Author Archives: Lloydville

THE CHRISTMAS SONG — IN THE HEART

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Bob Dylan’s Christmas In the Heart, track by track . . .

Dylan just eases into this one, with a quiet pleasure that summons up an image of him settling back in an armchair before the fire, wearing his Bing Crosby cardigan and filling up a pipe — with tobacco!  The ghost of his favorite dog from childhood, old Shep, is curled up at his feet, he can smell the turkey roasting in the oven and he knows that the egg nog in the icebox is just about ripened.  Boy, that’s gonna be good.

The night wind is whipping snow against the windowpanes, and Bob is entertaining visitors, even though nobody but him can see them.

He’s communing here, with Bing and Nat and Frank, not trying to outdo them, just happy to be in their company.

In short, he’s messing with your head.  He’s messing with his own head.  But what the heck?  Just throw another log on the fire, settle back in your own armchair and enjoy it.  It’s Christmas . . . the happiest season of all.

Back to the Christmas In the Heart track list page.


CHRISTMAS ISLAND — IN THE HEART

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Bob Dylan’s Christmas In the Heart, track by track . . .

How’d you like to spend Christmas on Christmas Island?  Dylan and his devilishly cute-sounding girl back-up singers make it seem like a swell idea.

In an interview about the album, Dylan said he knew nothing about Christmas Island — not even if it was a real place.  It is — that’s a picture of it above.  It’s the largest coral island in the world, sits in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and was discovered in 1777 by Captain Cook — on Christmas Eve, natch.  It was unpopulated then but now has a few thousand inhabitants and, due to its position relative to an international date line, is the first inhabited place on the globe to ring in the New Year.

The British conducted some of their first nuclear bomb tests there in the late Fifties and early Sixties — radio reports of which may have entered Dylan’s subconscious at the time.  Graham Greene mentioned the tests in his novel Our Man In Havana, clearly struck by the irony of such things happening on an island so named.

The song was first recorded by the Andrews Sisters (above) in 1946, reflecting America’s fascination with the Pacific islands in the post-WWII era.  After the horrors which unfolded on them in that war, they took on a paradoxical aura of magic, making Hawaiian shirts, exotic tropical drinks and “Tiki” music irresistible.  Were they the symbol of an innocent paradise lost in the war, which we wanted to recover?  Or did we simply feel a new, proprietary affection for the places where so much American blood was spilled?

All the contradictions were embodied in works like South Pacific, the stage and film musical, and in John Ford’s Donovan’s Reef (where a South Seas Christmas celebration figured prominently in the tale.)  Both these works explored the subject of racism, in a setting where the issue was perhaps easier to engage, metaphorically, than on home soil.  (Thanks to Paul Zahl for noting the Donovan’s Reef connection.)

Musically, the Tiki style, with its pedal-steel guitar, influenced country-western music (and, as Mary Zahl has reminded me, Dylan’s own Tiki-inflected pastiche, “Beyond the Horizon”).  Bing Crosby and Jimmy Buffett, both of whom Dylan admires, recorded covers of “Christmas Island”.

So a lot of cultural lines intersect in this song, as they do in all the songs on Christmas In the Heart, but the best thing about Dylan’s version is that he plays it straight, without “quotes” around the number — it’s not about nostalgia or irony or attitude.  It gets to the heart of what made the Tiki style so appealing — a dreamy, lyrical vision of places where love and life are easy, simple, natural . . . places where goodness calmly gets the better of meanness . . . places where all your Christmas dreams come true.

Back to the Christmas In the Heart track list page.

THE FIRST NOËL — IN THE HEART

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                                                                                                                    [Image © 2007 Midolluin]

Bob Dylan’s Christmas In the Heart, track by track . . .

As I wrote recently to a friend, Dylan has a capacity to re-imagine Christmas as though the past 2000 years of institutional church nonsense never happened.  He seems to be singing from the apostolic era of Christianity, as an eyewitness to what went down back then.

On this song, I have no trouble hearing the voice of one of the original shepherds in Bethlehem who first saw the momentous star and followed it to a stable, where a baby was being born.  The shepherd was a boy then — now he’s an old man, but he’s telling the story one more time, just as he remembers it.  “And by the light of that same star,” Dylan sings, in a tone that suggests he’s saying, “. . . that star, boys, the one I was telling you about, the one I saw.”

And as he’s telling it, he gets caught up in the excitement of it . . . one more time — not just reporting anymore, by the end of the account, but adding his voice to the angels’ chorus, quite carried away by the word they kept repeating . . . “Noël!”

He’s probably dined out on the story more times than he cares to remember, to the point where the old-timers of Bethlehem are sick of it, but it still gets to him, in spite of himself.  It makes him feel like a kid again.

Back to the Christmas In the Heart track list page.

SILVER BELLS — IN THE HEART

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Bob Dylan’s Christmas In the Heart, track by track . . .

Dylan’s version of “Silver Bells” has  a country-tinged arrangement, which subtly suggests that the singer is far from home this holiday season, looking around in wonder at the city celebrations, “Santa’s big scene”.  Dylan delivers the lyrics with a quiet sort of reverence, though — as he listens for the transcendent meaning of it all, which he hears in the silver bells ringing out from the steeples of churches, high above the bustle, echoed perhaps in the hand-bells of the sidewalk Santas.

You’re bound to think of the vision delivered in Dylan’s own song “Ring Them Bells”, in which sacred bells toll out their timeless commentary on “the wheel and the plow”.

In the middle of the urban hurly-burly, Dylan is looking for something that isn’t immediately apparent, something that speaks only to the heart.

Back to the Christmas In the Heart track list page.

MUST BE SANTA — IN THE HEART

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Bob Dylan’s Christmas In the Heart, track by track . . .

The raucous arrangement here is led by David Hidalgo, of Los Lobos, on accordion.  His Tex-Mex style comes full circle, back to the polkas played in south-Texas German communities which morphed into the Latin-inflected border music of today.

It’s all part of the delirious free-fall through American music that Dylan takes on Christmas In the Heart, into a place where there are no borders between styles, genres, periods.  No borders, either, between high-brow and low-brow taste, deeply religious and secularized Christmas music, fun and faith.  In short, this is a journey into culture as it’s actually experienced, a jumble of modes and moods and images that somehow adds up to Christmas in America.  Dylan is down on his knees at one moment, up on his feet dancing at another.  This is not chaos — it’s life.

He’s dancing on this song, proving that joy to the world doesn’t have to be delivered on an organ in a church, or in a choirboy’s voice.  Further commentary would be useless — you need to get up off the couch and dance to this one.

As the wacky video of the song suggests, it’s one way of shooing the Devil and all his works out the window.

Back to the Christmas In the Heart track list page.

PARIS: DOUBLE VISION — THE GRAND VÉFOUR UNDERGROUND, PART TWO

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Today, Coralie Chappat takes mardecortesbaja readers into the heart of the Grand Véfour restaurant in Paris — the underground kitchen.  It looks so spotless it’s hard to imagine that food is actually prepared in these spaces, but it is, as future reports will affirm.  Note, too, the reference photos posted above the work counters, ensuring that the presentation of the dishes will conform to the chef’s original conceptions.  Coralie writes:

Les lourds plafonds bas et l’espace réduit se déploient en trois
souterrains donnant à l’ensemble, l’esthétique du sous-marin.  Les
lieux pour lesquels l’absence d’effluves me surprend, me sont décrits
avec la précision requise: la chambre froide:

. . . le couloir des desserts:

. . . le coin des mets chauds:

À chaque espace est assignée une tâche singulière, mais je ne retiens qu’un ensemble de carrelages et de plans de travail en acier inoxydable, qui font effet de négatif photo aux images culinaires du Grand Véfour.  Mon regard lisse les surfaces, parcourt les renfoncements, s’incruste dans les moindres recoins, pendant que mon enthousiasme se mue en une interrogation nimbée de mystère.  J’en imagine le fonctionnement pareil à un mécanisme d’horlogerie.



Aucun indice, pas la moindre évidence ou trace sur la manière dont ces
petits miracles s’accomplissent.  Une sensation s’éprouve néanmoins.
De ce laboratoire au laborieux quotidien où la fonction se lit beauté,
se dégagent des inclinaisons altruistes inspirant le respect.

Arrivée au terme du temps qui m’est imparti ; il n’y a pas l’ombre d’un
doute. C’est bien de magie qu’il s’agit.

[Photos © 2009 Coralie Chappat]

HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS — IN THE HEART

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Bob Dylan’s Christmas In the Heart, track by track . . .

Finally Dylan comes up against a song with a precedent he can’t really improve upon or add much to.  Judy Garland’s recording of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”, done for the soundtrack of Meet Me In St. Louis, is the definitive version of the song, treading the line between the lyric’s sadness and its hopefulness with sublime delicacy.

It’s only her soundtrack version that rules, though — the recording she made for the song’s commercial release on Decca is very fine but not quite as moving.  This was true of many of her movie songs, which she really “acted” on the MGM recording stage, then performed in a more neutral style for Decca.

Dylan’s version is very fine, too.  He sings it tenderly — but somehow he misses the melancholy, half-panicked undertow of Garland’s soundtrack recording.  Only on the line “until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow” does he suggest that things might be worse than he’s letting on elsewhere in the song.


                                                                                        [Image © 2009 Drew Friedman]

Sinatra, on his similarly fine recording, also misses the full measure of melancholy that Garland conveys — though like Dylan he has his moments.  When he sings “so have yourself a merry little Christmas now” you can feel a sense of doubt and resignation that gets to the song’s core.

Garland is aided greatly on the soundtrack recording by Conrad Salinger’s subtle but deeply expressive arrangement, which brilliantly evokes the melancholy mode without hitting you over the head with it.  This allows Garland her own subtlety in interpreting the song — you feel its sadness without quite being conscious of it, at least on a first hearing.  On subsequent hearings you realize that Garland’s character in the film is not just trying to reassure her younger sister with the sweet song, she’s trying to reassure herself — and not quite succeeding.

Garland’s is one of the greatest vocal performances of all time — to say that Sinatra and Dylan almost give her a run for her money is high enough  praise for any singer.

Back to the Christmas In the Heart track list page.

PARIS: DOUBLE VISION — THE GRAND VÉFOUR UNDERGROUND, PART ONE

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The venerable Grand Véfour restaurant in Paris is located in a colonnade at the edge of the Palais Royal garden, above.  The entrance, below, opens onto a magical space for dining, but below this space is the heart of the Grand Véfour — penetrated by Coralie Chappat on a recent visit.  Here is the first part of her report on her adventures underground:



Si les kamis sont les divinités ou esprits qui s'attachent au Japon,
aux objets autant qu'aux lieux sacrés, et que les elfes habitent les
lieux souterrains ; ces touchantes créatures devraient bien être
perceptibles d'une quelconque façon?  Aussi je pensais qu'en visitant
l'antre du Grand Véfour, la magie se livrerait à moi et que je
comprendrais dès lors comment ces petits miracles qui conquièrent tous
nos sens, surgissent comme par enchantement, ne pouvant relever que de
la seule dextérité humaine.  Après m'être ennoblie des mets les plus
fascinants, j'obtiens par faveur la visite des lieux sacrés.


Je déguste un caramel mou et une dernière mignardise, lorsque le maître
d'hôtel me conduit par le petit escalier rond qui s'enfonce sous
terre.  Plus je descends, plus je pénètre l'épaisseur du secret.

Next . . . the mysteries of the kitchen revealed!

O, COME, ALL YE FAITHFUL (ADESTE FIDELES) — IN THE HEART

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Bob Dylan’s Christmas In the Heart, track by track . . .

Now we come to another of the classic carols on the album, which, as I’ve written before, “have a different kind of joy than the upbeat pop numbers —
almost triumphal.  Dylan sings the first verse of ‘Adeste Fideles’ in
Latin, punching out the words like a preacher on fire with the
unimpeachable authority of the good news he’s delivering.  Now that
Pavarotti has moved on, is there anybody left but Bob who can sing
Latin like he means it?”

Pavarotti, by the way, does a stunning version of this song on his great Christmas album O Holy Night.  There, Pavarotti summons the world to worship, in tones meant to ring out from one end of the globe to the other.  Dylan, by contrast, seems to be addressing a small band of stragglers at the back of beyond.  He sings the name of Christ as though you might not have heard it before, stretching it out into two syllables (verging on three.)  He doesn’t sing “O come let us adore him” as it’s ever been sung before — the “O” is more of a cross between “Aww” and “Ahh”, as though his own heart were being pierced by the exhortation.

The stragglers are not alone, however — Dylan’s back-up girl group chimes in sweetly at the end, addressing “all ye citizens of Heaven above” . . . the seraphim and cherubim who are accompanying the rag-tag pilgrims on their impromptu journey to a little stable somewhere.

Dylan’s version of “Adeste Fideles” is the greatest version of this song that ever has been, and probably ever will be, done.

Back to the Christmas In the Heart track list page.

PASTOR RICK RECANTS

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After my exasperated post about Rick Warren's initial unwillingness to condemn the proposed Ugandan laws prescribing imprisonment, and in some cases the death penalty, for gay people, I feel I must report that Pastor Rick has had second thoughts and has written a letter to Ugandan pastors urging them to speak out against such laws.



As with the Lutheran Church's belated apology for its founder's vile and nauseating anti-Semitism, and the Southern Baptist Convention's belated apology for its sect's enthusiastic support of slavery, and the Catholic Church's belated (and still rather half-hearted) apology for conspiring in the sexual abuse of children, I guess one can say, “Better late than never.”



Perhaps one could also say that getting browbeaten by history or bad publicity or common decency into adopting the most fundamental teachings of Jesus is a curious kind of witness for Christians, so many of whom seem to have a special genius for identifying the most vulnerable and oppressed members of the societies they inhabit and adding to their oppression by every means within their earthly power.

What's up with that, Pastor Rick?

THE CHRISTMAS BLUES — IN THE HEART

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Bob Dylan’s Christmas In the Heart, track by track . . .

This song is a bit of a mind-bender.  It’s an ersatz, easy-listening, Tin Pan Alley blues — Dean Martin sang the classic version.  Dylan sings it with a combination of Dino’s nonchalance and the rough vocal directness of a real bluesman.

It’s like hearing Charlie Patton sing “Blues In the Night” in a Las Vegas lounge backed by the Count Basie Orchestra of the Fifties.

It doesn’t have the strong emotional impact of some songs on the album but it’s a lot of fun — and it fills in a few tesserae of the musical mosaic that is Christmas In the Heart.

Back to the Christmas In the Heart track list page.

PARIS: DOUBLE VISION — THE GRAND VÉFOUR AS THEATER, PART TWO

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The tour of the Grand Véfour restaurant, Paris, seen as theater continues — in notes and photographs by Coralie Chappat:

Le reflet pourpre des banquettes fait office de rideau de velours
étoffant de sa chaleur rassurante les baignoires qui se multiplient en un clin d’oeil.

La somptuosité absorbe tout passage d’être et s’évapore nulle part, dans la multitude des dorures et des ornementations géométriques.  Apparaître-disparaître au gré des
improvisations.  Le lieu divisé en compartiments fait effet de coffre magique des prestidigitateurs.

Dans la rupture avec l’extérieur, l’hôte devient l’espace scénique d’une architecture onirique d’où émanent des effluves enchanteresques.



Ce petit espace magique est à lui tout seul, un monde de fluidité lascive.

See Part One of this report here.

LITTLE DRUMMER BOY — IN THE HEART

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Bob Dylan’s Christmas In the Heart, track by track . . .

“The Little Drummer Boy” was one of my least favorite Christmas songs — until I heard Dylan’s version of it.  It’s so sweetly and tenderly sung.  It’s about a musician’s gift to the Prince Of Peace, and maybe it got to Dylan on that level, resonating in a purely personal way.  Time goes backwards and forwards in Dylan’s version.  The line “I am a poor boy, too” now harks back to Dylan’s own “Po’ Boy”, and there’s also the echo of “for Christmas buy her a drum” from “She Belongs To Me”.  Dylan’s songs draw from every area of America’s musical heritage, and on this album of covers he takes the gifts he rescued from the past back to where he found them, rescuing new gifts in the process.

There’s something spooky about the whole album — a sense that Dylan is floating through our culture on multiple levels, summoning whatever he needs to enrich the clichés of Christmas music, to reconnect us with its roots, in history and in faith.

On one level, “The Little Drummer Boy” is a shameless appeal to sentiment.  But Dylan asks, “What if we took the sentiment seriously, as an honest appeal to the heart?”  The answer is tears.

Back to the Christmas In the Heart track list page.

PARIS: DOUBLE VISION — THE GRAND VÉFOUR AS THEATER, PART ONE

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The first part of a tour of the Grand Véfour restaurant, Paris, seen as a theatrical setting, in photographs with notes by Coralie Chappat — from the “dressing room” of the ladies’ toilettes (above) to the stage set where the drama will unfold . . .

Dans la loge bas de plafond, se soignent les derniers détails avant le
lever de rideau.

Le lieu se contemple pareil à un écrin où l’on serre amoureusement les
bijoux.

Dans leur existence autonome à l’instar du Palais des Mirages
du Musée Grévin, les miroirs incrustés dans le plafond où les lustres
surgissent du sol carrelé, sont autant d’ouvertures se déployant en
déclinaisons à l’infini.

L’aventure se poursuit dans les galeries de
ce Petit Trianon qui se donne à souhait, l’espace d’une présence et
sort tout droit d’Alice au pays des merveilles.

See Part Two of  this report here.

[Photographs © 2009 Coralie Chappat]

I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS — IN THE HEART

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Bob Dylan’s Christmas In the Heart, track by track . . .

One wag reviewing this album said that Dylan’s “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” comes off as more of a threat than a promise.  Dylan does sound a bit like like the irascible old uncle who’s been invited to Christmas dinner but that everyone is hoping won’t show up, because he always creeps people out.

But the performance takes on another dimension if you remember the provenance of the song.  Bing Crosby recorded the hit version of it in 1943, when legions of young American men with thousand-yard stares were hunkering down in foxholes in Italy or on remote Pacific islands, or training for the invasion of Europe that everyone knew would have to be made eventually.

Many of these men knew they wouldn’t be home for Christmas, except in their dreams, and might not be home for Christmas ever again.  It summed up what they were thinking — in the heart — and broke the hearts of their loved ones back in the States.

Today, the song doesn’t have this resonance — it’s just a wistful, sentimental reverie about a family gathering.  Dylan brings it back to what it originally was, a matter of life and death.

Listen to it with the context of 1943 in mind, which the retro arrangement helps you to do — listen to the weariness and edge of hopelessness in Dylan’s voice . . . and it will break your heart, too.

Perhaps it will also remind you that the context of 1943 is not so different from our own right now, and so incline your thoughts to the legions of young American men and women in harm’s way in Afghanistan this year who won’t be home for Christmas, and might not be home for Christmas . . . ever again.

Back to the Christmas In the Heart track list page.