12 Days Before Christmas Poems

 

- 2000 - 

White Denim - Last Day of Summer

Summery Pop Swirls

I reviewed White Denim’s D with positive observations on the musicianship and echoes of 60s/70s’ performers, and recently placed it in my 2011 favourite albums’ list. Last Day of Summer was initially a freebie via the band’s website, but is now released officially, and it is more of the same but with a sustained pop sensibility. It is, apparently, a collection of songs worked on since the band’s formation in 2006, and whilst some reviewers have seen the collection as slightly disparate, I hear, as I’ve said, a consistent and enjoyable pop playfulness underpinned by lush harmonies and busy instrumentation.

Opener I’d Have It Just The Way We Were is a swirling pop tune with those vibrant harmonies and a psyche, Randy Californiaesque guitar break. Next Home Together is similarly inspired with an organ core and those sweet vocals. Fourth If You’re Changing foregrounds the Tyrannosaurus Rex echoes I heard in D. There is an instrumental lull of sorts for tracks five and six, and seventh Some Wild Going Outward presents a more complex but still swirling, melodic songwriting and performance. The remainder continues with the T-Rex sound and this, for me, is part of the overall charm. The album ends, oddly, on an anonymous indie tune New Coat.

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

Christmas Ode VI

(after Coleridge)

My pensive colleagues! thy weary heads reclined
Thus on thine arms, most soothing sweet it is
To imagine each sat beside a Cot, any Cot o'ergrown
With flowers, and no thoughts of a targeted hurdle
To leap, just musings on Innocence and Love
And watching of clouds, that late were richly alight
With their vocation, and mark the rising stars
Serenely brilliant (such should Teaching be)
Shine opposite! How exquisite the sense
Snatch'd from yon school-field! and the playground so hushed!
But the inner murmur of what we distantly perceive
Tells us of defiance.

                                  That performance-related Loot
Placed naked in the seducer's casement, hark!
How by the derisory political breeze caress'd,
Like some toy maid half yielding to her payer,
It pours such sickly-sweet upgrading, as must needs
Tempt to expose the wrong! So that now, its strings
Professionally swept, the long vocational notes
Over conscientious surges sing and rise,
Such a soft floating teacherly sound
As twilight planners and markers make, when they at eve
Voyage on gentle gales of honest lesson plans,
Where Melodies round eyelid-dropping hours,
For every child, like birds of Paradise,
Nor pause, nor perch, relying on one another's wings
O! the one Life within school and at home,
Which defies money's promotion and becomes all,
(A slight in £££££s, a £££££-like desire to slight),
Rhythm is in thought, and joyance everywhere -
Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to love such a job as one filled;
Where the breeze is self-induced, and surrounding air
Is Music paying the preferment.

- 1998 -

Hat Fitz and Cara Robinson - Beauty 'n the Beast

Nude Blues

Delta Blues in the nude. Well, that’s the cover’s innuendo, but in reality the relevance is that much is stripped back, basic foot-stomping blues, or Celtic folk, and fine for that. Opener Black Cat Bone sets one tone with slide guitar, simple drumming, and dual harmonising. Hat Fitz plays a mean, screaming harmonica and has the vocal of Seasick Steve about him, or vice versa – it’s a generic hard blues calling. The sweeter antidote to Fitz’s Aussie appropriation of dirtblues is heard in the pretty flute and Irish drumming of partner and wife Cara Robinson on instrumental Fitzmullolland. This more melodic alternative is also presented in fourth track Where It All Began where Cara sings prettily and is accompanied by fiddle. The album moves between these differences, but gets merged, for example, on sixth track Nobody’s Fault But Mine where Fitz plays a calm, seductive and electric blues slide and Cara sings in a pure and beautiful voice. Lay Me Down with acoustic slide and Cara's vocal is gorgeous. It’s a neat combination.

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

Christmas Ode V

(after Pope)

What dire offence from politicians springs,
What mighty changes rise from trivial things,
I sing - This verse BLUNKETT, a Muse is due
Because, although blind, he must have a view
Of how recent events cannot bring praise
When all about him the gloom still lays.
  Say what strange motives, for heaven's sake, could compel
A well-bred Socialist to assault with such hell
Teachers who have as yet their happiness unexplored
(A little like Hague as to a recently departed Lord)?
In decisions so bold, can such little men engage
In others' bosoms this quite mighty Rage?
  As if through curtains there shoots a ray
Of fleeting sun, this is what we want to say:
Now lap-dogs, give yourselves a rousing shake
And like sleeping tossers, decide to awake.
Thrice ring the mental bell, beat head against the ground,
And let us hear a more sagacious sound:
Blunkett from his Tory-like downy pillow prest
Raises a head from such balmy, barmy rest
And thus summoned from the ministerial bed
His morning-dream hovers inside an enlightened head.
  New fairest of mortals, show a distinguished care
To distribute largess like the Inhabitants of Air
To everyone. If this be but one Blunkett thought
Let the Nurse Blair and Priest Brown see it brought
By treasury Elves in moonlight shadows seen -
A whole-profession token of spendable green
(Or whatever colour gives money powers)
So like golden crowns it's our heavenly flowers.
Hear and believe! thy own importance know,
Not bound any longer by narrow thoughts below
Like secrets from a learned pride concealed,
But now have real care and concern revealed.

- 1998 -

[NB David Blunkett was the then Labour Secretary of State for Education and Employment]

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

Christmas

White-sound
of snow;
a huge yawn of the sky-mouth
that shouts wind and ice
like knife-slice
and hammer-blow:
winter warms for Christmas
in its cauldron of cold.

A fox nudges snowflakes
with his feather-soft caress of nose.
He dream-drinks each
to the icicle sharpness of both eyes
and enters invisibly
this white-world
in a fire of red fur-glow.

All melts.
All is one.
All merges in the
stall of this moment. Snow again
falls and
falls and
falls.

There is a man, iron-strong,
walking in this moment.
His snow-crow hair is like a scarf
around head and neck,
black-white/white-black,
and he moves in the wind-hover
like a ghost.

When he speaks the hills tremble.
"This is Christmas," he intones
in an earth-tremor voice,
holding in his hand the scent of fox
like a glove: fur-warm, snow-soft,
shrouding bones.

White-sound
of snow
and this man in its cauldron of cold.
Fox is still watching,
indelible paws never growing old.

- 1998 -

[Written in memory of Ted Hughes who died in this year]

The Revelations feat. Tre Williams – Concrete Blues

Sweet Soul Music

Southern soul revival and the sweet, sweet vocal of Tre Williams - the lyrics too delve into the essential soul themes of human inequality - those of rich and poor, and those in love and those suffering its loss. Classic. Listen to Trouble Man which swells with lyrical angst and funked-up emotive rhythms. Feel How Could You Walk Away as soulsilk personified. Tense to the guitar-empathy of Wes Mingus on One Reason To Stay. This is a wonderful album.

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

Christmas Ode IV

(after Arnold)

   Had we but World enough, and Time
This joyless Blair were no crime.
We would sit down, and think slowly which way
To make his parliament more au fait.
He by the River Thames' side
Should'st humility one distant day find: I by the Tide
Of Clyst would complain and complain. I would
Barrack him ten years before the Flood:
And he should if he please refuse
Till he walked again in Socialists' shoes.
My vegetable garden should its metaphors grow
Vaster than Millennium domes but much more slow.
An hundred years should go to raise
My fists and on his forehead graze.
Two hundred pummels on his hairless chest:
But thirty thousand to the puny rest.
An age at least to every part
And the last age should reveal him as The Grand Old Fart.
For Blair, Sir, you deserve this from the State
Nor would it reward you yet at any higher rate.
   But at my back I always hear
Times winged chariot flapping near:
And yonder all before us Schools will be
In Deserts of vast Insipidity.
Thy intellect shall no more be found;
Nor, in number 11 (despite the move), shall sound
My echoing of being wronged: then Worms will eat
That long preserv'd Tory policies' Repeat:
And Blair's faint Honour turn to dust
And into ashes all my disgust.
The grave's a very final place
But not where we should bury Education in disgrace.
   Now therefore, while his youthful hue
With a few strands of manicured hair still seems new,
And while the suppressed Socialist nearly transpires
At every mention of the poor with aroused Fires,
Now let us do good while we may:
And now, like we mean what we say
Rather at once the Time devour
And begin to use what the people gave him: Power.
Let us roll all our Principles, and all
Our Convictions, up into one Ball:
And tear up Tory Blueness with rough strife
Through the School Gates of Life.
Thus, though we cannot make our Sun
Stand still, yet we will once again make Learning fun.

- 1997 -

[NB A year that resonates for socialist teachers like me at the time who hoped New Labour's election  would herald much needed reform and good sense in education after years of Tory terror. It didn't. Labour merely reflected and actually made worse those Tory policies that started to kill the job, and which Labour made terminal. So, poems at this time and from here on in became even more despairing and cynical! Won't sound like good Christmas wishes for readers here following this nostalgic revisiting. There might be a few more light and fluffy interludes, but no amount of baubles and flashing lights can disguise the falling needles.....]

Tony Spinner - Down Home Mojo

Mojo Spinner

Couldn't be simpler: ripitup, throwitdown, kickitabout rock 'n' blues with walltowall fine guitar work from axeman Tony Spinner. Neat harmonies help to carry an OK vocal, but it's the licks and riffs that form the seamless strength of this seventh studio release from Arkansas slicksmith Spinner.

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

SNOW -

1. Snowperson

There is no reason to object
to the politically correct

even if it is a silly decision
to use such a neologism

2. Snowballs

He sat
naked
in the snow
with his
testicles
so very,
oh so very
cold.

3. Snowflakes

Providing all of the recommended
minimum daily requirements
of ice crystals,
these need to be eaten with
chocolate milk so that each flake
can be seen floating at the top of a
bowl and in a tiny xocolatl lake.

4. Snowboard

riding
gliding
riding
sliding
riding

on ennui

5. Snowjob

Bill and
Monica
enjoying
winter

6. Snowberry

In summer it's naughty;
in winter it's haughty.

8. Snowmobile

But can you imagine
how it could fall
if it wasn't able to move
at all?

-1998 -

[No. 5 was a clue to the year!]

To Act In Love

William Maker - Agapao

More in the Waits/Beefheart vocal lineage, this is a bluesy singer-songwriter project that takes the listener through 15 self-penned tracks with Maker performing all parts of singing and instrumentation. It isn't an album of memorable melody - rather it's simple blues or melodic lines repeated and made engaging by the slide or echoing guitar riffs played - usually delicately and certainly unobtrusively - above this. There's occasional harmonica and simple beat as on Holy Spark which has minor peaks of instrumentation, but always the gruff vocal holding it tight and focused. Title track Agapao is a gentle blues with slide guitar, baritone growl and self-harmonising - not much more can describe such simplicity. Fourth track Rosebud is a slight jumped heartbeat within the whole restrained pulse, sixth On High On chances on some pace too, and seventh I Am I is the liveliest of all, a relatively jaunty instrumental at 1 minute and 54 seconds [though follower Revival 6 is no absolute slouch]. Closer Sol is another slow blues with more electric slide and harp, so slowed it makes sure the listener has never been aroused to reverie but instead kept calmed by the album's sustained straightforward patterns. None of this is criticism: it's to characterise the mood for listening.

Autobiographical details and digital download can be found at http://music.makerworks.com/

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

Christmas Ode III

(after Arnold)

Go, for they call you, Shephard from Westminster;
   Go, Shephard, and untie the battled knots:
      No longer leave thy shattered flock dismal,
   Nor let thy bawling fellows fill their throats hot
      From full glasses, drunk as if that is all
         It takes to administer;
   And your tired men and women need a rest,
      And only the white flags are seen
      Waving across your initiative-pocked battlescene;
         Come, Shephard, and again renew the quest.

Here, where past reapers planted their hate,
   In this darkened corner where Ministers leave
      Their coats like a shed skin and pass on the bruise;
   Where only a new sun and morning can bind the sheaves
      Of hope, then here can come back common sense to use;
   While to our ears from beyond our sway
      The bleating of fellow flocks is borne
      With distant cries where the reapers left them shorne -
         All the echoes from so many of those days.

- 1996 -

[NB Gillian Shephard was the then Tory Secretary of State for Education and Employment]

Dual Harmony

In know it couldn't be any less than two [!], but this is a quick post to refer to four examples of male and female [that's just how it is] dual harmony that I have particularly enjoyed this year:

Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, with no more needed to what has been said already.

The Civil Wars - Joy Williams and John Paul White. It wasn't till seeing them on Later...with Jools and hearing a bootleg recording of a concert performed this year that I realised how superb they are and returned to their album Barton Hollow, though it's live where they excel with just acoustic guitar and vocals.

Pharis and Jason Romero, who are even more ethnic in their Country than Welch and Rawlings, but harmonies just as tight.

Tiny Home - Sonya Cotton and Gabe Dominquez - who sing beautiful tight harmonies, and advertise online to perform at weddings and functions in the San Franscico Bay area in ecologically considered contexts. They do a superb version of Van Zandt's If I Needed You.

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

A Film Cliche Christmas

You say Christmas dinner is ham?
Frankly dear, I don't give a damn.

Santa picks up his sack,
turns and says [in silly English] "I'll be back."

From a Ridley Scott cut:
Christmas presents exploding from the gut.

You say Christmas dinner is a cat?
You dirty rat.

- 1996 -

2011 Favourite Albums' List

Only Santa's magic eyes can see Some Diurnal Aural Awe's 2011 Favourite Albums' List, but a visible copy has been obtained and is printed here for your secret viewing and interest:

Alison Krauss and Union Station - Paper Airplane

America - Back Pages

Archie Shepp – Wo!man

Ben Howard - Every Kingdom

Big Harp – White Hat

Blackie & The Rodeo Kings – Kings & Queens

Bing Ji Ling - Shadow To Shine

Bon Iver - Bon Iver

Bonnie Prince Billy – Wolfroy Goes To Town

Brute Heart – Lonely Hunter

Buddy Miller - The Majestic Silver Strings

Buffalo Death Beam – Salvation for Ordinary People

Feist – Metals

Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

Gillian Welch - The Harrow & The Harvest

Glen Campbell - Ghost on the Canvas

Gotan Project - La Revancha en Cumbia

Guillemots - Walk the River

Guy Clark - Songs & Stories

Hank Williams III - Ghost to a Ghost/Gutter Town

Jeff Bridges - Jeff Bridges

Joan As Policewoman - Deep Field

John Martyn - Heaven and Earth

Josh T Pearson – Last of the Country Gentlemen

Josh T. Pearson - Rough Trade Christmas Bonus

Johnny Winter – Roots

Jonathan Wilson - Gentle Spirit

Kami Thompson - Love Lies

Karen Savoca - Promise

King Creosote – Thrawn

King Creosote – Diamond Mine

Laura Marling - A Creature I Don't Know

Leslie West – Unusual Suspects

Lindsey Buckingham - Seeds We Sow

Martin Simpson - Purpose + Grace

Meg Baird - Seasons on Earth

Merle Haggard - Working in Tennessee

Moreland & Arbuckle - Just a Dream

Nils Lofgren - Old School

Paul Simon – So Beautiful So What

Phoebe Killdeer - Innerquake

Rachael Yamagata – Chesapeake

Radio Moscow - The Great Escape of Leslie Magnafuzz

Raphael Saadiq - Stone Rollin'

Red Hot Chili Peppers - I'm With You

Rebecca Ferguson – Heaven

Richmond Fontaine - The High Country

Ron Sexsmith – Long Player Late Bloomer

Ry Cooder - Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down

Ryan Adams - Ashes and Fire

Shelby Lynne - Revelation Road

Steve Earle – I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive

Steve Miller Band - Let Your Hair Down

Steve Tilston – The Reckoning

Teddy Thompson - Bella

The Answer – Revival

The Black Lillies - 100 Miles of Wreckage
The Civil Wars - Barton Hollow

The Dallas Explosion - Off To War

The Duke Spirit – Bruiser

The Gourds - Old Mad Joy

Thea Gilmore – Don’t Stop Singing

Tom Waits - Bad As Me

Van Der Graaf Generator - A Grounding In Numbers

Various Artists – Johnny Boy Would Love This: Tribute To John Martyn

White Denim – D

Picking an absolute favourite is difficult, but I will stick with what I have mentioned before and go for Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings. The act of compiling this list reminds me of lesser known but brilliant ones that I need to revisit: Blackie & The Rodeo Kings, Big Harp, and The Black Lillies. Many have been reviewed on this blog, but others haven't. Three of the albums are significant because they are superb but also by female vocalists I love: Joan As Policewoman, Feist, Shelby Lynne. Teddy Thompson and Josh T Pearson released albums poles apart in terms of genre and performance, but each excellent release was complemented by seeing them performing live this year. The most personally meaningful album was John Martyn's posthumous release. I realise some of my favourites will be others' turkeys, for example Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and the recent selection of Rebecca Ferguson may continue to surprise, but that should be done and dusted by now. Roll on 2012.

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

Christmas Ode II

(after Poe)

Once upon a midnight dreary, as I wadded through words, weak and weary,
Over many a dull and spurious volume of philistine's lore -
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly in my head came a tapping,
As of some imposed curriculum rapping its song at my metaphoric door.
"Tis some friggin' new initiative," I swore, "tapping at my battered door -
                                           Labelled More and More and More."

Ah distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each past initiative's ember wrought its ghost upon the mind's floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow of '96 would bring a power that would not borrow
Others' ideas to inflict an increase on my sorrow - sorrow for not being as before,
For the rare and radiant teaching with the swish of an angel's wings before
                                           Becoming shameless automatons evermore.

- 1995 -

12 Poems Before Christmas

The Christmas

(after Ray Carver)

the Christmas with bells on
the Christmas when you were alone
the Christmas with knowledge of snow
the Christmas as smorgasboard
the Christmas transcending home
the Christmas where angels fall
the Christmas pretending to have a chimney
the Christmas inside bonhomie
the Christmas long-distance call
the Christmas in someone's war
the Christmas behind mystery
the Christmas becoming childhood
the Christmas writing Stocking Fillers
the Christmas through mulled eyes
the Christmas with an open door
the Christmas you misunderstood
the Christmas bloody number one
the Christmas that passes by
the Christmas of frozen breath
the Christmas on cocktail sticks
the Christmas from a store
the Christmas beyond death
the Christmas pouring killer roads
the Christmas wanting more
the Christmas inside soap operas
the Christmas that's left over
the Christmas you can remote control
the Christmas at a year's end
the Christmas for lovers
the Christmas of a lost soul
the Christmas card you never send
the Christmas when Ray's car broke down
the Christmas lived with the old
the Christmas with kids before they've grown
the Christmas as an abstract noun
our Christmas

- 1995 -

Rebecca Ferguson – Heaven

Electrically Eclectic

I’ve now given this album a proper roadtest – well, a treadmill test outside in the freezing shed where I worked-out and listened, and Rebecca Ferguson thoroughly entertained me to a genuine head of steam, a good enough musical gauge for today, especially as it’s bourbon night and I normally prefer a more lethargic preparation in honour of what’s to come so effortlessly.

Two of my previous Surprise Songs instincts on her have held up to today’s fuller scrutiny: it is a ‘fine’ album throughout – not outstanding, but definitely more than average; and track Shoulder To Shoulder is the standout on the album: just listen to that beautifully held note on the word free. This is an emotive and convincingly sung track, a genuine heartache lived and revisited in the lyric. Opener Nothing’s Real But Love is a bold starter with its simple acoustic guitar beginning, and the soulful vocal is firmly in control - a hardship also lived and revisited in this lyric. The song builds with just enough backing vocal and organ accompaniment adding a gospel feel, but not overdone.

There are derivative sounds as well but never more than reflections of genre rather than other artists and/or others’ songs. I like track six Fighting Suspicions which begins as a slow brooding ballad - piano and brass in dirge control - and for a brief moment I imagine Tom Waits dueting his growl to Ferguson’s soulsilk croon, but the track quickly funks up and is just as cool for this. Seventh Teach Me How To Be Loved is essentially piano, cello and voice, and quite simply, Ferguson can sing distinctively in such unobtrusive company.

Since posting a positive reference to this album as my second Surprise Songs I’ve had two comments, both expressing shock! The first, on this blog, is from someone who also likes the album which is great; the second, sent by email, is from a friend who refuses to even listen to the album [and he’s entitled with his impeccable musical tastes and our occasional if strong musical differences which merely demonstrate the brilliant variation of opinion]. I mention because about this time last year I also referenced, positively, another X-Factor singer, Cher Lloyd and observed that I thought she too has a genuinely solid voice/vocal. Her album Sticks and Stones hasn’t lived up to my expectations because it is more controlled and influenced by production values and interferences – these beyond her control and, perhaps, mature oversight – but I still believe she has talent and potential and I look forward to that being realised in the future, for this listener at least. I also mention because I’m pleased to engender any interest and comment, but readers shouldn’t be shocked by my eclectic tastes – if it’s good it’s good.

12 Days Before Christmas Poems

Christmas Ode

(after Keats)

My heart aches, and a drowsy dumbness pains
  My tense brain as I recall, as if still drunk,
The man Patten who led me down a dismal drain
  To depths other teachers Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not for pleasure to remember our lot,
  But being happy as Christmas comes
    One should be light-winged Dyrad of the trees
      And aspire to some noble plot
To have him expired for what he's done
  And rhyme such dreams with a full-throated ease.

- 1994 -

[NB John Patten was the then Tory Secretary of State for Education]

Breakfast Blues and SOS

The Blues Band - Few Short Lines

Here's two simple dishes served up for my morning consumption: The Blues Band with Paul Jones, Dave Kelly, Tom McGuinness; star guest players like Al Kooper, Pete Wingfield and Mike Sanchez, and guest vocalists Linda Lewis, Maddie Bell and Southside Johnny, all playing straightforward harmonica fuelled blues - and my American breakfast of SOS, Shit on Shingle, a concoction formulated during the second world war to feed the GIs, made from minced [ground] beef fried in a pan, a can of mushroom soup poured over this, then heated through and served on toast.

Of course this should be titled Breakfast Bliss and SOS, which has a neat rhyming, but I wanted to be precise about the music and food combination - a different music/food amalgam to the recent Juicy Lucy, but perhaps establishing another blog category?