It's been a while since my last post. Always the same this time of year, out to do Christmas shopping. Everywhere you go it's the same old Christmas songs. Apart from a few most are pretty awful. When we had the shop I tried not to play any Christmas songs until Christmas Eve. Only if someone asked to hear a track would we play any. We were more likely to play tracks from Monty Python Sings or a Half Man Half Biscuit album.

I have only a couple of Christmas albums in my whole collection, a compilation called Bah Humbug on Greentrax records.

This includes tracks from amongst others, Eric Bogle "Santa Bloody Clause", Bill Barclay "The twelve days of Christmas" and Robin Laing "The man who slits the turkey's throats at Christmas"

The other Christmas album I actually own is Bruce Cockburn "Christmas" that includes his version of "I saw three ships"  This is a great album, as are all of Bruce's albums.

It would be bad of me not to mention one of the other truly great Christmas songs "Mr Blobby", no seriously I meant The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl "Fairy Tale of New York" Though it should be said that Mr Blobby is a particular favorite of many record dealers up and down the country, having earnt them lots of money not only in sales, but also from the bookies. Having been number one two weeks before Christmas it dropped down to number two and the bookies started taking bets on it again with daft odds, thinking that there was no way it could go back up, how wrong could they be. Dealers up and down the country waded into their local bookies and placed large amounts on it being the Christmas number one. Sales went through the roof and, hey presto, lots of very happy record shop owners, and a fair few reps as well.

    

I will take a look at some more Christmas tracks between now and the big day, but I will leave you with this spoof video from last year.