57 Not Your Average Christmas Music

I put the Heavy Metal tracks into the preshow, only to find that my colleagues disagreed with the labelling of Danish group Pretty Maids as Heavy. Apparently they are Hair Metal, despite what their website and Wikipedia (I know…) says. I think we can compromise on Glam Metal. I never knew there were so many different Metals out there.

Apart from them, we had two tracks from We Wish You a Metal X-Mas and a Headbanging New Year, on which each track is played by a combination of metallic musicians. I simply could not resist including Silent Night.

Also in the preshow was The Kings and Shepherds Arise from The Home Service’s soundtrack to the Royal National Theatre’s 1985 cycle of Mystery Plays, with John Tams and Linda Thompson providing memorable vocals.

The postshow contained a proper French language version of Patapan and Herderkenslied, the Shepherds Song from Flemish group ‘t Kliekske, keeping our international credentials intact. The Death or Glory Wassail from Sid Kipper could almost have been another language, heavy Norfolk accent laid on thick. Some Early English music from The Sixteen and Polyphony followed and we closed with the Wintersmith from Steeleye Span, in memory of Terry Pratchett. Steeleye Span were one of his favourite groups, and he was thrilled to bits that they had take his book and set it to music, as well as asking him to provide some spoken word parts.

The final show for 2016 went down well, even though the hosts all forgot their Santa Hats. We had 27 listeners at one stage and over 20 for nearly the whole show.

Preshow

The Show

Postshow