As the newness of the year feels bright and inspirational the desire to get something down on paper wells up after nearly two weeks of slow life in the mountains. Even though there were periods of very fast descents punctuated with flat lander lungs grasping vainly for air and thighs straining under the remorseless pummelling of steep hard-turning slopes of snow, time still passed slower in the Sierras than in the City over the holidays.
The desire to share in the seasonal joys leads me each year to find new Christmas music, in part a personal quest but also in part a reflection of the upbringing in England; dominated each December by familiar if standardised and repeated Christmas hits and a shared manic national fascination for discovering which would be the new Xmas Number One.
This is a uniquely British institution due to the dominant radio stations being multi format or style compared to the US where everything is subdivided by genre to a point where true Pop or 'popular' music does not really exist outside maybe of X-Factor.
Growing up in the 70's I witnessed the first full frontal assault on the pop charts by a Xmas song to start the craze for the highest sales for a single song being the week prior to Christmas Day, with Slade's "Merry Xmas Everybody". The process went into overdrive for the next 20 years although the Brits have a long seated penchant for an odd novelty, charity inspired or plain sappy seasonal pop nugget, which we can probably sing with more commitment and confidence than many can the National Anthem.
According to our friends at Wikipedia, who I trust nearly as much as the BBC, The Beatles are the only act to have four Christmas number ones, three consecutively starting from 1963. On two occasions, 1963 and 1967, they had both the Christmas number one and the number two, the only act to have achieved this. As part of two acts, George Michael repeated the feat with Band Aid and Wham! in 1984. Paul McCartney has been top eight times with various acts.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen, which reached the number one spot at Christmas 1975 and 1991, is the only record to have reached the top twice. "Mary's Boy Child" is the only song to be Christmas number one for two entirely unrelated artists (Harry Belafonte in 1957 and Boney M. in 1978) and I hated both, although "Do They Know It's Christmas?" has been Christmas number one for three generations of Band Aid. The original version of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" is the second best selling single in UK history, regardless of the fact that its lyrics were written on a napkin in the back of a cab by Midge Ure after a boozy lunch in Soho and, not surprisingly, are patently ridiculous as well as patronizing at least half of Africa.
Since 2002 the Christmas number one has been dominated by reality television contest winners and so my interest has been below subliminal. So a great musical tradition has been hijacked by the evil forces of commerce yet again, or at least Simon Cowell and his minions.
As I said earlier though this usurping of the Christmas music commercial grail has not prevented me from continuing my journey musically following a Christmas star in the heavens or at least downloading a new piece of snappy seasonal nonsense from the ever-giving ether.
So what was my selection for 2012? Those smooth operators of the land between soulful rock and southern charm the Rosebuds and their Christmas Tree Island collection of newly written songs just for the Holidays. Ivan Howard and Kelly Crisp are the core of the band and were a married couple for 10 years of the band's existence based out of Raleigh, Tobaccoland. As sometimes happens they have split up but the band happily continues, Kelly has now moved on to be yet another cool musician based in Brooklyn. So they built on their sound scape used for the track by track recreation of Sade's Love Deluxe to create a great Christmas album, all original songs that will become classics, regardless of the gratuitous yet totally welcome use of sleigh-bells.
So what was the preferred tipple to accompany such a lush yet traditional slice of yuletide jollity? how about real egg nog, as in the old Tom and Jerry cocktail, long on cream and egg white batter and of course lashings of rum and cognac. What better way to maintain the warm glow from those songs of celebration, the wood burning stove, the Christmas lights, the joys of gifts received and given? and now back to the real world for another year of opportunities.