The Christmas Party

A broadcast on behalf of the Christmas Party! An accidentally profound film about human aspiration, longing, suffering, the expression of these in literature, art and music the possibility (but by no means the certainty) of God and what that means as discussed amicably by four old and slightly tipsy friends. The sax episode “I can’t play for laughing!” steals the show - funny and musical (not always at the same time!) and I think we all come together more during that than on anything else, though we are definitely 'together' as a group throughout. Carols and Nativity poems (by U.A Fanthorpe and T.S. Eliot) and songs (Judy Garland’s “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”) offer their mixture of divine longing and wry realism, holy and broken hallelujahs, true and bum notes. And no Christmas story would be complete without a compelling modern tale of an Inn too busy cashing in to offer warm rooms of welcome. John’s emotion at the end of the Muggeridge is a revelation, a powerful ending that one doesn't expect but which resolves all the rest in a way one feels was always coming.

Say Good Buy To £7 - A Tacky Christmas Advert For Our New Album

1.	The Peacock's Tale 03:00 video
	2.	Rosemary Lane 03:20 video
	3.	Crazy Man Michael 03:39 video
	4.	In The Bleak Midwinter 03:22 video
	5.	The Rise of an April Leaf 03:04 video
	6.	Lady Guinevere 03:01 video
	7.	Bring Me To Fring All Saints 04:02video
	8.	Listen Listen 02:43 video
	9.	Blackwaterside 03:02 video
	10.	Tired With All These 02:03 video
	11.	Gwenhwyfar 05:40 video
	12.	Summer Wine 04:37 video
	13.	The Swimming Song 01:58 video
	14.	Walk on the Wild Side 04:52 video
	15.	Diamonds and Rust 04:14 video
	16.	Twenty Years 01:58 video
	17.	Transatlantic Arti 04:29 video

The Peacocks' Talking Christmas Card

Our favourite carol in a Peacock's Tale full band arrangement of Bert Jansch's Pentangley solo folk guitar version, prefixed here with the octave of my sonnet "Journey of the Magus". Also featuring bells from the church down our lane. 

The poetry of the carol (1872 ) is by Christina Rossetti and the tune (1906) by Gustav Holst. Rossetti has the distinction of having modelled the figure of Christ in the pre-Raphaelite painter Holman Hunt's "The Light of the World".

lyrics

To have turned to the East is then to be
Conscious of the chaos behind the plan,
Mindful of the terror behind the calm,
Eyeful of darkness in lit Western cities;
Now I’m called at last to God’s own country
Disbelieving in switch and tap and fan,
A Western, hygienic, jetted Dis-Man
Orientated by your love of me...


In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan
Earth stood hard as iron
Water like a stone
Snow had fallen
Snow on snow, snow on snow
In the bleak midwinter
Long ago

Heaven cannot hold him,
nor Earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
when he comes to reign.
In then bleak midwinter
a stable place sufficed
The Lord God almighty,
Jesus Christ.

Angels and Archangels
May have gathered there
Cherubim and Seraphim
Thronged the air
But his Mother only
In her maiden bliss
Worshiped the beloved
With a kiss

What can I give him
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would give a lamb
If I were a wise man
I would do my part
What I can I give him
Give him my heart.

credits

from PEACOCK'S TALES (The Sapphire Wedding Album), released December 1, 2024
octave from Journey of the Magus © Gareth Calway 2015 

Carol lyric by Christina Rossetti 1872, tune by Gustav Holst 1906.

Maz- Lead vocal, acoustic guitar.
Gaz - Voice, bass, foot bells, foot tambourine, djembe drum, bodhran, hand drum, triangle, common flute, support vocal, hi hat, starry cavern angels harmonium, Fring church bells.

Epiphany

Saints and Singers; Our Christmas LP

 

First released in 2021 as a 6 track EP and now expanded to showcase  all our Christmas material including new recordings for this year. 
The whole attempts to be greater than the sum of its jolly parts by evoking a journey Eastward - part mediaeval/allegorical orientation, part benighted rural Look East of England-  culminating in an arrival at Whatever Christmas Promises around track 13.

https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/saints-and-singers-our-christmas-album

https://youtu.be/xdBI4GQp-eY  The video

Being Santa

 

As I waited for our grandchildren to arrive and witness my premiere of this most iconic of roles, I shivered slightly. Not just with the damp December cold but with the responsibility. Here was Isla's encounter with the magical childhood Santa we all treasure in our memories. (Theo at a year old so as was unlikely to be find it any less strange and wonderful than his normal encounters with his grandsire)  I felt the weight of generations and centuries on my shoulders. Was my cod Nordic yodel and white beard sufficient disguise to sustain the magic of otherness in the familiar garden den Isla had helped me prepare? Would I fluff my vaguely Scandinavian up and down lines ("Ho ho ho! Have you been a good girl for your mummy and daddy?") overwhelmed by the epiphany of heaven's generosity and earth's humanity I was suddenly embodying, sotto voce, centre-stage and spot-lit in the radiance of a childhood delight? No Method actor (three months living with reindeeer in Lapland on mince pies in a thin red suit communicating only in High Elvish; then matching every word uttered to a motivation and a movement of the stuck on eyebrow so that I really 'felt' it,  - whether the audience did or not) could have felt any less charged and apprehensive. I recalled terrified moments behind the curtain at my Edinburgh fringe shows listening to the audient come in.

In the event, I needn't have worried.  "Grandpa! she shouted through the gap in the trees (top left) from the road below. The stocking hanging off the bough and the red and white through the depleted winter hedge succeeded in bringing delight but not it seems even a willing suspension of disbelief. And then it unravelled even more spectacularly and unexpectedly when she arrived at the grotto entrance and shared that sudden childhood terror of seeing a white bearded loon in the gloom.

"But don't you want your present?"

"No! it's too scary."

Ah well, maybe next year. (Theo will be two so you never know.) Fortunately our daughter, their mother, was old enough to deputise and console.

JOURNEY OF THE MAGUS by Peacock's Tale folk indie duo

Saints and Sinners Christmas EP by Peacock's Tale Audio

 

	1.	Fring Church Bells 01:52
	2.	Saints and Sinners (with bells on) 04:23
	3.	Journey of the Magus 01:43
	4.	You Gotta Move 02:00
	5.	The Parting Glass 02:06
	6.	Down To The River To Pray 02:53
	7.	Saints and Sinners live (amps off) 04:23

about

Press Release 

‘Saints and Sinners' is a cover of a folk song by Scots-Canadian David Francey performed live to camera on YouTube from our cottage in Sedgeford. 

“We set up the studio so that everything – voices, harmonies, guitars, percussion – rings out like a bell. In case the audience is in any doubt, we’ve blended some Fring Church bells (as rung on a Sunday morning by our local vicar) into the live mix.” 

The song’s composer won a John Lennon award for songwriting in 2010. The down to earth message of the lyric is that “it’s a long way from heaven to Bethlehem”but with a deep sympathy for “the joy and the sorrow of my fellow man.” Fellow survivors of the early 70s will recognise the nod to Lennonism in the jingly jangly hippy 60s mix. 

The EP covers the 'Christ' and the "Mess' of Christmas with a sonnet set to a drum and bass soundtrack narrating the 'Journey of the Magus' and an a capello cover of the Scots folk song 'The Parting Glass.' This Saints and Sinners motif is further pursued with two gospel covers 'You Gotta Move' and 'Down to the River To Pray'. 

The whole package may be streamed or downloaded from Bandcamp (search for ‘Peacock’s Tale folk indie duo’) and the ‘A’ side viewed on YouTube from December 6.

credits

released December 6, 2021

See also - https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/track/the-peacocks-talk-turkey-the-meanings-of-christmas

license

all rights reserved

tags

indie alternative americana folk gothic rap Sedgeford

about

X

Peacock's Tale Folk/Indie DuoSedgeford, UK

It's all right, folks, we're married. A marriage of melody and rhythm. Indie folk, Norfolk noir, historical ballads, musical ... more

edit artist bio

1. garethcalway.co.uk
2. Bardonthewire
3. SoundCloud
4. garethcalway.blogspot.co.uk
5. Facebook

discography

Phezant's Tail on BBC Upload

 

Tune in to

@BBCNorfolk

between 6 and 7 pm tonight for our uplifting 15C "The Only Gift (A Lynn Carol)" soaring across Norfolk into your 21C devices (at a safe social distance!)

@YourLocalPaper

@Voluptuia

@KingsLynnLive

@BBCUpload

Whet your appetite with https://youtu.be/R1xdN1QynoQ 

And check out "Who Killed Cock Robin, the Covid Case" our new double concept murder mystery album released today. https://phezants-tail.bandcamp.com

The Only Gift (A Lynn Carol) by the Phezant's Tail - Christmas single

Music video at -  youtu.be/R1xdN1QynoQ 

https://phezants-tail.bandcamp.com/track/the-phezants-tail-talk-turkey-the-meaning-of-christmas

The Phezant's Tail used to sing carols around the village on Christmas Eve, including this one, and the idea is that you open the door on hearing the Book of Margery Kempe (early 15C) at the start and these carol singers' voices float in on the night air. 

Since its publication as the final ballad in Gareth Calway’s “Doin Different, New Ballads from the East of England” (Poppyland, December 2012) The Only Gift has been set and recorded by no less than five different composers and enjoyed performances all over East Anglia, including a 50 voice rendition in Lynn Minster in 2018. The carol is as much about music and where it comes from as it is a celebration of Lynn mystic Margery Kempe, whose visions were auditory as well as visual and who writes compellingly in her Book about the music she heard in heaven. On this album, The Phezant's Tail sing, play and arrange the carol themselves, adding new musical material to folk musician Andy Wall’s score to confront “A Covid Christmas on the cards.” In the process, the duo reference the message and meaning of Christmas as an enduring hope amid trial, bereavement and despair from 1420 to the present. Coronavirus - corona meaning 'crown' - has certainly contextualised the mortality in the first verse, with its the opening line "A crown of thorns to freeze your breath." But it doesn't get the last word.

lyrics

"This creature had various tokens in her hearing. One was a kind of sound as if it were a pair of bellows blowing in her ear. She – being dismayed at this – was warned in her soul to have no fear, for it was the sound of the Holy Ghost. And then our Lord turned it into the voice of a dove, and afterwards he turned it into the voice of a little bird which is called a redbreast, that often sang very merrily in her right ear." (From the 'Book of Margery Kempe', early 15C) 

‘A crown of thorns to freeze your breath 
The berried holly brings; 
Through snowing sunlight chaste as death 
The silent barn-owl wings 

But now the ghostly holy dove 
That bellows in your ear 
Is tuned to robin-song by love 
And cheerfully made clear.’ 

The only gift left on the shelf 
That nothing else can rise above 
Includes all treasure, lasts forever, 
And grows when shared with others: love. 

Now starry angels on the tree 
Grow larger in the dusk 
To heaven-blue and Eden-green 
And gold and reindeer-musk. 

And what was heard by Margery, 
The Visionary of Lynn, 
Rings out on tills for checkout girls 
Who hear that robin sing. 

The only gift left on the shelf, 
That nothing else can rise above, 
Includes all treasures, lasts forever, 
And grows when shared with others: love. 

A sacred Ouse of honeyed sound 
Above her dreaming bed, 
She wakes as one in paradise 
And leaps as from the dead. 

A thrilling robin in her ear, 
A rose that’s heaven scent, 
A man divine to earthly eye, 
All music from Him lent. 

The only gift left on the shelf, 
That nothing else can rise above, 
Includes all treasures, lasts forever, 
And grows when shared with others: love. 

God coughs; the Cosmos catches cold; it's Marge upon our Holy Bread. 
A Covid Christmas on the cards to feed our emptiness. 

Love!

credits

released November 13, 2020 
Main ballad lyric © Gareth Calway first published in 'Doin Different' (Poppyland, 2015)  
garethcalway.blogspot.co.uk/p/doin-different.html 
credits 
Additional words © Gareth Calway 2020. And from the Book of Margery Kempe, early 15C. 
Main ballad melody composed by Andy Wall with harmonies written by Vanessa Wood-Davies. 
Arranged, performed and with additional music composed by the Phezant's Tail (Gareth and Melanie Calway). 
Twinned with  phezants-tail.bandcamp.com/track/the-mortification-of-mr-margery-2

license

all rights reserved