TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAY LIST

Sunday, June 27, 2004
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
What a Wonderful World by Joey Ramone
Wall of Death by Richard & Linda Thompson
If New Orleans is Beat by The Tragically Hip
World Leader Pretend by R.E.M.
Country at War by X
Together We're Heavy by The Polyphonic Spree
Runaway Child by The Funk Brothers

Drink to Me, Babe, Then by A.C. Newman
Jazzman by Eric Burdon
In the Garden by Van Morrison
That's So Amazing by Michelle Shocked
It's All in the Game by Tommy Edwards
Little Miss Strange by The Jimi Hendrix Experience
When Doves Cry by Patti Smith

PRINCE SET
All Songs by Prince except where noted

Life O The Party
Let's Go Crazy
U Got the Look (with Sheena Easton)
The Future
Little Red Corvette by The Gear Daddies
One of Us
Cinnamon Girl
Superfunkycalifragicsexy
Dirty Mind
Raspberry Beret by Hindu Love Gods
I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man
The Cross by The Blind Boys of Alabama
Dear Mr. Man
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH

Somehow my story about last week's threat to Gov. Richardson didn't make it to The New Mexican's web site. I'll post it here.

As published in the Santa Fe New Mexican

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

But when there’s a security threat going against the state Homeland Security Office, Homeland Security goes home.

At least that’s what happened this week when a woman called the Homeland Security Office threatening to shoot Gov. Bill Richardson, politicians in general and unnamed “Mexicans.”

According to Peter Olson, spokesman for the state Public Safety Department, a woman walked into the state Transportation Department and asked to use the phone Thursday afternoon shortly before 4 p.m.

She then called Homeland Security. Referring to “politicians,” the woman threatened to “line them up, Bill (Richardson) first, and get rid of them one by one.”

According to Olson’s press release, “The woman said approximately ten times in the conversation that she would ‘get a gun to shoot Mexicans.’ She stated that the next time a Mexican violated her rights; she would ‘shoot them.’

“The woman kept referring to immigration policies and used racial slurs against Mexicans throughout the course of the conversation,” Olson said.

Richardson was in Boston Thursday, attending meetings for the upcoming Democratic National Convention, of which he is chairman.

The woman’s image was captured on a security camera. However, she left the office before police arrived.

Homeland Security employees were sent home Thursday afternoon, Olson said. The office reopened Friday morning.

Annette Sobel, director of the Homeland Security Office, couldn’t be reached for comment Friday.

A spokeswoman for the governor’s office declined to comment referring questions to Public Safety Secretary John Denko.

Denko was quoted in the press release saying, “This represents another example of the increasing number of threats made against Governor Richardson since he assumed office in January of 2003. All security precautions will be taken to insure his safety.”

In the past year Denko and other administration officials have given security as a reason for Richardson’s state police drivers driving at 100 mph speeds and for not disclosing some details of Richardson’s travels.

But Olson said Friday couldn’t quantify how much the threats had been increasing because he didn’t know how many threats have been made against Richardson.

“We haven’t been keeping track,” he said.

State police have investigated threats against the governor that have included phone calls as well as “people yelling things from crowds,” Olson said.

Few of the threats have been publicized. In January, state police evacuated most of the Capitol — although reporters in the press room were not told to leave — for a police bomb squad to investigate a “suspicious package” in Richardson’s parking space in the underground parking garage. The governor wasn’t in the building.

Police haven’t disclosed details about the package. No arrests were ever made.

KELL ROBERTSON IN NO DEPRESSION

I just got the latest issue of No Depression in the mail today and it includes my piece on Santa Fe poet/singer/madman/drunk/angel-headed hipster/goodtime guy Kell Robertson.

The story's not available online, which means you'll have to go to the store and buy it. (Quaint little notion, no?) In Santa Fe you can find it at Borders and Hastings. It's the issue with Dave Alvin on the cover. (If it's not in the stores quite yet, have patience. It will be soon.)

It also includes this snapshot I took of Kell at Cafe Oasis a couple of months ago.

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAY LIST

The Santa Fe Opry
Friday, June 25, 2004
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Host: Steve Terrell
Guest Co-Host: Laurell Reynolds

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
From a Jack to a King by Cornell Hurd
Honey Babe by Vassar Clements with Maria Muldaur
Believe by Robbie Fulks
Midnight Shift by Los Lobos
Oh Lonesome Me by Johnny Cash
I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again by Buffy Sainte-Marie
Sink Hole by Drive-By Truckers
Matty Groves by ThaMuseMeant

Mental Revenge/I'm It All Up To You by Linda Rondstadt
My One Desire by Freakwater
Crawling From the Wreckage by Graham Parker
Bring It On Home To Me by The Flatlanders
Everybody's Talkin' At Me by Emmylou Harris
Ashgrove by Dave Alvin
Wichita Lineman by Glen Campbell

Cool and Dark Inside by Kell Robertson
St. Mary of the Woods by James McMurtry
Paper in my Shoe by Michelle Shocked
Never Let the Devil Get the Upper Hand on You by Marty Stuart
Lonesome Valley by Jon Dee Graham
Walking After Midnight by Patsy Cline
The Bottle Let Me Down by Emmylou Harris
Don't Gossip in the Sauna by Emily Kaitz

Kind Woman by Buffalo Springfield
Hesitating Beauty by Billy Bragg & Wilco
She's a Mystery to Me by Roy Orbison
I Guess I've Come to Live Here In Your Eyes by Willie Nelson
Woman Walk the Line by Emmylou Harris
Young and Beautiful by Elvis Presley
Dreaming My Dreams by Waylon Jennings
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: HIS NAME IS PRINCE

As published in The Santa Fe New Mexican

Like many Prince fans — unfortunately, perhaps like most Prince fans — I’ve been out of touch with His Purple Majesty for several years now. I’d argue that he reached his peak in the late ’80s circa Lovesexy and The Black Album. Many say his pinnacle was even earlier, that it’s been downhill since Sign O’ the Times or even Purple Rain. But few would argue that Prince’s output in the last decade or so has been essential.

With each album seeming more obscure and less relevant, Prince started seeming like a happy memory instead of a still-vital music force. For the last couple of years Outkast, with its eccentric funk and tomfoolery, has done its best to fill the void that was once Prince’s territory.

But there’s good news: with his new album, Musicology, Prince proves he’s not ready for the nostalgia circuit just yet. The album is a sweet joy that reminds you of the splendor of the artist’s greatest years without feeling retro.

You can feel the confidence in his lyrics. In the title song, a celebration of “old school” funk, he evokes James Brown, Earth Wind & Fire, Sly, Chuck D, Doug E. Fresh and Jam Master Jay. He doesn’t come out and put himself in that pantheon. But he deserves to be there — and he knows it. By “Life ‘O’ the Party,” which includes a nod at Outkast and its Atlanta funk, there’s no false modesty or any question who the life of the party is.

As in his best work, there are some great, funky booty-shaking jams — the aforementioned tunes plus “Illusion, Coma, Pimp & Circumstance” — as well as some soul-shaking love ballads — “Call My Name,” for instance.

One of my favorites is “On the Couch,” a bluesy, gospel-drenched tune you could almost imagine the late Ray Charles covering. The horn section on the latter includes former James Brown sideman Maceo Parker and Dutch treat Candy Dulfer on saxes.

There are even some political songs here. “Cinnamon Girl” (not the Neil Young song) is about a girl of “mixed heritage” who is arrested for some unspecified crime after Sept. 11 but prays for peace “as war drums beat in Babylon.”

In “Dear Mr. Man” Prince rages against war, pollution and poverty, quoting Scripture and concluding his “letter” by saying, “We tired, U’all!”

It’s great to have Prince back. Hope he sticks around.

Some refried soul

*The Best of the Funk Brothers: the Millennium Collection. Here’s a strange situation. This is both a best-of album and, technically at least, a debut album.

The Funk Brothers, as documented so well in the film Standing in the Shadows of Motown, were the house band for Detroit’s most famous record label. The group played on hit records by Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, the Supremes, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Martha and the Vandellas, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles and the rest of the Motown stable.

But until now, they never recorded as the Funk Brothers. They released instrumental albums under the name Earl Van Dyke & the Soul Brothers because, so the story goes, back in the mid-’60s the word funk was considered to be just this side of obscene.

Most of the tunes on this album are the Motown hits we know and love. “The Way You Do the Things You Do,” “Come See About Me,” “How Sweet It Is (to Be Loved by You),” (most of these done with Van Dyke’s organ taking the place of Diana, Marvin, Levi or whoever) all the way up to “What’s Going On” and “Papa Was a Rolling Stone.”

This collection is a good listen. And it goes without saying that keyboardists Van Dyke and Johnny Griffith; bassists James Jamerson and Bob Babbit, guitarists Eddie Willis, Robert White and Joe Messina; and percussionists Benny Benjamin, Uriel Jones, Pistol Allen, Jack Ashford and Bongo Brown deserve credit for creating the sound behind some of popular music’s greatest records. Without a doubt, it was a stupid injustice that Motown never credited its instrumentalists until Marvin Gaye shamed them into it on What’s Going On in 1971.

But this album disproves one of the troubling contentions of Standing in the Shadows of Motown — that the Motown singers were interchangeable, that with a band as great as the Funk Brothers, it didn’t really matter all that much.

Well, the singers did matter. And if you can’t tell Levi Stubbs from Stevie Wonder, or the Temptations from the Vandellas, then you shouldn’t call yourself a music fan.

The fact is, most of these cuts, despite the first-rate instrumentalists, sound half finished. You need those singers. Only the last few cuts — specifically the Temptations’ “Runaway Child Runnin’ Wild” and a Van Dyke original called “The Stingray” sound like actual songs instead of potential karaoke tracks.

And ironically, this collection commits an injustice of its own. They don’t list the horn players, who are essential to many of the songs, especially the late-period stuff included here.

Who were these guys? I guess we’ll have to wait for the documentary "Standing in the Shadows of the Funk Brothers."

Hear “Sweet Hour of Prince” on Terrell’s Sound World, 10 p.m to midnight Sunday. (The Prince segment will start shortly after 11 p.m.) And don’t forget The Santa Fe Opry, same time, same channel Friday night.