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. (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: Big Bad Love [Soundtrack] (2002).
Somehow, I came upon a free copy of this CD. I hadn’t really listened to it at all, save for the Tom Waits songs (which turned up on Orphans anyhow). But I listened to it the other day and it’s a really good collection of unorthodox/noisy blues. I’m not a huge fan of the blues, but I can get into short bursts of it. The R.L. Burnside songs are lots of fun, as is the Junior Kimbrough piece. And, there’s a great piece by T-Model Ford called “She Asked Me So I Told Her” which seems to consist entirely of the lyrics, “So she asked me, so I told her, why I’m here” over a very raucous blues riff. There’s also some nice instrumentals by Tom Verlaine & Kronos Quartet.
I Just Read About That... 