Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Countdown To Christmas - Never Mind The Baubles

(Or 'Oi To The World' to borrow a Five Centres phrase)

Given punk's sloganeering and songbook of No Future, Boredom and Blank Generations there's possibly more punky seasonal sing-a-longs than you'd expect...

The Damned's 'There Ain't No Sanity Clause'
XTC's 'Thanks For Christmas'
Stiff Little Fingers 'White Christmas'
The Stranglers Christmas EP

And of course the Sex Pistols played their final UK date, before hitting then splitting in the US, at a Huddersfield charity gig on December the 25th 1977

So good to see then that the tradition of Advent, Anarchy and God Save The Queen's Speech is being kept alive by the good people at Punk Christmas with an online advent calender that pops out one Christmas-chestnut-newly-reworked-as-punky-nugget per day (all for free too) - where you can grab crackers like these...

Bonus points are available if you can spot which punk/new wave classic has been adapted as the template for each tune

Another Rock And Roll Christmas



Stop The Cavalry



Little Drummer Boy



A special Santa salute to Agent Cooper for the tip off about this treat.

And if you know someone who's any sort of a Ramones (or punk) fan - here's just the thing to drop in their bovver boots for Christmas..Jenny Lens's photo-based eBook covering The Ramones first west coast tour of '76 - loaded with over 100 exclusive hi-res photo's sent straight to your inbox for just $15!!! (or 8 of your Queen's pounds)

Get your Gabba Gabbas on it right here...


Jenny Lens is the California 'punk scene' photographer, with a role call of spiky icons and heavy-hitters in her archives - Blondie, The Ramones, the Sex Pistols and The Clash were all caught on film by Jenny during the seventies punk explosion. Her last book 'Punk Pioneers' is a must have if you're a nutter for punk like me - and at literally pocket money prices for this gallery of goodies, you really can't pass up the Ramones digi-book.

Did you know? - A major influence on The Ramones non-stop power punk (and haircuts) are the glam-anthems of our very own Christmas stompers Slade!

8 comments:

Keith said...

These were some really cool clips. I loved them. It's neat that even punk rockers did their own take on Christmas. I've never really heard any of these. I wanted to say that I've been learning a lot more about punk music from your blog. By the time I was really getting into music, punk was dead. I never really knew much about it. Sure, I had heard of bands like the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, etc., but I wasn't really old enough during their days of infamy.

Mondo said...

I was a couple of years too late for punk myself Keith, and caught the fall-out rather than the explosion - but it's something that's stayed with me ever since - and punk from back then has a sense of humor and is probably a lot more 'pop' than it's generally remembered as being - The Ramones, Undertones, Buzzcocks could all be The Archies with overdrive - and glad to be filling the gaps for you

lil said...

Much as I love “Let it snow”
(My favourite this time of year)
It’s so refreshing to hear something entirely different!
G’s gonna love it…

Mondo said...

This lot should be right up G's street Lil - have you seen it's punk version of 'Wombling Merry Christmas' today?

I'll mail you links to a couple of Ramones based ones (How's your luck I only found them yesterday after I'd posted this, they would have been bang on to tie in with The Ramones book bit)

Piley said...

nice little bunch of goodies Mond... although some of those Crimbo toons do sound a bit 'punk by numbers'??!

Got the 1st of my perverted Christmas album reviews over on my blog... it'll make sense when you see it!

P

Mondo said...

Know what you mean P - checked your post and added a link to the Carry On Christmas theme tune too..

Istvanski said...

Hmm, this reminds me of the punky-ish Xmas podcast that we did ages ago.

Mondo said...

Punky Xmas Podcast you say - ho, ho ,ho I'm on my way right now...