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MERRY CHRISTMAS!
I hope everyone has a very happy holiday! 
"Step Into Christmas" was released in 1973, likely the most prolific and succesful year of Elton John's career. He began that year with the January release of the album Don't Shoot Me I'm Only The Piano Player. Then, in October, came the release of the legendary Good-bye Yellow Brick Road double-album. The two albums combined produced a total of six hit singles, two from the former album and four from the latter. In late November of that year (after the first two single releases from GYBR), "Step Into Christmas" was released as a non-LP single. It reached #23 on the UK charts. Later, when the 1974 album Caribou was remastered and re-issued in 1995, the song was included on the CD as a bonus track. It's also been included on other Elton John compilation CDs.
ELP's "I Believe In Father Christmas" is probably my favourite contemporary Christmas song by a pop/rock act. After doing the tab of it, I was surprised when I looked on YouTube and couldn't find a copy of the version I had tabbed. The song has had three lives just with Greg Lake/ELP alone. The first version was Greg Lake's recording of it, released as a solo project. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqOfXumI18A) Then a more stripped-down version of the song appeared on ELP's Works, Volume 2. The choir and orchestra backing of the original are removed in this version. This is the first version I knew, the one I'll always like the best, and it's the version I tabbed. The band re-recorded the song once more, with a slightly different guitar line, and some added backing vocals. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSUP_b88Sdg) All three versions are quite similar, but not exactly the same. (The version I tabbed also has two guitar parts in the Intro, which I don't think the others do.) I know I'm biased toward the Works version because I knew it first, but I also love the simplicity of it. Just a couple of acoustic guitars, a bit of synth, and Lake's lead vocal. There are lots of postings of the song at YouTube, but finding the version I tabbed was a tough task. Finally, with some perserverence, I found a video that used that version as background music. (The link for it is below.)
It's interesting to read comments at YouTube about this song, plenty of people saying that it's anti-religious, anti-Christmas, anti-Christian, etc. I think they mostly object to the first few lines of the second verse. It isn't the cheeriest Christmas song you'll ever hear, but I don't think it's any of those above named things, and Lake has made it clear in interviews that it's not meant to be any of those things. But I think it's a song of its time (written in 1974), a time when "message" songs were the order of the day. The Vietnam war was still ongoing. In the video of the orginal version, Lake sings the last line, "The Christmas we get we deserve", then there's a montage of video clips of the Vietnam war, finishing with a clip of a soldier arriving home and his young son running into his arms. Lake says the song protested the over-commercialization of Christmas, but to me it seems more like a loss of innocence song about how at Christmas adults fill childrens' heads with idealistic platitudes about peace on Earth and good will to men. But as those children grow up they realize that wars and crime and social ills go right on, even at Christmas time. I don't see the song as bitter or depressing; it just seems to be saying that Christmas itself isn't a magic panacea that makes the world a wonderful place. People have to do that. People have to make those platitudes about peace and good will mean something by their actions. The "Christmas we get we deserve" line suggests that the world is only what we make it. Which means there's always the option to make it better. So for me, the song sounds a note of hope and possibility, too. My two cents worth, anyhow.
Most-viewed tabs for the month of November 2008 (w/ view numbers):
22 - April Wine - Cum Hear the Band
17 - The Kings - Switchin' To Glide
17 - The Kings - This Beat Goes On
16 - Harlequin - Thinking Of You
14 - A Foot In Coldwater - (Make Me Do) Anything You Want
12 - Headpins - Celebration
12 - Loverboy - Working For the Weekend
11 - Harlequin - I Did It For Love
11 - Honeymoon Suite - Burning In Love
9 - Bachman-Turner Overdrive - Takin' Care Of Business
9 - Loverboy - Hot Girls In Love
Total Tab Views For November: 529
(By section: Canadian-332 Girlschool-136 Various-37 Chords-24)
Most-viewed tabs overall (stats date from Oct.3/07 to Nov.30/08):
184 - Harlequin - Thinking Of You
131 - The Kings - This Beat Goes On
114 - The Kings - Switchin' To Glide
107 - Honeymoon Suite - Burning In Love
91 - A Foot In Coldwater - (Make Me Do) Anything You Want
79 - Headpins - Don't It Make Ya Feel
78 - Honeymoon Suite - Stay In the Light
72 - Harlequin - Sweet Things In Life
71 - Kim Mitchell - Patio Lanterns
68 - Trooper - Raise A Little Hell
*Only tab views made by people (excluding my own views) are counted here. Webcrawler/bot views are excluded.
Calling all "long-haired freaky people". 
Today's riff is from Ottawa's Five Man Electrical Band. "Signs" is, of course, the band's best-known song. It's from the 1971 album Good-byes & Butterflies (groovy, man ). According to the liner notes of Absolutely Right (Five Man's greatest hits CD), the inspiration for the song sprang from vocalist/guitarist Les Emmerson's experience of driving Route 66 to California, and noticing along the way the many billboards that cluttered up, and blocked the view of, the scenery.
"Signs" was originally a B-side to "Hello Melinda, Good-bye", a single which failed to achieve much success. After a change in management, the band was encouraged to release "Signs" as a single in its own right. The advice proved to be golden, as the single sold 1.5 million copies, reached #3 on the Billboard chart, and became a classic anti-establishment anthem. Tabbed here is the Intro.
FIVE MAN ELECTRICAL BAND - "Signs" (L. Emmerson)
https://www.angelfire.com/planet/zerofret/annesblog/canriffs.txt
Audio:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiJk6MeBx54
One from the request file today, Loverboy's "Hot Girls In Love". The song is from the band's third album Keep It Up, released in 1983. The record went double platinum in the US, with "Hot Girls In Love" becoming their most successful single up to that point. It peaked at #11 on the Billboard chart, aided by heavy rotation on video stations like MuchMusic and MTV. This degree of success garnered the band its first headlining tour. The one time I saw Loverboy live was the year before this (summer of 1982). They opened for April Wine at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto, although with the kind of success both bands were enjoying at the time, it was more like a great double bill.
"American Storm" is the opening track of Bob Seger's 13th studio album Like A Rock (1986), his fifth with The Silver Bullet Band. The album went platinum, reaching #3 in the US. "American Storm" rose to #13 on the US Hot 100 and reached #2 on the Rock Charts. The song title was also tapped as the name of Seger's 1986 tour. It was a nine-month, 105-show affair, which sold 1.5 million tickets. At the time, Seger said the American Storm Tour would be his last major tour.
It's pretty common knowledge amongst listeners of Canadian rock music that Headpins were born as a side project of Chilliwack guitarist Brian MacLeod and bassist Ab Bryant, and that the project ultimately became a full time venture. Perhaps less well known is the fact that the band originally had a different lead singer. It's hard to imagine Headpins without Darby Mills' famous growl, but the band's first lead singer was Denise McCann. Remember the 1979 disco hit "Tattoo Man"? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1peo9NhafAY) Yeah, that Denise McCann. She left after a year, in stepped Darby Mills, and the rest is Headpins history.
Today's riff entry comes from Nazareth, a band who took their name not from the Middle East city in the Holy Land, but rather from the first line of the song "The Weight" by The Band. ("I pulled into Nazareth, Was feelin' 'bout half past dead...") The Nazareth referred to in the song is Nazareth, Pennsylvania. And as a further bit of trivia, Nazareth, PA, just happens to be the home of C.F. Martin & Co. guitar manufacturers.