Virgin enters into the festive spirit with this seasonal offering, "Thanks for Christmas" by The Three Wise Men. The song was penned by well-known writing team Kaspar/Melchior/Balthazar, the Far East's answer to Holland/Dozier/Holland. Production was by The Three Wise Men and the Good Lord himself.
Not surprisingly, the release hits the decks shrouded in mystery, intrigue and much speculation. The ‘What's On In Bethlehem’-style sleeve may well proclaim ‘The Three Wise Men’, but this non-de-plume cunningly conceals the identity of one of Virgin's top pop groups! Not that we're telling you which band. Could it be Culture Club, Human League, Heaven 17, China Crisis or even Slapp Happy? Over to you! Just good clean Virgin fun to keep you guessing right into the New Year. It's certainly countdown to Christmas party time. Cheers!
Virgin tried to keep the identity of the "Three Wise Men" a secret, but anyone who heard more than a few seconds of the song could easily identify who they were. "Thanks For Christmas" and its B-side "Countdown to Christmas Party Time" were later reissued on 1990's Rag & Bone Buffet compilation (under the pseudonym XTC), and has appeared on a few Christmas compilations. "Thanks" was covered by Darlene Love on her recent Christmas album It's Christmas, Of Course, but the original version is not currently in-print anywhere, at least legally. Here are the A and B sides of the single courtest of the Riverfront Times (which doesn't seem to allow deep-linking.. grab them from the link above).
Three Wise Men (aka XTC)
Thanks For Christmas / Countdown to Christmas Party Time
That Riverfront Times blog entry has another famous "lost" Christmas song, Squeeze's "Christmas Day". "Countdown to Christmas" joins "Listen, the Snow Is Falling" (Yoko's b-side to "Happy Xmas (War is Over)") and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reggae" (Macca's b-side to "Wonderful Christmastime") in the parade of lesser-known B-sides.
XTC has another Christmas rarity "Always Winter But Never Christmas", an Andy Partridge demo from the B-side of the "Peter Pumpkinhead" single. Here's that one.
XTC - Always Winter But Never Christmas
3 comments:
*sigh*...another lost opportunity. Everyone knows the line in the carol is "and a partridge in a pear tree"; well, we're talking about Andy Partridge - and "Andy" sounds pretty much like "and a"...so clearly, the appropriate pun is simply "Andy Partridge in a pear tree." There - that wasn't so hard, was it?
Why is everybody throwing things at me?
Incidentally: once you're at that Riverfront Times page, click on the song links...for me, once that page is up, saving the page actually saves the underlying mp3 file, for those of you who'd rather have the songs in a more portable format.
The Yoko title is "Listen, the Snow is Falling."
in case anyone is reading this in the future, the Yoko title is fixed now.
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