Band Aid – Do They Know It's Christmas?

I hated this song when I first heard it. It was a clunky, tone deaf bit of musical hubris that seemed entirely self serving. That and it featured a gaggle of singers I ... could ... not ... stand.

Over the years the song has managed to worm its way into my subconscious, and I will begrudgingly admit that there are some pretty catchy bits and I actually enjoy the song now. To the point where I look forward to hearing it over the holidays. It's still completely tone deaf, but now it just feels like something that was okay in the olden days, and a tad out of step today but that's okay.

It's hard to imagine that it's been forty years. Good grief. Of course, to celebrate the occasion there's a 40th anniversary remix that has managed to recreate all of the vitriol I felt when I first heard it back in '84. Now, it's not just a case of me being a borderline boomer, it really is a stinking piece of musical crap. Even my daughter who loves all things Christmas has deemed it to be even worse than Chris Rea's "Driving Home for Christmas." I happen to like Chris Rea, so it seems unfair, but we do agree the new mix is absolutely and unequivocally irredeemable.

Since I'm veering wildly off course, I'll just preserve and push through to the other side. The other day I met up with a buddy and his lovely wife for an early dinner. After we popped back to their place, Christine mentioned she had a bunch of old records and would I like to take them off her hands?

Duh.

It was a big pile, and there were some records that will be given away to the charity shops, but there were a lot of really cool albums too. The one that's up on the turntable is a UK pressing of Do They Know It's Christmas? I have to admit I was surprised when I saw it there, and if I'm being honest I was pretty excited. Like I said, time and nostalgia have been very, very kind to this song for me. Over the years I've heard the other songs on the single, and they're ... um, interesting.

The version I have is FEED 112, which opens with Trevor Horn's 12" Mix of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" that runs over six minutes and contains a lot of filler, and many of the vocal greetings from the "Feed The World" track. It's okay, and once in a while it hits the spot, but really it's a remix and as is the lot of so many remixed singles, it wears thin really quickly.

I tend to play side two. This is what I wanted to hear. The song still sounds remarkably full. I had it cranked in the basement and Phil's toms were rattling the windows. Now the neighbours know it's Christmas too. "Feed The World" is one of those tracks that reminds me of those old fan club Christmas greetings where the various artists literally phoned in their contributions. It's cute in a kitschy way, but once you've heard it you really don't need to hear it again.

Still, for all the posturing and rock star pandering, there was something about this moment in time that captured people's imaginations, and inspired people to care for their fellow man, even if for a few moments.

Maybe they don't know it's Christmas, but we do, and if nothing else we can try and be a little nicer to each other.

Billy Rankin - Growin' Up Too Fast

Growin' Up Too Fast was never widely released on CD (if at all), and it was one of the albums I really wanted to get back after a basement flood wiped out my vinyl collection in the '90s (when no one really gave a shit about records, and my insurance gave me a couple hundred bucks for an appraised $10,000 collection). Way back in 1984, my (dearly departed and greatly missed) buddy Dave let me borrow his cassette copy, which included a bonus track of "Get It On (Bang A Gong)." When I eventually bought the album, I didn't know it was a bonus track, or even what a bonus track was. If that sentence was hard to read, just go back and skim it. I'm sure you'll get the gist. I'd find out later Billy was an off-and-on-again member of Nazareth and wrote some absolutely killer songs for them. At the time, though, all I knew was this guy laid it out cold with the opening cut, "Baby Come Back," then proceeded to lay down one killer tune after another bef...

Styx - Paradise Theater

Styx was hands down one of my favourite bands as a kid. They were a strange band, even back then. They were a hard rock band, almost progressive at times, who had a penchant for sucky ballads. I know there's a tendency for people to zero in on "Babe" as the song that killed the band's credibility. The roots go way back to almost the beginning when Styx released "Lady" on their second album. It showed a side to the band that needed to be kept in check, and for the most part the band kept things on a pretty tight leash. The band had been setting a gruelling pace, releasing an album a year (two in 1972) and by the time they released Paradise Theater (if I end up writing theatre later it's because that's how we spell it here) in 1981 they'd dropped ten albums in less than a decade. I snapped this up as soon as I saw it, and it became a fixture on my turntable. Like the band had announced on "Borrowed Time" from 1979's Cornerstone , ...

Lighthouse - Sunny Days

Bin diving at my local record store where there were more than a few choices to make. After picking out a half dozen treasures, I figured I'd stop looking and leave before I caused myself trouble at home. Lighthouse was one of those ridiculously large bands in the early 70s I didn't understand. I mean really, BTO was just four guys, The James Gang was three, until they weren't, what in the world do you do with a dozen guys in a band? Of course I had a radio — it was the first significant purchase I made with my money from cutting lawns. I think at the time it cost about 35 bucks, and had FM and other high frequency things I never got to use living out in the suburbs away from the reach of the big city FM signal. "Sunny Days" was a great song. I remember thinking it was cool and didn't switch to the other AM station when it came on. A few years later, when I got my first record player, the obligatory K-Tel anthologies would feature a myriad of cut up and edited...

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