I am not going to get a Christmas podcast together this year. But it’s Friday and we need a Top 5, so here are some tunes I would have put on the podcast if I’d gotten around to it.
Purple Reign: Holiday tunes from the classic era at Motown are thick on the ground, but Marvin Gaye’s contribution is slim. I’ve only found two songs, and one of them, “Christmas in the City,” is an instrumental. The other is called “Purple Snowflakes,” recorded in 1964. Hear it here.
Plug Me in to Something: The Moog Machine made a couple of albums at the dawn of the synthesizer age. Switched On Rock featured synthesizer versions of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Aquarius,” “Get Back,” “Time of the Season,” and others. Christmas Becomes Electric came out in 1969. You can hear several tracks from the album here.
Keith Partridge Sings the Blues: The album A Partridge Family Christmas Card was inevitable in 1971, and it’s about what you’d expect: well-made, lightweight, and mostly forgettable. The track that stands out from the rest is “Blue Christmas,” in which David Cassidy does his best to go down home while the Family provides some absurd-yet-awesome doo-wops behind him.
Upon Further Review: I owe Mary Chapin Carpenter an apology. Her album Come Darkness, Come Light sounded a lot better the second time than it did the first time around, particularly “Christmas Carol,” in which an unchurched MCC goes looking for the meaning of the holiday but doesn’t really find it—and then makes the best of what she does find.
Where Have You Been All My Life: In 2003, the Moody Blues recorded December, a holiday album that escaped my notice entirely until it blew me away a couple of weeks ago. There are several fine songs on the album, especially “A Winter’s Tale” and “When a Child Is Born.” The one I can’t get out of my head, however, is “December Snow”:
Time, take this sadness from me
Time, bring my heart back safely
Hold on to warm September
‘Cause life can be like December snow
Here is is, recorded live in 2005.
That is some beautiful song, typical of December, which is the kind of warm, peaceful, friendly record you want to put on at this time of year.
Be sure to drop by the blog this weekend for new holiday-themed posts on both Saturday and Sunday.
“Blue Christmas”/Partridge Family (buy it here)
“Christmas Carol”/Mary Chapin Carpenter (grab this quick because it’s coming down after the weekend; buy it here)
jb, I didn’t know about the Moodies’ Christmas album, either, so thanks for that tip. I’ll be sending you some snow in a few hours as a gesture of gratitude.
Add me to the Moodies first-timers list, too. “A Winter’s Tale” sounds perfect as I watch the snow fall… and fall, but Justin seems to strain a bit to reach some of the high notes on “When A Child Is Born.” Maybe if they’d added a children’s chorus…