From a nonexistent Bee Gees LP, photo circa 1973.

Less than two weeks out from Christmas, it’s time for a good Christmas-y post, so here are two clips, one from the Bee Gees and the other from Sheryl Crow.

The Bee Gees clip is both charming and unique. Appearing on Cilla Black’s TV show in 1983 for a live rendition of Silent Night, the performance is unique for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I can’t think of any other television appearance that featured Barry, Robin and Maurice with their respective wives (Linda, Dwina, Yvonne).

Sheryl Crow, 2008.

The performance* also features several Gibb children and finds the brothers in a very relaxed mood with them all cracking jokes. Robin is particularly funny. But for diehard Gibb fans, you can’t help but appreciate how seemingly unusual (or rather, special) it was to have the brothers together at this lesser-known juncture in Bee Gees history.

1983 saw the brothers releasing solo albums, writing Kenny Rogers’ Eyes That See In The Dark LP and writing and performing songs from the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, Staying Alive. They were incredibly busy, but they weren’t especially known as “the Bee Gees” in 1983. It’s a beautiful clip, enjoy:

And the second video is Sheryl Crow with her hymn-like 2008 Christmas original There Is A Star That Shines Tonight. On my radio shows I’ve been bemoaning the fact that whether good songs or bad songs, new Christmas songs never get airplay beyond the year they are released.

Then low and behold, CNN ran a piece yesterday about that very fact, saying how Mariah Carey’s 1994 All I Want For Christmas is the most recent song to establish itself as a Christmas standard – that’s 19 years ago! So here is yet another modern Christmas song to unfortunately get forgotten, the quite lovely (and directly spiritual) There Is A Star That Shines Tonight: