Bob Dylan Reads “‘Twas the Evening Prior to Christmas” On His Vacation Radio Display (2006)

Permit me to identify simply some of the peo­ple I wish to pay attention host­ing and curat­ing radio displays—former Intercourse Pis­tols’ singer John Lydon, for­mer Conflict entrance­guy Joe Strum­mer, for­mer Woody Guthrie imper­son­ator Bob Dylan.…

Good fortune­i­ly for me, this ain’t simply fan­ta­sy base­ball; at var­i­ous instances, and with range­ing lev­els of com­mit­ment, every of those tastemak­ers has host­ed a professional­gram display­cas­ing their very own favourite artists. In Dylan’s case, the com­mit­ment used to be pret­ty sub­stan­tial. His display, Theme Time Radio Hour, ran for just about 3 years—as soon as per week from 2006 to 2009—on satel­lite radio.

Every episode cen­tered on a gen­er­al theme, therefore the identify, however the selec­tions had been in all places—roughly what you’d be expecting from Dylan: an eclec­tic col­lec­tion of people, blues, gospel, soul, coun­take a look at, mod­ern pop, and rock ‘n’ roll combined with old-time radio jin­gles, nov­el­ties, and professional­mos, and the host’s ordinary­ball com­males­tary and hokey humor. File­ed whilst Dylan used to be at the street, then edit­ed togeth­er with pho­big apple “lis­ten­er calls” and emails, Theme Time Radio Hour aimed, Dylan mentioned, “to extend the musi­cal style” of his lis­ten­ers. That it did, even in its maximum tra­di­tion­al episode, identify­ly the hol­i­day spe­cial on Christ­mas and New 12 months’s, or as Dylan calls it, “a Xmas­tide extrav­a­gan­za.”

In his 2006 Christ­mas huge­solid, above, Dylan bounces from Bob Seger to the Sta­ples Singers to Lord Nel­son, “uncrowned king of Soca,” and Mabel Mafuya, who performs “a Mara­bi taste, kind of like South African rag­time.” The vast vari­ety of well- and not more­er-known artists—all play­ing Christ­mas song—blended with Dylan’s wry inter­jec­tions, makes for satisfaction­ful­ly bizarre lis­ten­ing. But if it comes time for his personal con­tri­bu­tion, he is going for the obvi­ous and recites Clement Clarke Moore’s “‘Twas the Evening Prior to Christ­mas.” You would possibly not have concept a lot of this the primary time you heard it, a lot much less the mil­lionth. However in Dylan’s learn­ing, the inventory­ings sound like they had been hung with care in some dim, smoky beat­nik cof­rate­area and the sug­ar plums dance to the fin­ger-snap­ping bop rhythms of jazz poet­ry whilst a harp­si­chord performs “O Tan­nen­baum” within the again­floor.

It’s an overly cool ren­di­tion, in oth­er phrases, of an overly corny piece of writ­ing. Thru­out the spe­cial, Dylan dis­performs an actual knack for suss­ing new sounds and angles from outdated, drained hol­i­day clich­es. His exten­sive knowl­fringe of hol­i­day tunes would possibly position him within the com­pa­big apple of John Waters and the numerous oth­er “males who love Christ­mas song” professional­filed within the document­u­males­tary Jin­gle Bell Rocks! Whether or not he’s a col­lec­tor or simply an avid lis­ten­er, I have no idea, however by the point you’ve fin­ished lis­ten­ing to his 2006 Theme Time Radio Hour Christ­mas spe­cial, you’ll in finding your appre­ci­a­tion for the hol­i­day style thor­ough­ly extend­ed.

Notice: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this publish seemed on our website in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan’s Thank you­giv­ing Radio Display: A Playlist of 18 Delec­desk Songs

The Most sensible 10 New 12 months’s Res­o­lu­tions Learn via Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Nice Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

Josh Jones is a creator and musi­cian based totally in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness