The Alternative Alternative Christmas Message

“Hello, this is yer old pal Baron Samedi Off Of Heroes here. When I’m not forming a quasi-religious militia, running down a corridor, or being twatted by Nathan Petrelli, I like nothing better than to take a look back over the last twelve months of Out On Blue Six. And what a twelve months it’s [...]

Q: Where Is Jaymi Bantok? A: On The Way To Bethlehem!

 It’s been featured on here before, and here it is again for your viewing pleasure – a hefty chunk of Christmas Eve With Val Doonican from 1987, featuring the parrot-favouring cardigan-clad crooner performing On The Way To Bethlehem with the aid of St Philip’s Choir and internationally renowned recorder-ist Michala Petri. [...]

Look Out! Cliiiiiiiff!

It really is amazing what you can find resurfacing on YouTube these days. Many, many years ago, while calling in on relatives one dark and rainy Christmas Eve, I caught haphazard glimpses of a very peculiar TV show (even more peculiar for having been on ITV) which continued to baffle me for many years.
Some considerable [...]

The Christmas Card That Keeps On Carding

Well, it’s time to unveil this year’s Out On Blue Six Christmas Cards… and we’ve recieved the grand total of one, from a Ben Baker off of Keighley. Still, we’re sure you’ll agree that nothing says Out On Blue Six At Christmas like Roland Rat with a seemingly detachable arm. Let snow battle commence! For some [...]

Is This Christmas Music? Part Twelve – New Kids On The Block ‘Merry Merry Christmas’

Christmas is, as Louise Hall-Taylor announces at the conclusion of The Nativity, “a time of celebration”. Clap Your Hands was the name of one of one of the tracks on Happy Mondays’ Madchester Rave On EP, which sat a couple of places below Band Aid II and Jason Donovan over the Christmas of 1989. Happy [...]

Is This Christmas Music? Part Eleven – Watch ‘The Nativity’

So how can a celebration of the art of the Christmas single, which has defended the use of simplistic seasonal iconography, struck a blow for purveyors of production-line pop and overlooked the presence of a sidesplittingly tacky saxophone, become so suddenly enamoured of a barbed and acidic assault on the very concept it endorses? Well, [...]

Is This Christmas Music? Part Ten – Spitting Image ‘The Christmas Singles’

I Believe In Father Christmas is a remarkable collection of ambitious musical and lyrical ideas crammed into the length of an ordinary pop single, and as such is perfect evidence of why those prog rockers should have tried limiting themselves to three minutes or so more often. Lake’s emotive disdain for the autopilot conveyer belt [...]

Is This Christmas Music? Part Nine – Greg Lake ‘I Believe In Father Christmas’

Anyway, back to Christmas, which these progressive rock types seem to have been rather keen on. Emerson, Lake And Palmer are amongst the most famous exponents of the genre, well known and lightly mocked the world over for their concept albums about giant mechanised armadillos fighting mythological beasts, liking for causing sufficient onstage damage to [...]

Is This Christmas Music? Part Eight – Mike Oldfield ‘In Dulci Jubilo’

In 1975 Mike Oldfield, that multi-instrumentalist pioneer of the prog-rock era, took time out from having his name plastered across the foreheads of albatrosses beneath the headline “The Terrible Secret Hepburn Took To Her Grave” (in the words of Rob Newman, it would take too long to explain, listeners) to record his own version of [...]

Is This Christmas Music? Part Six – Leroy Anderson ‘Sleigh Ride’

Band Aid II may have done their bit for famine relief in 1989, but there was one individual who had been doing his own low-key but no less admirable bit for charity for several years before that, and would continue to do so for several years afterwards. By the mid-1980s, with the dadaist pan-European giant-inflatable-cow-costume-toppling-into-paddling-pool [...]