Three Hundred Sixty-Four Days Filled with Doubt and Fear

It's a very nice thing indeed to collaborate with Blue Girl on these annual Christmas songs. In 2006, we did a very quiet, meditative, woody version of the Vince Guaraldi number, "Christmas Time Is Here"; for last year's project we acknowledged the Inner Rockabilly, doing "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree." Keep this up, we'll have enough for an album.

The Viscount LaCarte suggested this year's tune. We go a long way back, he and I, in the Digital XTC Fan World -- nearly to its inception -- and he importuned us to work up a version of a novelty single XTC released in 1983 under the pseudonym The Three Wise Men and the Good Lord. It is a regular feature on the sorts of Christmas CD compilations that get played in shops and public places, and it never grows old for me. It's got a sweet sentimentality appropriate to the season, and hearing it simply makes me happy. What can I say? I'm a sucker for bubblegum.

Apple's update to Logic, their pro-level digital audio workstation, has brought the fabled Apple ease-of-use to what was once an insanely complicated interface. It was a joy to use it, and it was just as wonderful to use a borrowed Rickenbacker 12-string for the arpeggiated bits. While I was squirreling away in the studio, Blue Girl took a guide track in to a studio near her, blew the paint off the walls, and sent me the result. Drop the resulting file into my audio bed, and presto! Instant X-Muss Joy. As always, Glue Birl's fabulous husband The Skimmer supplied the witty artwork.

Without further fuss, then, here it is...

Thanks for Christmas (pops).