Monthly Archives: December 2011

Dec 25

Greg Lake – I Believe in Father Christmas

Guardian:
I Believe In Father Christmas was an attack on commercialisation, [Lake] says. “When I was a young boy, I remember Christmas being about goodwill on Earth: how did it ever get corrupted into this horrible, present-buying orgy? So we decided to write a serious song about Christmas.”
The song went to UK#2.

Dec 24

VID Music Sports #1 – AarabMUZIK dubstep live

A couple of months ago, DEM started a Sports Music series of ‘extreme’ or solo sports videos accompanied by music.

Lots of people are impressed by -fast fast- performances aka mad skillz. The result is a slew of ‘virtuoso’ music – going back through history to famous works like Flight of the Bumblebee and Sabre Dance, or piano sonatas and preludes by Scarlatti and Chopin, or Paganini’s Caprice No. 24 for violin , or many concertos – written so that artists can display their chops.

Mad skillz are celebrated in pop music (thinking Hendrix) and so remain alive today (I’m thinking of Richard Devine live just now). Here from Poland is the first performance of this new Music Sports series.

Dec 20

Gene Autry – ‘Frosty The Snowman’ (1950)

He had the Midas touch. Star of 94 films, multi- millionaire, 36-year baseball-team owner, member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, record-label owner. Singing cowboy Gene Autry put out several Xmas records.

He wrote his 1947 US#9 hit Here Comes Santa Claus. His 1949 ‘Rudolph’ was a US#1 hit; this one was a US#4 in 1950. He’s a lot easier to listen to over-and-over than The Chipmunks!