SOUNDTRACK: JOHN ZORN’s A Dreamer’s Christmas (2011).
You can never say with certainty what kind of music you will get with a John Zorn record. It could be beautiful; it could be scary. It could be chaotic; it could be traditional. There’s could be death metal or gentle jazz. There could be vocals or not.
Some time in 2008, Zorn started yet another project. This one was called The Dreamers and it proved to be on the mellow, jazzy side of his spectrum.
The members have been Cyro Baptista − percussion; Joey Baron − drums; Trevor Dunn − acoustic and electric Bass; Marc Ribot − guitars; Jamie Saft − keyboards and Kenny Wollesen − vibes, chimes, glockenspiel. For A Dreamer’s Christmas, Mike Patton (notorious for making a racket) sings some delightful vocals on 2 songs.
The album contains eight tracks: six traditional and two original Zorn compositions.
“Winter Wonderland” is played on vibes. There’s a cool repeating bass signature that bounces the song along and a groovy jazzy keyboard background before the electric guitar comes in to play the main riff.
“Snowfall” is just lovely with more vibes and a delicate guitar and twinkling piano. There’s even some hand drums to add some cool percussive effects. the songs is primarily a lovely piano instrumental. I don’t understand why I don’t know this song. Why isn’t it on other Christmas albums? It’s lovely.
“Christmastime is Here” is, indeed, the song from The Peanuts movie. The main melody is guitar and vibes and this version is possibly more entertaining than the original.
“Santa’s Workshop” is a John Zorn composition. It’s faster and a bit more upbeat than the others, but with a really groovy riff and some fun vibes to match it. There’s also a fun keyboard solo. This song first in perfectly with the others.
“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” begins with a quiet and somber piano playing the melody. It’s a lovely piece with some fun piano noodling.
“Let It Snow” starts with a bell and a rather funky bass line. After a minute or so the guitar takes over to play the main melody. There’s some weird and wacky 70s keys playing around in the background that you don’t really notice right away.
“Santa Claus is Coming to Town” is the first odd-sounding track on the disc. The guitar is plucked and the percussion seems to be all kinds of small wooden things clattering around. I assume someone is playing the rims of glasses as well. That goes on for a minute before the piano comes in and it gets very jazzy (with an upright bass). It sounds a lot like the kind of piano playing featured in Charlie Brown. The end of the song features a kind of whispered, slightly sinister take on the lyric by Patton.
“Magical Sleigh Ride” is the second Zorn original. It is a swift-moving treat–fluid bass, repeated guitar licks and solos, and a fast percussion beat before the melody kicks in. After about 2 minutes there’s a pretty wild and rollicking guitar solo. It’s the most intense thing on the record (which isn’t very intense really) but all along the jazzy pianos and percussion remains. Its followed by a similarly exuberant vibes solo. It’s another great Christmas song and fits in perfectly with the others.
“The Christmas Song” returns to the traditional with a lovely, quiet piano rendition of the song and a nice vocal delivery from Mike Patton. Patton is in perfectly deep-voiced crooner mode and it suits everything perfectly. There’s a lengthy piano solo in the middle and then Patton finishes the song.
The disc ends with everyone wishing us a Merry Christmas.
It is a surprising and wonderful Christmas album worthy of addition to everyone’s collection.
[READ: November 26, 2017] The Crown of Fire
This is the fourth and final book in the Copernicus series. There is no third or fourth mini book (I wonder why there wasn’t at least at third one).
I found this book to be exhausting and depressing. And that’s because for the most part that’s how the characters felt–exhausted and depressed. I also felt more exhausted by the series than I apparently felt after book three. I thought I had stopped because I was burnt out on the series, but that’s not the impression I get from reading my post. But this book did get very dark for most of its 500+ pages.
Lily and Darrell are together by themselves and they are fleeing once again. They eventually find someone who will help them leave the country in a cargo ship–two weeks in a tiny hold by themselves. Even Darrell who is still crazy about Lily finds it a bit much.
Back in the other part of the world, Becca Wade and Sara have just gotten a message from Roald. But it turns out to be a trap.
Luckily for Roald and the other scientists trapped by Galina, help is on the way, but it won’t come for many chapters.
What is so exhausting about all of this is the actual time consumed in the story. Becca is unconscious for two weeks. Lily and Darrel are in a boat for weeks. And while we don’t have to read about all the details of the time lost, it is exhausting just thinking about it. Plus, as I’ve said before, they do so much work to get these clues–perhaps if they just left them alone Galina would never have found the. The clues are weird and esoteric and really hard to decipher. They’re also really well hidden and Galina got nearly all of hers because the kids dug them up for her. The fact that she had a deadline to meet also suggests that they could have left one or two buried and saved themselves a lot of trouble.
Some things made the story less monotonous, even if they were still dark and awful Like the scene in Indonesia, where one of Galina’s henchmen kills a guy. It’s a horrible scene, but there is some comic relief and at least our families aren’t getting chased around for a few pages.
After almost 200 pages everyone is reunited again (well except for the dads). But despite all of their planning for a safe reunion, they are still ambushed. It’s exhausting.
And there are still clues to collect.
Since the first three books amassed only 5 relics, the final book had to produce 7. That upped the pace somewhat, but it also meant that there was little down time–which is my favorite stuff from Abbott.
By page 300 all of the family members are reunited. But then Becca’s radiation poisoning (for that is why she is not healing) gets too bad and she needs to be hospitalized. Possibly forever.
Eventually they end up in the Vatican, where they are given a special audience with Pope (the Vatican is storing a number of the relics). With The Pope’s help they figure out a final clue. They also find out that the best hospitals in the world are not helping Becca and she is on death’s door.
By page 430 nearly everyone they have every known has been killed. It is really disheartening. And Galina has enough relics to get the time machine to work.
Which means that the final hundred or so pages get really exciting. And a little confusing (as time travel will do ).
There’s a final showdown between the Guardians and Galina and The Order. There’s some interesting time travel with unintended results and some past-meddling that changes the future. I’ll assume that Abbott has worked out the details correctly and that it all makes logical sense because Time Travel is confusing and hurts my head.
I have to wonder if, after they modified the timeline if dead people came back to life. I feel like I’m not quite sure how things left off in the world once it was done.
So, I guess I had a lot of confusion with this series, which is a shame as it started so wonderfully.
Also:
I had asked some question in the last book.
What is up with Galina? I can’t wait to see what the revelation is about her–for a time I considered that she might be one of the children from when Becca went back to Copernicus’ time.
The revelation for this and why she does what she does is pretty spectacular. Although I’m not sure it is worth that much world destruction, frankly.
How does she keep finding them so easily? This is the most frustrating aspect of the story. She is either supernatural or we are meant to believe that her super spy next work is powerful as she says.
Never stated explicitly, I guess she just has access to a great spy network.
Why did Becca’s flashback/time travel cease?
Never explained. None of that flashback stuff was explained at all, exactly. There was some kind of notion that they were travelling to these places together all along in time travel realm, and I’ll let that suffice for all of the paradoxes and mysteries.
So that’s it for his series.
Overall I found it way too long and samey. That’s the problem with finding 12 items. Next time a story like this comes out there should be four things to find with more family camaraderie and less fleeing. But there was a ton of really cool stuff in here. All of the stories of this ilk are great for showing off world knowledge and historical information. And the characters were pretty interesting too. Although they changed quite a bit from their original destinations. This is natural progression of course, but it also seems like maybe some things were better left discarded as the story became more intense.
By the end, this story certainly felt more YA than J.
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