Look what he has done to this little guy ...............

from the LA Times:

Despite some skeptical public reaction to news that Bob Dylan has made a Christmas album -- “Another sign that the end times are near,” a friend wrote in an e-mail linking to the Amazon Web page -- it’s no joke. And judging from half a dozen songs I was able to preview at a listening session Wednesday evening, it is a ton of fun.

“Christmas in the Heart” is due Oct. 13, and Dylan was still finalizing the song selection and sequencing this week, which is one reason a handful of music journalists weren’t able to hear the whole thing.

But the Currier and Ives-ish cover image is a good clue as to what Dylan is after on this set of traditional carols and recent vintage Christmas chestnuts -- beyond the charity aspect. (All of Dylan’s royalties -- in perpetuity -- will be divvied up among three organizations that help feed the hungry: Feeding America, U.K.-based Crisis and the United Nations’ World Food Program, which made a snarky Reuters story earlier this week about an early-download arrangement between Sony Music and Citibank seem especially misguided.)

Rather than simply a tossed-off session for his kids and grandkids, Dylan seems to be offering up an astute exploration of the roots of holiday music -- Christmas records in particular -- in the same way he has returned in various albums over the years to mine pop music’s foundation in blues, folk, country and gospel.

His version of “Must Be Santa,” with David Hidalgo squeezing reindeer-quick accordion, is directly inspired by the arrangement that Texas rock-polka group Brave Combo created on its 1991 gem of a seasonal album, “It’s Christmas, Man!” Better yet, there's a video on the way, shot here in L.A. Dylan's treatment of “Here Comes Santa Claus” goes straight back to Gene Autry’s 1947 version, with a guitar solo that mirrors the original, melodically and tonally.
He goes back even further with “O Come All Ye Faithful (Adeste Fideles),” singing the first verse in Hibbing, Minn.-accented Latin. Quattuor astri!

The arrangement of “Christmas Island” splits the difference between the Andrews Sisters-Guy Lombardo rendition from the '40s and pop throwback Leon Redbone’s wonderfully craggy 1987 recording. Taking on Mel Tormé’s “The Christmas Song,” Dylan’s grizzled voice sounds at times like a vocal cord or two might have been roasting on the open fire alongside those chestnuts.

Choral support on several of the previewed tracks recalls the Ray Conniff Singers, Mitch Miller and other such ensembles whose holiday albums were staples of the '50s and '60s, the soundscapes equally expansive and sonorous, favoring reverb-drenched chimes, xylophones and bells over the tight, fat and bluesy sound of Dylan's recent studio albums.

We can only hope that when the rest of the music surfaces, Dylan takes his cue from Dwight Yoakam and serves up a mariachi treatment of “Silver Bells.”

Dear God in heaven, what is this?? I agree with Barn Owl, it is hilarious. As soon as it began I had to laugh out loud. Yes, it IS campy too, but is it intended to be?
Look, Dylan's voice is totally unique, and it has always made his incredible music what it is and there is nobody like him. But an album of Christmas Carols?? He should have left that to Vic Damone or Andy Williams. His voice is incongruent with these songs, sung in the traditional way he has done here. If he were to alter them or make them more "Dylanesque", that's a different story.

Don't panic Bob tries so very hard ta keep it hid but it's just the Tiny Tim comin' out in him ......



ROCKMAN

Funny, but if the stones had released the same album at least half this board would have gone into cardiac arrest!

Sorry StonesTod, I read the set list quickly in a "State of Shock."
Think I'll spend my money on the Susan Boyle CD instead. Wonder how many times I will want to play it?

The LA Times review is just unbelievable. So there's nothing new on the album, it's all borrowed from here and there (and even as recent stuff as 1991 - but even if it was as old as 1871, so what?), but this rehashing of standard arrangements is called an "astute exploration of the roots of bla bla bla". I hear a man who not only has lost his voice, but also his mind it seems. What the hell? If my drunken grandpa gets into nostalgic huming, and if I mix it witha various oldies Karaoke tracks, it will sound the same as this, and it won't be an astute exploration.

I was already by people who call any recent Dylan stuff "genius". It seems the lower he sinks, the higher the superlatives rise, in a desperate attempt at self-dellusion. So let's have it! Dylan crowns his peerless career by becoming Christ himself, celebrating his own birth, with croaks that testifies that he has the blood of twenty centuries on his voice...

Ah Bob, Bob... I'll give a spin to something nice like Abandoned Love, to remind me why we are inclined to still praise you for your disastrous outings, the mad old timer who puts on his old independance war uniform and goes bare foot through the streets chanting irish tunes...

I am a big Dylan fan. His later stuff has a lot of poignant brilliance, but this release is...umm....really strange! And his voice does indeed sound pretty shot. I guess I will go back to Merry X-Mas (War is Over If You Want It) for my classic Christmas fix.

It´s a funny release. It doesn´t count the same way as his others because it´s a christmas album. Whether you like it or not. It´s going to be played from now on every christmas.......

PS: as sometimes mentioned, this is a stones forum

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bluesinc.
PS: as sometimes mentioned, this is a stones forum

Oh,ok,let´s wait for Jagger´s Jingle Bells...

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shortfatfanny

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bluesinc.
PS: as sometimes mentioned, this is a stones forum

Oh,ok,let´s wait for Jagger´s Jingle Bells...

he would take it too serious and it won´t be cool, well maybe, we don´t know.
But Keith could do it....
Chuck Leavell did it. Got a signed copy of his What´s in that bag CD

Thanks for the preview Turd.
I've heard enough and canceled my order on Amazon. I'll stick with Bing and Burl Ives.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Dylan fan...but this is ridiculous.
Campy? Maybe. Humorous? Possibly. Pathetic? Absolutely.

well, it's just an effing xmas album - hardly an attempt to add to his artistry...

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bluesinc.

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shortfatfanny

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bluesinc.
PS: as sometimes mentioned, this is a stones forum

Oh,ok,let´s wait for Jagger´s Jingle Bells...

he would take it too serious and it won´t be cool, well maybe, we don´t know.
But Keith could do it....
Chuck Leavell did it. Got a signed copy of his What´s in that bag CD

Keith already put out one Christmas song:

Maybe Dylan can use this one
for a Chanukah album ...

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Toru A
What is the contents of deluxe edition?

Is "I'll Be Home for Christmas" different from this classic?

Yes. Different song.

Bob's album sounds like the perfect solution for those who like to spend Christmas alone.

...or, for that matter, any other day of the year.

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Barn Owl
Bob's album sounds like the perfect solution for those who like to spend Christmas alone.

...or, for that matter, any other day of the year.

see? now that's more like it...very few albums are perfect...this sounds like an exception....

LoFL: after listening to about six seconds of that "preview" yesterday,
i actually had a nightmare about this release. thanks a lot, Bob! very funny :E

from Rolling Stone:

Sincerity — that’s Bob Dylan’s present to you on his first-ever Christmas album. Based on a preview of six tracks from Christmas in the Heart — a set of traditional hymns and popular holiday songs to be released October 13th — held at the Sony Music offices this week, Dylan truly means it when he gets to the famous closing line of “The Christmas Song,” co-written by singer Mel Tormé and first cut in 1946 by Nat King Cole: “Although it’s been said many times many ways, Merry Christmas to you.” Against a restrained country-saloon-band arrangement, Dylan’s dirt-road larynx smooths out into a low warming tenor wishing you the top o’ the season.

Dylan produced the album under his pseudonym Jack Frost (very appropriate this time around) and recorded it with his touring band and some guests, including male and female chorales and Los Lobos accordionist David Hidalgo, who played all over Dylan’s last album, Together Through Life. The accordion is, in fact, the driving instrument on “Must Be Santa,” which Dylan takes at hyper-polka speed, with a spiked-eggnog exuberance in the backing vocals. “The Little Drummer Boy” combines the dusted-roots quality of Together Through Life and the haunted flair of his 1989 album, Oh Mercy, with prominent drum rolls and a wall of singing angels behind him. The Jordanaires-like male harmonies in “Here Comes Santa Claus” add some holiday Elvis to the barn-dance gait. A long Hawaiian steel-guitar flourish starts the palm trees swaying in “Christmas Island,” and Dylan puts extra church in “O Come All Ye Faithful” by singing the first verse in the original Latin (”Adeste fideles . . .”).

Dylan, who opens a fall U.S. tour October 4th in Seattle, recently completed a video for “Must Be Santa” and is hoping Christmas in the Heart will be a gift that keeps on giving. He has pledged all of his American royalties from the record, now and forever, to Feeding America, a program that provides meals for the hungry. Proceeds from overseas sales will go to international charities.

I miss 'Silent Night' on that list.

2 1 2 0

This is just so 'Dylanisque move'. It makes me fixed feelings. The whole thing came out of blue and it still goes a bit beyond common sense. But there is something so fascinating in his sincerity and braveness. He is STILL, funny as it is, difficult to define. The point is: I think none of us here does have a suitable categories or conceptual framework according to which to really judge this recent move. Simply, there are TWO things that seems to bother us:

There are
(a) no a Dylan album like this before (i.e it goes beyond our concept of Dylan)
(b) no a Christmas album like this before (i.e it goes beyond our concept of Christmas music)

I think 'we' try to locate the album either of these categories, and they just don't fit. There are no equals. With (a) I think it is based on what we 'know' about Dylan by now, of his releases, of his legacy, etc. With (b) I mean what we think of Christmas albums - how corny and cheap - they 'usually' are when an artist - or a pop singer, etc. - decides to realease a Xmas album or a song...There's not much street crebility left after that move (unless it is done with own particular, significant way: Lennon, Keith )... If Dylan had done as I, for example, thought - 'dylanisque' blues folk based interpretation of the old classics - THAT would have made sense, and we would see it to both of these categories.

But like said, I'm fascinated, but I don't know what REALLY to think of all this... Probably the album in future will remain with, say, SELF-PORTRAIT, gathering most dust and be played VERY rarely.

I think if ANYONE else had tried to do this project he or she or them or it would be laughed out of court. But Dylan seems to get away with it. It is not a question of having double-standards - the issue is that he can do thing no one else is able to. He is not coping certain patterns but creating and re-shaping them.

Wonderful to have Dylan - a living, real artist - around. He IS unique.

- Doxa



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2009-10-05 12:26 by Doxa.

Sunday, September 27, 2009
'50s Polka In a Decrepit Mansion, Russians, And a Fight Where Someone Gets Thrown Through A Window

Why, "It Must Be Santa!" And it is. Dreamtime reader "CompleteUnknown" passed on this report from the NeverEnding Pool, from an actress who was at the filming of the "Must Be Santa" video last Wednesday/Thursday and contacted her friend in the Pool, "Wild About You Babe," with the details. In turn, "Wild About You, Babe" was kind enough to post the full report at the Pool. Thus, the "She" below is the unnamed actress.

I've edited the original a bit for clarity and to take out some extraneous stuff. You can read the full report at the link above. Moral of the story is that if see a casting call for "Video shoot with popular musician,”unlike with panthers, you should anthah.

... she remembers submitting for a job that said only- ‘Video shoot with popular musician” She said she rarely applies for those kind of things. When she got the call informing her she was selected for the Bob Dylan video, she said, “I didn’t apply for that’ “Yes you did” she was told, “ The producers didn’t want his name on the announcement because they didn’t want vast numbers of people applying for it.”

The filming took place [September 23rd] at a large house in Los Angeles. It sounded like no one is living there because my neighbor described it as deteriorated. She said she could tell it had once been a beautiful home, and couldn’t believe how rundown it was.

The video is for the song “Must Be Santa” She said it is a fast polka beat and she is exhausted from dancing all night. When she got there, she was the only one that knew the words to the song, so she was assigned to teach it to the rest of the cast. She was the only one of the group that got to sing a whole verse with Bob. The rest of the singer/dancers were fed a line each, one at a time, to sing with Bob. Then they all joined in for the chorus. The scenes moved from room to room and when the chorus came in, Bob would pop up in a different room. She was in the group of ‘polka dancers’ She was dressed in ‘fifties’ style clothing. She also mentioned some Russian dancers. The video also has a fight scene and one cast member was ‘thrown’ through a plate glass window at the front of the house. She also described a scene where Bob was sitting on top of a tall porch surrounded by pillars.

The shoot went from about 9 am Wednesday to 3:30 am Thursday...

...After the shoot, She, Bob and (as she described him) “this horrible accordion player they hired” were just sitting around singing. Bob did not want to sing any of his songs. They sang a lot of Elvis (including Love me Tender) The Beatles and The Everley Brothers. She was amazed at how Bob knew all the words to the songs. She tried to sing harmony with him during an Everly Brothers song but said, “there’s no harmonizing with that voice!”. She said the accordion player couldn’t hit two notes if his life depended on it but apparently he was well connected to Bob, thus getting all of Bob’s attention. They hadn’t seen each other in forty years. He taught Bob and Sarah the Lamaze method of childbirth back when they were having the kids...

not that I know what to say - I have no idea what to think ;P

Erik, help!

Give us some wisdom on this Christmas bag Bob is into.

Yeah Erik you are always a big voice for Dylan, help shed some light on this. Now I for one don't find it as aweful as most of the folks here, and it is actually quite funny in places. But man his voice really sounds shot on several of the tracks.

... a Christmas video where Santa is getting thrown through a plate-glass window sounds ... special :E
(i'm Jewish, so what do i know - oh wait: so is Bob!)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2009-10-06 12:14 by with sssoul.

brilliant stuff from Bob - can't help but feel all Xmassy.
Bring it on

Oh Little Town of Bethlephlegm!?!?!

It would have made a great soundtrack for Bad Santa...