i wish it could be christmas everyday

637. ‘Let’s Party’, by Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers

/ UK #1s blog / 9 Comments

Shhh! Be very very quiet. We’re hunting wabbits…

Let’s Party, by Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers (their 3rd and final #1)

1 week, from 10th – 17th December 1989

Blunderbusses at the ready, for surely you knew it was coming. With a chart-topper in the summer, and one in the autumn, Jive Bunny and his Mastermixers set their sights on the Christmas number one.

And after two rock ‘n’ roll medleys, he’s skipped forward a decade or so, to the glam Christmas classics of the seventies and early eighties. A Noddy Holder soundalike is on C’mon everybody! duties, as well as his classic It’s Chriiiisstmaaaass… line from ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’. This version sounds muted by comparison to Slade’s raucous original, but it only lasts for a verse and a chorus, before Wizzard take over.

Yes, ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’ finally assumes its rightful position atop the charts. It’s just a shame that it took this crap to get it there. Unlike Slade, Roy Wood endorsed this sampling, and even re-recorded his vocals for the occasion. That done, the 3rd song is announced: Ok Gazza, take it away…

And it’s ‘Another Rock and Roll Christmas’, Gary Glitter’s 1984 comeback hit. Given that he was also involved in last year’s ‘Doctorin’ the Tardis’, it’s easy to forget just how big a part of British popular culture he was before his trip to PC World. Presents hanging from the trees, You’ll never guess what you’ve got from me… (We’d rather not find out, Gary.) Apparently he’s been replaced with Mariah Carey in more recent versions of ‘Let’s Party’, though who exactly has listened to this song at any point in the last thirty years is beyond me.

The thumping beat that holds this whole mess together is called ‘March of the Mods’, which I don’t think has anything to do with Christmas. Why didn’t they try something from ‘The Nutcracker’, at least? And while I complained about some of the mixing on JB’s earlier #1s, at least attempts were made to stitch those songs together. Here the three Christmas songs and the filler beat slam together like dodgems. I found some cheesy, madcap charm in the previous chart-toppers, but here my patience runs out fast. (The sleeve above lists the record as a double-‘A’, alongside a version of ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Thankfully the Official Charts Company only lists ‘Let’s Party’, so I’ll follow their lead and pretend the Bunny’s desecration of Rabbie Burns never happened…)

What in the hell is going on…? a voice demands towards the end, a sentiment I wholeheartedly echo. J-J-Jive Bunny! someone else replies. Meanwhile the fake Noddy Holder aggressively bellows Let’s Party! It’s a mess, and not a hot one. Yet it entered the chart at #1, and meant that Jive Bunny joined Gerry & The Pacemakers and Frankie Goes to Hollywood in making top spot with their first three releases (the fact that Jive Bunny did it quickest is another feather in his cap).

He and the Mastermixers still had two Top 10 hits to come, and would continue releasing singles until well into 1991. But, thankfully, they won’t be troubling this blog again. And, despite the clear demand for this single, it was never going to be 1989’s Christmas Number One. We have Bob Geldof to thank for that.

(This is the original video, but with the Gary Glitter verse edited out and replaced with the second verse of ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’.)

(This sounds to me like a re-recording – with slightly more modern production values – but with he-who-shall-not-be-named left in…)

Should’ve Been a #1… ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’, by Wizzard

/ UK #1s blog / 11 Comments

Are you ready children…? (*Fart noise*)… Ladies and gentlemen, I give you a Christmas classic.

‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’, by Wizzard – #4 in December 1973

People complain that few good Christmas pop hits are written these days – though I would argue that The Darkness, Kelly Clarkson, Gwen Stefani (and even Miss Britney Spears) have all added their own classics to the canon this century – and then they look wistfully back to 1973, when two of the most enduring Christmas songs of all time raced up the singles chart.

Slade made #1 – and you can read all about that here – while an even better record got stuck at number four. (I always knew that they came out at the same time, but for years I assumed that Wizzard were runners-up.) Roy Wood’s band had already scored two superlative chart-toppers in ’73 – ‘See My Baby Jive’ and ‘Angel Fingers’ – when they turned on the snow machine and went even heavier on the French horns.

While Slade went quite tongue in cheek – with talk of drunken Santas and dancing grandmas – Wizzard lay the traditional Christmas tropes on thick: When the snowman brings the snow, Well he might just like to know, He’s put a great big smile on somebody’s face… And while Slade toned down the glam, for a Beatlesy ode to the season, Wood chucks everything at this one. It’s every bit as OTT, if not more, than their earlier #1s. And why not? When has Christmas ever been a time for subtlety?

By the end, if the two drummers and multiple brass instruments weren’t enough, the sweet, sweet voices of the Stockland Green School choir are added into the mix. Ok, you lot… Take it! (The full credit for the single is: ‘Wizzard ft. vocal backing from the Suedettes plus the Stockland Green Bilateral School First Year Choir with additional noises by Miss Snob and 3C’, which is every bit as extra as the song itself.) And for the last line, Roy earnestly implores us: Why don’t you give, Your love, For Christmas…?

See, it’s not as wild and anarchic as it sounds. Except, when you actually stop to imagine it being Christmas every single day, when the kids start singing and the band begins to play, and it quickly becomes a dystopian nightmare vision of never ending lights, noise, gift giving and turkey…. Still, I can forgive them, for this is a classic. A song that has been played every December since, but that somehow doesn’t ever inspire in me the feelings of irritation that, say, Slade, the Pogues and Mariah Carey do. As I write this, ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’ sits at #16 in the UK Singles charts, and will probably climb even higher next week.

All that’s left for me to do is to wish everyone who reads and follows the UK Number 1s Blog, a very merry Christmas. It doesn’t come everyday – and this year might be different than most – but, still, make it a good one!