Christmas Booze...

A Drummers view of Christmas gigs

Chris...Mas! haha

It's that time of year again, when the big jolly chap with the red nose laughs and spreads good will to all. But that's enough about John, because Christmas is nearly here! About 2 years ago around this time I had just finished making the last of the band replica puppets, and really wanted to make a music video with them. My flat at the time was freshly decorated with a Christmas tree and we had been gigging a lot of festive run-up parties. The weekend before the Booze Brothers had a gig at the Salhouse Lodge near Wroxham, and I had recorded the whole gig on video camera. For once, the audio and the visuals had come out really well.

JP and Mike, enjoying the season...

There was a fairly passable version of us doing the Mud festive classic, 'Lonely This Christmas'. We always dig this song out, as everyone knows it and it's fairly easy to perform while drunk. I do remember once, playing it at a gig in the summer just for a laugh, but that's a story for another day… Armed with the audio we decided to make a Christmas video, fairly basically, in front of the Christmas tree. The results were alright - if you look closely you can see bit of puppeteer arm and head at times, but the tissues and over acting happily mask most of the artistic wobbles!

Just enough Christmas Cheer, and 80s decorations!!

Quite some time later, somewhere around the middle of the year, Mike informed me at a gig that he had written his very own Christmas song, and he and JP had recorded it on a four track. After lots of 'Why didn't you tell me sooner?!' rhetoric, he said he would get a copy of it to me, only his immediate family had heard it and he didn't know what else to do with it.
This seemed like a great opportunity to shoot our very own Christmas song video featuring just Mike and James' puppets.

Keeping it simple, I decorated the living room set with tinsel and (the very same) Christmas tree. I had found some really awesome 1980s ceiling hanging decorations at a car boot sale in August, so I HAD to use those as well. Once I had James and Mike in Christmas hats, I let them rock out to the "Christmas Cheer" song from two angles to make the most of the seasonal set.

Christmas Cheer, with a sprinkling of snow!

I belong to a puppet makers forum called puppetsandstuff run by Shawn Sorrell (http://www.wildjokerdesign.com/puppetsandsuch/ ) and during one thread I was following, someone mentioned that having a few lines of the puppets speaking before or after the song made the video better for the viewer. So, with that in mind, I  wanted a small amount of dialogue at the end to round off the song. I had been getting 'green screen' tips from the same forum and thought, what if I make it snow in the flat? That's pretty Christmasy, then I could use my puppet to fret about the mess. After a few hours of editing and cropping the Booze Brothers Band of Puppets Original Christmas Song was ready for unwrapping. So for your delight and Seasonal Chipperness, I present Mike 'The Chalk' White's "Christmas Cheer".

I would like to thank Michael White and James Phillippo for letting me use their song, it's a really nice edition to the puppet song channel, and a nice way to end a creative year for the Booze Band of Puppets. Merry Christmas to all the band, their long suffering families and all the people out there who have watched our videos and come to see us at gigs.

Lets hope 2013 is just as successful.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all of the Booze Brothers Band!