The Listening Club - 20th December 2020

Greetings and Ho Ho Hum to you all.

Well, 2020 keeps it up to the very end, doesn't it? As new strains lock down big chunks of the UK even further (including the one my mum lives in, sadly), borders get shut down again, and Dutch numbers keep rising, I'm at a loss to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Still, at least I managed to get my shit together to resurrect #LockdownRadio, hopefully there will be a few more of these over the festive period and beyond...

Thanks to everyone who chipped in a vote to decide, pretty overwhelmingly, that the #FestiveVortex will be next Sunday 27th December, so please send me a couple of your favourite tunes of 2020 each as soon as you can, and we shall celebrate our collective tastes in fine style next Sunday.

Last Sunday chez #LC, it was me, @kleptones, in the chair, treating you all to Gil Scott-Heron's "We're New Again - A Re-Imagining by Makaya McCraven", which seemed to go down very well indeed. All that remained was to disinfect the frisb and sail it across to South London, where @ohmyliver is waiting with tonight's intro...

"Ahh, the Listening Club pick.   So close to Christmas, it has to be a Christmas album. 

But which one.   As soon as I got the pick, I knew which album.   Got everything ready that evening. 

But then, doubt crept in, like a lazy metaphor into an ill-thought out bit of writing. Should I go for that one?  Should I go for the Beach Boys’ Christmas album?  I mean ‘Little Saint Nick’ is a banger as the young folk might say.   What about the Motown stable’s only slightly saccharine Christmas Albums?  What about Atlantic’s ‘68 Christmas record, I mean ‘Backdoor Santa is a great gritty funk track, and only raises eyebrows slightly when it’s snuck on Spotify Office Christmas playlists? 

I even did a poll on that Twitter. 

I was going to pick Natty Christmas by Jacob Miller.   A fantastic late ‘70s Roots Reggae album reworking a number of well known Christmas songs into something more ital.  An in parts dubwise selection of tracks, replete with exhortations to be gifted not your standard Christmas dinner herbs. It’s got a lot of charm, and if you like roots reggae you’ll not be disappointed.

I was going to pick Phil Spector’s A Christmas Gift For You.   The man’s a murderous shit.  Having said that, this is THE Christmas Record, in no small part down to the skill of Darleen Love, The Ronnettes, and co.  The best Christmas album ever made so far.  Amazing pop renditions of the Christmas songs everyone knows with a sort of otherworldly Mall sheen to them.  An idealised Christmas seen on a glossy TV screen.  A framework to hang your own memories of Christmas, both good and bad, onto.  The album which takes me back to being a kid, and my father playing it.  The album that I sing along with my daughter.. 

But in the end, I went with this.   It’s a compilation of tracks from 3 Christmas albums by this artist. You’ll know who it is within the first minute of playback. It’s not as pop, it’s more angry than other Christmas songs.   But this is what we need. America might well be facing a fascist coup, and Britain is slipping into a sort of petty, venal, dystopia thought up over a boozy afternoon by Alan Moore, Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris.   A more ‘we aint going to forget, you f*ckers’ Christmas mood. "

Okaydoke. Download's here, and the stream's below:

See you 8pm GMT, and here's wishing you all a safe and peaceful holiday season - see you in the vortex!