What I was alive for

A Christmas break – with two Christmas songs

The Effortless blog is taking a Christmas break – but so you're not left without a new Regulars song over the festive period (well, not a new one, but you know what I mean), here are two live recordings of Chrimbo tunes played by The Regulars in successive years at the Jug of Ale.

In the Bleak Mid-Winter (2000)
Ding, Dong! Merrily on High (2001)

One of the nicest things about being on Bearos Records was getting to play at the special Christmas gigs the label put on every year at the Jug. Even the year Baxxter got nekkid on stage, it was still great. Actually, that probably helped. Like everything decent in Birmingham, though, the Jug has recently been closed down, further vindicating my decision to do one.

In 2000 the gig was the same night as Chris's work Christmas do – in those days we used to have no end of arguments about his priorities – so we had to play without drums. We decided to make a proper acoustic set of it all, partly because it sounded great when we played that way at the city council's ArtsFest thing three months earlier, and we all played sitting down and I borrowed a synth to add a bit more texture. 'In the Bleak Mid-Winter' is my favourite carol so I worked out some chords, wrote a little in-betweeny instrumental bit, and bingo. I love Stu's climbing bassline and there's some really pretty, wistful guitar in there from Paul too.



The following year Chris was back on board so we decided to go the opposite way with a daft version of 'Ding, Dong! Merrily on High'. The verse is laced with drunken slide guitar and the chorus sounds like an oi! band. It sounds absolutely dreadful but it was a lot of fun to do!

Even after The Regulars disbanded the Bearos Christmas gig had a lot of significance for me. In December 2002 I asked if I could play a little solo set at it. I wasn't really prepared, but I was still reeling from the band's recent split and I wanted to do something vaguely defiant and show everybody I was still there. (For my festive tune I covered 'Stop the Cavalry', with Stu doing the "shub-a-dub-a-dub" bits; under-rehearsed, we stumbled badly, but it was dead funny. If anyone wants to hear it, shout up and I'll dig out and rip the CD.) So that was my first ever solo gig. It was ages before I did another one, but if I hadn't done this one then I might not have carried on at all.

Thanks for sticking with the blog so far, and for all your comments. It surprises and sometimes disturbs me how much these songs still mean to me, so it's good to get the chance to talk about them after all this time. Have a great Christmas and I'll be back soon with the next track!

posted by Pete Green @ 22:27