Hot Press is an Irish music magazine of long standing. In 1978 and 1979, the magazine sponsored the release of several rock Christmas singles, and now they've put together an EP with all of them available in one place. (They're pushing this in 2016, but the Amazon listing indicates this has been up since 2014.) "December 24" is a midtempo rocker that takes a jaundiced look at last-minute shopping, with a nod to the spirit of the season mixed in there somewhere. "Christmas in the Cookhouse" is a Little Richard-via-garage-band ode to a missing holiday turkey (inspired by a true tale of the dog stealing it), "Gobble Gobble Gobble Hey!" mungs together 70s British punk with a purloined Ramones title while celebrating holiday excess, "Eight Reindeers (Santa Was a Trucker)" takes its inspiration for a mid-70s trucker song from Little Feat, and the title song is a Bruce Springsteen homage, right down to the downbeat lost-love topic of the lyrics. It's not clear from the promotional materials, but it appears at least some of the folks involved with these tunes were magazine staffers, and I gotta say, good on ya's, not just for doing this in the first place but for resurrecting it in the modern age so we can rock out old school for one more holiday.
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