect.

A golden oldie for you now, but with a relatively recent video:

They don’t come much more rock ‘n’ roll than Chuck Berry, do they! The song may have been around for donkeys’ years but that video was released in October 2020 and has accumulated more than 18m views in that time. I think it’s superb. The track was originally released as a non-album single in 1958, reaching #69 in the US – it has been re-released several times, and achieved its best ever position of #10 in the US in the last week of 2020. No doubt this animation helped! In the UK its highest chart placing was #36, in 1963 – it didn’t rush into the charts, did it? It was co-written by Marvin Brodie and Johnny Marks: the latter of those also wrote Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, which is a kind of prequel to this one. Wikipedia gives a very long list of cover versions of Run Rudolph Run but, thankfully, none by she who spoils Christmas: I dread to think what she’d have done with it!

I’m going back into English folk mode for today’s closer. This is a little bit of lunacy from my favourite live band:

Bellowhead, with Christmas Bells. 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: 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, though, as Paul Sartin – the chap doing a spot of doctoring with a trombone around the 1’40” mark – passed away three years ago from a sudden heart attack just as he was about to go on stage, at the age of just 51. He is much missed.

I like to close these posts with a seasonal advert but, as I said last time, this year’s crop hasn’t really enthralled me yet. So I’ve decided to play you the full series of four that I regard as the gold standard of Christmas advertising. Between 2017 and 2020 Hafod Hardware, a shop in the small Welsh town of Rhayader, produced four little gems. This is their first, from 2017:

See what I mean? These were all made on a shoestring budget, most of which was spent on licensing the music by the wonderful Andrea Von Kampen. Family members and friendly locals played their parts in creating mini-movies, each of which had a suitable seasonal theme. These have always been popular every time I play them, so I hope you enjoy this if it is your first time. Sadly, this is the fifth year without them – I follow the shop on social media and they haven’t mentioned anything about doing new ones, though they have brought out a children’s book this year. More on that next time…

That’s Advent Part Two done and dusted, and hopefully WP will allow you to see all of the videos this time! I’ll be back for Song Lyric Sunday, and will be here again with Advent Part Three on Tuesday. See you for both, I hope. Take care 🎄