Amex Sponsors Christmas

It's pretty well known that I used to work for American Express. I think the phrase used in these situations is "Amex is a good company, with a good product, but I've moved on now. Got good memories though." Party line. 

Yeah.

Anyway, Amex does do one good thing which is its annual shop small where, in many small shops and pubs that take Amex, if you spend £10 you get £5 back. Obviously Amex want to prove to merchants the value they bring despite taking a market topping discount rate. Whatever the motive, if you have an Amex card, then these two weeks in early December are a good time to do a pub crawl with Amex coughing up £5 in every £10 (once per location).

So, in a very real way, Amex is sponsoring my Christmas. I have the hangover to prove it.

For my previous thoughts on Xmas click here. 

Enjoy the video and let's push it to 50 views. 

Cheers

Tim

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Signs of Christmas on Lavender Hill

It's getting to that time of year again.

The Ascension of the Lord's garden is fenced off in preparation for selling Christmas trees. Fine. Fine. But who the hell buys cut Christmas trees in early November? Fools. That's who.

Bar Social has Christmas lights in October (see picture). Ocean going stupidity - like Christmas carols playing in a garden centre during September. Like scraping into a car in Tesco carpark and doing a runner without leaving a note. Just crass.

The fashion this year is for the ladies to don a wooly hat with a pom pom. Today I was falling over fashionable Clapham women in these accrutiments sashaying past me and into memory. Which reminds me, I think I need to upgrade my head gear - had a business meeting today with a client in a flat cap.

Tim switches from white wine to red wine in honour of the festive season. Let us not forget the religious nature of Saturnalia. Er, Christmas.

Below we have Oasis going toe to toe with Beatles around Xmas 1994. They are the only group who could (briefly) take on The Fab Four and not get their ass handed to them. Enjoy.

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Loose Ends

The Ancient Roman general Sulla twice turned his armies on Rome. Caesar just the once. Later. But who remembers Sulla? Crossing the Rubicon trumps The Battle of the Colline Gate in our collective memory. Which just goes to show that posterity goes to the those that write things down (Caesar) against those that don't (Sulla).

Yeah, a new year hasn't blunted the edge of my pretentiousness. If anything the Xmas break has sharpened it. When not overeating or drinking, I used the time to read up on the decline of the Roman Republic whilst simultaneously ploughing through the decline of the Empire four hundred years later.

I think it's called having depth. Polymathic. Or being single. Whatever.*

Which is I guess a somewhat irrelevant introduction to the real purpose of this blog - tying up loose ends. And what loose ends are these, Tim? Well, the loose ends that I left on this blog at the end of 2016. And no, by loose ends, I don't mean the lady in Quench Bar in Burgess Hill a couple of weeks ago who I never called. **

What I mean is - yawn - Christmas songs. 

Briskly - 

- Best crooner type - Frank Sinatra - The Christmas Waltz

- Best cheesy Xmas song - Last Christmas (RIP George)

- Best carol - Can't choose. I like all five. Like a contemporary school sports day - you're all winners. ***

And lo! we become 2017. Saturnalia is over, the Xmas tree packed away, novelty Santa egg cup awaiting the chill festivities yet to come. 

Let me leave you with an intimate view of Mick and Keef being surprisingly good in 2016.

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Notes (why?)

* Polymathic. Whacked it in. No spell check appeared so I guess the word exists!

** Literally cannot turn it off.

*** "Ever feel you've been cheated?"

Golden Era Xmas Songs

Gosh - I'm so over Christmas.

Today we're nominating the Golden Era of Christmas songs - Bing, Frank, Ella, Tony, Dean. Hey! You know. Class. In a glass.

I'd like to side track and pay tribute to the guy in the baseball cap who reversed from a side street tonight into a busy Wandsworth Road - one handed! His other hand was, naturally enough, holding his phone. Kudos mate! You are my Xmas ***t.*

Nominees

1) Frank SInatra - The Christmas Waltz

2) Nat King Cole - The Christmas Song

3) Snow - Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, Trudy Stephens

4) Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer - Dean Martin

5) Tony Bennett - Winter Wonderland.

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* Those that know me well will be able to fill in the blanked letters on this four letter word.

Christmas Cheese

I wish it could be Xmas everyday, and here it is, Merry Christmas, I'll be lonely this Christmas, Stepping into Christmas, Stop the Cavalry, they said it would snow blah blah blah.

We all know the hey-day of this genre - the 70's and 80's. It's probably the most ubiquitous of my Christmas song categories but also, my least favourite. But - culturally - these cheesy types of festive songs evoke Christmases past, slow dances with girls long forgot in venues either burned down for the insurance money or long converted into flats.

And the nominations for best cheesy Christmas song go to:-

1. 2000 Miles - The Pretenders
2. All I want for Christmas is You - Mariah Carey
3. Last Christmas - Wham, Cascada, Taylor Swift
4. Wrapped in Red - Kelly Clarkson
5. One More Sleep - Leona Lewis

Yeah - I added a couple of more modern ones as I think the genre kinda died in the 80's but these last two are pretty decent reinventions (I've posted Kelly Clarkson's song here already).

Sorry for the multi artist nomination for Last Christmas but I like Cascada's version and Taylor Swift's Holiday EP is pretty awesome and her Last Christmas, countrified, is a great interpretation. 

Anyway - results in a couple of weeks! Please enjoy The King looking (and sounding) his best in 1968 in his comeback special. And yes, it's Elvis on electric lead guitar.

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A Carolling we will go!

I'm going to be publishing a shortlist of carols and, towards Christmas, I'll choose one as the 'Ultimate Carol'. I'll list the other categories in the coming days but The Best Christmas Carol is the most important category.

I did think about opening the results up to a public vote but:

1. I can't be arsed
2. Only two people would vote (both me from different IP addresses)
3. Last time I opened up the comments section on this blog someone helpfully pointed out that I was a sad, pathetic man with no friends who was probably sat in his underpants spewing forth vitriol at the world to hide the fact that he was an inadequate loser.*

So, here is the shortlist:-

1. Every Star Shall Sing A Carol
2. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
3. The Star Carol
4. In the Bleak Mid-Winter
5. See Amid the WInter's Snow

Contenders that just missed out:-

• Little Donkey
• O Little Town of Bethlehem
• Ding Dong Merrily On High
• O Come, All Ye Faithful

So what am I looking for? Well, it's a cocktail, naturally enough. Tune and melody - of course. Many carols fall by the wayside with their insipid or dirge-like melodies. There's a reason why there's about 15 well known carols - many of the others are poor.

Secondly, nostalgia and the power of memory. For a few years I was a Church of England choirboy. But also my schools used to sing carols as part of unashamedly Christian assemblies. Carols were as much a part of Christmas as anything else. Increasingly, in my evolving memory, carols are a growing part of the experience. Which leads me to the third criteria; the spine tingling feeling you get from a carol being sung at full-blast, led by an organ and choir belting out a full counterpointed arrangement as they deliver the nativity story with power and eloquence. A musical but muscular Christianity indeed!

I'm not ashamed to say - I'm a cultural Christian. As I get older I know, it's who I am. It's home. And what better way than through melody to evoke childhood? I'm already looking forward to my one church visit a year when I take my kids to the local Church of England candlelit carol service next week. I spend most of the service with tears in my eyes. Happy tears.

So there are the nominees. My taste is a shifting scale - one moment here, the next there. All the carols mean something, all are worthy. If there's a couple of unfamilair ones, take a listen on Youtube - they are there.

Anyway - a bit of Bert Jansch doing In The Bleak Mid-Winter

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* Clearly the person knew me. It sort of paraphrased - whilst eschewing the flowery language - my own short stories. We are the stories we tell, unfortunately.

An Early Christmas Present!

Merry Christmas readers. Enjoy!

Tim Robson still rocking that cardigan. Hip cat. Play those blues, boy!

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Run Run Rudolph!

Last January I - somewhat bizarrely - promised to publish a list of my favourite Christmas songs. But like a drunken middle-aged man with performance anxiety, who's just met a gorgeous girl and is a bit out of practice, I sadly failed to deliver (the Xmas article).*

Sorry. 

And so here we are, one year on, with my growing readership unaware of what my taste in Christmas songs is. How can that be and must it be tolerated? Obviously not. It's time to let y'all know. Let me remind you of what the categories were:-

1. Carols
2. Hollywood type Christmas songs (roughly 40's to the 60's)
3. Cheesy Christmas pop songs (roughly 70's to the 90's)
4. Folky / world music type Christmas songs
5. Miscellaneous

Well, I'm gonna do some listening in the next few days, remind myself of the contenders, maybe record a video of me playing a couple. Who knows? My axe is cold and needs to be warmed up. On camera. And actually this is important stuff. Food, family, music; hopefully these are givens and so pretty universal. Food I can cover in a later post. But music. Well, it was my first love.

One day I'm gonna write a classic. Maybe in an attic? Cause I'm an addict. An addict for shite lyrics.

So, from London, bon soir.

Cheers

Tim

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*Yes that metaphor was too long. Just having fun with words. It's clearly not based on personal experience. Well, except a story my friend Dan told me. He tells me he's fine now, I believe.

What else for a cold January night? Xmas music, of course!

Well - that's Xmas 2015 finished. Flushed away around the U bend of history. The tree is packed up, the lights stuffed in boxes, baubles awaiting their mid-year dropping and natural selection. My cat turns over and yawns. It rains.

But what I want to talk to you about - obviously being as it's January - is Xmas music. I know, Tim the contrarian strikes again. I could argue that I've had a month of listening and sifting my favourite Christmas songs but, I won't. I just like to swim against the tide. Nob.

Christmas music, can be divided into five categories. Yes, this is like, the law, so I will abide by the categorisation:

1. Carols
2. Hollywood type Christmas songs (roughly 40's to the 60's)
3. Cheesy Christmas pop songs (roughly 70's to the 90's)
4. Folky / ethnic type Christmas songs
5. Miscellaneous

I'll be posting the results of these hotly fought contests over the next few hours / days / whatever. An agog nation holds its collective breath.

Merry Christmas

Tim

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