Fan Fare

Forget “Blonde on Blonde,” Dylan now rocks a blond wig for Santa

Back in the 1960s, when Bob Dylan came out with albums with such elusive titles as “Blonde on Blonde,” fans dissected his lyrics for every shred of meaning they could find. What does it mean?

Surely some of his hardcore fans will be applying the same microscope to his music video for “Must Be Santa,” just released on Monday, in which the rock icon sports a blond wig as he carouses at a wild Christmas party. Why blond? Why switch from a white hat early in the video to a black hat later on. What does it mean? Who knows.

It’s probably better to just enjoy the video for the wild, bohemian party it looks like, and leave the image dissection to someone writing a master’s thesis. Click here for a link to the video, which shows Dylan at the center of the kind of Christmas party just about anyone would like to attend. The crowd is dancing, singing and jumping around, and there’s even a little fisticuffs for everyone’s entertainment, as a party goer runs away from another man, throws things at him and swings from a chandelier before crashing through the window. Who knew polka music could lead to such crazy happenings?

Of course on the mysterious blond angle, Dylan has gone blond before, as the Reuters photo to the left shows, when Dylan appeared at the Sundance film festival in 2003 and his normally brown hair looked about the same shade of blond as that of actress Jessica Lange.

Dylan has been keeping many of his fans scratching their heads since it was revealed in the summer that he would be releasing a Christmas album, given that he had previously never recorded a Christmas song. But then again, it seems Dylan has gotten into the true spirit of Christmas, by donating proceeds from the album to buy meals for the needy. Dylan’s website has a running tally of the number of meals that have been donated so far, and it’s up to more than 2.3 million.

Raising money for charity, now that seems like a good reason to put on a blond wig. And it makes a good party get-up.

CORRECTED-Bob Dylan’s new Christmas album has the goods, critic says

It turns out that Bob Dylan Christmas album due out on Oct. 13 might be a good reason to hit the eggnog after all.

When news of the album was revealed over the summer, many Dylan fans could hardly believe it. Dylan just isn’t the kind of artist who does Christmas albums, or so everyone thought.

But writing at the Los Angeles Times music blog Pop & Hiss, critic Randy Lewis said on Thursday that after a sneak preview listen to some songs from Dylan’s “Christmas in the Heart,” he judges that the album is “a ton of fun.”

“Rather than simply a tossed-off session for his kids and grandkids, Dylan seems to be offering up an astute exploration of the roots of holiday music — Christmas records in particular — in the same way he has returned in various albums over the years to mine pop music’s foundation in blues, folk, country and gospel,” Lewis wrote.

In tracing the roots of some of the songs on the album, Lewis wrote that Dylan’s version of “Must Be Santa” harkens back to the Texas rock-polka group Brave Combo, and that his treatment of “Here Comes Santa Claus” reaches back to the stylings of Texas-born singing cowboy Gene Autry, whose 1947 version of the song is remarkably similar.

It’s not the first time that Dylan has borrowed from a Texas-born singer named Gene. His “Sugar Baby” song on the 2001 album “Love and Theft” lifts a melody from Gene Austin’s “The Lonesome Road” (follow the links to hear for yourself).

Lewis writes that Dylan’s for-charity Christmas album comes complete with “reindeer-quick accordion” from Los Lobos star David Hidalgo, and Dylan singing the first verse of “O Come All Ye Faithful” in Latin. So it looks like Dylan has shaken up the Christmas standards like a kid shaking a present under the tree.