Christmas Time is Here Again

And that means you have to listen that one, infernal EMI Christmas album wherever you go. The EMI Christmas Album.

Everyone knows that Christmas songs are rubbish. You buy them because the festive season addles your brain with wine and good will. In January they are rightly discarded. Since Simon Cowell rogered the Number 1 spot with whatever pathetic excuse for a singer he's dragged through ITV, Christmas music has got even less interesting.

There is only one good Christmas song, which is Slade's "Merry Christmas Everybody" which was made for whooping it up in the pub drinking Advocaat. The rest of the EMI Christmas Album is detritus. If you can crawl through Chris Rea singing "Driving Home For Christmas", John and Yoko crabbing out that war is over, if you want it, complete with tuneless vocals, you might despair that there are any good musical times at Christmas.

Christmas is for singing yourself, and the carols that you learned at school. That's the joy of it. It's for everyone and you don't need popstars to do it for you, unlike the rest of the year when we've all got day jobs to worry about. Christmas music can have finesse such as the carols from Kings in Cambridge, but at large in England there is a tacit acceptance that Christmas will mean wassailing from tuneless six year old girls and recorder recitals.

But Christmas is a time of good will to all men (even Simon Cowell) and so there have been some interesting songs written about Christmas. For good or bad it can be one of the most powerfully emotional times of the year, and I toast and post to that.

Banbarra - Shack Up

This was covered by "A Certain Ratio", but the original sank into obscurity when it was released. The more digging I do into soul and funk, the more I find that there are a lot of gems like this that haven't yet had the chance to really shine.

Hamilton Bohannon - Disco Symphony

A master percussionist who is widely sampled but not widely known. The chances are that if you've even put a toe into a nightclub in the last ten years then you heard something that was ripped off from this man.

Candi Staton - Heart On A String

I had the pleasure of seeing Candi Staton in the Shepherd's Bush Empire this week, where she blew the roof off with her vocals. I danced for the whole time she was on, and a bit on the way home too.

Curtis Mayfield - Move On Up

I had this on an iPod, but then the iPod it die. I have decided not to replace the iPISSUoff, and will instead carry on buying lumpy LPs instead. That way, only a house fire can ruin my collection.

Maze - Twilight

Saturday night - shake a tailfeather!

Cream - I Feel Free

A great record. I believe it was used by Waitrose to advertise their new range of organic eggs.

I know it worked because while I moved to collect my usual ovoid comestibles in the rock and roll desert that is Fulham, I could hear the chino chap next me going "mmmmmmmmmmmmifeelfreeeeeeee".

Chicken liberation!

Heino - Karnival in Rio

From the chi chi stylings of Italy to the terrifying singing of Volkisch Germany.

Heino and his street cleansing vocals are probably thankfully little known outside his native Germany but with his medically induced stare, permanent dark glasses and uber blondness, he is the fantasy German I like even better because he is real.

This car crash of a record succeeds despite itself, with military clapping en masse, commands to "Zing!" and some dubious implications about post war escapees to Latin America. I would never buy it, but I am gleeful that it exists, and it is irrestible on the way home from the pub when one is over refreshed from one of the many excellent lagers that Heino's countrymen have gifted to the world.

Franco Godi - Theme From Signor Rossi

Those who follow the Pink Half will know of my love of all things cartoon. Therefore I am always pleased when music and cartoons come together to produce something special. Today's entry is the theme to Signor Rossi, the Italian cartoon, a joyful stereo track which only seems to convey a place where the sun always shines.

Franco Godi did the most wonderful job with this piece, making a slinky bossa nova with an impeccable flute solo. If you're going to do these things, you should make them this beautiful, even if you don't have to. How very Italian.

Della Reese - It Was A Very Good Year

I know that Frank Sinatra's version of this is the accepted classic, but this is far better because it is more bawdy and very much groovier.

Freddy Cannon - Palisades Park

Go on, you've heard this at every fairground in your youth. And if you haven't, you've had this feeling.

If you've got someone to squeeze, today might be the day to do it.

Jimmy Smith Trio - Organ Grinder Swing

Friday, and the cocktail hour seems not too far away. Kick back and relax with the smooth sounds of Jimmy Smith and his silky hammond tickling.

Peter Sellers - A Hard Day's Night

I think it will be.... alright.

The Beatles - Baby It's You

A Beatles record that is rarely played these days, not least because its a cover.

Yet it is great opportunity to hear a young John Lennon sing without that bloody echo that he had slapped on all of his records from 1967. Lennon thought he had a bad voice, and its a shame that he did, in effect, destroy how he sounded by insisting on this stupid production technique.

David Bowie - Queen Bitch

A bit of a cheat this, since I do actually own this track, which is on the superlative LP "Hunky Dory".

On the other hand, I bought the record from an Oxfam shop in Hitchin, it came with a serving of raspberry jam in the grooves, which rendered the track unplayable to this day. A case of jam today, jam tomorrow.

Pulp - Cocaine Socialism

A small reminder that when the Labour Party starts throwing brick bats at bankers and the City, that they were at the time "intensely relaxed about people becoming filthy rich".



Stupid, self absorbed, nostril decorating bastards.

Billy Nichols - London Social Degree

Happy memories of this, not least because I remember arriving here as a social newbie, and was quickly thrown into the maelstrom that is London life.

The wearing of daft hats, dancing to peculiar music, drinking your own body weight in alcohol and talking bull until 3 am in the morning is the only degree that you really need at 21.

The other higher education qualifications I have only lead to the company of grown ups, who, if they truly admitted it, would rather be wearing a daft hat and supping on a Brandy Alexander.

The Pixies - Monkey's Gone To Heaven

Despite many happy fruggings to the Pixies at indie clubs all across England, I've never bought one of their records, a gross mistake that I urgently need to correct.

The clip is the first appearance of the Pixies on television.

Boz Scaggs - Lowdown

And relax.... it is Friday, which technically means no work at all, save the important business of organising the weekend's delights.

Here's some Boz Scaggs to MOR you to relaxation satisfaction. Pull up a textured bean bag and put your blackberry in the office shredder.

The Associates - Party Fears Two

I hope you are sitting uncomfortably.

This song, which has all the calming effects of drinking five espresso in a confined space with people you don't trust, may be some of the brilliant neuroticism ever committed to record. Unbelievably, it's magnificent descending break was used as the introduction to Radio 4's bellicose "Week Ending".

The rather lovely Billy MacKenzie who wrote and sang "Party Fears Two" inspired the devotions of fellow neurotic Morrissey, who, in a rare state of passion, wrote "William It Was Really Nothing" for Billy. But Morrissey never created anything as mole hill paranoid and magnificent as this.