"Christmas In the Heart" and "Normal as Blueberry Pie": A Double Review

It is a bittersweet feeling when both of your favorite songwriters release covers albums on the same day. Sure, it is great to have another album, but it would be even greater to have another album of original material. This is what happened on October 13, 2009, when Bob Dylan and Nellie McKay simultaneously scheduled the release of new albums, Christmas In the Heart and Normal as Blueberry Pie, respectively. In Dylan's case, it being a covers album was much more tolerable since he had recently released an album of new material, but after release three albums, including two double albums, and an EP in a four year stretch, McKay hadn't released anything since 2007.

Both albums were centered around a theme. For Dylan, this was to be a Christmas extravaganza in order to raise money for charity. For McKay, this was a tribute to Doris Day, mostly in honor of Day's work with animals.

In terms of song selection, I think McKay has the slight advantage if only because the music is less familiar to me. Dylan stuck mostly to classics from the Christmas canon, though he chose ones which seemed to work. When the project was announced, I thought "Silver Bells" would be an okay song for his current voice, and it is. I also assumed he would cover "Here Comes Santa Claus" simply because Gene Autry had written it, and his cover is appropriately Christmasfied country swing. Dylan's three non-canonical choices, "Christmas Blues," "Must Be Santa," and "Christmas Island," are, not surprisingly, among the album's most inspired moments. "Must Be Santa" drives perhaps harder than Brave Combo's. I've always wanted to hear Bob record a polka, and after hearing Brave Combo perform this on his Theme Time Radio Hour, I've wanted this to be the polka he chose to record. "Christmas Blues" is perhaps overpraised by critics, but it does have some nice moments. "Christmas Island," a cover of the Andrews Sisters, is an even better Hawaiian song than Bing Crosby's "Mele Kalikimaka," and the Ditty Bops provide even more endearing backing than the Andrews Sisters.

Nellie McKay's album is composed entirely of covers of Doris Day songs, though some, such as "Sentimental Journey," have reputations which expand beyond Day. Coming into the album, I had only a very passing awareness of Day's later work, such as "Wonderful Guy," "Everbody Loves a Lover," "Que Sera, Sera," and "Teacher's Pet." Only one of those songs, "Wonderful Guy," appears on this collection. Because the music was so unfamiliar to me, I have found it harder to get into than I did Christmas In the Heart, which I was immediately taken with. As I've listened to the album time and again, though, I have come to love many of the songs. I can't provide comparisons with many of Day's versions, but McKay, with help of session men like Bob Dorough, gives the songs the best songs the feeling of early jazz, while the rest seem like torch ballads. The jazz, especially when it swings, works best. Songs like "Do Do Do" and "Wonderful Guy" are fun, but it really burns on "Crazy Rhythm" and "Dig It."

When it comes to album packaging, Bob has the total advantage. the album is adorned with four illustrations. The front cover pictures a 19th century Russian sleigh ride. The back cover features a somberly joyous picture of the three wise men traveling on camels. Inside, there is a Vargasesque painting of Bettie Page and a picture of worn-out street musicians in Rome. These conflicting images of Christmas suggest a coexisting of diverse viewpoints of the holiday and asan extension make the album polylithic.

McKay's album has plenty of pictures of her looking delightfully like a 1950s housewife, and then it has a lot of weird quotes. All of the quotes have to do with animal rights and vegetarianism, but some seem a little extreme, such as "You're better off eating a salad in a hummer than a burger in a prius" from Bill Maher. I get the point, but the ills of corporate farming doesn't exactly make Hummers any more palatable. How about a salad in a Prius? Without the whole mindset that led us to a nation where a car like the Hummer was able to achieve popularity, we never would have strayed away from a localized agrieconomy, so in that respect the salad in the hummer is worse. Chief Seattle tells us "the whited too shall pass," and in context he was right to say that, but to pull it out of context, McKay is simply playing to the same problematic essentializing which led to hegemony in the first place. Also, Seattle probably wouldn't be too pleased with "Black Hills of Dakota" which capitalizes on well meaning, but ultimately stereotypical, notions of the noble savage.

Musically, both albums are great. When McKay cooks, she cooks. I would have put fewer ballads and more uptempo songs in the mix, but even the ballads are good, especially an exquisite take on "Sentimental Journey." The few mid-tempo numbers, such as "Mean to Me" and "Wonderful Guy" are also enjoyable. McKay's vocals sound great as always, but I had trouble understanding her a few times. The most common objecton to Dylan's voice is that you can't understand what he's saying. That has always bothered me as he often overpronounces, and if he doesn't its for effect, to suggest a possible double meaning in a word. Mostly, with McKay I encounter this problem during the middle breaks in "Crazy Rhythm" and "Dig It," which is unfortunate since they are my favorite numbers. Either way, the arrangments on all of the songs are amazing and breath new life into them. The playing is fantastic. While I wish that McKay's luscious piano playing adorned every track, the playing is good all around, particularly Jay Berliner's guitar playing (he sounds like he could put Django to shame) and Charles Pillow's tenor sax.

Dylan enlisted a mixed-voice choir, including the Ditty Bops to provide background vocals, David Hidalgo to play accordion and Phil Upchurch on guitar. He also uses a variety of Christmasy instruments like jingle bells and the celesta to provide the proper aura to the music. It works. It sounds like a 1950s Christmas album, which is what I grew up on this time of year. The arrangement play it straight, and so what stands out is Dylan's vocals. He really tries to sing, and while on some songs he does sound like a moaning whale, on songs like "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" he nails the song like no one before him. That song, and many others, find Dylan reverting back to lyrics which are rarely used. On "Adestes Fideles" he reaches all the way back to the Latin. On "Here Comes Santa Claus" he includes the oft-omitted third and fourth verses, and his gruffness places an extra emphasis on the lines where Santa "doesn't care if you're rich or poor. He loves you just the same." I appreciate the song much more with its anti-classicism intact. And then Dylan adds lyrics, but only on one song; with a song as fun as "Must Be Santa" its hard not to indulge in the fact that Vixen rhymes with Nixon.

Worried I'd be disappointed, I'm not. I'm not completely enamored, either, but I feel comfortable awarding each album four of five stars.

The Christmas In the Heart that could have been

When Dylan's camp announced a Christmas album, I was expecting few if any originals, though I was hopeful for at least some obscure covers, and at least "Melekaliki Maka." It was revealed shortly thereafter that Christmas In the Heart was to be an album of mostly Christmas standards.

I was a tad disappointed at first, but "Christmas Island" is as good as "Melekalki Maka" and its a song I didn't know before. Dylan's vocals have made me actually pay attention to parts of songs like "Here Comes Santa Claus" that I'd always ignored before. Also, when listening to the Christmas episode of Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour, I've always thought Dylan should make a polka recording each time I heard Brave Combo's recording of "Must Be Santa," which Dylan has now covered and supposedly made a very wild video for.

Having heard several samples, it seems like Dylan has put his own spin on at least a few songs, and payed tribute where it needed payed on others, so it can't be all bad. I also understand that the fantastically creative Ditty Bops contributed the Andrews Sisters' style background vocals; hopefully this will increase their exposure. I can't imagine many Dylan fans disliking a duo who sew their own dresses out of grocery store bags, a talent which is both hot and environmentally friendly.

While I'm putting off listening to the whole album before it is officially released to the public on Tuesday, I did compile a list of Dylan's non-Christmas In the Heart Christmas songs. This should give an idea of what an album of Dylan's Christmas originals may have looked like.

1. Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie [from Bootleg Series Vol. 1-3 (1991, recorded 1963)
2. Ballad of Donald White [from Best of Broadside 1962-1988, circa 1962)
3. Farewell Angelina [from Bootleg Series Vol. 1-3 (1991, recorded 1965)]
4. She Belongs to Me [from Bringing It All Back Home (1965)
5. On the Road Again [from Bringing It All Back Home (1965)]
6. Three Angels [from New Morning (1970)]
7. Arthur McBride [from Good As I Been To You (1992)]
8. Floater (Too Much To Ask) [from "Love and Theft" (2001)]
9. Can't Escape From You [from Tell Tale Signs (2008, recorded 2005)]
10. Huck's Tune [from Lucky You soundtrack (2007)]

1. "Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie"

This is actually a poem Dylan wrote, and then decided to recite one time in concert. It doesn't have that much to do with Woody Guthrie, but more to do with the regression of American culture. It is rather lengthy, but one section features Dylan calling out all the people he sees as fakes and phonies, including the people who:

"come knockin' and tappin' in Christmas wrappin',
sayin' 'ain't I pretty and ain't I cute?
Look at my skin shine, look at my skin glow'
when you can't even sense if they got any insides,
these people so pretty in their ribbons and bows."

2. "Ballad of Donald White"

One of Dylan's early topical songs, "Donald White" is set on Christmas. The song is written from White's point of view, a petty criminal who liked jail so much he didn't want to leave. Life on the outside left him feeling alienated and depressed, and so to make sure he had the comforting routine of prison life, he murdered a man on Christmas Eve. Christmas can be a lonely season for those with no one to connect to, and Dylan plays on that in the songs. The detail of Christmas Eve may be factual, but Dylan's topical songs were never noted for sticking to the facts.

3. "Farewell Angelina"

This song was an early exercise in surrealism, and was recorded most famously by Joan Baez. One of the lines is "King Kong, little elves -- on the rooftops they dance." Well, there are elves....

4. "She Belongs to Me"

This song may have been written for Joan Baez. Part of the song reads like a shopping list of presents Dylan meant to give Baez -- "For Halloween buy her a trumpet, / and for Christmas get her a drum" -- but then decided to leave on the curb outside of the gate in "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" a few albums later.

5. "On the Road Again"

Not the Willie Nelson song about traveling, Dylan's "On the Road Again" is a hilarious tale of being in love with a girl who is in the crazy house. It also has some of Bob's most "dylanesque" vocals. In addition to noticing things like relatives walking around in Napoleon Bonaparte's mask, when Bob visits the girl, he "ask[s], 'who's there in the fire place?' and [she] tells him Santa Claus."

6. "Three Angels"

New Morning is a summer album, and in this song, which is really more like a poem spoken over music, Dylan evokes the feeling of a small town's rundown mainstreet where the dingy Christmas decorations are still there from the year before. It is the most depressing song on the album by far (though, to be fair, it may be Dylan's happiest album). Dylan imagines the three angels sitting atop telephone poles to be sentient beings, and then wonders if they'd even care that no one seems to notice them.

7. "Arthur McBride"

Technically, this isn't a Dylan original, but it is closer to what I initially expected on Christmas In the Heart. "Arthur McBride" is a folk song about a British army recruiter who attempts to intimidate two young Irish boys into enlisting on Christmas morning. When they not only refuse, but tell him they think the king only wants the Irish to serve as lambs to the slaughter, the enlisting officer tries to attack them, but they end up beating the shit out of him instead. A nice song about a cheerful Christmas morning.

8. "Floater"

In the 2000s, Dylan had several original songs with Christmas in them, so it shouldn't have come as a total surprise that he wanted to record a whole Christmas album. This is the first of the decade. In Floater, Dylan includes the verse:

"My grandfather was a duck trapper;
he could do it with just drag nets and ropes.
My grandmother could sew new dresses out of old cloth.
I don't know if they had any dreams or hopes.
I had them once though I suppose
to go along with all the rain dancin' and the Christmas carols on all the Christmas eves;
I left all my dreams and hopes
buried under tobacco leaves."

Well, eventually Dylan's dreams end up as compost in the fields of the South, but at least when he did have them it was during a happy time like Christmas. Overall, the feeling is too resigned to be bittersweet; instead, it's almost wistful.

9. "Can't Escape From You"

This recent song is about a woman Dylan wants to get away from but doesn't seem able to live without for long. During one of the many parts of the song where he insults her to no end, he informs her that:

"You've wasted all your power.
You threw out the Christmas pie.
Now you're withering like a flower;
you'll play the fool and die."

Well, either Christmas pie is a song of power or else Dylan needed both a. something to rhyme with "die" and b. something else to fill out the meter.

10. "Huck's Tune"

In perhaps Dylan's most definite statement on the holidays, he has this charming nugget to share: "All the merry elves / can go hang themselves." Yikes!

As a bonus, the album could include the liner notes to John Wesley Harding, which feature a perverse, post-modern recounting of the nativity, blended with the last supper, with Frank(ie Lee) in the role of the Christ manchild and Terry Chute in the role of Dylan's unethical ubermanager Albert Grossman, if he happened to be hanging around Bethlehem at the time.

Ultimately, if Dylan had written Christmas In the Heart, it seems that it would have been a much more dour affair. As it is, it sounds like it will be at least mildly enjoyable as a whole, and some songs will leave you grinning from ear to ear.

Record Store Day

So, yeah, I realize that this is the logo for last year's Record Store Day, but the Sun Records-esque logo is too killer to pass on.

This year, tomorrow -- almost today -- is Record Store Day, celebrating the renewed success of vinyl as a medium. If you are fortunate enough to live next to a 45 rpm emporium, go down for a visit and see what's going on. You may encounter special sales, rare collectibles, impromptu concerts by a slew of performers or pre-listening parties for records set for release in the weeks to come. And if you live in New York City, the mayor has even deemed it an official holiday.

National Poetry Month: Martin Espada

Martin Espada is may favorite Latino poet. I mean, just look at his beard. Also, he teaches at University of Massachusetts-Amherts. Before I even knew who Espada was, I wanted to go there to study with James Tate, but now, no matter how great Tate is, I admire Espada's work more. His poems cut to the core. They are always working on at least two levels, often more, and are always engaged with the broader world around him. Espada cares little for self-expression, but instead relies on political commentary and social critique.

I was blessed to have the opportunity to teach a healthy portion of Espada's poetry while working in an Upward Bound summer program a few years back. I admire several of his poems, but my favorite is still the one that first floored me back when I discovered him. Alternatively titled "Late Night at the Pawn Shop" or "Latin Night at the Pawn Shop," the poem begins with a group of kids looking at the instruments in a pawn shop window and imaging themselves in a salsa band. The poem turns dark though, as the children realize that social class has killed their dreams, or as Espada puts it the instruments have "price tags dangling, / like the city morgue ticket / on a dead man's toe."

National Poetry Month: William Stafford

Another important Kansas poet, Stafford has an interesting history. A conscientious objector during World War II, he would go on to be named Poet Laureate of the United States, or Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress as it was called then. I was at a reading once where someone, perhaps Stephen Meats, editor of the Midwestern Quarterly, told an anecdote about how Stafford would not get up out of bed in the morning until he had completed a draft of a poem; the 20,000 pages of his daily writing donated to Lewis and Clark College in 2008 bears out that claim. He was certainly prolific, publishing four separate volumes in 1978 alone.

"Traveling Through the Dark," perhaps Stafford's most famous poem, has the feel of Hutchison, KS, where Stafford grew up and would call home for much of his life. The poem is about finding a deer dead on the side of the highway, and making the decision to push its carcass off the road to keep cars from swerving. The decision becomes complicated whent he speaker feels a baby, still alive, within the doe's belly. The speaker must "think hard for us all," coming upon the decision with no romance, with nothing but feelings of regret and solitude.

National Poetry Month: Jonathan Holden

To really get a good feel for Jonathan Holden, Kansas's first poet laureate, you should hear him read. The way he phrases his poems is so skillful that when reading poetry on the page, his is the only voice I hear other than the voice in my head -- and perhaps the poet's voice if I know what they sound like -- reading the poem. When I read Charles Simic, it is often Holden's voice I hear reciting it. Also, the introductions he gives to his poems and the bird calls he imitates in "Western Meadowlark" enrich the poetry that much more.

Many of my favorite poems of Holden's, such as "An American Boyhood" and "How To Play Night Baseball," deal with the experience of growing up, of boyhood in the Midwest. My favorite is "Why We Bombed Haiphong," a poem that personifies the B-52 bomber, cleverly nothing the "B-52 was voted 'Most Popular' / and 'Most Likely To Suceed.' // The B-52 would give you the finger / from hot cars. It laid rubber, / it spit, it went around in gangs, / it got it's finger wet and sneered / about it."

I will lave it at that. Holden once told me that the best you can do is quote a poem and let it speak for itself, so that what I'm leaving his work to do.

National Poetry Month: Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound has long been criticized for his anti-Semitism, and in a way rightfully so. Pound should have been smart enough not to rely on cultural assumptions and stereotypes about Jews. That said, I don't think Pound hated Jews outright. Certainly, he did support Mussolini, but it seems as though he supported fascism because fascist leaders were interested in nationalizing specific industries and in restructuring banks, something the far left also takes an interest in. Specifically, Pound was railing against usury, the loaning of money at inordinate interest rates, such as is done by banks and credit card companies. The cause of usury is greed, and looking at the current economic state we can see where that got us. Banks weren't content to simply charge outrageous interest rates that made it difficult for working families to put a dent in the principle, but they also loaned out to everyone, figuring they could earn more money that way, and when they loaned out to even those unable to pay their rates, it was the straw that broke the camel's back. In Pound's time, the attitude toward Jews was that they mostly made their money off of usury. Pound should have been able to see through that, but the impulse to be against usury was a good one.

As a critic, he came up with better ideas, and expressed them in a more direct way, than almost any other writer I can think of. From editing Ernest Fellosa's "The Chinese Character As A Medium" to The ABC of Reading, Pound's theoretical work is fascinating, infused with wit and consistently thought-provoking. As a poet, hiw work is also strong. "In A Station of the Metro," arguably Pound's most famous poem, was cut down from dozens of pages to just two single lines, two contrasting images that form the verbal equivalent of an Eisensteinian montage.

Pound's "translations" of Chinese poetry recreated their ideas and feelings using his own ideas of how Imagism should be practiced. The peak of this, perhaps, is in "River Merchant's Wife," when the wife's entire emotional complex is embedded in the line "the monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead." Later, Pound's Cantos were revolutionary as intertextual creations, like an extended Wasteland that effortlessly represents a plurality through blending multiple systems of linguistics. They are among the most challenging poems in any and all languages, but all the more rewarding because of it. And to hear Ezra read them, with one of the most intense recorded voices in history, is to be shaken straight out of your bones.