I grew up in England, being as I’m British and all, and only am in America because we had to move here. At Christmas time, we had our many rituals and traditions, some of which we’ve lost by coming over here. Among them were Christmas pudding, Christmas crackers (with hats and toys inside, at dinner time), and watching ‘The Snowman’.

Based on a book by Raymond Briggs written in 1978, the film was released in 1982 on the U.K.’s Channel 4. It was an instant hit, and ever since has been shown every Christmas. It has become an important part of British and International Christmas culture.

Blah blah. I effing love this movie, I remember begging my mum to watch it all throughout the year. Its a silent film, scored by Howard Blake and features the song he also wrote called ‘Walking In the Air’, sung by Aled Jones for the film. Recently, ‘Walking In the Air’ was performed by Chloe Agnew, one of the singers of Celtic Woman.

This post has the mp3 of the song, and the youtube full version of the film.

The Snowman Website

For anyone who wants to buy this as a gift, or just enjoy it on Christmas, its available on DVD on Amazon for only $8.99. Can’t beat that. And Two-Day Shipping is  7 bucks. Totally worth it.

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 Walking In the Air - Aled Jones [3:25m]: Play in Popup | Download

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Culture Bully caught PJ Harvey’s performance of Grow Grow Grow on Leno the other night, like I did. I’m glad CB pointed it out, otherwise I may have forgotten to talk about it. LOVED this performance. Totally simple, voice and strings, easy. How she sings like that completely defies me. Her voice is weirdly normal, or normally weird, but still sneaks up on you, like a siren. I think. I don’t even know. Check out the vid, and head over to CB to check out the mp3 of the performance.

PJ Harvey // MySpazz // Check out White Chalk

If you hang around the site long enough, you’ll see that the band we have the most posts about is the John Butler Trio, which is probably my favorite band. I’m not big on picking favorites, but its the only band I really follow and check out whenever possible. Some may wonder why; if you check out their music and message maybe you’ll get it. Doesn’t matter. But this is another reason: Ocean.

I’ve seen John play it live 3 times. At Bonnaroo, at the HOB in New Orleans, and in Alabama. Bonnaroo’s Ocean was a little disappointing, because he didn’t do his slap-tap version, which I like best. In Alabama it was the first time I’d seen them live, and had only heard Ocean on CD and seen a video of him playing it at Webster Hall in 2005 in Oz. So that time was amazing, because I was seeing it, and because he did his slap-tap version.

Thats why I’m posting this video. It’s 14 minutes long, and if you can bypass the crowd cheering, you can see why JBT has so many devoted fans and why this is such a favorite. Its entirely instrumental, very impressive, but more than that, it’s just beautiful. I think I know why its called Ocean, if there is a reason for it. I hope you like.

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Link to this video.

And heres the video from Webster Hall, much shorter, only 5 minutes.

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Check out this video of John Butler playing with Keith urban on guitar and Michael Barker and Shannon Birchall doing rhythm for JBT’s performance of Funky Tonight on the Australian Arias. Pretty sweet, I say. Not Butler’s best performance of the song, but the dueling guitars at the end is pretty kickin’.

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