Theme Time Radio Hour
Christmas & New Year special
No arguments from LRG family at Christmas. Given the right opportunity, we must listen to the Bob Dylan Theme Time Radio Hour Christmas & New Year special.
I first heard about this show in 2008, in the run up to Christmas, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t actually listen to it on it’s broadcast date.
A special one hour edition of Christmas music as chosen by Bob Dylan.
www.bbc.co.ukHowever, in the spirit of the times, I found a copy lurking online somewhere, and painstakingly transferred it to an mp3CD as I only had it as a single mp3 file, with no breaks, and it was a pain to convert to a regular CD format. Luckily, with the advent of the 🌟 internet 🌟 - some useful sort organised the whole thing into a SoundCloud thingamajig, and here we are now.
Regardless of how I found this, the first time Dr G & I listened to this, we were blown away.
Musically it’s a fantastic trawl of Bob Dylan’s influences, from Rockabilly to Calypso, Blues to Rock ’n’ roll and a whole load of other weird and wonderful arcana.
However, what’s really great about this is listening to Bob introduce each track with such esoteric knowledge and, err, wisdom. Recipes for eggnog? Bob has it. Merry Christmas in 20 different languages? Yup, Bob delivers. Damning 17th Century interregnumen.wikipedia.org leader, Oliver Cromwell for “banning Christmas”, yeah Bob will do that too.
It’s delightfully unhinged, and you can hear that Bob genuinely LOVES CHRISTMAS.
As we love Christmas too, we’ll often take this on the annual road-trip to deliver gifts to relatives, and it always delivers us a cup of cheer.
I suspect the success of this episode lead directly to Bob’s release of his own Christmas record “ Christmas in the heartopen.spotify.com” a year or so later, which is also definitely worth a listen.
Cover image: Bob Dylan (left) in the video for “Must be Santa”