Give me 5 minutes and you can have the radio

Lovely, Miko! You guys are making me feel holiday cheery despite myself. o noes!

What a wonderful way to start off December. I love the idea of a musical advent calendar, and the accompanying trivia!

I can't say that I recognize this song at all, but I love it almost as much as I love that the music advent is back! Yay!

Well, that's today's earworm chosen! My mother's orchestra playing Lieutenant Kije is one of my earliest memories.

Oh, awesome. I do recognize the tune, but have never heard of the film. Thanks so much, Meeks!

I recognized the tune too. I think it was rearranged and used for something famous somewhere, probably on TV. My wife immediately identified it by name & composer.

Musical advent calendar, yay!

Sounds vaguely familiar. Didn't know that about sleigh bells, nifty!

Welcome to Installment 2 of Miko's Musical MeCha Advent Calendar 2009.

Tonight's selection: Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy, by Bing Crosby and David Bowie.

This song is actually one I own on 45, having gone in search of it at record stores at the age of 12 or 13.

I recall my parents finding it to be a pretty odd -- maybe laughably odd -- track. Here was Bing, the swingin' hepcat of my parents' parents generation, but by the 80s an old-school has-been, into collaboration with the pale, cadaverous, androgynous Bowie who was decidedly not a flower power type, and did not yet have a defined New Wave to belong to. It didn't seem to make much sense. Bing - who my younger brother and I mocked endlessly after seeing him interviewed by Baba Wawa: he was asked whether he could tolerate his son's cohabiting with a significant other without benefit of marriage, and said that if he heard such news, it would be "Aloha on the steel guitar" for his offspring by blood...? This fuddy-duddy, singing with David Bowie? David Bowie, the spangliest prancing glam-rock pony?

It turns out that the whole thing came about in 1977, when Bing, a venerable star with nothing more to prove at age 73, was on tour in England at the same time he was scheduled to do a Christmas special. The theme of the show was conveniently determined to be "Christmas in England," and Bing's producers went searching for some English stars to bring into the all-celeb special. Twiggy was available, and so was the 30-year old David Bowie. Producers sent Bowie the idea of singing Little Drummer Boy with Bing; Bowie shot back "I hate this song. Is there something else I could sing??"

The producers decided to split the difference, and within a little more than an hour, wrote an impromptu descant called "Peace on Earth" with an anti-war sentiment that provides a lyrical as well as melodic counterpoint to the martial "drummer boy" burden of the tune. They say Bowie and Bing learned it in a matter of minutes, and laid down a track that, for me at least, rescues what would otherwise be a monotonous and predictable rendition of an old chestnut. The final production is the kind of magical unlikely moment only TV can create, with Bowie confessing that he listens to "older artists" like John Lennon and Harry Nilsson, and managing to negotiate a spotlight for Heroes before the special ends.

After the show, Bing told a reporter that the future Kahn was "a clean cut kid and a real fine asset to the show. He sings well, has a great voice and reads lines well. He could be a good actor if he wanted."

On this day in 2009, when most of the news bandwidth in the US has been taken up with discussions of whether it's right or wrong to stay in Afghanistan or plan an exit from Afghanistan, this song doesn't really seem as cheesy as it did in the 80s, when the memory was too recent and the awkwardness too obvious. The plaintive wish that we could end the stupid interactions demanded by a wartime state has plenty of dignity, as I'm sure it did a couple of short years into the aftermath of Vietnam.

Nothing wrong with hepcats from two generations, now both vulnerable to wearing the "has-been" mantle, saying: I pray my wish will come true/ For my child, and your child too:/ We'll see the day of glory; we'll see the day/ When men of goodwill live in peace/ Live in peace again."

this song doesn't really seem as cheesy as it did
To be honest (I'm one of the proverbially blunt Dutch after all) it still seems cheesy. But cheesiness comes with the territory of lyrical music. So I'm perfectly fine with that.
It's just that most people need booze to connect with sentimentality in songs. David Bowie is no stranger to sentimentality f.i. Wild is the Wind or Cat People.

So if I remember correctly from my secular upbringing the significance of the advent of advent is that I get the little chocolate from the daily opened little door, right? Where is it? Or did you eat it already? That's so unfair.

Merry mecha advent to you too.

Welcome back! You've arrived at Day 3 of Miko's Musical MeCha Advent Calendar 2009.

Today's Selection: Christmas Anthem, a brief but robust shape-note carol written in 1844 and performed here by an Alabama group of Sacred Harp singers and collected by Alan Lomax in 1959. The song has a pedigree: it was written by a relative of the Denson Brothers, who became some of the most prominent publishers and circulators of Sacred Harp sheet music. You can still buy Denson editions of shape-note songbooks today.

For those who don't listen to a lot of shape note, the first half of the song is actually a rehearsal. You'll hear the chorus members practicing the tune once through by singing just the syllables for the notes of the melody: fa, sol, la. After everyone has got that down, they launch into the lyrics. Listen to the multilayered, recursive way the lyrics are treated in the arrangement: you almost get an impressionistic lyrical collage, punctuated by the strong rhythm of the carefully aligned syllables.

Oh, how charming
Are the radiant bands of music!
Flying in the air.
The church triumphant gives the tone
While they surround the holy throne,
In glory, with celestial arts,
Angelic armies tune their harps,
And raptured play their parts:
Strike their notes at our Redeemer’s birth.

Welcome back! IT's Day 4 of Miko's Musical MeCha Advent Calendar 2009.

Tonight's selection is an instrumental version of a tune often known as "Sing We Now of Christmas." It's a haunting melody, a medieval French tune dating back to at least the 1500s, and it turns out to have more than one holiday up its sleeve. When titled "Now the Green Blade Riseth," it can serve as an Easter carol; with these lyrics, it's a Christmas carol. A detailed history here gives even more variants and notes that the song is in Dorian mode, a surefire way to make stuff sound a little spooky.

Here, the song is performed by cellist (and other things) Hans Christian and friends.

Is there a download link for Day 4 that I'm not seeing?

What she asked.

Oooops! Here is Sing We Now of Christmas.

I'm kind of glad to know people are following the thread! I was going to ask today if I should keep adding to it.

I've really been enjoying it so far!

This is pretty.

Here's the Day 5 selection: The 1936 hit What Will Santy Claus Say (When He Finds Everybody Swingin') by Louis Prima and his orchestra.

Prima, the "King of the Swingers," is not one of the best-remembered Big Band greats (or at least wasn't until David Lee Roth's cover of "Just a Gigolo" helped revive interest in his work), but more people know his voice than they realize: He's the voice (and character model) for King Louie in the Disney film The Jungle Book. Prima did a lot of recording for Disney, including at least two other Christmas novelty songs, but this one is the toe-tappin'est.

Louis Prima was one of the first big stars who was openly Italian-American. Odd as it seems now, before midcentury people of Italian descent were pretty actively discriminated against in many parts of the U.S., for varying reasons that changed with the times but included simple difference in habits, fear of organized crime, fear of socialism or fascism, Sacco and Vanzetti, etc. This article on Italian-Americans in Jazz is really interesting; in fact it says that between 1890 and 1920, Italian-Americans were the target of the most lynchings of white people in the South.

It's Day 6, and now, for something a little different: The Taj Motel Trio doing Angels We Have Heard on High.

I'm really enjoying this. Thanks! :)

Ha! I love it!

Miko, this is very merry. Thank you.

This evening for Miko's Musical MeCha Advent Calendar, Day 7, it's a Merry Christmas Baby-off! Who's got the most smooth-mellow, the most soulful-sexy, the most goodtime-party versions of Merry Christmas Baby? Why, these 3:

Otis Redding
Bonnie Raitt & Charles Brown
Bruce Springsteen, recorded live December 29, 1980, at Nassau Coliseum

So... what happened to the advent? Is Christmas on hold for a bit?