December 07, 2003

Jackie & Bridie - There Are No Lights On Our Christmas Tree

The Christmas season is well and truly upon us now, and many of the local houses are trying to out-do each other to see who can run up the biggest electricity bill for external decoration. All a far cry from the family described in this lovely folk song, There Are No Lights On Our Christmas Tree.

There was a lot of folk music in my upbringing, most of it local to the North-West of England. I didn't really appreciate it then, partly because it wasn't "cool", and partly because of the prevalence of the Lancashire mill songs from the Houghton Weavers. There are still a fair number of Houghton Weaver songs that I like, but I much prefer the groups with a Liverpool slant, such as The Spinners and the singers of this song, Jackie and Bridie.

There Are No Lights On Our Christmas Tree is taken from a recording of the duo live at the Liverpool Philharmonic (iirc, my parents went to see this actual gig) which explains the banter at the start. The sleeve notes on the LP finish with the line "you will be hearing a lot more from the talented Jackie and Bridie", it's a shame that I probably won't.

Posted by Adrian at December 7, 2003 10:29 PM | TrackBack
Comments

Whats a spammer?
I wonder if any one does have an update on Jackie and Bridie ?? I was one of crowd with your parents and have started to replay the old tunes. I would like to obtain more of their music and also know what has happened to them over the intevening years.
Can any one help me?
Anni

Posted by: anni plummer at January 10, 2005 07:04 PM

Ah, I see my link to Jackie's website has gone rotten. A quick google finds a new home for Jackie's website and an article about her from the Westmorland Gazette which also gives us the sad news that Bridie died a few years ago.

Posted by: Adrian at February 3, 2005 04:30 PM

I've just happenned across this site. I have fond memories of both Jackie & Bridie playing at the EMU Club at RAF Sealand in the early 70's. It was to my great delight that I saw them again in the early 80's playing in McTavish'e Kitchen in Oban, I think. The greatest memory was that I ended up on stage playing the wellie for them, much to the surprise of my girlfriend.

Posted by: Neil Turner at February 26, 2006 09:14 PM

Any idea where I could find a recording of the song?

Posted by: Eli at December 14, 2006 08:12 PM

Hi Adrian do you know if you can get the album that 'There are no lights on our christmas tree' on CD or still on good old vynal as after Father Died and when my Mother moved it was stolen and I would realy like to replace it. Tricia

Posted by: Tricia Marks at August 15, 2007 07:29 PM

It seems like there are still quite a few places selling old folk records. The LP that I've got featuring "There are no lights on our Christmas tree" is "Live at the Philharmonic" and there are a couple of copies on sale at this website.

And this search on Google has a few other websites with Jackie & Bridie records for sale too.

Hope you find a copy.

Posted by: Adrian at August 16, 2007 09:40 AM
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