WACKY WEDNESDAY: Cult Classics -- by REAL CULTS

No question about it, religion has given the world some beautiful music, from Gregorian chants to the Hallelujah Choral to Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

It's also given us stuff like you'll hear in the videos below.

These are musical expressions by members of various "alternative" faiths some call "cults."

Warning: If you listen to them all, you might have to be deprogrammed.

Let's have a listen, starting with Jeremy Spencer, who was an original member of Fleetwood Mac (back in the pre-Buckingham/Nicks days when they were a British blues band.)

One day in February 1971 while Fleetwood Mac was in Los Angeles for a gig at the Whiskey a Go Go, Spencer slipped away. He met up with members of a group called The Children of God and rather suddenly decided he wanted to join the group. So he did. He never went back to Fleetwood Mac.

The Children of God seemed to be everywhere in the early '70s. I was frequently accosted by them in my early years at the University of New Mexico. The group was known for a controversial recruiting technique called "Flirty Fishing," which basically involved young female members using sex to entice new male members into joining. That never happened to me. All I got were hairy, stinky guys who wanted to rant about their crazy apocalyptic visions of the nuclear bombs stored deep in the Manzano Mountains.

Anyway, here's Jeremy Spencer singing one of his religious songs. I'm not sure how old it is. These days Spencer has white hair and less of it.



One day in the late 70s or early '80s when I was working at Stag Tobacoonists, this hairy, barefoot guy wearing a white robe came in the store and bought a bunch of Royal Jamaica cigars. Jesus, he told us, likes Royal Jamaicas. All us Stag employees were big fans of RJs, so we just agreed with him.

Lightning Amen

He told us he was a member of a church called The Christ Family.

During the next few years I would see several members of the Christ Family -- you could recognize them by their white robes and bare feet -- on the streets of Santa Fe. When I started writing a weekly features column for the Santa Fe Reporter in the early '80s, I decided to interview members of the group.

I found a half dozen or so members in a bus near the Santa Fe River off Guadalupe Street. They welcomed me aboard, but as the interview wore on, it was obvious they weren't welcoming my questions.

They told me that they lived celibate, vegetarian lives because Christ Family was against "killing, sex and materialism." They told me their messiah was someone named Lightning Amen (who I later learned was fond of good cigars. I assume those included Royal Jamaicas.)

At one point the man who was doing nearly all the talking became so angry with my questions, he was turning read in the face. I asked him why he was so upset. His answer:

"BECAUSE YOU ARE KILLING, SEX AND MATERIALISM!"

He didn't laugh when I joked, "That's what she said last night."

Lightning Amen -- real name Charles McHugh -- died about five years ago. In 1987 he was sentenced to five years in prison for drug charges, including the transportation and possession for sale of methamphetamines.

But at least some of the Christ Family is still together in Helmut, Calif. Here is one of their songs.



[UPDATE: 11-14-15 Some time after I posted this, this and all the other Christ Family videos disappeared off of YouTube. I don't know why.]

Next is Scientology's answer to "We Are the World." You might have heard this on the HBO documentary, Going Clear.




And then there are the Hare Krishnas. They definitely had a presence in Santa Fe and Albuquerque in the late 60s and early '70s. They had a storefront temple on Water Street when I was at Mid High school here (in the same building that used to house the Adobe Laundromat.) A couple of times I stopped in to yack with them at the temple. Unlike the Christ Family, they never yelled at me when I asked questions. No heavy proselytizing either, though they always invited me to their Sunday feasts. (I never went.)

This song comes from the album The Radha Krsna Temple, which was produced by none other than George Harrison. And unlike the other songs posted here, it doesn't suck that much ...

This next Krishna chant goes on for nearly seven hours. Give it a listen if you have the time.

[UPDATE 4-6-23: The 7-hour Hare Krishna video has disappeared from Youtube! But fret not. I just found an EIGHT AND A HALF (!)  hour video to take its place.]

Know any more "cult classics" from other "alternative" religions? Post links in the comments section.

WACKY WEDNESDAY: More Cult Classics -- by REAL CULTS

A little more than four years ago, I did a Wacky Wednesday post of music videos by actual cults -- including music from The Children of God, Scientology, the Hare Krishnas and The Christ Family -- a group I'd encountered before in Santa Fe in the early '80s. (However, within a few months of that post, The Christ Family pulled all their videos off YouTube, apparently forever.)

Here's the sequel to that post.

Let's start with something from a 1973 album by Rev. Jimmy Jones' Peoples Temple Choir. This was four years before they drank the not-proverbial Kool-Aid,



Here's a happy little tune called "Gloomy Sunday" from Church of Satan Founder Anton LaVey



California in the '70s must have been a magical place. The Source Family, led by a Sunset Strip health-food restaurant owner called Father Yod (James E. Baker), was the subject of a fascinating 2012 documentary. This guru had his own sanctified psychedelic band called Ya Ho Wha 13. They sounded like this:



Anyone remember Synanon? This was a group founded by Charles E. Dederich in Santa Monica in the late '50s as a drug rehab clinic. But it grew into a cult that became known for violent retribution against critics.

From a 1982 article in the New York Times:

In 1979 Mr. Dederich pleaded no contest to a charge of conspiracy to murder a Los Angeles lawyer by placing a rattlesnake in his mailbox, after the lawyer won a $300,000 suit against Synanon. 

(That lawyer, Paul Morantz, was representing former Synanon members and relatives of members who said they were being held in Synanon against their will. The snake bit Morantz, who was hospitalized for six days.)

But in 1962, years before that unpleasantness with the snake, etc., jazz guitarist Joe Pass recorded an album featuring fellow musician patients at Synanon being treated for heroin addiction. Here's a track from that album, Sounds of Synanon.

WACKY WEDNESDAY: One Year of Wacky

One year ago, on Wednesday, Nov. 19, I unleashed a new weekly feature on this here web log.

Wacky Wednesday, was created, I wrote, "to introduce you, the reader to strange, funny and/or confounding music -- the type of "unclaimed melodies" that the Firesign Theatre's Don G. O'Vani was talking about when he said, `if you were to go into a record store and ask for them they would think you were crazy!' "

I've tried to live up to that mission statement. Some weeks work better than others, but I think I've provided you guys with a lot of wackiness this past 12 months.

My very first post was a salute to a musician named Bob Purse who I'd just discovered on the Free Music Archive.

Below are videos and other mementos of the first year of Wacky Wednesday. Keep the wackiness alive!

Early on, I wrote about a song that tore at the soul of a youngster (yours truly) who loved The Beatles as well as Allan Sherman. The day I posted this, I showed it to my oldest grandson, then 3. He looked at me bewildered and asked, "Why does Pop hate The Beatles?"

I wish I knew, kid, I wish I knew!



Wacky Wednesday has explored the musical legacy of Muhammad Ali.



Bad karaoke is usually good for some good wholesome fun (and cheap laffs).



In honor of the 41st anniversary of the resignation of President Nixon, I did a Wacky Wednesday full of Watergate songs. Here is one I stumbled across while searching for another song.



On April Fool's Day I looked at a cruel prank that cost The Dwarves a record contract.

One of my favorite Wacky Wednesdays was one about "Cult Classics" -- by real cults.



And one Wednesday I featured songs by, about and associated with Popeye.




One Wacky Wednesday I wrote about that strange night in 1986 when Camper Van Beethoven served as Tiny Tim's pickup band. The complete show, starting with Camper's set, can be heard in the player below.




And not very long ago, in belated honor of R. Crumb's birthday, I explored the cartoonist's contributions to music.



One week we had a musical battle royal with songs by and about wrestlers. Here is a heartbreaker.



One week I looked at the history of "Louie Louie," including the your-tax-money-at-work FBI investigation of the subsersve song:

The FBI's Investigation of Louie Louie;

And the world of Bollywood is rarely short on wackiness.



This world isn't getting any saner. Something tells me there will be plenty of wackiness to mine in the year ahead.

Please come back to this blog tomorrow for a very special Throwback Thursday.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: DEATHBED ROCK

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
January 19, 2007

Call it “deathbed rock.”

Warren Zevon is the master of it, having crafted his farewell album, The Wind, as he was dying of cancer. The album was released shortly before he died in late 2003. It starts with the lines, “Sometimes I feel like my shadow’s casting me/Some days the sun don’t shine” (in the song “Dirty Life & Times”), and ends with a tear-jerker called “Keep Me in Your Heart,” in which he sings, “Shadows are falling, and I’m running out of breath ...”

Then there was Joey Ramone, who recorded Don’t Worry About Me as he was dying of cancer in 2001. Most of the album doesn’t really deal with his impending departure. But the song “I Got Knocked Down (But I’ll Get Up)” expresses a resolve to recover (“Sitting in a hospital bed/I, I want life/I want my life”), and his cover of “What a Wonderful World” — for my money the finest cover of that corny chestnut in the history of the world — can only be seen as a glorious, life-affirming goodbye letter to those of us who loved him.

Neil Young reportedly was thinking in that direction, writing most of his songs for Prairie Wind (2005) as he was undergoing treatment for a brain aneurysm. Fortunately, however, Young did us all a favor and didn’t die.

Bob Dylan had already beaten the Reaper when he recorded the melancholic Time Out of Mind (1997). But many of the songs there are melancholic meditations on mortality, so it could be considered an honorary deathbed rock album.

Lee Hazlewood — the crusty-voiced cowpoke who wrote most of Nancy Sinatra’s ’60s hits and costarred on several Lee-and-Nancy classics — late last year released Cake or Death, advertised as his last album because he’s dying of kidney cancer.

And now comes Chris Whitley, whose last album, Reiter In, apparently was meant as a defiant middle finger in the face of smiling Sgt. Death. Whitley, a Texas guitar slinger who died of cancer in November 2005, didn’t give up the ghost until after making one final recording with a group of friends he dubbed The Bastard Club.

Whitley basically was a “cult artist” who had several influential friends — among them, Daniel Lanois and Malcolm Burn — and won lots of critical praise during his 15-year recording career, though, as is the case with most of the people I listen to these days, he never achieved much commercial success.

I never was a true devotee of the Whitley cult. A friend gave me a couple of his ’90s albums a few years ago (his Burn-produced debut Living With the Law and the dark, acoustical, and superior Dirt Floor), which I enjoy, though neither really twisted my head off.

But the new one does twist my head off. And it’s not because of any sentimentality over Whitley’s death. It’s just a strong album, indeed a tough album, that’s more about his life than his leaving.

By the very first song, you know Reiter In isn’t going to be any maudlin affair. With grungy, rumbling guitars and a proud thud-thud-thud of the drums, Chris and his Bastards roar though a spirited take on the Stooges’ classic “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” (This song also has been covered by Whitley’s fellow Texas roots rocker Alejandro Escovedo. Escovedo does a baroque version, with violin and cello, that he usually introduces with an obscene story about Iggy Pop and Béla Bartók in a cheap motel room. But Whitley’s “Dog” has more metallic bite.)

From Iggy, Whitley goes straight to Willie — Dixon, that is — with “Bring It on Home,” a rough-edged, swaggering electric blues. Whitley seems on top of his game here. His vocals are raspy, but he sings with the confidence of a voodoo priest.

Though many have sung the praises of Whitley’s blues-guitar talents, “Bring It on Home,” “I Go Evil” (“Come on, man! It’s cornball but cool,” Whitley proclaims at the end of this one), and the seven-minute “All Beauty Taken From You in This Life Remains Forever” aren’t hotshot Stevie Ray-wannabe, ax-man workouts. They sound more like Mudhoney reincarnated as a blues band.

“All Beauty” (whose title would look great on a tombstone) is groove infested and mainly acoustic with a call-and-response harmonica, tasty fiddle flourishes, and mysterioso Angelo Badalamenti-like vibes.

Reiter In features several covers from surprising sources. Whitley does an intense, slow-burning, and — yes — bluesy take on an old Flaming Lips song called “Mountain Side.” And he does a bouncy, snarling-guitars version of “Are Friends Electric?” written by New Wave “Cars” salesman Gary Numan.

Though the strongest tunes here are electric, there are examples of Whitley’s acoustic side. The sadly beautiful instrumental “Inn,” featuring interplay between guitar and violin, sounds as if Whitley spent some time in the motel room with Bartók.

And there’s the lo-fi country waltz “Cut the Cards,” written around a poem by Pierre Reverdy. It’s one of the few places on the album where Whitley deals with his impending fate. “Death could happen/What I hold within my arms could slip away,” he recites.

And, in a more vague and symbolic manner, there’s the title song in which Whitley’s longtime companion, Susann Buerger, reads an unknown poem in both German and English. “As the one who sits on the horse, the rider is the ghost that leaves the body,” she says as the band plays a slow, menacing instrumental behind her.

In short, this is deathbed rock at its finest. Whitley’s ghost can ride in pride.

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: My Favorite 2015 Albums

Happy New Year, dear friends! Here is a list of my favorite albums of 2015. This list is in no particular order, but at some point throughout the past year, each one was my number-one favorite for at least a few days.

1) This Is The Sonics . Unlike The Standells, Question Mark and The Mysterians, Sam the Sham and The Pharaohs, and other giants of the garage-rock era of the mid-1960s, The Sonics didn’t get much radio play where I grew up. Thus, I didn’t really get exposed to them until well into my adulthood. And I didn’t become a complete babbling devotee of their cult until just a couple of years ago when I saw The Sonics — with three original members — rage, ravage, and conquer the Ponderosa Stomp festival in New Orleans. This is the band’s first studio album of all-new material in nearly 50 years, and it rocks harder than anything by any young whippersnapper I heard all year.



2) Mutilator Defeated at Last by Thee Oh Sees. John Dwyer is a miserable failure at hiatus. His attempt at putting Thee Oh Sees on the shelf only lasted a few months before he was back with a new line-up, which I begrudgingly have to admit is just as ferocious as the previous incarnation. The sound of Mutilator is unmistakably Oh Sees: rubbery post-psychedelic guitar-based excursions into the unknown with distorted echoes of garage rock, punk, and noise-rock.



3) Freedom Tower — No Wave Dance Party 2015 by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. This album, the Blues Explosion’s second since the band’s resurrection with 2012’s Meat + Bone, is a loving song cycle about New York City. In several tunes, the band indulges in a little well-earned nostalgia about the sleazy, crime-ridden era of the ’70s and ’80s, those gritty days when punk rock, hip-hop, and yes, “No Wave” were born. Jon Spencer and the boys are as loud, frantic, and joyful as they were in their mid-’90s heyday.



4) The Ruffian’s Misfortune by Ray Wylie Hubbard. Once again, Ray Wylie Hubbard has given the world a swampy, blues-soaked collection of tunes in which, in his trademark Okie drawl, he tells stories of sin and salvation; gods and devils; women who light candles to the “Black Madonna;” undertakers who look like crows (“red-eyed and dressed in black”); and hot-wiring cars in Oklahoma.



5) No Cities to Love by Sleater-Kinney. These women are far better at hiatus than Thee Oh Sees. Sleater-Kinney’s little break lasted about 10 years. They roared back this year, though, with a mighty tour (including a memorable show in Albuquerque in April) and this new album. It’s brash, urgent, and emotional. And they make it seem so easy.



6) Long Lost Suitcase by Tom Jones. No, I’m not being ironic here. In 2015, Tom Jones — the old British pop star who sang “It’s Not Unusual,” the cheesy ’70s TV star and Las Vegas sex symbol at whom grown women threw their underwear — made one of the year’s finest albums. I was drawn in by his haunting cover of Gillian Welch’s “Elvis Presley Blues,” but I stayed for his rocking version of Billy Boy Arnold’s “I Wish You Would,” and Los Lobos’ “Everybody Loves a Train” – not to mention his stark take on one of my favorite early Willie Nelson tunes, “Opportunity to Cry.” I was so impressed, I sought out Jones’ previous albums with producer Ethan Johns — the gospel-drenched Praise & Blame and Spirit in the Room. Jones’ powerful voice is still in impeccable form and his taste in material has never been better.



7) Giving My Bones to the Western Lands by Slackeye Slim. On his latest album, Joe Frankland, aka Slackeye Slim, continues his exploration of the shadows. As usual, many of his songs are frequently cast in an Old West setting, though his themes of sin, redemption, loneliness, desperation, and freedom are universal. Slackeye lived among us in New Mexico for a few months, forming a sinister musical alliance with The Imperial Rooster, an Española band. He’s moved back to Colorado, but promises he won’t be a stranger.



8) Walk on Jindal’s Splinters by Jello Biafra & the New Orleans Raunch and Soul All-Stars. This is a live New Orleans concert by former Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra that was reportedly done on a dare. Teaming up with a rootsy but raucous band (including a horn section), the West Coast punk-rock icon blasts his way through a bunch of Big Easy R & B classics.



9) Bailazo by Rolando Bruno. This is my choice for world-beat heavyweight champion of 2015. Rolando Bruno’s label, Voodoo Rhythm Records, describes his sound as “Full Blast Psychedelic Latino Cumbia Garage with a very Cheesy Touch of a ’70s Supermarket!!!” Bruno, a former member of the Peruvian garage-punk band Los Peyotes, also throws in Middle Eastern riffs, kung-fu movie soundtrack sounds, and other surprises to create a wacky but very danceable brew.



10) Coulda Shoulda Woulda by Holly Golightly & the Brokeoffs. Holly Golightly and her partner “Lawyer Dave” Drake continue their streak of bare-boned funky-clunky country bluesy albums. Golightly is a native Brit, but this is a big sloppy homemade American mess, which of course I mean as a compliment. The whole album is packed with crazy fun.




Honorable Mentions

* Lost Time by Dave & Phil Alvin

* Under the Savage Sky by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages

* So Delicious by The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band

* Banditos

* Ballsier by The Grannies

* Supay by Cankisou

* O How I Wish My Bad Heart Was True by Chipper Thompson

* That’s Your Wife on the Back of My Horse by Johnny Dowd 

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: A Seedy Tale

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
November 13, 2015

Thursday, June 25, 2009. A beloved and influential innovator of modern popular music is dead. A stunned nation mourns.

Actually, most of those stunned and mourning people that day were grieving for some guy named Michael Jackson. But not me. The only tears I shed that summer day were for Richard Marsh, better known as Sky Saxon, the singer of one of most important ’60s-garage, proto-punk (and don’t forget flower power) bands in rock ’n’ roll history.

I didn’t care about the King of Pop! On that sad day, I looked to the Sky!

Saxon and his band, the Seeds, are now the subject of a well-researched, thoroughly entertaining, and totally rocking documentary called The Seeds: Pushin’ Too Hard.

I’ve been a Seeds fan since I was in junior high in the mid-’60s, which was back when their song (“You’re) Pushin’ Too Hard” was first a big hit. That tune fit in perfectly with some of the great snot-rock of the era such as “Dirty Water,” “96 Tears,” and “Psychotic Reaction.” but until this film I didn’t really know that much about Saxon or the Seeds.

The Seeds

First of all, this was a real band, not just a charismatic singer with a bunch of sidemen. Director Neil Norman (whose father Gene Norman signed the group to his GNP Crescendo Records) includes footage of recent interviews with former Seeds keyboardist Daryl Hooper (whose Wurlitzer electric piano with heavy tremolo made early Seeds records unforgettable) and fuzztone-guitar pioneer Jan Savage, as well as some footage and taped commentary of drummer Rick Andridge, who died in 2011.

I also didn’t realize that Saxon himself had been knocking around Hollywood for as long as he did, trying to get a break in the showbiz game. Born in Utah, he first went to Tinseltown in the late ’50s, initially signing to a label co-owned by Fred Astaire. Some of those quasi-doo-wop songs, which he released under the name “Little Richie Marsh,” can be found on YouTube today. They’re kind of cool, but you’d never realize these songs are the seeds of the Seeds.

The magic didn’t really start until Little Richie hooked up with Hooper and Andridge, a couple of high school pals who moved to Hollywood from their hometown of Farmington, Michigan. They started out covering the usual early rock classics. Things started to happen after they began writing their own songs.

Like many rock docs, much of the story told comes from famous folks who are fans of the film’s subject. Here we have the likes of the late Hollywood creep Kim Fowley, Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys, members of the ’80s girl band the Bangles, Johnny Echols of the group Love, and others.

Iggy opines from his throne

My favorite celeb testimony in Pushin’ Too Hard is Iggy Pop, who says The Seeds “gave a lot of people a vocabulary.” Of Saxon, Iggy says, “Besides his great name, which is super cool, he doesn’t sound stoppable. He sounds like you can’t stop him or shut him up. ... He couldn’t really sing, but neither can anyone else who’s any fucking good.”

Watching the rise of the Seeds is exciting, and watching their fall in the documentary is painful. Norman presents the case that it was too much ego, as well as too many drugs, that led to Saxon’s decline and the disintegration of the band.

After two snarling, rocking albums came Future, an ill-conceived, badly executed third album — an artsy experiment, probably influenced by Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and all the other “rock is art” idiocy of the era. The Beach Boys’ Johnston grouses, “I didn’t want to hear the Seeds with harps.” (Perhaps he didn’t recognize the irony here — a lot of people said the same thing about the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds.)

Saxon’s appetite for LSD became a problem. “On stage it was like talking to a six-year-old,” a bandmate says. He tended to adopt stray humanoids who took advantage of his generosity and trust. Saxon’s house became a “flophouse for degenerates,” Savage says. “People fed Sky’s ego, giving him dope. He lost his edge.”

The Seeds broke up in 1969. Saxon apparently went to seed. (I apologize for that.) He lost his house, and folks would see him walking the streets or “wandering around the hills playing the flute,” according to one account in the film.

Saxon in later years

At one point in the ’70s, Saxon became involved with a utopian communal experiment (none dare call it cult) in Hollywood that ran a popular Sunset Strip health food restaurant (which is the subject of another fine documentary, The Source Family, released in 2012). Saxon was given a new name, “Arelich Aquarian,” by the group’s head honcho Father Yod. The former rock star worked in the restaurant and moved to Hawaii with the group when Yod decided it was time to flee the mainland.

There were reunions and reformations of the Seeds. Saxon recorded several solo albums (I have Transparency, which was released a few years before he died. It’s not bad, though it’s not the Seeds).

He eventually moved to Austin, where he worked with a band called Shapes Have Fangs. At the time of his death, he’d been planning on a tour with the contemporary versions of the Electric Prunes and Love.

It’s a corny cliché to compare a fallen music star to Icarus, who flew too close to the sun. Yet it seems appropriate for Saxon, who in his final years, this film shows, seemed like a sad, bewildered Icarus on a doomed quest to find his long-lost wings. But don’t forget — this crazy sucker in his prime flew pretty darn close to the sun.

The Seeds: Pushin’ Too Hard is showing at the Jean Cocteau Cinema (418 Montezuma Ave., 505-466-5528) at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 18, and Thursday, Nov. 19. The doc’s director will be on hand both nights.

Tune in to Terrell’s Sound World on Sunday, Nov. 15,  for a special segment featuring the music of the Seeds, Sky Saxon, and lots of cool bands covering their songs. The show starts at 10 p.m. with the Seeds set starting at the 11th hour. That’s on KSFR-101.1 FM.

Hot video fun

Here is the official trailer for this movie:



Here's Little Richie Marsh:



And here is an epic Seeds song:

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: FALL FORWARD

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
April 6, 2007
Spring is here. It’s time for The Fall.

Thirty years on the road and Mark E. Smith, on The Fall’s new album, Reformation Post TLC, is still cranking out his crazy brand of rant ’n’ roll, shouting his incomprehensible, half-comical lyrics over steady, driving beats; bubbly, fizzly synth noises; and ever-tasty, irresistible, garage-band guitar riffs.

It’s a formula tried-and-true and one from which the former dockworker from Manchester, England, rarely strays. But dagnabbit, the darn thing still works.

A little background on this album. Last year, just a few dates into an American tour, all of Smith’s sidemen — except his wife and keyboardist Elena Poulou — walked out on him. (“They went home because of my violent and abusive behavior,” Smith told Maximum Rock’n’ Roll in an interview last year. It’s not clear if he was being facetious.) The Fall’s latest record company, Narnack, recruited a trio of Americans to take the place of the absent Brits. It’s this group that recorded Reformation Post TLC.

The new boys — guitarist Tim Presley, bassist Rob Barbato, and drummer Orpheo McCord — might not share Smith’s Manchester working-class roots, but they seem to have caught on to the basic Fall sound.

More than a decade ago, in reviewing some Fall album or another, I wrote, “I doubt if all the CIA’s computers could crack the garbled ranting of Mark E. Smith.” In recent years I’ve been leaning toward a conspiracy-theory explanation for The Fall’s appeal to its scattered cult.

The band is actually sending coded messages to some alien/Lovecraftian sleeper cell. Some isolated Smith yelp in conjunction with some post-Standells guitar hook causes some shift in brain chemistry in some isolated listener, and next thing you know some unwitting Fall fan in Dalhart, Texas, is making a 4 a.m. drive to the Tucumcari airport to pick up a crate of something unspeakable delivered on a secret flight from Bohemian Grove.

I hope I’m safe now that I’ve spilled that secret.

Or maybe people like me like The Fall because it’s good, stripped-down rock and because Smith’s crackpot/shaman lyrics open up the imagination.

There are a few departures from normal Fall fare on Reformation. Poulou handles the vocals on “The Wright Stuff,” reciting the lyrics in her lovely Greek accent as a snaky Farfisa organ riff slithers behind her.

Smith tries a turn at country music (ploughing the same ground as The Mekons on “Lost Highway” and “Sweet Dreams”), singing with a Bizarro World cover of Merle Haggard’s “White Line Fever.” (It’s not the first time The Fall has gone country. Back in the ’80s the band recorded a fine little hillbilly tune called “Pinball Machine.”) Here the Haggard song seems to be a setup for the next track on the album, “Insult Song,” which starts off with Smith, in some wino/pirate voice, grumbling, “White line fever/I got it off the children of Captain Beefheart/They’d been locked in the forest for many years/They could not help it/They were retards from the Los Angeles district” and repeating "White line fever" several times through the mysterious spoken-word song.

The one major misstep here is “Das Boat.” Unfortunately, at 10 and a half minutes, it’s the longest song on the album. It’s mainly a dull synthesizer drone with percussion that sounds like someone hitting a desk with a ruler and chimplike chants of “eee eee eee eee” by Smith and Poulou. The following track, “The Bad Stuff,” works better even though it sounds as if it might be a collage of studio outtakes. It starts off with spooky guitar twanging but soon goes into a hopped-up, classic-Fall, instrumental workout, with indecipherable Fall-jabber popping up here and there.

(Belated correction: in my past couple of reviews of The Fall, I mentioned a July 1981 gig at what used to be the old El Paseo Theater in downtown Santa Fe. I mistakenly called it The Gold Bar, but after some e-mail correspondence from Stefan Cooke (who has an excellent Fall Web site), I dug out the original clip of my review of that show in the Santa Fe Reporter and discovered the theater was operating under the name of Paseo de la Luz. )

Also recommended:
* I Walk My Murderous Intentions Home by King Automatic. This is a one-man garage band from France. Mr. Automatic (his real name is Jay something) plays guitar, drums, harmonica, and Farfisa organ. Until I checked the Web site, I thought it was a full band. (A guy named Julien plays sax on a couple of tracks here.)

King Automatic sounds like one of those proud, unsung ’60s bands you find on compilations like the Pebbles series. But he also has a fine sense of noir. The title cut and a reggae-tinged tune called “Here Comes the Terror” could be from a soundtrack of some warped foreign cop show. And there’s an instrumental tribute to Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti-Western themes called “A Few Dollars Less.”

*Garage Punk Vol. 1: 20 Years of Uncontrolled Live Shows and Ultra Rare Records by The Monsters. Here’s an aptly titled, double-disc record by the Swiss band led by Voodoo Rhythm Records high priest Rev. Beat Man. It’s a self described “no-fi” collection from “one of the trashyest, loudest, ... bands you’ll ever see!” On one of the live cuts (“Dead End Street”) Beat Man proclaims the music to be a cross between death metal and rockabilly. Throw in some Stooges, Cramps, and a little Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, and that’s a good start.

If you can get past the no-fi, there’s some real oughta-be classics here. “Nightmares” and “Blues for Joe” are timeless garage glory. “Searchin’” is downright ferocious. And the cover of Rick Nelson’s “Lonesome Town” is touching and hilarious at the same time.

Anyone who believes that “Psychotic Reaction” ought to be the national anthem should check out The Monsters. While the sound quality definitely lives up to Beat Man’s “trash” aesthetic, this group indeed is monstrous.

Learn more about The Monsters, King Automatic and other trash-rock avatars at the Voodoo Rhythm site.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: Kid Congo Haunts Your Head

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Sept. 27, 2013


Brian Tristan, better known to his cult as Kid Congo Powers, has one of the best résumés in underground rock ’n’ roll today. Going back to the early ’80s, he’s done stints in The Cramps, The Gun Club, and even Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. But with his band The Pink Monkeybirds, with whom he’s made three albums since 2009, the Kid has created his own unique sound, one that doesn’t sound like he’s trying to recycle those influential bands of his youth.

His latest album, Haunted Head, is another sturdy and impressive effort highlighting Powers’ guitar prowess without sounding self-indulgent, predictable, or wanky. The Pink Monkeybirds — guitarist Jesse Roberts, bassist Kiki Solis and drummer Ron Miller — are a tight little unit. The music is seamless, and there’s little punk-rock clatter or garage-band slop. And yet they don’t come off as too smooth or polished.

Haunted Head is heavier on the noir than the group’s previous works, especially tunes like the title song, “222,” and the slow and low album opener “Lurch,” all three of which could be set in a misty graveyard on some midnight dreary. With its reverb-soaked twangy guitar, “222” might even evoke memories of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” — as used right before the car-wreck scene in David Lynch’s Wild at Heart.

Because the title song is so similar to one of Concrete Blonde’s greatest numbers (the explosive “Your Haunted Head”), it’s got something to live up to. Powers’ song doesn’t have the rage of that tune, and certainly his vocals are nowhere near those of Johnette Napolitano. But the Monkeybirds’ song has its own sinister integrity. And the intense (if too short) shredding guitar solo toward the end of the song is a wonder to behold.

Currently my favorite song on this album is “Su Su.” It’s a beefy, atmospheric rocker that shares a subtle sonic kinship with Talking Heads’ “Life During Wartime,” though it’s supposed to be a tribute to actress Susan Tyrrell, who died last year.

I’m also fond of the minimalist, almost avant-garde “Let’s Go,” which is driven by Miller’s sci-fi keyboard playing.

Undoubtedly the craziest song is an unlisted “surprise” song that appears after “Lamont’s

Requiem.” It opens with some faux doo-wop before Powers comes in reciting lyrics lifted right out of “Monster Mash”: “I was working in the lab late one night when my eyes beheld a hideous sight.” And then a story unfolds involving Humpty Dumpty. I’m not making this up.

There are a couple of songs — “Lady Hawke Blues” and “Loud and Proud” — that are built upon blues riffs. The latter, with its chicken-scratch guitar played over a spacey soundscape and caveman drums, is irresistible. Powers’ buried vocals could invite comparisons with those of The Fall’s Mark E. Smith.

Speaking of buried vocals, that’s my chief complaint with the album as a whole. It’s a weakness slightly less obvious on The Monkeybirds’ previous albums, Dracula Boots and Gorilla Rose. In all three, Powers’ vocals are mixed down way too low. Granted, he’s never pretended that his vocals are the main draw of this band. Basically, Powers doesn’t sing. He growls, reciting the words like one of those spoken-word artists fronting rock groups in the ’90s. But on the new one, the Kid’s vocals are so low that it’s difficult to make out the words in several songs.

Fortunately, the music of Haunted Head is evocative enough that it tells stories of its own.

Not recommended:

* EP1 by The Pixies. Let’s cut to the proverbial chase. This isn’t bad — well, it’s not terrible — but ultimately it’s pretty disappointing.

A little background: Rock ’n’ roll bands are like comic-book villains. They’re never really dead until you see their bodies.

Take my beloved Pixies. It looked as if they died in the early ’90s, right at the height of their popularity and influence. Not long after the release of their album Trompe le Monde, Pixie potentate Charles Thompson, aka Black Francis, aka Frank Black, announced The Pixies were no more.

And that seemed to be the case for a decade or so. But after a couple of years of reunion rumors, The Pixies actually did get back together for a tour in 2004. And apparently it was so successful that they did several subsequent tours.

At the outset of their rebirth, the band recorded a couple of new songs: Warren Zevon’s “Ain’t That Pretty at All” for a Zevon tribute album and “Bam Thwok,” a rocker written by Pixies bassist Kim Deal for (but not used in) the movie Shrek 2.

The two songs were a hopeful sign. But as far as new material went, there was no follow-up. Black Francis and the crew seemed content with playing their classics. And that’s what the fans wanted. The Santa Fe folks who packed into the Sweeney Center in November 2011 went to hear The Pixies play their breakthrough 1989 album Doolittle, not for “Bam Thwok” (though that would have made a pretty bitchen encore).

But something strange happened this year. Deal announced she was leaving the band around the same time Black Francis and the others went into the recording studio for the first time in nearly 10 years. (A guy named Simon Archer replaced her on bass for these sessions. Another Kim, Kim Shattuck from The Muffs, has since been hired for the touring band).

In July, the group released a free MP3 of a techno-edged slow-burning rocker called “Bagboy.” And now there’s this four-song EP. It kicks off with the slow, spacey “Andro Queen,” which sounds like a space-alien love ballad. That’s followed by a bland soft-rocker, “Another Toe in the Ocean.” If I’d never heard this one before and you told me this was Bob Welch-era Fleetwood Mac, I probably would have believed you.

Things start to get interesting with “Indie Cindy.” After a slow “Wave of Mutilation”-like instrumental intro, the song goes into what sounds like an angry rant by Black Francis. The chorus slows down into a pretty melody as he sings “I’m in love with your daughter.”

The finally song, “What Goes Boom,” starts off with a boom — hard ’n’ heavy, near-metal guitar from Joey Santiago. It’s the most rocked-out song here, but in the end, it’s forgettable. And that’s the case with the other three songs as well.

The Pixies surely will plow on and hopefully, even without Deal, they will keep thrilling audiences as they recreate “Monkey Gone to Heaven” and “Caribou” and “Broken Face.” But something tells me the restrooms will be crowded when they play “Another Toe” and “What Goes Boom.”

Blogging from New Orleans: Next week I’ll be in New Orleans looking for the ghost of Mr. Bojangles, eating oyster po’ boys, and attending the 2013 Ponderosa Stomp, a festival dedicated to the unsung heroes of American music. There are R&B, soul, rockabilly, zydeco, and garage-rock acts on the bill, including a few you might have heard of like The Standells, The Sonics, Maxine Brown, and the mighty Jerry Williams, better known as Swamp Dogg. Assuming I can get the crawfish off my fingers, I’ll be blogging about the Stomp right here at the Stephen W. Terrell Web Log. Bookmark it!

Meanwhile, here's a couple of videos:

First, Kid Congo.


And here's the official "Indie Cindy" video from The Pixies.