(no subject)

[miko2]

Today's Song: The Toymaker/Last Day of the Year by Golden Bough

I have a Christmas cd by Golden Bough that is long out of print (I think). It has some of my favorite covers of certain Christmas songs -- Christmas Comes But Once A Year, The Holly and the Ivy, My Dancing Day, and Down In Yon Forest. While I was trying to make sure I had all of my favorite songs from this cd on my current Christmas playlist, I kept trying to locate another song by them that didn't seem to be on my cd -- but I knew they did it, and that it was a Christmas song.

I looked through my other cds of theirs and still couldn't find it. Then I did some research. Here's what I found: Of the original first 6 albumns that Golden Bough put out, I have 4 1/2 of them on cd. I own the original self-titled release, I own Far From Home and Beyond the Shadows, which were two of the last of the first six releases, plus the Christmas cd Winter's Dance. I also own The Boatman's Daughter, their second release, on cd -- and it contains a bunch of the songs found on Flight of Fantasy, their third cd.

What I'm missing (on cd -- I still have lp's of everything) is Winding Road, their fourth cd (and the last with Lief Sorbye, before he left to form his Celtic folk-rock band Tempest). I'm also missing a few songs from Flight of Fantasy, but until now I hadn't realized that this included a favorite Christmas song of mine, The Toymaker/Last Day of the Year. They didn't put this on their Christmas cd, and they didn't include it on the special The Boatman's Daughter cd. It can be found on one of their "recollections", a 2-cd set of songs from these older cds called Contemporary Songs: The Night Wind.

I've now rectified that by ordering this cd for cheap through Amazon -- it was only about $7.00 including S&H. Not that I really needed to order anything else this month, but I want to hear this song again. ^_^

This is an original song written by Paul Espinoza of Golden Bough, so I won't find another version anywhere. But it's a nice Celtic tune about Santa Claus, very pretty.

Oh, and by the way -- The Mediaeval Baebes do a nice version of The Holly and the Ivy. I downloaded that one. On the other hand, Roger Whittaker does just about the worst version I have ever heard.