Happy Christmas!

First of all, a Happy Christmas to you all. It has been so long since I posted here, I'm not sure anyone will read this but Happy Christmas anyway!

For the last few years I have posted a special Advent version of Free Download Friday offering links to free festive music on the four Fridays before Christmas. This year, I managed two Free Download Fridays and no Advent downloads. Sorry. I did, however, collect a few good freebies, so I offer them here as a Christmas present.

1) Joe Bonamassa

Another year, and another Christmas download from Joe. Perhaps not as strong as previous offerings (no longer available, but you can read about them in my previous post) but a new track from Mr Bonamassa is always worth a listen. You can download it from his website in exchange for enduring a particularly bizarre web page!

2) Hayseed Dixie

Thanks to my colleague, Mr Mosh, for this link... I posted a video of Hayseed Dixie back in 2009 but they have never featured in this blog as a free download. But just in time for Christmas, they posted links on their facebook page to two Christmas tracks. White Trash Xmas is good and well worth a listen but Misty Wonderland Hop is outstanding! Download it now and put it on repeat for the rest of Christmas - you'll thank me later.

3) Roadrunner Records

At a time when free downloads are becoming harder to find, it's great to see that Roadrunner Records is still making tracks available on a semi-regular basis. This year, it looks like the main free download (well, the one featured on the front page of the UK site) is No Presents For Christmas from King Diamond. After a deceptively traditional start, it soon launches into its full metal glory! As well as the this track, they have also "re-released" Black Stone Cherry's Santa Claus Is Back In Town which is outrageously good! The sweartastic X-M@$ from Corey Taylor is also available for free but I'll leave you to find that one yourself. (This is a family friendly blog after all!) Finally, while looking around to see what else is available, I found a track from 2012 that I obviously missed last year that is still available for download: Royal Republic have an acoustic cover of Chris Rea's classic Driving Home For Christmas. The sound quality is a bit tinny but it is still a good track.

4)  For everyone else

I realise that the three sets of download above will not be to everyone's taste, so here are a few alternatives where hopefully there will be something for everyone.

• CBC's Twelve Days Of Christmas: thirteen tracks to choose from. I like The Little Drummer Boy from Walk Off The Earth and I Believe In Father Christmas from Moist but my favourite by a long stretch is the boogie-woogie piano version of Winter Wonderland from Michael Kaeshammer (see video below). 
• Paste Holiday Sampler 2013: Fourteen tracks in this one. My favourite is Children Go Where I Send Thee from Nick Lowe but I like the submissions from Otis Redding, Little Hurricane and The Last Bison too.
• Classical guitar - Craig Ogden: A beautiful version of Deck The Halls.

That's it for this year. Merry Christmas and, in the words of Tiny Tim: God bless us every one!

Free Download Friday #134: Fourth Friday In Advent

Give Love On Chrsitmas

To make up for what is possibly the latest Free Download Friday ever, here's an eleven track Christmas download:

This is another one where you can download the tracks for free but, if you want, you can make a donation to a charity; in this case to a charity called Blood:Water Mission. The Noise Trade site gives the following information about the charity:

Blood:Water Mission was established by Grammy Award winning band Jars of Clay to empower communities to work together against the HIV/AIDS and water crises in sub-Saharan Africa. Since its launch in 2005, Blood:Water has raised millions of dollars through the creative efforts of individuals seeking to make a difference. To date, Blood:Water has partnered with more than 1,300 communities in Africa, providing life-saving water for 800,000 people in 11 different countries and access to HIV/AIDS education, treatment and support for nearly 40,000 people.

Have a good Christmas!

Rock Advent Calendar

Should have posted this a couple of weeks ago... my Rock Advent Calendar is back... I admit, it is very similar to last year's but there are a couple of new tracks in there. Feel free to make suggestions on tracks I should have included.

Day one is an obvious choice... and I don't care what anyone says, they are a rock band! As the days go on though, I hope you will find a diverse and occasionally bizarre mix of Rock and Blues Christmas songs. Enjoy!

Part 3 - Rock Advent Calendar

And here's the final eight. Have a great Christmas!

Day	Artist	Video	Download
17	Steve Lukather	The Christmas Song	Amazon (CD) iTunes
18	Northern Light Orchestra	Away In A Manger /  Come Let Us Adore Him	NLO Website
19	B. B. King	Please Come Home For Christmas	Amazon iTunes
20	The Ramones	Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight)	Amazon iTunes
21	Joe Perry	Blue Christmas	Amazon (CD) iTunes
22	Keith Richards	Run, Run, Rudolf	Amazon iTunes
23	AC/DC	Mistress For Christmas	Amazon (CD) iTunes
24	The Darkness	Christmas Time (Don't Let The Bells End)	Amazon iTunes

Let me know what you think of the selection and feel free to offer alternatives.

You can see all of these and more on the online Rock Christmas Advent calendar.

Part 2 - Rock Advent Calendar

And here's the next eight:

Day	Artist	Video	Download
9	Manowar	Silent Night	YouTube only?
10	Joan Jett And The Blackhearts	Little Drummer Boy	Amazon iTunes
11	August Burns Red	O Come, O Come Emmanuel	Amazon iTunes
12	Seasick Steve	Xmas Prison Blues	Amazon iTunes
13	Radwan Hoteit (?)	Happy Xmas (War Is Over)	Amazon iTunes
14	The Black Crowes	Back Door Santa	Black Crowes
15	Jethro Tull	Ring Out Solstice Bells	Amazon iTunes
16	Alice Cooper et al	Santa Claws Is Coming To Town	Amazon iTunes

Let me know what you think of the selection and feel free to offer alternatives.

You can see all of these and more on the online Rock Christmas Advent calendar.

Part 1 - Rock Advent Calendar

File this one in the "It seemed like a good idea at the time..." category.

I like Rock music and I like Christmas music but Rock radio stations seem reluctant to play Christmas music... perhaps because it is generally associated with a high cheese factor. We were discussing this issue on a Rock Radio facebook page and I said that you could easily fill a couple of hours of programme with Christmas music that would appeal to Rock fans. Unfortunately, Don Macbeth called my bluff and challenged me to post a different Rock Christmas song every day in advent.

So that's what I've been doing. I only made two provisos: one, I didn't want any grumpy comments about this or that not being Rock; and two, I was going to include some Blues.

I noticed, however, that my daily posts don't seem to show up on my facebook wall, so if you don't go the the right page, you wont have noticed the songs. Therefore, I created an online music video Rock Advent Calendar and I wrote this post. This will be the first of three posts, taking me up to Christmas Eve, when I will list the last eight of the videos.

Let me know what you think of the selection and feel free to offer alternatives.

Day	Artist	Video	Download
1	Slade	Merry Xmas Everybody	Amazon iTunes
2	Bruce Springsteen	Santa Claus Is Coming To Town	Amazon iTunes
3	The Greedies	A Merry Jingle	Amazon (Vinyl) iTunes
4	Twisted Sister	O Come All Ye Faithfull	Amazon iTunes
5	Joe Bonamassa	Santa Claus Is Back In Town	Try Joe's download from last year
6	Joe Satriani	Silent Night/Holy Night Jam	Amazon (CD) iTunes
7	Dio, Tony Iommi et. al	God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen	Amazon iTunes
8	Eric Clapton	Christmas Tears	Amazon iTunes

Free Music Friday #82: Happy Christmas from Joe Bonamassa

Joe Bonamassa featured in last year's Advent downloads (see Free Download Friday #40: Final Friday in Advent) thanks to his excellent version of Merry Christmas Baby (which is still available for download on the record company's site).

Just yesterday though, I got an email from him (I assume he sends them to me personally even though it looks like a form letter) with this year's Christmas download: Joe Bonamassa - Happy Holidays. In exchange for your email, you get to download his take on Santa Claus Is Back In Town.

I'm not sure if the track starts with a sample from the Elvis version or if Joe has just managed to get his backing singers to do a passible imitation of The Jordanaires but either way, it sets up the Christmas feel perfectly for Joe to pick it up and run with. Now I have to admit that vocally, Mr Bonamassa isn't a match for Mr Presley but but for screaming Blues guitar solos, Joe's version wins hands down. This is a great Christmas track. I hope that Joe Bonamassa releasing a free Christmas download is now established as an annual event!

For another take on the same song, here is some backstage video from Black Stone Cherry:

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM BLACK STONE CHERRY

Black Stone Cherry | Myspace Music Videos

Apparently they streamed their version of this song on Myspace last year but at the moment it is nowhere to be found on the Internet (or at least, I can't find it). It seems, however, that it was played on Rock Radio the other day so I'm vaguely hopeful that they are going to make it properly available as even the rough video clip embedded above, with its poor audio quality, hints at another interesting take on the song.

Christmas @ Amazon - Bah. Humbug!

I find it extremely frustrating to see a Tweet or the result of a Google search that promises free Christmas music, only to be taken to the Amazon USA site where, since I do not live in the USA, I cannot download. It seems that there are bucket loads of free mp3s available at the US site compared the the dozen or so available at Amazon UK.

Jethro Tull 070373_0018

Originally uploaded by Heinrich Klaffs

Specifically, I am miffed because I was looking for online Advent calendars (see Advent Calendars: Take 2) when I came across Amazon's 25 Days of Free. It looks brilliant... but is for USA only. Bah!

Is it simply down to scale? Can Amazon USA offer more free stuff because they are so much bigger? Is it down to the record companies who have bizarre ideas about protecting markets in different regions?

To be fair to Amazon, they are not the only music service that suffers from this problem. The USA just seems to have a bigger choice of legal music downloads in the first place. If anyone can shed some light, I'd be genuinely interested to know why customers outside the USA get such a poor deal.

Also, to be fair to Amazon, there are other music sites that gave away free downloads last year but do not seem to be doing so this year. For example, iTunes UK gave away music and TV shows last year on the run up to Christmas and also had the Holiday Sampler (see Free Download Friday #39: iTunes Holiday Sampler). This year though, no sign of any freebies.

I follow @AmazonMP3UK on Twitter and occasionally there is an announcement of a free download but usually, they are announcing new product or discounts. For example, their most recent message said: "Yep, it's December, so instead of getting the same three versions of the same three Christmas songs, check this out... http://amzn.to/e4Z2XC" The link takes you to a couple of pages with some alternatives to the usual suspects you hear every Christmas. One of the offerings is Elvis' Christmas Album, which at £2.57 is not as good as a free download but is still a real bargain.

There are a few other albums in there that look interesting but I have some already thanks to eMusic. {I've talked about eMusic before. Please note that if you sign up after following the links on this blog, I get a few extra downloads for sending you in their direction. You can get free credit for downloads just for signing up and, as long as you remember to cancel your subscription before a month is up, those downloads are yours to keep. I suspect though that there will be plenty there to convince you to keep your subscription going.}

Some Christmas albums that you could spend your free credit on include:

• Elvis' Christmas Album
• Christmas Album by Jethro Tull
• Christmas by Low

Free Download Friday #81: Poly Styrene - First Friday in Advent

It looks like last week's pre-advent Christmas download from Paul Simon (see Free Download Friday #80) is still active, so I guess the site that told me it was only going to be available for four days was wrong... which is excellent news. This means that you will get five Christmas themed Free Friday Downloads this year instead of four!

The first official Advent download though comes from Poly Styrene. If you are about my age, and from the UK, you might just recognise the name. She was the lead singer in X-Ray Specs in the mid to late seventies. Unfortunately, although I recognise the name, I am not familiar with her back catalogue. The problem is, when I was a teenager in the seventies, you could either like Punk or Rock... and I liked Rock.

It seems though that Ms Styrene is about to launch a new album and to whet our appetites, she is giving away a Christmas track that will not feature on her album. The track is called Black Christmas and you should be able to get it from this widget:

Or failing that, you can hear it streamed from the wonderful RCRD.LBL site:

And, you can also download it from the RCRD.LBL site.

It is a great track although the lyrics are quite dark in places:

I never knew a very merry Christmas

Santa Claus was a real bad guy

I’m dreaming of a Black Black Christmas

But the darkness is undercut by a the bouncing Reggae beat - try listening to it without bobbing your head! And if you turn up the volume, prepare to have your teeth rattled by the bass line.

Something Old

As well as giving a link to something new, I thought I'd link to something from last year that I didn't manage to feature. Or at least, this time, it's something I thought I'd missed last year. (See What a nightmare! I missed it.) In 2009, Nightmare Records gave away an album, or rather a double album, called Merry Metal Christmas, with more than two hours of free music. I thought I'd missed it but either, they've re-instated it or I was looking in the wrong place.

I am not a huge fan of the screaming "Wooorrrarrghh!" style of Metal but the tracks on this album are very much in the Melodic Metal mould and some are even a bit Progressive.

Although it is called Merry Metal Christmas, there are only three tracks that are Christmas themed. I guess the rest are Christmas presents rather than about Christmas. You have to download the lot because they come bundled together in two zip files but the three Christmas tracks are:

1. Bethlehem by Theocracy
2. Wicked Land of Winter by Sacred Dawn
3. The Chronicles of Jacob Marley by Order of Nine

And all of them are jolly good. I did think Kings will Come by Narnia might have been about the journey of the Magi but it seems to be about kingdoms rising and falling instead and, despite not being a Christmas song, I think it is one of my favourites. Although most of the album is not really Christmassy, there is still good stuff there that will be worth listening to in January.

Free Download Friday #80: Papa Roach (and possible Christmas bonus)

Another sponsored free download this week - from Zippo Lighters no less!

016 Kobetasonik 2009 Papa Roach

Originally uploaded by Dena Flows

I suppose Zippo want to be associated with "wave your lighters in the air" moments at concerts and so have created a music site called Zippo Encore. To be honest though, the last concert I was at where that sort of thing happened, it was mobile phones that were waved in the air rather than lighters - is this a side effect of the smoking ban?

Currently, Zippo have three tracks for download on their Encore page: All Lies from Quarterfly; Live Like TV from The So So Glos; and the one that really caught my eye, Burn from Papa Roach.

I pretty much associate Papa Roach with the Nu-metal and Rap Metal style and still love their first album - Infest. I am not so familiar with their more recent output but it seems they have moved more towards a more Hard Rock style. Perhaps this explains the report on the Zippo site that they were not entirely happy with their old record label releasing a greatest hits package that (inevitably) doesn't reflect their newer sound.

Certainly, Burn is a belter of a Rock track. The opening few seconds sounds a bit Linkin Park-ish, then the vocals and the rest of the band kick in and the track takes off. I especially like the chorus and I can see fans at gigs punching the air and bellowing out "Burn!" along with Mr Shaddix. (And I suppose Burn is a suitable title for a Zippo sponsored download!)

So zip over to Zippo's site now (sorry, I couldn't resist) and download a great Rock track now. (Although I should probably issue a Parental Advisory on the lyrics!)

Christmas Bonus (if you're quick)

Paul Simon is currently offering Getting Ready for Christmas Day as a free download:

I am hoping to do a Christmas themed download on the four Friday's before Christmas and would like to have held this track until then but I think this one is only available free for four days, so get it while you can.

Finally, although I am aiming for four Christmas downloads, Jeff has already started over at Free Christmas Music and hopes to do one a day on the run up to Christmas! I really like the first couple he has posted, so if you like Christmas music, go and check out his site.