2011              2011

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

See the Light was the 1988 debut album from the Toronto-based trio formed by blues guitarist Jeff Healey. The album spawned four radio singles, and sold 2 million copies worldwide. Even before the album was recorded, the band gained international exposure when a demo tape sent to producer Jimmy Iovine resulted in them being cast as the house band in the film Road House. After that project, Iovine helped to produce See the Light.

Tabbed here are the first twelve bars of the title song's Intro. Tabbing Jeff Healey's guitar parts can present some new challenges. His unorthodox playing style gave him options the average guitarist doesn't have. Sometimes it can result in slightly awkward fingerings when transcribing it for guitar played in the standard way. But it keeps things interesting!

THE JEFF HEALEY BAND - "See the Light"     (J. Healey)

https://www.angelfire.com/planet/zerofret/annesblog/canriffs.txt

I wasn't able to find a studio recording of the song online, but this live version is fairly close (in regard to those first twelve bars).
 

In November of 1984, Queen released the holiday single "Thank God It's Christmas". The song was released independent of any Queen album, with the B-side consisting of two songs from The Works, the band's album release from earlier that year. "Thank God It's Christmas" later appeared on the Queen album Greatest Hits III.

Wikipedia notes that the lack of a promotional video to accompany the song prevented it from getting much play on video stations in ensuing years, leading to it being one of the lesser known pop Christmas songs. That, however, wasn't the only disadvantage the single faced. A mere ten days after its release came the release of another Christmas song on the British pop music scene, Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas". Needless to say, that song garnered most of the media attention and generated the biggest buzz during that Christmas season. Still, "Thank God It's Christmas" climbed to #21 on the UK pop charts.

Soon after, Queen kicked off 1985 with a triumphant headlining spot at the Rock In Rio festival, then followed it up by turning in arguably the best performance of the day at the Live Aid concert in July. After a relative dry spell throughout the early 1980's, 1985 saw Queen's popularity on the rise once again.

The chord chart:
https://www.angelfire.com/planet/zerofret/crd/queen-thankgoditschristmas.txt

In the 1990s, Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart engaged in a musical side project, a band called The Lovemongers. Joining them in the venture was their long-time friend and songwriting partner Sue Ennis, as well as musicians Frank Cox and Ben Smith. The group released an EP and a full length CD, and in 1998 they released a Christmas CD entitled Here Is Christmas.

As I recall, that album was a bit hard to come by, but I remember buying a cassette tape single of the album's title song. The B-side of that single was a very nice acoustic guitar and flute instrumental rendition of the traditional Christmas carol "Bring A Torch, Jeanette Isabella".

In 2001, the Wilsons re-released this Christmas CD under the Heart name, titling it Heart Presents A Lovemongers' Christmas. It was issued once again in 2004 (with the cover shown at top right) with two new tracks added. A shortened one-verse version of "Bring A Torch" opens the album, seguing directly into "Here Is Christmas", while a full version of the song closes the album. The tab is of the full three verse version.

The tab:
https://www.angelfire.com/planet/zerofret/vartab/heart-bringatorch.txt

I'm hoping to have things up and running again within the next week or so. In the meantime... 

At 17 million plus hits on YouTube, there can't be many people who haven't seen this seasonal video yet, but it's always fun to watch again. I think it's pretty cool since it's almost local to me (relatively speaking), having taken place just over in Welland (Ontario) in the food court of the Seaway Mall. Chorus Niagara does a fantastic performance of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's "Messiah", and it looks like it was a lot of fun for everybody.

Most-viewed tabs for the month of July 2010:

39 - Honeymoon Suite - Burning In Love
33 - Max Webster - A Million Vacations
27 - Doucette - Mama Let Him Play
27 - The Kings - This Beat Goes On
27 - The Poppy Family - Where Evil Grows
26 - Honeymoon Suite - Stay In the Light
24 - Max Webster - Let Go the Line
23 - Harlequin - Thinking Of You
20 - Honeymoon Suite - New Girl Now
19 - Girlschool - All Day All Night

Total Tab Views For July: 1,096
       
By section:  Canadian-691  Girlschool-194  Various-109  Chords-102