Monday 14 December 2015

Christmas Crackers!

Every Christmas a thought keeps coming into my mind. Do a Christmas type playlist. Not being a download/mp3 type of guy I have connected my old Sony minidisc recorder/player upto my CD player. Why did Sony produce so many great bits of tech that never took on? Think Betamax, minidisc and SACD. All far better than what became popular, all died the death! Anyway, it quickly became clear that to fill the 80 minutes of a minidisc, Christmas cuts that I liked wasn't going to be enough so I extended the remit to include winter themed tracks, sort of! So here is my playlist.

  • Greg Lake - I Believe in Father Christmas
  • Jethro Tull - Ring Out Solstice Bells
  • Mike Oldfield - in Dulce Jubilo
  • Steeleye Span - Gaudette
  • Jethro Tull - Christmas Song
  • Lana Lane - December Moon
  • Big Big Train - Wassail
  • Genesis - Snowbound
  • Various - Spectral Mornings
  • Squire/White - Run From the Fox
  • Lana Lane - Winter Song
  • Cocteau Twins - Winter Wonderland
  • Cocteau Twins - Frosty The Snowman
  • Sky - Troika
  • Kate Bush - Misty
  • The Durutti Column - Sketch for Winter
  • Steven Wilson - The Raven That Refused To Sing

Some old chestnuts there, but the Greg Lake is a classic Christmas song. I included the original single version, which has the full choir and orchestra. I could only find that on The Atlantic Years compilation. Works 2 and other compilations only seem to have the stripped down band version. I particularly liked the coupling of two ghost stories by Kate Bush and Steven Wilson, separated by Vini Reilly's beautiful guitar piece.

I enjoyed messing around with minidiscs again so much that I have produced a best of 2015 compilation. That is up next.

 

 

2 comments:

  1. Barrie get yourself over to Mixcloud and uploasd your MP3 version of your mixtapes (or mixminidiscs). Mine are under Cloudland Blue Quartet there... Merry Xmas to you, the missus and prog dog and not prog dog!

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  2. Hi David, uploading, mixcloud what's all that about? I will look into all that malarky but do all my computing mostly on ipad at the moment. But seasons greetings to you and the Executive Producer!

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