The 25 Days of Christmas: Day 23
Something sublime and otherworldly as we head into the final stretch.
The first time I heard Harlan T. Bobo I was driving down Union Avenue, heading to Midtown Video and listening to WEVL. The song was It’s Only Love, and I had one of those sublime “driveway moments” as I parked, turned off the car, and just sat there listening until the song ended. This was something different.
That song was the first track on the album Too Much Love, which I played nonstop for several months after that and still return to with pleasure. I’d go see him any chance I could, and two of the best live shows I’ve attended were his. In 2010 I saw him play at the old Hi-Tone Cafe with the Iris Collective, which was back then an offshoot of the Germantown Symphony (video of that show here). They played his songs with orchestral arrangements added to the electric instruments and it was marvelous.
But if you ask me what’s the greatest live show I’ve ever seen, the first thing that comes to mind is his 2008 Christmas show at the Hi-Tone. I took some photos that night, with all the awesome clarity that a 2008 digital point-and-shoot had to offer at max ISO 200:
The Christmas show featured a hand-painted backdrop showing aliens delivering Baby Jesus to Earth. Bobo wore elaborate costumes, there were black light effects, and everyone was given some of those spectrum diffraction glasses at the door. It was an incredible full-force Sensory Experience, of the kind not usually seen in an intimate venue like the Hi-Tone.
Sometime around then, he recorded—but did not release—a Christmas album called Merry Christmas Spaceman. I got the mp3s from a friend who had gotten it somehow, and couldn’t believe what I was listening to.
This album was so secret that sometime around 2011 I called Goner Records, the High Temple of Memphis Music Hipsterdom, to ask about it and they’d never even heard of it. The guy sounded skeptical, clearly convinced that I was either confused or lying. Of course I didn’t want to ruin anything so I kept quiet about it after that, but it was pretty great being, as far as I knew, one of just a handful of people with a copy of Harlan T. Bobo’s Christmas album.
Since then Harlan has released it on Bandcamp, and you can listen to it in its entirety here:
The weirdness of the whole thing is marvelous. Sci-fi sound effects, unusual instruments brought in out of nowhere (an opera singer! some kind of whistle! pipe organ! is that someone playing a saw? ooh, a kazoo chorus!), bizarre Esquivel-worthy arrangements, parts that are engineered to sound like a live performance, and even some rare songs like “Christmas in Killarney” that he’s resurrected just because he can. A wildly inventive collection, fully worthy of a Mad Genius. I can’t even pick a favorite song because the whole thing exists in my mind as one indivisible work.
Notes:
If you like this album, feel free to buy the download. The artist gets 85% of the purchase price.
Especially if you’re a Memphian, but even if you’re not, please go listen to his masterpiece “Must Be in Memphis” immediately.
For holidays that have an Eve, the day before the Eve is, logically, the Adam. Today, then, I wish you a happy Christmas Adam. Further, in my attempts to expand the holiday period, I propose that the day before the Adam be called the Word, and the day before that the Void. December 21 is Christmas Void, 22 is Christmas Word, 23 is Christmas Adam, &c.