Sunday, March 29, 2015

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST


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Sunday, March 29, 2015 
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M. 
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell
Webcasting!
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's the playlist below

Like the Terrell's Sound World Facebook page

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE

Party Like It's ONE MILLION YEARS BC on the new Big Enchilada Episode


THE BIG ENCHILADA




Yabba Dabba Do, fellow homo erecti!! This month the Big Enchilada is going to get down to the bedrock of rock 'n' roll with some modern Stone Age sounds. 

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Here's the playlist:

(Background Music: Caveman by Los Straitjackets)
Caveman by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
Dial Up Doll by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Jaybird Safari by The Brain Eaters
Twinkle Toes by The Neanderthals 
Scat Song by Mojo JuJu & The Snake-Oil Merchants
You Can't Teach a Caveman 'bout Romance by The 99ers

(Background Music: The Cave by Chuck Holden)
I Caveman and You by Los Peyotes 
Bakaloria by Mazhott
Shake a Bone, Capone by The Frantic Flintstones
Del Dia de su Muerte by Los Eskeletos
Blind and Deaf by No Hit Makers
Bedrock Barney by The Dickies
Cave Girl by The Texreys 

(Background Music: Cave Man Love by Space Man & The Rockets)
Neanderthal Beat by Jonah Gold & The Silver Apples
Cave Man by Blood Drained Cows
Boogeyman by The Mad Doctors 
Shoplifter by Quintron & Miss Pussycat
(Background Music: Alley Oop by The Hollywood Argyles)

Play it on the player below:


Friday, March 27, 2015

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

UPDATED with Mixcloud Player of the Mose McCormack segment.

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Friday, March 27, 2015 
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM 
Webcasting! 
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell 
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist below:

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Red Red Robin by Rosie Flores
I Like to Sleep Late in the Morning by Jerry Jeff Walker
Do as You Are Told by Texas Martha & The House of Twang
Flyin' Saucer by Yuichi & The Hilltone Boys
That Nightmare is Me by Mose McCormack

Mose McCormack live in KSFR Studio

Santa Fe Trail
Perfect Sea
Naco Jail
Dusty Devil
Joni
Out on the Highway
Lost and Never Found 
Hillbilly Town
Under the Jail

The World's a Mess It's in My Kiss by X
Poor Little Critter in the Road by The Knitters
The Union Dues Blues by Chipper Thompson
Wanted Man by Johnny Cash
Year of Jubilo by The Holy Modal Rounders
A Fool for Love by Marty Stuart
Where the Comet Falls by Al Duvall
Jean Harlow by Lead Belly

Someday We'll Look Back by Merle Haggard
Whiskey and Cocaine Stevie Tombstone 
Wildcat Run by Red Sovine
Shortnin' Bread by J.E.Mainer & Red Smiley
The Fox by The Waco Brothers
My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You by The Rizdales
That's How I Got to Memphis by Kelly Willis
I Made a Friend of a Flower Today by Fayssoux Starling McLean & Tom T. Hall
I'll Think of Something by Hank Williams, Jr.
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets


Here the first hour with Mose McCormack on the player below. Mose's live segment starts about 17 minutes into the show


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Live Tonight on the Santa Fe Opry: Mose McCormack



Mose McCormack will put you under the jail tonight on The Santa Fe Opry!

McCormack, who has been picking and singing and occasionally releasing albums in New Mexico music since the 1970s, will be playing on my show, starting a little bit after 10 pm Friday (Mountain Time) on KSFR, 101. FM in Northern New Mexico and streaming live HERE.

Here's a profile of Mose I wrote for No Depression back in the '90s. And below is Mose performing one of his tunes:



Thursday, March 26, 2015

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: Mojo JuJu and Bettye LaVette Cast Their Spells

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
March 27, 2015


Mojo JuJu & The Snake Oil Merchants.
Ms. JuJu is sitting with resonator guitar 


Close your eyes and imagine you’re lost on a foggy night on some uncharted back street off the Reeperbahn in Hamburg or near the port of Amsterdam, where the sailors all meet. From some dangerous little dive you hear music: after-hours blues, off-kilter torch songs, Gypsy jazz, hot Weimar Republic cabaret, “punk noir,” strange tangos, and dark, soulful ballads. But before you can go in, you wake up.

Don’t worry. You can find that kind of alluring music on a new collection called Anthology by Mojo JuJu & The Snake Oil Merchants.

In case you’re not familiar with Mr. and Mrs. JuJu’s baby girl, she’s an Australian from Melbourne who has been a solo act for a few years. But Off Label Records, my favorite crazy German punk/alt-blues/garage/slop country/jug-band record company in recent years, compiled this collection of her work with her old band and released it last month to expose this music to a wider audience — and, I suppose, to show us what we’ve missed.

The music here falls somewhere between that of Cab Calloway and Gogol Bordello. I’m also reminded of the Eastern European-influenced Firewater. “Fisherman’s Daughter” starts off with a horn section that sounds like it might have come from a ’90s ska-punk group. And if anyone claims that Tom Waits isn’t a major influence, they’re either lying or deaf. Try to listen to Mojo’s banjo-led, horn-accented “Sacred Heart of Mary” without being tempted to sing along in your best phlegm-heavy Waits voice.

And elsewhere, like on “Transient Being,” you might be reminded of the late Amy Winehouse. That is, if Winehouse had been prone to using accordion and trombone in her songs. In one interview, Mojo said she gets her inspiration from “scary antique stores.”

Sounds reasonable.

Some of the best tunes here are the ones that sound like they could have been theatrical pieces. “Scat Song” would have fit in on the soundtrack of Boardwalk Empire (maybe in a scene set in Chalky White’s nightclub). “God and the Devil” is a little morality drama in which a woman hears a pitch from the Prince of Darkness and asks, “Well, I looked that devil right square in the eye and said, ‘Do I look stupid to you?’ ”

One of the darkest, most striking songs on Anthology is the near-seven-minute “But I Do.” It’s slow and menacing. Mojo sings of pain in her heart, the piano plays sinister little one-finger trills that sound like Morse code, and the drummer seems to be pounding to drive away demons.

The song that sounds most autobiographical here is “My Home,” an intense tango in which Mojo sings:

And the color of my skin and the color of my eyes 
has meant that even in my homeland I have been mistaken for a stranger in a foreign country
But it’s my home. This is my home. 

She sounds angry and proud. It’s powerful.

Mojo Juju, without her Snake Oil Merchants, is about to release her latest solo album, Seeing Red/Feeling Blue, next month. That should be worth checking out.

Also recommended:



* Worthy by Bettye LaVette. I normally don’t quote James Taylor much (if at all), but listening to this album made me flash on an old line by sweet baby James: “A churning urn of burning funk.”

To be sure, it’s slow-burning funk, and one of my few problems with the album is that there should have been a few more faster numbers. But like LaVette’s best work since the turn of the century, the soul runs deep. Every song on this album is a raw emotional statement — though that’s also true of just about all the songs on just about all of her albums.

Quick biographical note: LaVette has been in the music biz since the 1960s. But as a result of bad breaks, bad business decisions, and the fickle nature of the entertainment industry, she never quite made it beyond the status of cult favorite.

That changed around 10 years ago, when she met up with producer Joe Henry, who helped LaVette make I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise, an album that not only was worthy (yes, I used that word) of her talents, but also had some commercial appeal, at least for hip adults.

She’s made some fine albums since then — one of my favorites is The Scene of the Crime, which Patterson Hood, of the Drive-By Truckers, produced in 2007 and which had a nice rock ’n’ roll edge.

When it comes down to it, Henry is a perfect fit for LaVette. And Worthy is a sweet reunion.

The album contains a song from each of the cosmic trinity of 1960s rock: “Unbelievable,” an obscurity from Bob Dylan (from the critically disdained 1990 album Under the Red Sky); a Beatles throwaway, “Wait” (from Rubber Soul); and the Rolling Stones’ “Complicated,” which was on their underrated album Between the Buttons.

But LaVette isn’t aiming for some empty-headed ’60s nostalgia here. Remarkably, she makes you all but forget the original versions by these exalted masters. I didn’t even recognize “Complicated” until about halfway through. “Unbelievable,” which kicks off the album, is the toughest and, yes, funkiest thing on the record. And LaVette brings out more emotional depth in “Wait” than the Fab Moptops ever did.

Other gems on Worthy are the slow, bluesy “Just Between You and Me and the Wall You’re a Fool” (written by James Brown, but not that James Brown); the stunning “Undamned,” which begins, “Sometimes the things we believe turn out to be nothing but a scam/I’m just trying to get my world undamned”; and “Stop,” a minor-key Joe Henry tune in which LaVette gets defiant. “Don’t tell me to stop,” she sings.

But I don’t know anyone who wants Bettye LaVette to stop.

Video time!

Here's Mojo JuJu



And here's Bettye covering The Beatles



||||

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Kingdom Coming in the Year of Jubilo

Here is a classic American tune that perhaps you first heard in an old cartoon.

Like this one:



Or maybe you remember it from Ken Burn's Civil War series.

Or maybe ever so often it just bounces around in your subconscious, just part of your American musical DNA.

It's called "Kingdom Coming" or sometimes "Year of Jubilo." And it was written in 1862, during the Civil War, by a  popular songwriter of the day named Henry C, Work (1832-1884).

Warning: The song was written for a minstrel show. And we all know about minstrel shows. Indeed, this song does contain a racist epithet: "darkies" and it's meant to be sung in minstrel show dialect.

But before we condemn Henry C. Work, consider his life. Born a Connecticut yankee, he was a devout abolitionist and supporter of the Union in the war,  It ran in the family. His parents’ house was used as a stop in the Underground Railroad for escaped slaves fleeing to Canada.

Despite the minstrel show conventions found here, the lyrics mostly ridicule the "massa," who has been frightened away from his own plantation by Union gunships.

It's a song of liberation in which the slaves celebrate, locking the cruel overseer in the smokehouse and helping themselves to the massa's liquor cabinet.

“The whip is lost, the handcuffs broken, but the master will have his pay ..."

I couldn't find any Youtubes of the song from the 1860s, but here's an old version by National Barn Dance radio star Chubby Parker:



Will Rogers sang it the 1932 film Too Busy to Work in which Rogers, playing a drifter named "Jubilo," who is reunited with his long-lost daughter,



Singer Pokey LaFarge did a wonderful version of "Kingdom Coming" in the 2013 compilation Divided & United: The Songs of the Civil War. He cleaned it up a little, changing "darkies" to "brothers."



But my favorite version still is that of The Holy Modal Rounders, who recorded two versions of it through the years, both titled "Year of Jubilo." They joyously screw with the lyrics. In the Rounders' versions you don’t see Lincoln’s gunships, you see Lincoln himself with “a piece of paper in his hand,” presumably the Emancipation Proclamation. “Abe Lincoln come, ha ha/Jeff Davis go, ho ho,” they sing.)



Have yourself a jubilant Thursday!

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

WACKY WEDNESDAY: The Whole World Digs That Sound From the U.S.A.


They wanna hear some American music, American music
They wanna hear that sound right from the U.S.A. ...
The whole world digs that sound from the U.S.A.

The Blasters sang it.

I believe it.

That settles it.

And so I'm going to indulge in a little American exceptionalism, musically speaking, and present a little showcase how different styles of the American music we love deeply in out hearts have been reinterpreted by pickers and singers from all over the globe.

Some of the music below might make you laugh at first. That's OK. After all, it's Wacky Wednesday. But after a chuckle or two, listen to these songs. There are some fine musicians here and their art is a testament to the glory of American music (not to mention the kinship of musicians throughout the globe and the strands of human culture that unite creative people everywhere.).

Obviously, American music has been influenced by all sorts of sounds that originated in Europe, Africa, Mexico, pre-statehood Hawaii etc. But hard-working American musicians turned it all into something new. And around the world, those who heard the call soaked it in and added their own sounds and made it new again.

In fact, the artists I like best out of these are the ones who take our roots music and add elements of their own culture. One of the best examples of this is a Romanian blues band called Nightlosers. Years ago I reviewed their album Plum Brandy Blues. And I still love it.




And how about a little late-'60s/early-'70s psychedelic garage soul from Ghana: I give you The Psychedelic Aliens!



And now, some hardcore, Casbah-rockin' punk sounds from war-torn Syria. This band from Damascus is called Mazhott. And they rock! Their sound is quite addictive.

According to a 2009 interview in Taqwacore Journal, they started out around 2007.

Guitarist Rashwan says:

The Mighty Mazhott
We sing about stuff that matters to young people, in general, and social [issues]. [For example], the high school diploma, here, is unbelievably difficult, so, we wrote about that. We wrote about fathers forcing their young daughters to marry older men, about our generation that is frustrated and lost and don’t know wot to do with their lives,  about less separating of boys and girls, and about how we need more attention and freedom.

Below, from the group's Bandcamp page is their 2013 EP M is for Mazhott. (And if you like these amazing songs, fork over a couple of bucks and buy it! I did.)



And of course, there is Japanese bluegrass. The Ozaki Brothers, Yasushi and Hisashi, are bluegrass pioneers in the Land of the Rising Son, who as pre-teens in World War II, had to secretly listen to the American folk music they love because the government had banned it, according to WAMU's Bluegrass Country website,

Here's a 2009 video of the brothers singing "Are You Washed in the Blood of the Lamb."



And let's close out with some Argentine rockabilly by a band called Coyotes!



God bless America!

(Hat tip to Tripp Jennings, who inadvertently inspired this with an unrelated Tweet last week,) 

Sunday, March 22, 2015

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

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Sunday, March , 2015 
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M. 
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell
Webcasting!
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's the playlist below

Like the Terrell's Sound World Facebook page

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE

Thursday, March 19, 2015

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Springtime in the Rockies



Tomorrow, Friday March 20, is the first day of Spring.

About damn time!

So in celebration of the changing of the season, here are three of my favorite songs about spring.

First, Gene Autry, performing the title song -- or close to it-- of one of his classic singing cowboy movies, Springtime in the Rockies, which was released in 1937.

Five years later, Betty Grable made a movie with the same title.




But Autry didn't write this song. A Mormon history blog called Keepapitchinin tells the tale:

The ballad became a hit single for Gene Autry, and later for country singer Hank Snow. The nostalgic words set to their simple melody suggest that this is an old folk song, its words polished by countless anonymous singers. But it is a 20th century creation, its lyrics written by a Mormon girl, Mary Hale Woolsey, born in Springville, Utah, in 1899.

Mary attended Provo High School, then Brigham Young University where she served as a class officer and wrote for student publications. With a keen ear for the spoken word, Mary wrote several operettas performed by local theater and church groups and found a ready market for her radio plays.

She successfully collaborated with professional musicians. “Springtime in the Rockies” was published in 1929 with music written by Robert Sauer and was followed by other songs in the sentimental western genre – “When the Wild, Wild Roses Bloom,” “Colorado Skies,” and “On the Trails of Timpanogas” were all popular for a time.

So there is our history lesson for the day. Here are two other spring favorites:

Here is Bobby Troup, the guy who wrote "(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66."



But I first heard "Their Hearts Were Full of Spring" by The Beach Boys, who based their version on that of The Four Freshmen. Here is a downright haunting live rendition from sometime in the '80s:



Finally, here's Elvis and some pals with "Spring Fever" from his motion picture classic from 50 years ago, Girl Happy.

Happy springtime to all!

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

WACKY WEDNESDAY: Some Favorite Cartoon Themes

No, it's not Saturday morning, it's Wacky Wednesday. But this week I'm going to share some of my favorite cartoon theme songs.

Sometimes at night when I go to bed and close my eyes, these songs play in my head. Taunting me.

Some of the lyrics were inspirational to me. For instance I always aspired to live up to the Yogi Bear credo: "He will sleep to noon but before it's dark, he'll have every picnic basket that's in Jellystone Park."

Somehow I fell short of that. Oh well, on with the show, cartoon pals.




There were a couple of Rocky & Bullwinkle themes, (This one had the best sound quality of what was available on YouTube



Listen to the next one and try NOT to think of Andy Kaufman



Thank you for your service, Beetle Bailey!



This next one actually was aired at night. Big time!



And here's my spiritual guide, El Oso Yogi.



And don't forget my Popeye Serenade in a Wacky Wednesday earlier this year. CLICK HERE

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Happy St. Patrick's Day!




Happy St. Paddys to ya!

Take a little time to enjoy some good Celt rock via the YouTube.








Let's start with a Marvel team-up of the band that basically started Celt rock and a venerated traditional Irish folk group: The Pogues and The Dubliners



Here's some Dropkick Murphys



I say this next one is Black 47's greatest song,



Flogging Molly



Below is my favorite Hungarian Celt-rock band.



The Mahones



And if you've made it this far, slow down a minute and take in this beautiful weeper:



And don't forget to check out the story of "Brennan on the Moor" last Throwback Thursday.

And if this ain't enough, check out my Celt Rock Spotify playlist The Paddy Wagon.


Sunday, March 15, 2015

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

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Sunday, March 15, 2015 
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M. 
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell
Webcasting!
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's the playlist below
Like the Terrell's Sound World Facebook page

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE

Friday, March 13, 2015

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

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Friday, March 13, 2015 
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM 
Webcasting! 
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell 
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist below:
OPENING THEME: Buckaroo  by Buck Owens
Back in the Saddle by Gene Autry
Lost in the Ozone by Commander Cody & The Lost Planet Airmen
Rainy Day Woman by Waylon Jennings
Georgia on a Fast Train by Billy Joe Shaver
Heartaches by the Number by Ray Price, Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard
Hogs on the Highway by Bad Livers
Take You Down by Texas Martha & The House of Twang
Long Road by Alice Wallace
Trucker Country by Erich McMann

White Dress by Anthony Leon & The Chain
The Ballad of the Alamo by Marty Robbins
Don't Remember Me by The Misery Jackals
Cheap Motels by Southern Culture on the Skids
Stuck in the Mud by Deano Waco & The Meat Purveyors 
Too Hot to Handle by Bryan Deere
Banshee by Ed Sanders
For Every Glass That's Empty by Pine Hill Haints
Hot Dog Baby by Hasil Adkins
I Love to Yodel by Carolina Cotton

Small Ya'll by George Jones
Poor Joe by Audrey Auld
Be a Little Quieter by Porter Wagoner
Naked Light of Day by Butch Hancock 
Truck Stop by the Liquor Store by the Highway by Kevin Deal
Santa Fe by Augie Meyers
Ruby Don't Take Your Love to Town by Jason & The Scorchers
The Day Bartender by Al Duval

My Old Man Boogie by Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band
Not a Song by Jim White vs The Packway Handle Band
The Western Lands by Slackeye Slim
Knoxville Girl by The Louvin Brothers
Highway Cafe by Tom Waits
A Preacher and a Girl of the Night by Jimmy Patton
CLOSING THEME Comin' Down by the Meat Puppets


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Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Later That Lifetime: An Update for The Roots of Picnic Time for Potatoheads

Back in 2011, when Spotify was new to these United States, I embarked upon a little "exercise in self-indulgence" and created a Spotify playlist of songs "that were parodied, stolen, alluded to, mentioned in passing in or somehow have a spiritual connection" with tunes on my 1981 smash hit album Picnic Time For Potatoheads.

Posting about that Spotify list on this very blog, I quipped, "If the album actually ever had been successful, here are some of the lawsuits I would have faced."

I thought about that list and the blog post tonight while reading a rant by my friend John Egenes posted on Facebook concerning a lawsuit over music copyrights.

I recalled my blog post, so I looked it up and re-read the thing. (And I fixed a four-year-old typo I hadn't noticed before.)

The entry about "My True Story" by The Jive Five said:

This song itself didn't directly inspire "The Green Weenie," but it's part of the great Doo-Wop Collective Consciousness that did. (I was disappointed that the Frank Zappa catalogue is not on Spotify. My first choice would have been a Ruben & The Jets tune in honor of the late Jimmy Carl Black, who played on "The Green Weenie.")

It occurred to me that in more recent times, I had seen Zappa on Spotify.

So what the hell, I updated it with my favorite Ruben song "Later That Night."

It's the last one on the playlist



I'm keeping the Jive Five tune on there just because it's such a great song.

And here is the song Ruben & The Jets inspired (drums by the late, great Jimmy Carl Black!)


THROWBACK THURSDAY: Brennan on the Moor

Faith and begorrah and  Erin go braugh, it's only five days until St. Patrick's Day!

So here  is a look at one of my favorite Irish outlaw songs, the tale of a "brave young highwayman" named Willie Brennan.

Here is one version of the lyrics:

'Tis of a brave young highwayman this story we will tell, 
His name was Willie Brennan and in Ireland he did dwell. 
'Twas on the Kilworth Mountains he commenced his wild career, 
And many a wealthy nobleman before him shook with fear.

Refrain:
And it's Brennan on the moor, Brennan on the moor, 
Bold, brave and undaunted was young Brennan on the moor.

One day upon the highway, as Willie he went down, 
He met the mayor of Cashel, a mile outside of town. 
The mayor, he knew his features, and he said, "Young man," said he, 
"Your name is Willie Brennan, you must come along with me."
(Refrain)

Now Brennan's wife had gone to town provisions for to buy, 
And when she saw her Willie she commenced to weep and cry. 
Said, "Hand to me that ten-penny," as soon as Willie spoke, 
She handed him a blunderbuss from underneath her cloak
(Refrain)

Now with his loaded blunderbuss—the truth I will unfold— 
He made the mayor to tremble, and he robbed him of his gold. 
One hundred pounds was offered for his apprehension there, 
So he, with horse and saddle, to the mountains did repair,
Did young Brennan on the moor, Brennan on the moor, 
Bold, brave and undaunted was young Brennan on the moor.
(Refrain)

Now Brennan being an outlaw upon the mountains high, 
With cavalry and infantry to take him they did try. 
He laughed at them with scorn until at last 'twas said 
By a false-hearted woman he was cruelly betrayed,
(Refrain)

Although others, notably Burl Ives, had recorded it before, it's Tommy Makem & The Clancy Brothers' version from the early 1960s that introduced me to the song.

Take a listen:



According to The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs,  (edited by Ralph Vaughan Williams and A.L.Lloyd in 1959):

"This song was widely sung in the Victorian era ... William Brennan really did exist, and was one of the most famous Irish criminals of the period. It is not easy to get authoritative information about him , mainly because legend quickly obscured fact, and even his date of death is not known for sure; 1804 is most cited, but there are other references to 1809, and even 1812, and while most sources claim that he was taken by authorities and formally executed, there is also a tradition that he was killed by one of his potential victims in a highway robbery which went wrong."

The Penguin book notes that like most outlaw ballads, this song turns Willie Brennan into a Robin Hood-like character, "And many a wealthy nobleman before him shook with fear ..."

Basically it was the gangsta rap of its day.

In his cool website ... Just Another Song, folklorist Jürgen Kloss, in writing about "Brennan on the Moor" notes that 18th Century lawyer John Edward Walsh  in 1747 claimed that the children's "integrity and sense of right and wrong was confounded, by proposing the actions of lawless felons as the objects of interest and imitation."

So, for the love of God, keep this vile song away from the children!

It should be noted that in some versions, Willie's own mother denounces him for his outlaw ways: "Oh, would to God that Willie had within his cradle died.'" (In some, it's his father who makes this declaration.)

And in some versions, "modern" ones Kloss says, the ghost of Willie still rides: "They see him with his blunderbuss, all in the midnight chill."

A young Bob Dylan dug The Clancys' take on "Brennan on the Moor.

In the liner notes of Dylan;s first Bootleg Series, John Bauldie wrote: "Dylan heard them sing the song in New York and loved it immediately. He told film director Derek Bailey in 1984: `I'd never heard those kind of songs before...all the legendary people they used to sing about - Brennan on the Moor or Roddy Macaulay...I would think of Brennan on the Moor the same way as I would think of Jesse James or something. You know, I wrote some of my own songs to some of the melodies that I heard them do...' "

And a website called Bob Dylan's Musical Roots quotes Liam Clancy: "I met the young Dylan on 4th St. in the Village one morning as I was rushing to rehearsal. 'Hey Liam, hey man. I wrote a song to the tune of `Brennan on the Moor' last night. Wanta hear it man?, only 15 verses man, wanna hear it'."

Yeah, let's hear it:




For more deep dives into songs, check out The Stephen W. Terrell Web Log Songbook

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

WACKY WEDNESDAY: Karaoke to Frighten the Children

Before we begin, let me admit something:

I'm very thankful that nobody was recording me that fateful night about 15 years ago when I basically cleared out an after-hours party at a downtown Albuquerque bar with my karaoke rendition of "You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma."

So I have some sympathy for the poor folks who basically are the butts of the joke in all these videos.

That being said, I think these are hilarious.

Enjoy

When I first heard this song sung by Dolly Parton on a car radio in the 70s, I was so awestruck, I almost drove my car off the road. When I heard this, I wanted to drive my car at a high speed toward the singer.



I wouldn't want to hear much more of Amy, but she's got personality



This guy isn't as cute or funny as Amy, but that's o.k. He sings even worse.



I have to admit, I don't think I'd sing very well either if I was suspended over a tank full of frogs and water snakes. This apparently is some kind of weird game show in Thailand.



Go ahead try this at home!

Sunday, March 08, 2015

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST


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Sunday, March 8, 2015 
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M. 
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell
Webcasting!
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's the playlist below


Like the Terrell's Sound World Facebook page

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE

Thursday, March 05, 2015

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: Sleater-Kinney plus The Grannies

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
March 6, 2015

In some alternative universe, some parallel world somewhere over some rainbow, the return of Sleater-Kinney in 2015 with an album as riveting as No Cities to Love is considered to be as big as the return of the Beatles was in 1975. (This is a separate reality, remember.)

Of course, it’s not quite like that here in the material world.

Truth is, most folks don’t value rock ’n’ roll as much as many of us used to. Perhaps Sleater really was the greatest band alive when it went on “hiatus” nearly a decade ago.

But outside of alt-rock or punk rock circles, it wasn’t and, sadly, still isn’t universally known. I’ve got a feeling that Carrie Brownstein is more famous for her co-starring role on the comedy series Portlandia than she is for her role with Sleater-Kinney.

So, for those not familiar with this important band, here’s the lowdown: This Pacific Northwest group is a trio with Brownstein and Corin Tucker on vocals and guitar and Janet Weiss on drums. Sleater-Kinney’s self-titled debut album was released in 1995, at the tail end of the Riot Grrrl scene, but S-K quickly transcended the generic girl-punk sound.

Vox recently described the group as a “left-leaning, feminism-preaching” band. Maybe that’s true, but the beauty of Sleater-Kinney is that it rarely, if ever, sounded like it was preaching. Any politics in the band’s songs were subtle and personal — no sloganeering or polemics. The group grew and actually intensified through the years, never losing its original frantic energy. It split up after its 2005 album, The Woods.

We rock ’n’ roll die-hards tend to view comebacks with jaundiced, jaded eyes, despite some good ones returning in recent years — Mission of Burma, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and the Afghan Whigs, for example, came back with strong records. No Cities to Love is also one of the good ones: It’s an unmitigated joy.

I consider Wild Flag, the 2011 album by the group with the same name, which includes two-thirds of Sleater — Brownstein and Weiss — (as well as singer/guitarist Mary Timony, who fronted the ’90s indie band Helium) to be a precursor of No Cities to Love. Shortly before then, Tucker made a solo record she described as “middle-aged-mom” music. (As I said back then, despite my senior citizenship, I’m still not ready for “middle-aged-mom” stuff.) But in 2012, she came back with a harder edge with Kill My Blues. With that and Wild Flag, I should have known that reviving Sleater-Kinney wasn’t an impossible dream.

No Cities opens with “Price Tag” — with what first appears as a lazy, almost bluesy groove. But seconds later, the drums kick in, the beat speeds up, and Tucker starts singing urgently: “The bell goes off/The buzzer coughs/The traffic starts to buzz,” and all of a sudden we’re in the middle of the rat race, punching a timecard at a crappy job, stocking shelves and worrying. Tucker sings as if she’s being crushed by the pressure — and the music is even more anxious than the lyrics.

Similarly, the stark, muscular “Gimme Love” is about someone who was born “too small, too weak, too weird” and who is “numb from the wicked this life imparts,” while “Surface Envy” employs images of drowning, though it’s a hopeful song. In the last verse, Tucker sings, “I’m breaking the surface, tasting the air/Reaching for things I never could before.”

But all is not so heavy on this album. In fact, “A New Wave,” sung by Brownstein, who also plays a distorted, rubber-toned guitar, reminds me of The B52s. (The official video for this tune features a cartoon version of the band playing for characters from Bob’s Burgers.)

In the final chorus of “Bury Our Friends,” Tucker and Brownstein sing, “We speak in circles, we dance in code/Untame and hungry, on fire in the cold/ Exhume our idols, bury our friends/We’re wild and weary but we won’t give in.”

Here’s hoping Sleater-Kinney stays wild and never gives in.

Sleater-Kinney is coming to Albuquerque for a show at the Sunshine Theater on April 28. I’ve got my ticket. You should get yours. Visit www.sunshinetheaterlive.com/get_tagged/Sleater%20Kinney.

Also recommended:

* Ballsier by The Grannies. America needs this music. The country needs musicians like these, who aren’t afraid to dress up like nightmarish parodies of old ladies and play crazy, aggressive, funny, profane, politically incorrect, and ridiculous music.

The Grannies don’t care if they make it on network TV or get invited to the White House — or anywhere else where there is polite company. They don’t care that they’ll never play the Super Bowl — though anyone who has survived one of their shows knows the Super Bowl would be much cooler if they did.

This album is punk rock — punk rock as the good Lord intended it to sound. It’s 11 snot-slingin’, beer-spittin’, breakneck, gut-bustin’ punk rock songs with titles like “Wade in Bloody Water,” “Outta My Skull,” and “Hillbilly With Knife Skills,” And there’s a crunching cover of the Beastie Boys’ “Fight for Your Right.”
Grannies in action, San Marcos, Texas. 2014

Then there are a couple of remixes of Grannies songs, my favorite being a total re-imagining of  one of my Grannies faves, “The Corner of Fuck and You” A producer named Ben Addison used flutes, soft horns and an ultra-cheesy beat to turn the song into something that sounds like it's from some bad British swingin’ ‘60s romantic comedy

The album is produced by Seattle titan Jack Endino, who’s been behind the knobs on some of your finer grunge and punk records.




Blog Bonuses

First off, here's a live show broadcast on NPR a couple of weeks ago CLICK HERE

Here's that Bob;s Burgers video




Here are a couple of songs by The Grannies. First, an old one



Then there's this remix ...

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Gonna Murder My Baby

Pat Hare, born Auburn Hare in Cherry Valley, Arkansas, played guitar with some of the great classic bluesmen -- James Cotton, Little Junior Parker, Bobby "Blue" Bland, the late great Johnny Ace, Rosco Gordon, Ike Turner and Muddy Waters. (He played on Muddy's Live at Newport, 1960 album.)

And his playing was unforgettable.

Nick Tosches, in his book Where Dead Voices Gather, described Hare's style as "black-magic electric-guitar conjurings through overamplified distortion [that] foreshadowed those of Hendrix ..." Cub Koda, in the Allmusic Guide, called Hare's playing as "highly distorted guitar played with a ton of aggression and just barely suppressed violence ..."

Though he never got famous, Hare undoubtedly would be a darling of the blues scholars and rabid early rock 'n' roll zealots because of his musicianship.

Unfortunately, he's better known for something that had nothing to do with his guitar playing.

On Dec. 15, 1963, after a day of drinking, Hare at the time was living in Minneapolis with a married woman named Aggie Winje, who, Hare told a friend, was thinking of moving back with her husband. After spending sometime fighting with Aggie, Hare told a neighbor "That woman is going to make me kill her." Another neighbor called police after hearing shots fired. Two officers responded. And one of them was shot to death by Hare. Aggie had been shot also.

The other officer pumped some lead into Hare, but he survived. Aggie  hung on for nearly a month, but died Jan. 22, 1964.

According to music journalist James "The Hound" Marshall in his detailed account on an excellent site called The Houndblog: "When questioned, Hare remembered only that he was drunk and claimed to have no recollection of shooting anyone."

But to add the ultimate twist to this squalid little tale, nearly a decade before, at Sun Studios in Memphis, Hare recorded a jolly little ditty called "I'm Gonna Murder My Baby."

Yes, he did.

Behold:



The Houndblog says:

 In May of '54, Sam Phillips decided to record Pat Hare under his own name. James Cotton was scheduled to play harmonica on the session but the two got into a fist fight that day, and Cotton disappeared. Instead, Hare is backed up by Israel Franklin on bass and Billy Love on piano on the two tunes.  The first is a monstrous reading of Dr. Clayton's "Cheatin' & Lyin' Blues," re-titled on the tape box "I'm Gonna Murder My Baby," it was and still is, one of the most foreboding and ominous recordings in the entire blues canon ... Phillips chose not to release Hare's disc which would not be heard until it slipped out on a bootleg on the Redita label in 1976, and later appeared on Charley Records' Sun Blues Box in the eighties. 

Hare was convicted of murdering his baby and the cop who came to help. He died of lung cancer in prison in 1980.

He's still a resident of Rock 'n' Roll Hell, where he's currently in a band with these guys ...



R.I.P. Ella Mae Evans

 

R.I.P. Nancy Spungen

This post goes out to my old friend, Mark, who knew more about Pat Hare than I dd.





Wednesday, March 04, 2015

WACKY WEDNESDAY: It's Duckadelic!

For this Wacky Wednesday, here's a tribute to my favorite waterfowl, the Duck.

According to Wikipedia (which is always right about everything):

Duck is the common name for a large number of species in the Anatidae family of birds, which also includes swans and geese. The ducks are divided among several subfamilies in the Anatidae family; they do not represent a monophyletic group (the group of all descendants of a single common ancestral species) but a form taxon, since swans and geese are not considered ducks. Ducks are mostly aquatic birds, mostly smaller than the swans and geese, and may be found in both fresh water and sea water.

Ducks are sometimes confused with several types of unrelated water birds with similar forms, such as loons or divers, grebes, gallinules, and coots.

So, sorry all you loons, divers, grebes, gallinules, and coots. This ain't for you. These songs are for the ducks.

Let's start with the ultimate cartoon duck piano showdown from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?



This next one by the beautiful Carolina Cotton, makes me wish I was a damn duck!



Eddie "The Chief" Clearwater walks the duck



Nobody has really done musical justice to the duck as much as this disco classic from Rick Dees & His Cast of Idiots



OK, the next one is stretching it. It's not really about a duck. It's not really really about oysters either. It's an old traditional American square dance mutated before your very ears by the late great Malcom McLaren. It's from his masterpiece album Duck Rock. And if I were a duck, I'd love this song.



Finally, just for weirdness' sake, here's a strange little band called Purple Duck I found while messing around on the Free Music Archive  (The original video I had here disappeared, but here's another one)


Sunday, March 01, 2015

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

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Sunday, March 1, 2015 
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M. 
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell
Webcasting!
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's the playlist below

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TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

  Sunday, March 17, 2024 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM, 101.1 FM  Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Te...