Ex-editor of the sadly defunct Melody Maker, author of Nirvana: The Biography and now proprietor of the excellent Collapse Board website, Everett True has not one but two Christmas mixtapes available to download just now. They covers all bases from the popular to the obscure, from funk to country to punk to indie(ish) and everything in-between. Everett himself says:

I spend great chunks of early December arranging and rearranging the 1,500+ Christmas songs in my iTunes folder into various playlists: for family, for friends, not for the children, and so on. Odd that I do so, as I’m really not fond of this time of year otherwise (although that feeling is changing as our family increases). This year, my task has been somewhat hampered by Daniel (aged 2) destroying the external hard drive, just two weeks after I’d transferred my entire cache of 2011 music onto it.

I suspend most of my regular aesthetic values when it comes to this season. As long as there’s a sleigh bell or an overtly schmaltzy production or a smart-ass lyric decrying the fact Santa NEVER BRINGS ANY FUCKING PRESENTS or some soulful heartfelt emotion or … well, anything to do with the season, really … I’m happy. I do have limits of course: Fiona Apple, that excrescence of a Bob Dylan Christmas album that appeared a while back, most of the She And Him Christmas album (although they still manage to sneak onto the collection below), most of X Factor (but not all), anything too self-consciously smart and/or indie. But really. Where else are you going to find a compilation that boasts Mariah Carey, The Moonbears, Willie Nelson, Can and Wild Billy Childish’s killer cut ‘Christmas 1979′?

As ever, the following restrictions apply:

The track-listing on the mix-tapes differs slightly to the one below. Copyright considerations, and all that. Also, the compilations will be available for a limited period only. If you like any of the featured artists, please track back to their MySpace sites, record company home pages and the like, and show support by purchasing their music direct.

Download A Christmas Gift from Everett True 2011, part one here.

Download A Christmas Gift from Everett True 2011, part two here.

As he says, download these now as they’ll be taken down very soon.

BONUS!

Shonen Knife’s “Space Christmas” (as featured on ACGFET2011 vol two):
 

 
Full tracklistings after the jump…

 
Alfred Hitchcock Presents…Back for Christmas, based on John Collier‘s story of a man who plans to murder his wife, and bury her in the cellar. Collier’s short story was originally printed in the New Yorker magazine in 1939, this was the story’s first TV outing, there were 3 different versions made for radio, including one with Peter Lorre, and was latter remade for Roald Dahl’s series Tales of the Unexpected in the 1970s.

Collier wrote dozens of stories, many of which were successfully produced for various radio, TV and film productions - including “Green Thoughts”, the basis for Roger Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors. He also contributed to such screenplays as the Humphrey Bogart / Katharine Hepburn movie The African Queen and the play based on Christopher Isherwood’s “Berlin Stories” I Am A Camera. Towards the end of his life, Collier jokingly said of himself:

“I sometimes marvel that a third-rate writer like me has been able to palm himself off as a second-rate writer.”

Hitchock’s version of Back for Christmas stars John Williams as Herbert Carpenter and Isobel Elsom as Hermione Carpenter, and was first broadcast in March 1956.
 

 
Part 2, after the jump…
 

Photo by Steven Cheshire
 
Did you know that “Santa” is an anagram of “Satan”? The Divine David (now known simply as David Hoyle) certainly does. Here’s a couple of clips of David spreading his own particular brand of Christmas cheer, the first showing us how to alternatively decorate a Christmas tree:
 

 
Previously on DM:
It’s Christmas, the world is burning, let’s masturbate: the Divine David Hoyle

After the jump, The Divine David’s disturbing memories of Santa’s abattoir…

 
And if you really, really don’t like disco, then perhaps this is more up your street. It’s an unexpected Christmas cracker by the king of UK grime Wiley, taken from his forthcoming album Evolve Or Be Extinct (to be released on Big Dada Recordings on 19th January - pre-order available here.)

This track is hilarious, the beat’s great and the sentiment is universal - about a family trying to cheer up that one misery guts who would rather stay upstairs playing Xbox while everyone else is downstairs having a drink and a laugh. We’ve all been there I’m sure:

“Go on, have a dance with aunt Shirley/
A little wind-up an’ that/
No, you go have a dance with Shirley/
Leave me alone anyway!”

I only found this track about an hour ago, and I’ve already listened to it half a dozen times. In fact, I’m going to listen to it again, right now. And you should too, it’s a future Christmas classic:
 

 
Legendary outsider musician Jan Terri is back! Almost twenty years after the recording of her classics “Get Down Goblin” and “Losing You” (regularly voted one of the worst videos of all time, but actually one hell of a catchy track), Jan is set to release a new album next year called Wild One. “Excuse My Christmas” is the first single from the album, and screw Billy Idol, Bob Dylan, Ozzy Osbourne & Jessica Simpson, the Beatles or any of that other shit - THIS is what Christmas should be about: 
 

 
After the jump, the video for Jan Terri’s 1994 Christmas track “Rock’n'Roll Santa”...

 
The talented bods at Bird Box Studios have made this fun animation, Singing Christmas Hedgehogs, where you can pick and dress a hedgehog to serenade you. How neat is that?
 

 
Via b3ta
 

 
If, like me, you find the constant barrage of the same old shitty Christmas music in shops and restaurants at this time of year mind-numbing - excruciating even - then this is the perfect antidote. I mean, I’m not being Scrooge here, I do like Christmas and all but I could die happily without ever hearing the fucking “Frog Chorus” ever again. As if Christmas shopping wasn’t stressful enough!

So praise be for dj, writer and Voodoo practitioner Stephen Grasso, who has put together a mix of tunes guaranteed to warm even the most humbugging of your icy cockles. A Voodoo Christmas in South Norwood features mostly ragtime and swing jazz versions of some well-known Christmas standards, along with a smattering of funk, soul and reggae, with some rarities and classics thrown into the mix. “Beatnik’s Wish” by The Beat Generation, “Christmas Time” by Horace Andy and “What WIll Santa Claus Say (When He FInds Everyone Swinging?)” by Louis Prima & His New Orleans Gang being personal favourites, and you will also find tracks here by Louis Armstrong, Celia Cruz, Charlie Parker, the Aggrovators, James Brown, New Birth Brass Band and many more. The full tracklist is on the Soundcloud page, and here is the 76 minute mix:
 

   
For more info on Stephen Grasso, visit his blog Clean Living In Difficult Circumstances, and be sure to check out “Smoke And Mirrors - All Cities Have Magic”, his excellent, ongoing psycho-geographical tour of London for the Bang The Bore blog.

Via Shallow Rave.

 
Light My Christmas.

Available now for the first time… The lost recordings of one of rock and roll’s most mysterious bands… In rare Yuletide spirit, The Doors… Light my Christmas...

This puts me in a festive spirit.
 

 
Creepy Christmas ornaments for your tree this holiday season from Michelle Scrimpsheron. You can order them at Michelle’s Etsy shop for around $17.00 per ornament.

Is it just me, or does the top ornament look like an eye from an Ood?
 

 

 
(via Super Punch)

 
I’m not putting up a Christmas tree this year, but if I were to, I’d top it with Yoda… and his lightsaber. He’s available for purchase over at the NetoShop for $59.95. 
 

 
Here’s an early Christmas gift from Caribou and All Tomorrow’s Parties:

From December 9th-11th 2011 at Butlins Holiday Centre, Minehead, UK, All Tomorrow’s Parties will present their yearly Nightmare Before Christmas festival. This year each day is curated by a different artist: Les Savy Fav on Friday, Battles on Saturday and Caribou on Sunday.

Please enjoy this amazing mix put together by Dan Snaith (Caribou), who has created an intense hour long journey through the artists chosen for his day of the event, highlighted by a new and previously unreleased remix of Improve Me by Junior Boys.

Tracklist:

01: Toro Y Moi - Intro / Chi Chi
02: Pharoah Sanders - Prince of Peace
03: Sun Ra Arkestra - Saturn Research
04: Pharoah Sanders Interview
05: Theo Parrish - Goin’ Downstairs Parts I & II
06: Getatchew Mekuria, The Ex & Guests - Aynamaye Nesh
07: Theo Parrish - Feel Free To Be Who You Need To Be
08: Junior Boys - Improve Me (Caribou Synthapella Mix)
09: Connan Mockasin - It’s Choa My Dear
10: Orchestra of Spheres - There Is No No
11:  Roll The Dice - The Suck
12:  Four Tet - Pyramid
13: Silver Apples - Oscillations
14: Roll The Dice - Cause and Effect
15: Factory Floor - Wooden Box
16: Omar Souleyman - Dabke (Daphni Edit)
17: Four Tet - Our Bells
18: Pharoah Sanders Interview
20: Sun Ra Arkestra - Space Is The Place

 
 
(via Testspeil.de)

 
Morrissey has allowed high-street department store, John Lewis to use a cover version of “Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want” on the chain’s £6 million Christmas advertising campaign. The track has been covered by Slow Moving Millie (aka Amelia Warner, ex-wife of Colin Farrell, apparently), which follows on from last year’s take of Elton John’s “Your Song” recorded by Ellie Goulding.

According to the Daily Telegraph Morrissey is “delighted” that the chain was using the track. Craig Inglis, John Lewis’s marketing director, is quoted as saying:

“We know our audience holds The Smiths and bands from that era in high esteem.”

“It’s a magical feeling when you find that perfect present for someone; there’s a great sense of anticipation from the moment you buy it to the moment you give the gift on the big day.

“That feeling is exactly what we’ve tried to capture with this year’s Christmas campaign.”

Ruth Paterson, head of marketing at Rough Trade, the record label which released most of The Smiths’ work, said she was entertained by the collaboration.

“I do like the idea of a really good song by a really good band being played in Middle England’s living rooms,” she told The Times.

“I’m sure that wasn’t the song’s intended purpose, but I think that’s a good thing.”

As Morrissey edges towards a pensionable age, the “substantial pecuniary boost” this ad will bring will no doubt be greatly appreciated - though perhaps not by his fans, as if that will matter.

After Morrissey and Christmas, who’s next? And what other advert involving high street business and alleged hip musician would make for the most unlikely pairing? Suggestions, please.
 

 
Ho-ho-hum.
 
Via I Raff I Ruse
 

 
The Divine David wishes us all the best for the Holidays. Let’s sing along.
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

 
As you sit around rolling the traditional Christmas joint (presents, surely? - Ed.) or preparing the Molotov cocktails (Egg Nog, surely? - Ed.) for the glorious day, (Holidays? - Ed), we thought you might like to hear the complete Beatles Christmas records , which some groovy people have posted on this site here.

Alternatively you can listen to all of these jolly festive discs below.

Have a glorious May Day. (You’re fired! - Ed.)
 

 
Complete Beatles Christmas Records 1963-1969, after the jump…
 
With thanks to Steve Duffy