Christmas with Bob Dylan -- or maybe better, without

by Ken

Has anybody bought the Bob Dylan Christmas album? (Amazon will sell you a "180-gram vinyl edition with bonus CD" for only $25.63! Stock up for the holidays -- MLK Day, Presidents Day, Valentine's Day, etc.) Has anybody figured out what to make of the album?

A friend has been sending out MP3 files of individual numbers, and the couple I've listened to have sounded, well, kind of creepy. Today it was "O Little Town of Bethlehem":



I'm not sure, though, that that's much creepier than this:



Where are Alvin and the Chipmunks when you need them?

Now, if you want Christmas music you can believe in -- or at any rate I can believe in -- here is the great Swedish tenor Jussi Bjoerling singing "O Holy Night" in his native language (I know there's at least one broadcast performance in English, but I don't have access to it):



"O Holy Night" always takes on a more martial, stiff-backboned character in its original identity as the "Cantique de Noël" by Adolphe Adam (yes, the composer of the ballet Giselle and the opera Si j'étais roi). Most famously, in the version by the great tenor Georges Thill, when he sings, "People, on your knees," you will damn well get down on your knees if you know what's good for you, with no fussing.

Here's a recording of the "Cantique de Noël" by the clearly veteran bass-baritone José van Dam (just because I happen to have it and you probably don't know anyone else who does):



And this concludes our Christmas music for 2009.

#