Bob Dylan has me freaking out.
No, not because he appeared at the Aragon Theater this past weekend and looked and sounded like an asthmatic escapee from a retirement home.
But a quick word on that:
Part of the joy of Bob Dylan is that no matter how no matter how much his voice degrades, sounding more and more like he just swallowed a box of roofing nails, his music continues to kick ass.
However, the Aragon Theater is just not a place he should perform. While the Aragon is a pretty little theater, the acoustics in there are so dreadful you might as well go watch a concert in a lead casket. Seriously, I don't know how that place gets away charging people money for the "sound" that is birthed into the world from its confines.
I needed like eight Red Bull and Vodkas just to paper over the tinny drill bit spiraling into my ear all night. Combine those acoustics with Dylan's corpse-voice and you basically have a completely incomprehensible show. I think he was either playing "Like a Rolling Stone" or a truck was dumping broken refrigerators into a concrete pit.
But that's not what has me down about Dylan. No, it's this whole Christmas album thing he's just put out called "Christmas in the Heart."
This album has basically fractured my perception of the world and split my mind in two.
If there's anything worth loathing in this strange world of ours, it's Christmas music, yet if there's anything worth loving with all your heart and soul, it's Bob Dylan.
Christmas music is the artistic equivalent of the Republican Party: it's useless, beyond obnoxious and never goes away no matter how hard it sucks.
Dylan on the other hand, is so enigmatic, so brilliant, so elusive, so beautiful, so striking in the depth of his musical and lyrical talents, that I occasionally find it hard to believe the guy is for real. Todd Haynes' film "I'm Not There" captured perfectly the contradictions of Dylan -- how you can't even cast a single actor to play him because every album, every song, every lyric almost feels like a reinvention yet somehow they all coalesce to make vivid sense.
Even in this late stage of his career -- decades after he had every right to be done as a creative and cultural force following utter masterpieces like "Highway 61 Revisited" or "Blood on the Tracks" -- he continues to elude fans, critics, and likely God himself with incredible albums like "Time Out of Mind," "Love and Theft," "Modern Times," and the eighth part of his bootleg series "Tell Tale Signs" (if you're a Dylan fan and haven't heard this yet, hit yourself in the face).
So that's why I have no effing clue what to do about "Christmas in the Heart." I certainly don't want to buy it and listen to it. But it's Dylan.
I listened to a few songs on the Interwebs and, yeah, it's kind of fun hearing Dylan's signature voice eviscerating these terrible, terrible songs, but I certainly don't want to have to hear them ever again. But it's Dylan!
Literally, I feel like my inner being, my core peace is being pulled apart, stretched like taffy. Because it's Dylan! Singing Christmas music!
Yet maybe that's the point. Dylan has never conformed to anything. Ever.
Not a single pre-conceived notion ever applied to him has been remotely correct. Most analyses of his music can be exploded within seconds. The man literally is the baddest mother****er to ever live because just when everyone was comfortable with his legend he goes and does the one and only thing no one ever could have predicted, which is release a Christmas album.
Bob, man, you got me. Yet again, you got us all.
Now, here is one of my all-time favorite descriptions of Barack Obama, spat like a hip-hop poem by Dylan himself:
Q: What struck you about him?
DYLAN: Well, a number of things. He's got an interesting background. He's like a fictional character, but he's real. First off, his mother was a Kansas girl. Never lived in Kansas though, but with deep roots. You know, like Kansas bloody Kansas. John Brown the insurrectionist. Jesse James and Quantrill. Bushwhackers, Guerillas. Wizard of Oz Kansas. I think Barack has Jefferson Davis back there in his ancestry someplace. And then his father. An African intellectual. Bantu, Masai, Griot type heritage -- cattle raiders, lion killers. I mean it's just so incongruous that these two people would meet and fall in love. You kind of get past that though. And then you're into his story. Like an odyssey except in reverse.
4 Comments
Christmas songs are boring. Dylan singing them is still boring. He made one mistake. He should of changed the words then that would of been an intresting christmas CD. No one cares about Karioki
Skratz said:
Another mysterious component to the curious case of Dylan’s Christmas album that I’ve yet to see mentioned is that this isn’t his first brush with putting out a Christmas entertainment. The 34th episode of his fantastic Theme Time Radio Hour was a “Christmas & New Year’s” Show. It was spot-on: hip, smart & witty but respectful. Check out the setlist on www.notdarkyet.org/themetime.html. It’s a wonderfully eclectic gumbo, from Leadbelly’s “Chistmas Is A-Comin’” to “Blue Xmas” by Bob Dorough & Miles Davis--a playlist, one might add, much better suited to Dylan’s singular performance skill-set than the baffling playlist he wound up with in “Christmas in the Heart.”
How did he come up with that particular selection, anyway? Did he download a play-list from a vault in the not-so-dearly-departed Muzak Corp? Did he lose a bet? “OK, I’ll vote for your guy, Obama, but if he turns out to be another run-of-the-mill president, I want you to record an album with these songs, & call it ‘Christmas in the Heart.’ Do whatever you want with the proceeds--give ‘em to a charity: God knows they’ll all be needing it!”
Jason said:
Also, he's Jewish.
fresnochicago said:
if you think his concert was bad
or the album is horrifying(which of course it is and this article completely nails it)
DO NOT view his Must Be Santa Vid on his offical youtube web site
it is utterly devoid of healing and is mega schlock kitsch
bobby bobby wherefort hast thou drooped unto within?
Leave a Comment?
What your comment will look like:
said: