[SPEAKER_01]: From the nation magazine, this is Start Making Sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm John Weener.
[SPEAKER_01]: Later in the show, we'll feature some special songs for the season.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bob Dylan's Christmas album.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bells are ringing, children singin' all is merry and bright.
[SPEAKER_01]: Later in the show.
[SPEAKER_01]: But first, Los Angeles vs Donald Trump.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bill Gallegos has that story in a minute.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the most important chapters in the history of 2025 is the story of how L.A. defeated Donald Trump.
[SPEAKER_01]: In June 2025, he sent more than 4,000 national guard troops and 700 Marines to occupy the city and terrorize the immigrant population.
[SPEAKER_01]: But by the end of July, almost all the guard and the Marines were gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: for the story of how that happened and what we can learn from it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We turn to Bill Geyagos.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's the former executive director of communities for a better environment, CBE, the California Environmental Justice Organization.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also a long time Chicano activist, and he's a member of the editorial board of the nation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bill Geyagos, welcome to the program.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, John.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so glad to be here with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you say Donald Trump hates LA.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why is that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, he's not exactly a hard person to figure out.
[SPEAKER_00]: He hates places that are strongly opposed to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is a super blue city and county.
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't seem to like black and brown folks can work in majority, minority, city and county.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's not a friend of unions.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a pretty strong labor movement here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to just give a shout out to our
[SPEAKER_00]: dearly departed Kent Wong from the UCLA Labor Center, and we are a city with a large immigrant population.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this was a city that made a lot of sense from the standpoint of really unleashing his ice brigades, his thugs, and sending in the troops, but it's also proved to be a center of remarkable resistance.
[SPEAKER_01]: Governor Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass denounced Trump sending the guard in the Marines to LA right away.
[SPEAKER_01]: The state sued the president, won a string of victories in federal court, but it was the mobilization of thousands of people in a fierce and effective local opposition movement that also played a decisive role in defeating Trump.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's our main focus today because that's what offers a lesson for communities across the country.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're speaking in L.A. Ice was raiding, workplaces around the city to round up and detain people whose crime was that they looked Latino.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were doing this at the Garmat Center downtown at car washes around the city in the parking lots of Home Depot stores where day laborers gathered looking for work.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we can pinpoint the day things started to change.
[SPEAKER_00]: When they assaulted Labor Deliver David Webta, the president of the California SEI, you service employees in the National Union, that really turned the tide.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just to fill in what happened here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hundreds of protesters had gathered downtown L.A. after ICE conducted raids at different places in the city.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there was this confrontation and David Huerta, that president of S.E.I.U.
[SPEAKER_01]: California, was tazed, pushed down by ICE agents.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hit his head on the ground.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then they charged him with felony conspiracy and jailed that was the event that was the spark.
[SPEAKER_00]: For all the weaknesses of our labor movement, it's still our largest social movement, a large sector of people of color of women, all the sectors that are so, from social movements that are so important to the resistance.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when labor came out, that sends a message to the media, it sends a message to elected officials, it sends a message to folks who are in unions, teachers, janitors,
[SPEAKER_00]: My son works at the UPS warehouse.
[SPEAKER_00]: My other son is a tech person.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think California guys come in there all union.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they were affected like if they can do this to David, they can do this to anybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's just say the SEIU is one of the biggest two or three unions in the whole state of California.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's correct.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not only a large union, it's very robust in politics.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the mobilization of the unions was a key moment here, but there were other well organized groups that had been working on immigrant rights for a long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: John, one of the things that makes me very proud about Los Angeles is we have a deeply rooted worker center movement.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Korean immigrant workers alliance, Filipino workers center, black workers alliance, E. Depsco, which organizes day laborers, the garment worker center.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they were, and the labor centers in Los Angeles renewed Mayday, about 15 years ago, they said, we're gonna go out for Mayday.
[SPEAKER_00]: and they expected a few thousand people and they got about 15,000 people out in the streets and it just energized again the workers' movement here because it's not just a union movement, it's a workers' movement.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's one other important element in this resistance movement and that is the faith community.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's correct.
[SPEAKER_00]: So clergy and lady, United clue has been around for a long time and done remarkable work, bringing different sectors of the faith community together to support social justice, environmental justice and worker justice, especially.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they were immediately out there before the cameras were on, before the microphones were out.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've been out there posing ice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, the AME church in South Los Angeles
[SPEAKER_00]: a leader in all of our political and social movements here in Los Angeles, and they played a very, very big role.
[SPEAKER_00]: At a time when there's been some tension in the faith community because of Gaza, there was a lot of common ground here, Jewish, Islam, all of the different faith sectors have come together in a remarkable show of support.
[SPEAKER_00]: And finally, the Archbishop of Los Angeles spoke out and says, this is a wrong and you can't do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: and there are millions of Catholics in Los Angeles.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Catholic Church is largely immigrant in California.
[SPEAKER_01]: All these organizations and groups then work together.
[SPEAKER_01]: They did thousands of no-year rights trainings.
[SPEAKER_01]: They distributed millions of no-year rights cards.
[SPEAKER_01]: They built a rapid response network to monitor and report on ice movements.
[SPEAKER_01]: For people who were detained, they provided legal assistance employers.
[SPEAKER_01]: They ran food drives and organized mutual aid efforts for immigrant families, and the public schools and the teachers unions organized to protect students from ICE.
[SPEAKER_01]: You say in the nation that the legal battle was equally important, Governor Newsom sued the Trump administration in June 2025 right away, over its deployment of the National Guard, several other organizations also went to court.
[SPEAKER_01]: What were the key groups that led in the legal battle alongside the state attorney general Rob Bonta?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, there's the American civil liberties union.
[SPEAKER_00]: in preparation because they knew Trump won was a very important battleground in the judicial area.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of these organizations, the ACLU, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the NAACP, Legal Defense and Education Fund, a lot of the immigrant rights organizations all came together and they were ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this was really important, not only in putting a stop to some of the more outrageous actions of the Trump administration, but it also gives us time and space for our organizing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So sometimes even when it has to work its way through the courts, if there's a temporary injunction that holds things up, that's very precious time for us to organize and reach people.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would mention one other organization, Public Council, where Mark Rosenbaum argued in federal court that ICE was detaining people without their required reasonable suspicion, mainly the argument was ICE is stopping people because of their race, ethnicity, or language.
[SPEAKER_01]: In other words, ICE was detaining people because they looked or sounded Latino.
[SPEAKER_01]: The district court agreed with this, the 9th Circuit agreed with this and issued and supported a temporary restraining order.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was in effect until September when the Supreme Court lifted that TRO with an emergency stay.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was not an
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... based on the merits of the case they just sent it back to the district court and now we're sort of back at the beginning of that but in the meantime the argument that ice is detaining people because they look or sound latino was the law in California all all summer long mark rosemba was one of those guy we want him to live till he's 200 he's always out there in the trenches with us
[SPEAKER_01]: And one other group, I think we need to mention here as a crucial element of this, surprising to many of our friends, liberal and even the neoliberal Democrats.
[SPEAKER_00]: So John, that's a really important point, I think, is Los Angeles is a good example of kind of what resistance can look like and how we build a broad united front.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to do that on a national level.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the issues I know that always comes up is, you know, the Democrats are just as bad and so on and so forth and that's I think very faulty thinking we need a very, very broad United front and that means we're going to be working with a lot of folks who we may have differences on a number even important issues, but right now the effort to impose a kind of Christian nationalist apartheid state.
[SPEAKER_00]: That should be our guide, guide post for how we come together in this effort to put to get the troops out of Los Angeles.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was at the our elected officials played an important role.
[SPEAKER_00]: The governor, our two senators, our congressional delegation, all the Democrats, not the Republicans.
[SPEAKER_00]: three or four five Republicans that we have.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our legislature, our school boards, our city council, our board of supervisors, mayors, not just mayor baths, but all the mayors of the southeast cities.
[SPEAKER_00]: They all came out and emphasized that not only did we need to get the troops out, we needed to stop the rates and that's a continuing ongoing struggle, but it makes it difference when all of
[SPEAKER_00]: the inner cities and the suburbs.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, that all of this came together in a remarkable, I think, display of unity.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, John, we didn't do what we often do.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was not this sniping insectarianism that so often hurts us.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that group has the wrong political line or we didn't have that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's a sign of our growing political maturity and a recognition of what we're up against right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: So your cover story for the January issue of the magazine has key lessons to take away from the LA resistance that could be applied in other cities.
[SPEAKER_01]: And your number one, the really important one is build on your organizing foundation, the long standing groups that know how to do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: You say you don't have to reinvent the wheel.
[SPEAKER_00]: that's right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of our unions, you know, H Hotel and Restaurant Workers locally, 11.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's some that stand out UCLA Labor Center.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the county fed trained 1,400 people in nonviolent resistance against ICE.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this folks have, you know, they've been out there for years doing this work.
[SPEAKER_00]: worker centers, a lot of community organizations, communities were better in environment.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to give a shout out to my organization, scope and agenda groups in South Los Angeles community coalition, inner city struggle.
[SPEAKER_00]: These groups have been doing it for a long, long time and they're rooted in the sectors where we need to be, the majority of this city, working class people of color.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're rooted there.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've done political education for a long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've trained thousands and thousands that we have a cadre of organizers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that they stepped forward first.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the newer folks could come in and there was something there already.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was an established foundation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to say it was so inclusive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody was turned away.
[SPEAKER_00]: You looked at me cross-eye 20 years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't give it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They haven't come on in.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to mention one group in particular.
[SPEAKER_01]: You mentioned them briefly earlier.
[SPEAKER_01]: Chirla, the coalition for humane immigrant rights, long-standing immigrant rights group.
[SPEAKER_01]: Trump singled them out as the one L.A. group.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said he was targeting for what he said was, quote, funding terrorism.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I got to say, you know, first of all, we had to be ready to defend Chirla.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think people have stepped forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because, you know, when they say they're going to go after somebody, we should take them seriously.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: and what will hold them off is if they know there's going to be a fight and they're going to lose.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think it's really what we really need, John, I would like to see the County Federation of Labor, maybe a group like the Liberty Hill Foundation, which has some resources, maybe some academics and folks are media, convene a strategy discussion.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need a strategy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Resistance is wonderful.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have just amazing tactics at every level.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we need now as a strategy, where do we need to focus our efforts so we can build our forces and weaken theirs very intentionally?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's the county fed I think is in a position to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have a lot of standing, maybe with the UCLA Labor Center and some of the faith community to really convene that kind of a serious discussion.
[SPEAKER_00]: about where do we need to focus strategically?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we don't want to end up like occupied or even the Black Lives Matter movement, which is now, you know, it's a few local organizations that was 25 million people in the street.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you don't have that, you know, that question, that strategic focus and orientation, it can fizzle out.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can include your cover story for the nation that there was a great success this summer in getting the National Guard and the Marines out of LA, but the struggle is not over.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, ISIS tried to, I think, has doubled down actually in their, in their thuggishness, especially.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they're just, we are going to, we are not going to be constrained by the Bill of Rights, by the Constitution, by the rule of law, we're going to just terrorize.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the idea is not to just terrorize immigrants, but the community in which they're situated, with those large sectors of community, which are centers of resistance.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, this means that especially our Democratic party allies cannot run away from the question of immigration the topic of immigration like they did in the last election.
[SPEAKER_00]: They tried to hide, they tried to run inside, and it left the field open to Trump and Vance and Maga.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think we have to be very assertive in advocating for a humane and inclusive immigration policy right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: All those things are possible right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are a lot of things are being discussed, and I think some people are kind of coming late to the realization that we face the...
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... fascist threat but uh... better late than ever and i still hear some folks saying we'll get through this that'll be okay we've gone through this before and no we haven't i've been through nixon and ragan has a few this is qualitatively different bill gayagos he wrote a cover story for the january issue of the nation magazine it's titled how al a defeated Donald trump and how the rest of the country can too thank you bill thank you so much john
[SPEAKER_01]: This is our Christmas show, and now it's time for our special Christmas music feature.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our guest is Sean Wallence.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's the official historian at the official Bob Dylan website.
[SPEAKER_01]: He also teaches American history at Princeton.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's written many books, including the age of Reagan.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's out now in paperback.
[SPEAKER_01]: We turned to him today to help us understand what the heck is going on with the new Bob Dylan Christmas album.
[SPEAKER_01]: We reached him today in Princeton, Sean, welcome back to the program.
[SPEAKER_02]: Great to be back, John.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I want to start by listening to Track 1.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here comes Santa Claus.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a Gene Autry song which I have to say is one of the most irritating holiday songs ever written.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even before Bob Dylan sang it.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're stuck on say your prayers, Sean.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is this?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is this a joke of some kind?
[SPEAKER_02]: No, it's not a joke at all, although you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: You could turn into one by imagining that the person is really thinking he's Vincent Price.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's a certain macabre to the song.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you can look at it that way.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can look at a Bob Dylan song anyway you want.
[SPEAKER_02]: But no, no, no.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is all very, very straight.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is Bob Dylan in many ways.
[SPEAKER_02]: Looking back to his own childhood.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he's seeing the songs that he heard as a kid in heaven.
[SPEAKER_02]: where everybody, you know, listen to Christmas music, whether you're Jewish or not, and he's recalling those times and those songs in that spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I understand that the album itself is a benefit, and that the royalties are all being donated to charity.
[SPEAKER_02]: In perpetuity, that's right.
[SPEAKER_02]: All of them, I think the royalties are going to feed America in the United States, and I think that there's a group in the UK, and there's another group to feed the homeless.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, basically, this is Bob Dylan in some ways, being the character pretty boy Floyd from the old Woody Guthrie song.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's, you know, providing Christmas dinner to the family's on relief, just that he's not sticking up a bank, he's sticking up his own fans.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, let's listen to another one, I'll be home for Christmas.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have to say when Bob Dylan sings, I'll be home for Christmas, you have to wonder, is the promise or is this a threat?
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll be home for Christmas You can plan on me Please have some admins to tell And friends it's all
[SPEAKER_03]: the tree.
[SPEAKER_03]: Friends, Miss Eve, we'll find me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Where the love lies, please.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll be home.
[SPEAKER_03]: Fabulousness is only in my dreams Bob Dylan, I'll be home for Christmas.
[SPEAKER_01]: It sounds like a reason to bolt your doors, Sean.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you know, it's hard to say what home is with Bob Dylan.
[SPEAKER_02]: that you know but being home for Christmas is a big deal for him because uh... you know he's not in his bus but you know this is part of what the albums about that's a song that was originally recorded by bincrosby as we're like sixteen of the fifteen songs on this album it's a sort of as tribute to bincrosby among other things but uh... in nineteen forty three remember christmas songs during world war two had a whole different meaning i mean they were very uh... it was very touching actually moving
[SPEAKER_02]: It was one of the, it was the music, actually, that it kind of helped people together wondering whether their boys and in some cases girls overseas, whatever, come home alive, ever.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, this is a very moving song, it was moving in the 40s and then after the war, Christmas music became a kind of way to assert with some aggressiveness, to assert a kind of normality.
[SPEAKER_02]: which people hadn't felt a lot of people in America hadn't felt since the beginning of the depression back in 19, you know, back in the early 30s.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he's trying to recapture that in part.
[SPEAKER_02]: Recapture that mood, which is bigger than Christmas, beginning Christmas in America.
[SPEAKER_02]: It has to do with a specific time and a specific place.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's also, as I say, it's sort of tribute to Pinkrosby.
[SPEAKER_02]: He hasn't had been Crosby's voice, but he's copying Pinkrosby's phrasing, and I know he
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, let's listen to another one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you want to say anything about this one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Must be Santa.
[SPEAKER_01]: This one includes our own David Hidalgo, the great East LA musician who's a big favorite of ours here.
[SPEAKER_02]: Indeed, Los Lobos.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's a man.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's maybe maybe one of the most gifted musicians that Dylan's ever worked with.
[SPEAKER_02]: Must be Santa is my favorite song on the album.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a polka song.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's basically ripped off from a Texas, the arrangement of a Texas rock polka band.
[SPEAKER_02]: And but it also recalls again his Christmas time because it recalls the great polka bands of the Midwest of the 1940s and 1950s
[SPEAKER_02]: people like uh... you know will be john will fart uh... is real name franky anchovitch uh... would you please spell the last name of will be john will fart please i l f a h r t now are you sure that this is not one of bob dillins many pseudonyms uh... like rose about gook no i have a photograph of will be john will fart at the mini-app with airport taking on about the same time about nineteen forty eight with his band
[SPEAKER_02]: And I happened to know a lot about the Wippie John.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was quite a character.
[SPEAKER_02]: When he died, it turned out there was he left money in most of the hotels or the Midwest.
[SPEAKER_02]: Stashed away a lot of lots of money and basically hiding it from the feds.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he lived quite a while of life.
[SPEAKER_02]: As you might imagine, by a man named Wippie John.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, let's never call you John.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sean will answer the official history of the official Bobdom.com website from the Bobdom Christmas album.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's listen to must be Santa featuring David D'Algo of Los Lobos.
[SPEAKER_03]: Who's got a beard that's long and white?
[SPEAKER_03]: Who comes round as personal life?
[SPEAKER_03]: Second round as special life?
[SPEAKER_03]: Special life?
[SPEAKER_03]: Who's got a beard that's white?
[SPEAKER_03]: Must be sadder, must be sadder, must be sadder, Must be sadder, sadder, sadder, sadder, sadder, sadder.
[SPEAKER_03]: Who has put them to the risk?
[SPEAKER_03]: Shadow where's put them to the grave?
[SPEAKER_03]: Who has a long head, long his head?
[SPEAKER_03]: Shadow where's all kept on his head?
[SPEAKER_03]: Head on his hood and dread?
[SPEAKER_03]: Special night, but here that's why Must be Santa, must be Santa Must be Santa, must be Santa
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, they're dancing in the corridor is here at KPFK must be Santa Bob Dylan with David he doggo from the Dylan.
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's listen to another one here's Bob Dylan's winter wonderland.
[SPEAKER_03]: In the lane, snow is glistening A beautiful sight, we're having a tonight Walking in a window of the night On a wave, there's a blue bird In his place, there's a blue bird He sings a love song as we go along Walking in a window of the night In the better we can build the snow back
[SPEAKER_03]: Then pretend that he is plus a frown He'll say, are you married?
[SPEAKER_03]: He'll say, no man But you can do the job when you're in town Later on, we're conspired As we dream by the fire To face on a fate, the plans have been made Walking in a window
[SPEAKER_01]: Bob Dylan, he sounds like you're gristled old uncle who's had a little too much of the spiked egg nog at the family gathering.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's the point actually.
[SPEAKER_02]: Actually, there's the Wonder Bread singers, you know, the white bread singers.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you also listen closely and you hear Donnie hammered on the piano.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's the first time that we're Wonderland has been done.
[SPEAKER_02]: at least in recent memory with a pedal steel guitar, Dylan adds always a touch that touches of the current Bob Dylan, along with the Bob Dylan, what Bob Dylan was hearing when he was seven years old.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, this whole project made me think of Dylan's radio program on the XM and serious satellite where we see what a connoisseur and scholar Bob Dylan is of these pre-rock earlier 20th century genres.
[SPEAKER_02]: In a way, this is part of that project.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the difference is that he sings all the songs.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: He doesn't just introduce them.
[SPEAKER_02]: But in fact, one of the songs must be Santa actually did appear in the, I think it's a name of the band.
[SPEAKER_02]: But anyway, on his Christmas show from ex-em, you know, Cirrus XM.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, yes, there is a similarity.
[SPEAKER_02]: He knows a lot about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: He wants to, you know, this is an active archival, you know, he's an archivist among other things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this album is an example of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... let's listen to another one of course he has to do old little town of Bethlehem
[SPEAKER_03]: Only two towers are there Has still we see the light Above the dim That dreamless steam The silent stars go up on
[SPEAKER_03]: Get in the dark streets of Sine It ever lasts in my mind The hopes and fears of the years I've been in peace now
[SPEAKER_01]: Bob Dylan's little town of Bethlehem, I can only say there must be some way out of here.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is not one of my favorite cars on the album.
[SPEAKER_02]: There are others that are better.
[SPEAKER_02]: A little town of Bethlehem, yet not as best performance.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you know, somebody, well, some of the songs just don't.
[SPEAKER_02]: Christmas produced a lot of interesting wonderful music which is why so many people cut Christmas out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody from you know Frank Sinatra to Rachel's to Barbara Streisand.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean even the Jews cut Christmas out.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Neil Diamond has a new one even the second one.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's a song book, a real song book.
[SPEAKER_02]: But some of the songs are very difficult.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is one of them actually.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the Christmas song, the famous Meltole Mace song is also
[SPEAKER_02]: You need a real range to sing those songs well, and I'm afraid that this doesn't quite do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Which is not for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're speaking with Sean Wallenzi, the official historian at the official Bob Dylan website, Bob Dylan.com.
[SPEAKER_01]: One thing that strikes me about this music that's so puzzling, so confusing, so troubling, to the Bob Dylan's...
[SPEAKER_01]: classic music.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bob has always made a practice of pulling the rug out from under fans who thought they had him pegged.
[SPEAKER_01]: He spent a lot of his career refusing to fulfill his fans' wishes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is certainly part of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can see it that way.
[SPEAKER_02]: The other thing is this is a cover album.
[SPEAKER_02]: These are all cover songs.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not a single Bob Dylan song on here that he wrote.
[SPEAKER_02]: And whenever Bob Dylan does a cover album, it usually means that there's a change, but there's a change you're going to call it.
[SPEAKER_02]: He did self-portrait, which got round and be penned, especially by, I don't know if I can say this on the year, but you'll remember, we'll mark his famous first line of his review and wrongstone of that album, which is what is this blank.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is this crap, but not quite crap?
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not quite that, yeah, and then he went on to do a lot of the tracks.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then he did the cover albums in the early 90s, you know, the two folk acoustic albums, good as I've been to you, and we'll go on long, and then next thing he comes out with his time and a mind, which is a whole different thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So who knows what's going to come?
[SPEAKER_02]: Here's another cover-up.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's Bob Dylan trying to, and I actually kind of mean this.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's him plumbing his depth, he's trying to find something, he's trying to locate something in his soul, in himself, in his music.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is the way he does it by singing other people songs, singing a whole album or other people songs.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the interesting for that, you have to watch out for that.
[SPEAKER_02]: The second thing is, this is the first time he's done a Christian album since Shadow Love.
[SPEAKER_02]: In other words, this is a spiritual record.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is about his beliefs.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you know, he's a Christian of a very weird kind.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to see in that context too, I mean, there's a lot of different ways in which Dylan is, and that also disappointed his fans, by the way, you know, when he went gossip.
[SPEAKER_02]: just disappointed as putting it mildly yeah people want not although i think that in retrospect if you go back and listen to some of those albums not not all not saved but but if you listen to shot a love again you will be very surprised there's a lot of really good music on you got it got to serve somebody uh... in retrospect does have some some strengths slow train common absolutely and but it go back and listen to shot a love some time you'll you know this song about lany bruce uh... it's him kind of being semi
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm secular but anyway by point is only that Bob Dylan is doing a lot of different things at the same time and he's doing a lot of different things at the same time in this album it just sounds so smallcy and innocuous but nothing with Bob Dylan even at it's most smallcy is to be taken completely at face value.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well I think we've got time for one more let's listen to from the Bob Dylan Christmas album have yourself a merry little Christmas.
[SPEAKER_03]: Have yourself, a merry little Christmas, let your heart be light.
[SPEAKER_03]: Next year, all our troubles will be out of sight.
[SPEAKER_03]: They did a Christmas make the you tag game Next year on the troubles will be miles away Once again
[SPEAKER_03]: As it ordered days, happy golden days of y'all.
[SPEAKER_03]: Faithful friends, who I did to us, will be near to us once more.
[SPEAKER_01]: Faithful friends who are dear to us, Sean Willance,
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, you can say, you know, this isn't singing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's croaking, but you know, when Tom waits croaks, a lot of people think it's great, or when Louie Armstrong sings this song, and he, you know, he doesn't have a beautiful voice either in the classic sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know what the complaining is about.
[SPEAKER_02]: I really don't.
[SPEAKER_02]: The same voice is saying, you know, loving Seth and the, you know, I don't quite get it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it is more to do that you are used to hearing these songs sung by Nat King Cole.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, some were well-known, Tom May, some were with a very smooth voice.
[SPEAKER_02]: So Bob Dylan is certainly adding a new dimension to Christmas now before, but it's a voice that is instantly recognizable, you know, much as to say Lewis Armstrong's was, you know, when you hear those voices, it takes you two nanoseconds, you know, who you're listening.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so immediately that conjures up a whole series of associations.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then it's not just the voice, which at times falters, it doesn't have the notes on that track in particular.
[SPEAKER_02]: But again, it's about the phrasing, listen to how he's parsing out his words, listen to how he's doing that with the music.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's actually a very much more complicated record than people would think about because he's taking all that seriously.
[SPEAKER_02]: maybe more seriously now than anyone else because this song has been sung by a million other people.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, Bob Dylan, when he sings, you know, I don't know, summer days or any of the songs that he's done recently.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's the only person who does those.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe Cheryl Crow will do them too, but very few anymore, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not like Peter Paul and Mary, that's his song.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, he has to go up against the entire galaxy of American singers going back to, you know, Eddie Canter and before.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he has to add something new to a tradition.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's part of what's going on here, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sean Wolens is the official historian at the official Bob Dylan website.
[SPEAKER_01]: He also teaches American history at Princeton.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sean, thank you for helping us understand.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, John.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's always a pleasure.
[SPEAKER_04]: We spoke with Sean Williams about Bob Dylan's Christmas album in December 2009.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've been listening to Start Making Sense, a podcast from the Nation Magazine.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm John Weener.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for listening.