The Free Press, Mankato, MN

Brian Ojanpa

October 16, 2009

Dylan’s just chillin’ with these old yule logs

By Brian Ojanpa

My ears are still bleeding after listening to it. But as they say, it hurts so good.

Bob Dylan, ever the mysterian, has struck again. This time with an album of classic Christmas songs.

This is no joke, though most people thought it was when news of its October release was announced a few months ago.

Dylan’s genius has always been his mercurial nature. He’s harder to pin down than that silver chef’s hat runaway balloon that had us all agog a couple of days ago.

Dylan continues to be a mystery inside a conundrum wrapped in an enigma. Never more so than this week, when his “Christmas in the Heart” hit the streets.

You have to hear it to believe it, and you might not believe it even then.

He croaks, he groans, he croons to an accordion, and with backup singers who seem to be channeling the Andrews Sisters.

On “Winter Wonderland” he sounds like Louie Armstrong after gargling barbed wire.

On “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” he sounds as if he won’t make it past his own driveway.

The languid monotone used to deliver “Little Drummer Boy” reminds me of my 11th-grade English teacher, who never met an insomniac he couldn’t cure.

Mostly, though, he comes across as the drunken uncle who grabs the karaoke microphone at the family Christmas party.

Therein lies the beauty of this recording: It’s awfully wonderful and wonderfully awful all at once, and it has music critics in a positive dither.

There’s no middle ground on this. People think it’s either an abomination or another bit of sleight-of-hand genius from popular music’s most ambiguous changeling.

One critic calls it “guttural braying” that “boggles the ears,” while another praises it as “an acknowledgment of an underappreciated musical tradition from one of the most important innovators and interpreters of American song.”

I tend to fall along the lines of the rum-soaked relative having a hoot.

Debate about whether he’s “serious” about these Christmas songs seems wrongheaded, because that’s presuming that Christmas songs are serious, which they’re not.

They’re about flying reindeer, talking snowmen and lyrics that read as if they were penned in an opium den.

Gone away is the bluebird,

Here to stay is a new bird

He sings a love song,

As we go along,

Walking in a winter wonderland.

No wonder Dylan takes a fancy to sky pilot stanzas like that. They’re Dylanesque.

He also has critics making fools of themselves as they attempt to dissect his renditions.

One reviewer lauded Dylan for delivering the first verse of “O Come All Ye Faithful (Adeste Fideles)” in “Hibbing-accented” Latin.

Two things about that: Dylan has no trace whatsoever of an Iron Range accent, and it appears the Los Angeles-based critic doesn’t know northern Minnesota syntax from second base.

Among my most prized recordings is a Rhino Records compilation called “Golden Throats.”

It’s a collection of pop songs recorded in the 1960s by assorted non-singer celebrities who were completely serious about their efforts, but ended up with hilariously disastrous results.

William Shatner butchering “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Phyllis Diller disemboweling “Satisfaction.” Mitch Miller & The Gang waging war on “Give Peace A Chance.”

Their efforts were horrifically awesome, the stuff of instant classics. Ditto for Dylan’s Christmas album cobbled from somewhere beyond the Twilight Zone.

Like warts and tumors, it will grow on you.



Brian Ojanpa is a Free Press staff writer. Call him at 344-6316 or e-mail bojanpa@mankatofreepress.com.

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