Advent Calendar 2024

About a week ago we had a bit of sunshine pop in the shape of Saturday's Children in the Advent Calendar, and today we feature one of the ultimate sunshine groups: Harpers Bizarre. They only recorded four albums for Warner Bros. Records, but aside from one or two missteps they are all great and I play them often. Proper commercial success was limited to their 1967 breakthrough single Feelin' Groovy, a version of the Simon & Garfunkel song; their most famous member is Ted Templeman, who later forged a successful career as a producer for Warner Bros., helming albums by acts such as The Doobie Brothers, Van Halen and many others.

The recording of Randy Newman's Snow is taken from Harpers Bizarre's second album, Anything Goes, issued in 1967. The song is not exactly a Christmas carol, but sometimes we venture into general "winter" territory for our Advent Calendar. If the song is this great, it's totally justifiable.

Listen to Snow.

Or listen on Spotify, where I've created a playlist for this year's Advent Calendar.

The Spotify playlist for all the previous Advent Calendars is here. Note: The playlist is incomplete, as some of my calendar selections are just too obscure for Spotify.