Noble Bob's got Christmas in his heart
Today is the day when Bob Dylan's heatedly-discussed album of Christmas songs appears. Christmas in the Heart includes seasonal standards like Little Drummer Boy (a Rainy Day favourite), Winter Wonderland and Hark! The Herald Angels Sing (another Rainy Day favourite). All US royalties will benefit Feeding America, the country's leading domestic hunger-relief charity, while international proceeds will go to hunger relief organizations such as Crisis UK and the United Nations World Food Program. Bob's certainly got the spirit.
Will this album ruin Dylan's chances of ever getting a Nobel from those crazy Norwegians? And will it sell? Well, if Xmas songs were good enough for Sinatra and Pavarotti, they must be good enough for Bob, right? The thing about Sinatra and Pavarotti, though, is that they possessed the silky voices that are regarded as ideal for crooning the kind of song that makes young and old want to gather round the Yuletide fireplace as cruel winter's winds howl outside. But with Dylan's voice now somewhere on the spectrum between a door swinging on a rusty hinge and the exertions of a wizened smoker after an exciting football game, this is not going to be saccharine stuff. But who wants that?
Christmas in the Heart ends with Must Be Santa, a Tex-Mex, polka-style number whipped along so furiously by David Hidalgo's accordion that it conjures up the image of a gift-laden Christmas sleigh pursued by a pack of hungry coyotes. Perfect! So, give him that prize next year, Thorbjorn Jagland, Kaci Kullmann Five, Sissel Marie Ronbeck, Inger-Marie Ytterhorn and Agot Valle. He deserves it.
