Christmas In Prison with John Prine

Joe writes: A recent discovery for me that is already one of my favourite Christmas songs, not least thanks to the couplet "I dream of her always/Even when I don't dream/Her name's on my tongue/And her blood's in my stream." The original version isn't on YouTube so I've experimented with embedding from Spotify:



There is a later, possibly better, studio take on YouTube.

Talking of Christmas songs, here's a wonderful article by Dorian Lynskey about Fairytale Of New York. I always wondered how that extraordinary song came about.

Christmas Records

Joe writes: Obviously the best Christmas record ever is Fairytale of New York and the best Christmas album ever is the Phil Spector one.

Here are three less obvious choices

3) Christmas Song - Dave Matthews Band. From the Platinum Christmas album which also contains two other really good Christmas originals by Dido and R Kelly. Maybe I'll post those next year.



2) O Tannenbaum - The Vince Guaraldi Trio. An essential purchase at this time of year is the A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. This is the opening track - a jazz piano trio version of the tune also known as The Red Flag isn't obviously Christmas-y, but the whole album really is.


1) A Kind Of Christmas Card - Morten Harket. Great uplifting track from former A-Ha frontman that should have been a massive hit. Shades of All The Young Dudes.


(update of post originally from 3/12/2007)