A Christmas Carol (used by permission)

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The Idea of North inspire with their all-round excellence, while Neville Turner stirs the pot of an old controversy with his article about who is fit to practise the art of jazz.

This issue, we have a lot to say to DIY songwriter/recordists. Terry Noone writes a must-read article about Tunecore, and how it might help you to get your songs on iTunes without benefit of record company. Another thoughtful article examines that other exemplar of internet self-promotion, MySpace, exploring the question of whether it could work for you. And The Songsmith concludes his two-part series on the five great mistakes novices make when cutting tunes. And if you don't know what a 6th chord is but you'd like to live on the wild side, check out Holden Fairlane's ongoing Harmony tutorial.
At the lighter end of the spectrum, Paul Gray reviews the wonderful Prairie Home Companion (I found the penguin joke funny) and we have our regular Certified Ads and CD Reviews.
For a while, I have been saying to people, "The next issue of The Dues is coming" and they have been retorting, "So's Christmas!" Well, here they both are. Enjoy, and God (or Allah, or the blind watchmaker) bless us, everyone!

"Bah! Humbug!"

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Prairie penguin poser

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For myself, I think it is funny, but only because it features penguins. Penguins are hilarious. They don't have to do anything to be funny. As for the bit about the tuxedo, that gets you thinking.

And it is good to think. It is also good to laugh. Thinking about penguins who pose difficult questions seems to bring both activities together, even if the laughter is more notional than physical.

What there is little debate about is that Garrison Keillor is a very unusual entertainer. A small but dedicated population of Australian fans recall with love his radio program when it was broadcast on the ABC, featuring fictional stories in weekly updated form from the Minnesota town of Lake Wobegon.

The news from Lake Wobegon, where all the men are tall, all the women are good-looking and all the children are above average, somehow extended its fame beyond its circle of listeners.

The rampant irony revealed - if irony can be revealed - in Keillor's semi-serious, sentimental evocations of polite American small-town life in the Lake Wobegon stories still sets people wondering.

Is this guy really writing a hymn to churchy, polite, traditional America? Or is he taking the mickey? Let those questions stand.

The movie based on Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion radio show, starring Keillor himself as the host GK, was the last movie ever made by director Robert Altman.

It's a pretty strange film. Ostensibly it's about the last-ever performance of a live radio show: Saturday night from the
F  Scott Fitzgerald Theatre in St Paul, Minnesota, with country music, inspirational (gospel) singing, cowboy humour and old-fashioned paid sponsorship jingles for products like Powder Milk Biscuits and generic brand coffee:

Coffee: it's even good in good in Lutheran churches. It keeps the Swedes and the Germans awake through the sermons.

It might not be everyone's cup of humour, although there's no doubt that Garrison Keillor is a talented wordsmith. But what really sets him apart is his unique ability to combine the wordiness of a talented humourist with a more than passing accomplishment in musical composition.

Anyone who has ever heard the often-requested "Young Lutheran's Guide to the Orchestra" on Classic FM mu7st admit that Keillor knows what he's talking about when it comes to instruments at least.

The radio show's last night at the Fitzgerald Theatre is not as straightforward as it seems. A mysterious glamour woman in a long white coat, whose name nobody knows, is moving around the back-stage offering cryptic messages about love and "coming home." She also questions Keillor about why penguin joke is funny.

It appears, though it is never made clear, that this woman is the angel of death. The magical mystery element is what stamps it as an Altman movie, rather than simply a Keillor story.

But what really drives the film along is the song list, almost entirely made up of numbers with words and music by Keillor himself.

I will pawn you my gold watch and chain dear, I will pawn you my gold wedding ring.

I will pawn you this heart in my bosom, Only say that you love me again.

Meryl Streep sings that schmaltzy number with Keillor harmonizing on the chorus. We're to believe the two have had a failed love affair, though the song is really the point.

As they croon it, you don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Angels, off-stage deaths and broken affairs aside, what makes the entertainment go off like a bomb is the "Bad Jokes" song in the program's second half.

Woody Harrelson and Jake Gyllenhaal play Dusty and Lefty, two wise-cracking cowboys with probably violent criminal records who milk sexual innuendo to death in another Keillor-penned number with enough bad jokes in it to keep most of us going at the pub for at least 12 months, or more.

The joyful tumble of words, reflections on relations between the sexes and chord changes from the conventional country song makes the film. Some how it proves the point that a good bad joke can say more about life than just about any other form of writing.

Keillor's joke about the talking frog is another illustration. It didn't make it into the movie, but it goes like this:

An 84-year-old man is walking through the forest when a talking frog says to him: 'Give me a kiss and I'll turn into a beautiful princess, and then I will grant you every one of your sexual fantasies.'

The man picks up the frog and puts it in his pocket, and continues walking.

'Hey, what about my kiss?' says his passenger.

'At my age,' the old man replies, 'I'd rather have a talking frog.'

If someone can put that to music, I'll buy it.

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