Theme Time Radio Hour Roundup Day

A lot of highlights in this week's Theme Time Radio Hour, which was either titled "(We Climb Aboard) Noah's Ark" or "Animals: Part 1" dependent on which teaser from Pierre Mancini you want to use.

Stand-out for the show for me had to be Bonnie Raitt's stunning version of Baby, Mine.  The song was originally sung as a lullaby to Dumbo the elephant by his Mom in the Disney cartoon. Raitt turns it into a torchy love song that, as Mr. D. says, sounds as if she's singing it to the man she loves. In fact, Our Host seems so awed by Raitt's version that he uses that exact same phrase in both introducing and closing the song.

A little searching uncovered that Baby Mine appears on Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films a compilation from 19 and 88 that immediately went into my Amazon shopping cart.  The song's arrangement was by Don Was, of Was (Not Was), and impressed Bonnie Raitt so much that she recruited Was to produce her next album.

One of the fun - sometimes frustrating - games to play with TTRH is "Name That Tune" or sometimes "Name That Clip," identifying the various snippets from song, film and T.V. that are used as bed music and underscores throughout the show.  I'm still trying to figure out the name of the jazzy piano piece used underneath this episode's "Nighttime in the Big City" intro, as Ellen Barkin re-appears and relates to her audience that, "a burly man sells factory-second tube socks out of his car's trunk."

There's also a great bossa nova version of the theme from The Monkees playing as Mr. D.'s explores the social organization of bonobo monkeys, which have "large sexual repertoires" according to Wikipedia, and sadly relates that he misses the `60s.

I immediately recognized the clip from Cool Coz's wonderful "Noah" routine, which appeared on his first album, Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow Right! recorded live at The Bitter End club in Greenwich Village way back in 19 and 63.  If your only knowledge of Bill Cosby is as the Huxtable patriarch, check out the video above and recordings of his early work.

It's possible that Mr. D. saw Cosby do "Noah" live.  They were both working the same clubs, and Suze Rotolo mentions in A Freewheelin' Time that Dylan and The Coz "bonded in ambition early on."

Other show highlights included "Cousin Emmy" opening with one of her signature tunes, Groundhog and Tex Ritter doing one of the many variations of Froggy Went a-Courtin', with Our Host, as always, avoiding mention of the fact that it's a song he's covered himself. Cousin Emmy, by the way, deserves a Dreamtime post of her own, and I'm going to hold off saying anything more about her until I get around to doing it.  I should also take a look at The Monkey Speaks His Mind, which, as Mr. D. notes, has a much longer history before Dave Bartholomew put it to music.  I'm pretty sure that song originated from the Black oral  tradition of "toasts."

Mr. D. tells a dreadful joke about giraffes, which he's told us before. There's a lengthy phone call from a "Tempest Foxx," who's working in a, uh, club, in Australia and who tells us more than any of us probably needed to know about the oeuvre of Grizzly Adams.

Tempest seems to share the same confusion about songs of The Beatles as the caller from the "Money" show, Carol, did as she asks for I Am The Walrus by The Who.  Unlike Carol, though, Tempest is willing to accept Mr. D.'s correction, noting that all those English bands sound alike to her anyway, and changes her request to a song about kangaroos.  Mr. D. complies with Rolf Harris' Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport, and solos - he claims - on the didgeridoo after the song. I kept on hoping for a didgeridoo version of Blowin' in the Wind, but no joy.

Our Host closed the show noting that he had decided 20 minutes into it that he was going to have to do a second show on the subject, not having time to play among others, Memphis Minnie's Mean Red Spider. So we'll have "Animals: Part 2" to look forward to next week.

TTRH in the WSJ

LBJ also rides the IRT to view the youth of America on LSD. And 10 Dreamtime points to readers who know the source of that non sequitur.

Anyway, Dreamtime reader/listener Steve Ramm sends us a link to an entertaining Wall Street Journal article by WSJ drama critic Terry Teachout. An excerpt:

To listen to "Theme Time Radio Hour" is to rediscover the sense of musical adventure that old-fashioned disc jockeys with strongly individual personalities offered in the days before big-money stations pinned their fiscal hopes to the rigid Top 40-style playlists that took the fun out of radio. Now that America's public-radio stations are abandoning musical programming in favor of news and talk, such shows have grown hard to find in many major markets. That's what makes satellite radio promising. Because it has so many different channels, it has room for everything -- including unpredictability.

Mr. Teachout notes as an aside that the FCC has apparently finally approved the Sirius/XM merger/takeover, of course doing it while Dreamtime was on vacay. There will be a separate post on that story upon the moment. Thanks for the tip on the WSJ article, Steve!

Authorized Theme Time Radio Compilation Coming in March

UPDATED January 15, 2008 - Ace has now released a full track list for the compilation and has a link to the set on the Amazon UK Web site. It doesn't appear that Dylan's commentary is included.

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Ace Records has announced that it will be releasing the first authorized CD compilation of TTRH on March 5, 2008. Grandpa Jones' Turn Your Radio On (featured on the Radio episode) will open the collection. Ace's announcement is below:

Ace are [sic] excited to announce the release of the authorised CD of music from award-winning XM music show “Theme Time Radio Hour with your host Bob Dylan” on March 5th 2008.

The compilation, a 2CD 50-track set, produced for reissue by “Theme Time Radio Hour” producer Eddie Gorodetsky and Ace’s own Roger Armstrong is based around the 828 tracks played in the 50 episodes of the first series.

The compilation represents the vast range of music played on the show, with a song list spanning ‘Papa’s On The Housetop’ by Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell recorded in 1930 to Mary Gauthier’s ‘I Drink’ recorded in 2005. Artists as diverse as The White Stripes, Grandpa Jones, Jerry Butler, The Clash, Memphis Minnie, Bobby Darin, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, The Modern Lovers, Billie Holiday, George Jones, Bo Diddley, Alton Ellis, Louis Jordan, Santiago Jimenez, James Carr, Gerraint Watkins, Slim Gaillard, Otis Rush and many others sit happily side by side on this highly eclectic collection.

The package, designed by Phil Smee at Waldo’s Design and Dream Emporium, includes a fully illustrated 40-page book packed full of rare photographs and memorabilia alongside detailed notes on each track, by experts in each genre.

Bob Dylan's "Theme Time Radio Hour" debuted to popular and critical acclaim on XM Satellite Radio in May 2006, and was subsequently broadcast on both BBC Radio 2 and BBC 6 Music. The Times described the show as “the most consistently entertaining hour on radio”, while The Observer noted, “The triumph of Dylan's show is that it really is unlike anything else you could hear, and as such is priceless." Among the show’s accomplishments of the past year, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum added the "baseball" episode of "Theme Time Radio Hour" to its archives in June 2006.

Bob Dylan is one of the world's most popular and acclaimed songwriters, musicians and performers, having sold over 100 million albums and performed thousands of shows around the world in a career spanning five decades. His newest album, “Modern Times”, has already sold more than two million copies, reaching the number one slot in 13 countries. The first volume of his memoirs, Chronicles, was one of the most acclaimed and best-selling non-fiction works of 2004, and 2005’s No Direction Home film, directed by Martin Scorsese, captivated audiences worldwide as it documented Dylan's early career and rise to fame.

The announcement leaves the question open as to whether Dylan's original commentary on the tracks will be included. Eddie Gorodetsky's involvement is a good sign, though. Ace is a British label, and there's also no word as to whether the compilation will be available in the U.S.

Leave your radio on, though, and I'll provide updates as I find them.

Theme Time Radio Hour art

Found via William Gibson's blog, I've fallen in love with the net.art.generator, which will compose a - sometimes unexpected - collage of images based on a word or phrase. Above, "Theme Time Radio Hour," almost pretty enough to replace the Dreamtime logo. If you need a productivity-buster time waster, try a selection of themes, including Drinking, Smoking, and Weather.

A Theme Time Christmas

There's just 48 days left of the holiday shopping season, and what to get that Theme Time Radio Hour fanatic in your household?

Dreamtime has come up with some, ahem, themed gift ideas for the most discerning fan tastes, and for anything from champagne to beer budgets. Anybody could think of the Baseball episode on CD, or gifting that special person with a subscription to XM Radio, but only at Dreamtime will you find these.

1. An iPod Retro Radio

A retro radio show deserves retro listeners, and what better way to show your head is in the past, no matter where your body may be, than with an iPod disguised as a vintage portable radio?

Go haunt a few flea markets or thrift shops, or maybe you'll find one squirreled away in the family closet. Bring your iPod along for sizing purposes until you find that perfect radio. Take the radio apart, gut it out, drop some foam in, route the cables.

Go show off.

Price: The cost of one vintage portable radio and your time and effort. Full instructions are here.




2. The Theme Time Radio Hour Poster


XM and/or bobdylan.com may eventually release a print edition of this Jaime Hernandez poster illustrating vignettes from the Big City, but if you don't want to wait, the 2 x 1 1/2'- foot 72 dpi image is available here.

Download the puppy, save it to some portable media like a CD or thumb drive and hie yourself off to your friendly neighborhood print shop. If you don't have one you already patronize, Kinkos (now owned by FedEx) is an option in most of the U.S. But any print shop willing to do a one-off poster will work.

Price: Kinkos in-store poster printing prices begin at $30. I used a heavy-duty poster stock that brought the price up to $55. Backing and framing will run you extra.




3. The Outlaw Blues Hat

Any TTRH wannabee-DJ is going to be looking good come Christmas morn wearing this hat inspired by the custom Outlaw Blues model Mr. D. sported on the 2004 Newsweek cover and during a 60 Minutes interview. And we have it direct from Tex Carbone that Our Host has worn it more than once in Studio B.

"As is the original, the 'Outlaw Blues" is made of specially dyed 'Silver Belly' 100% Fur Felt, with a lanky ''moonshiner' styled and shaped crown, and wide brim, which we then sidewindered on both sides in a 'West Texas' style fender fold..."

Price: $430 from Baron Hats.

4. A 6-Pack of Select Beer

If your gift recipient is like ol' Hank from the Drinking episode and likes a beer with a single throw switch, go empty out a cardboard 6-pack and refill it with a selection that could include Irish Red, Murphy's Stout, Newcastle Brown Ale, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Stella Artois, and Beck's. Or you could simply hop over to the Gift Specialists and order that Special Someone A Big Fat 6-Pack of California micro-brewed beer.

Price: From $20-$30 dollars




5. Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton

Our Host recommended this one back in the Tears episode. The perfect gift for that family reader - or relative with gender issues - on your gift list.

Billy Tipton was ajazz pianist who played in clubs throughout the Midwest for nearly 50 years. Upon Tipton's death it was discovered that the five-times-married father to three boys was biologically female. More info can be found at the author's site, which includes recordings of Tipton's music and voice.

Price: Paperback- $11.90 at Amazon.com.




6. Samson's Diner

If money is no object, Dreamtime has the perfect gift selection for you. Buy a diner and rename it Samson's. Imagine the look of delight on your hubby's (or hubbette's) face when they walk outside on a snowy Christmas morning and find this baby in the driveway!

So where do you find a diner for sale, you ask? No prob, answers Dreamtime. Just hop on over to the American Diner museum where you'll find listings for everything from the Sunrise Diner in Jim Thorpe, PA ($42,000) to the Gateway Diner (pictured above) in the Netherlands (105,000 Euros or B.O.) Learn how to make the world's strongest cup of coffee, and not only is this destined to be the best Christmas Gift Ever, but it will also become a revenue stream! Who could ask for more?

Price: From $6,000 to $113,00 or more depending on condition and location. Moving expenses and coffee extra.


7. People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs 1913-1938


Know someone who has a yen to play Theme Time deejay, but who just can't seem to settle on a theme? Buy them this 3-CD box set, and they'll have a disastrous radio show nearly ready to go. Add some trivia on the Titanic and Johnstown Flood, a poetry reading of Lord Byron's The Destruction of Sennacherib, maybe an email from The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, stir well and voila! Instant Theme Time.

Price: CD Box set - $46.99. Selections as mp3 downloads - $0.99 ea. From Amazon.

8. 2008 Hybrid Cadillac Escalade

Because we can't say it any better, here's the blurb from Automobile Magazine:

"Attention hip-hop stars, professional athletes, and fat-wallet extroverts of all stripes: The new Cadillac Escalade is here. And to go along with your diamond-studded earth shoes, the Cadillac Escalade will go hybrid in the 2008 model year, along with the Chevrolet Tahoe and GMC Yukon. GM claims a 25 percent increase in fuel economy."

Estimated Price: $54,875 - $57,430


9. Figgy (or Figi) Pudding

However you want to spell it, it spells Christmas according to Our Host! But who has the time to make one from scratch like Bob? Dreamtime stepped into the breach and found a pre-made Figi for the well-meaning but time-challenged.

According to the description at the appropriately named figis.com, it's "spice-laden, loaded with raisins, and deliciously drenched in brandy. It's so good that wassailers made a song of it… and, though this pudding has no figs in it, it lives up to the tribute! Add the included Brandy Butter Hard Sauce for ultimate Figi goodness. Avail. Oct. 15th thru April."

Price: 2 lb. Figi Pudding $29.99

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