THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, December 2, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Don't Get Above Your Raisin' by Ricky Skaggs with Elvis Costello
Haley's Comet by The Tom Russell Band
Cortez Sail by Terry Allen
The Moon is High by Neko Case
Ghosts in the Holler by The Family Lotus
Trotsky's Blues by Joe West
Behind the Fear by Lurn Hatcher

Christmas Time Will Soon Be Over by Jack White
Steve McQueen by Drive-By Truckers
I Like My Chicken Fryin' Size by Hank Thompson
New Lee Highway Blues by David Bromberg
County Line by Eleni Mandell
Silver Bells by The Rev. Horton Heat

He'll Have to Go by Ry Cooder
The Big Easy by The Jimmy Stadler Band
Blue Louisiana by Bobby Earl Smith
Hard Luck Troubador by Nancy Apple & Rob McNultin
To the Music World Unknown by Oneil Howes
Bluer Than You by Ronny Elliott
It Took 4 Beatles to Make One Elvis by Harry Hayward
Your Past is Going to Come Back to Haunt You by Emily Kaitz
Christmas Time is Here by Marah

On the Wings of a Dove by Lucinda Williams & Nanci Griffith
My Sister's Tiny Hands by The Handsome Family
Lonely Boy/Greener by Boris McCutcheon
Ain't No Cane on the Brazos by The Band
(Think About a) Lullaby by Merle Haggard
Last Train from Poor Valley by Norman Blake
Am I That Easy to Forget by Bobby Bare
Four Walls by Jimmie Dale Gilmore
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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

ROBERT MUGGE'S MUSICAL SPIRIT

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
December 2, 2005

To filmmaker Robert Mugge, music is a metaphor for the human spirit.

“It’s beneath the surface in every film I’ve made,” he said in a recent telephone interview. “Music is a leaping-off place for discussions of social issues, cultural issues, political issues, even religious issues.”


Mugge, who will be in town to present three of his music documentaries at the Santa Fe Film Festival, is enmeshed in a project to document the effects of Hurricane Katrina on a city that is a major wellspring of American music. Mugge is making the Katrina movie for the cable network Starz.

“The story of what’s happening in New Orleans is so big,” Mugge said, “you can turn on a camera anywhere there and get something interesting. You can talk to anyone you see on the street and get a great story. So music makes it a manageable focus.”

Music has been a metaphor for Mugge’s spirit since his early childhood in North Carolina in the early 1950s, when a radio introduced him to the strange and alluring world of American music — country, gospel, and rock ’n’ roll.

Mugge began studying film in the early ’70s at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. By the end of the ’70s he’d made documentaries about Frostburg, Md. (an Appalachian mining town where he’d gone to college in the 1960s), and controversial Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo. George Crumb: Voice of The Whale (1976), a portrait of the contemporary avant-garde composer, was Mugge’s first music movie.

In 1978 Mugge began filming Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise, a portrait of the Alabama-born jazz spaceman. From then on, music, musicians, and places where music is made have been his focus.

Music isn’t shortchanged in Mugge’s movies. Unlike many music documentaries that interrupt great performances for inane fan chatter or irrelevant observations, Mugge frequently allows the whole song to play and let the music speak for itself. And his interview segments almost always go straight to the core.

Mugge has made documentaries about bluegrass, reggae, and Hawaiian music and has done films centered on Rubén Blades, Sonny Rollins, Robert Johnson, and Gil Scott-Heron. In 1984’s Gospel According to Al Green, Mugge became the first interviewer to get the soul singer to open up about a terrible night in which a spurned girlfriend threw a pot of boiling grits on him — causing second-degree burns — then went into a bedroom and fatally shot herself.

He’s done several movies on the blues, three of which are showing at the film festival. Deep Blues, a 1991 film narrated by Arkansas music writer Robert Palmer, features performances by Mississippi masters R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough — captured on film well before they became cult heroes on Fat Possum records — as well as lesser-known worthies like Jessie Mae Hemphill (both solo and with her fife-and-drum band), Roosevelt “Booba” Barnes, and Big Jack Johnson.

Mugge said that a major point of Deep Blues was that pockets of authentic Mississippi blues were alive and well. But by 1999, when he made Hellhounds on My Trail: The Afterlife of Robert Johnson, “I started to sense (Mississippi blues) was beginning to die. A lot of performers were dying, and jukes were closing down.”

That concern prompted him in 2003 to make Last of the Mississippi Jukes, which also is showing at the film festival. While it’s full of high-powered performances by Alvin Youngblood Hart, Chris Thomas King, Vasti Jackson, Bobby Rush, and Patrice Moncell, it’s ultimately a sad film.

It starts off with a brand-new juke joint in Clarksdale, Miss., the Ground Zero Blues Club, which is co-owned by actor Morgan Freeman. But it ends at the Subway Lounge in Jackson, Miss., shortly before the club closed. At the end of the film there’s hope that the Subway would be renovated and revived. However, due to structural problems, the building has since been demolished.

The third film Mugge presents in Santa Fe is Rhythm ’N’ Bayous: A Road Map to Louisiana Music, originally released in 2000. Mugge said the purpose of this film was to show the impressive breadth of music in Louisiana — Cajun, zydeco, Creole, gospel, country, blues, soul, funk, jazz, rock ’n’ roll — and not just focus on “the same people” usually chosen to represent Louisiana music.

Among those featured in the movie are jazz trumpeter Kermit Ruffins, rockabilly artist Dale Hawkins, New Orleans rocker Frankie “Sea Cruise” Ford, and blues pianist Henry Butler.

Rhythm ’N’ Bayous can be considered a preamble to his new project about Katrina’s effect on New Orleans music, a joyful picture of “before” that will provide a sad contrast with the “after” that Mugge is documenting.

In the days before his interview with Pasatiempo, Mugge had been in New Orleans and other locales in the South talking with and filming performances of New Orleans musicians. He found cars on top of houses and in swimming pools, and he saw mysterious men dressed in black patrolling the neighborhoods at night. He filmed in clubs with no running water and unspeakably foul restrooms.

Mugge convinced the Army Corps of Engineers to take him up in a helicopter for an aerial perspective of the city and of landmarks such as Fats Domino’s house. Mugge’s co-producer, Diane Zelman, convinced a voodoo priestess to allow the crew to shoot a voodoo ceremony in a neighborhood where electricity hadn’t been restored. At the climax of the ritual — whose purpose was “to bring the city back to life,” Mugge said — the lights suddenly came back on, evoking nervous laughter from all involved.

Mugge filmed a gig at Grant Street Music Hall in Lafayette in which Marcia Ball presented fellow pianist Eddie Bo with a new electronic keyboard to replace the one he’d lost in the hurricane.

He shot an unknown guitarist playing an unplugged electric guitar on the roof of his mother’s home.

“We filmed Irma Thomas going back to her home, which is now gutted,” Mugge said, speaking of the venerated soul singer. “We went with her to her nightclub, the Lion’s Den, which was destroyed. She pointed to these Christmas lights on the wall and said, ‘You guys put those there 12 years ago’” when Mugge filmed Thomas for True Believers, a film about Rounder Records.

The new Thomas footage as well as that of Ruffins, whom he tracked down in Houston, will be interspersed with old performance footage “from happier times.”

A major question underlying the Katrina project is whether New Orleans will survive as a living, thriving music center. It’s a question Mugge has yet to answer.

“Cyril Neville believes there’s a real conspiracy among white financial people to do away with the black, impoverished neighborhoods,” Mugge said. “That’s where the people get this culture that’s responsible for this music.”

But even people who are less conspiracy-minded fear that New Orleans will be rebuilt as a Disneyfied version of its former self, perhaps something like Beale Street in Memphis, once a bucket-of-blood crucible of the blues, now an upscale tourist district offering safe, sanitized blues.

“People want to make sure that the city (government) doesn’t sell them out and don’t try to turn it into a new Las Vegas,” Mugge said.

Many New Orleans musicians have fled and might not return. Ruffins is Houston, Eddie Bo in Lafayette, and Neville in Austin, Texas. “These guys are really good and they’re still New Orleans musicians,” Mugge said. “But if New Orleans ceases to be New Orleans, there’s no place for them. If every city in the country has its own New Orleans musician, are they truly New Orleans musicians if the city’s ceased to function?”

New Orleans, Mugge says, “is like a body without a spirit. The music itself is the spirit.”

(The photo way above is Robert Mugge with Jack Owens during the filming of Deep Blues.)

Schedule for Mugge Films at Santa Fe Film Festival

Deep Blues 7:30 p.m Thursday Dec. 8
Rhythm 'N' Bayous 2:30 p.m. Friday Dec. 9
Last of the Mississippi Jukes 2:30 p.m. Sunday Dec. 11
(All at CCA Cinematheque, 1050 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe NM 87505, phone: 505 982 1338)

STEEEEEEE-RIKE!

The commentary on Gov. Bill Richardson's baseball career keeps coming.

Here's a hilarious op-ed piece titled "Field of Hallucinations" from Tom Ruprecht in The New York Times.

One of my favorite paragraphs:

Howard Dean, the Democratic Party chairman, concedes he may not have been a member of the Beatles. "I have distinct memories of singing 'Penny Lane' and 'Rocky Raccoon,' but whether I did that as a member of the Beatles or in my dorm room, I am unable to determine at this time," Mr. Dean says. Scientists studying Beatles albums find no evidence of Mr. Dean's voice, though they do note that there is one scream on "Helter Skelter" that could be his.

I like this one too:

With others in Washington rewriting their biographies, former House majority leader Tom DeLay asserts his claim that he is the pope. The recently indicted pontiff denounces his colleagues' dishonesty and proclaims himself "saddened" by the state of politics before jetting off with former lobbyist Jack Abramoff for missionary work in Cancún.

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: A WORTHY CONSPIRACY

So you thought The Hives were the only serious high-voltage guitar band to come out of Scandinavia? Think again.

The (International) Noise Conspiracy is one exciting band of Swedes whose albums almost, though not quite live up to their live performance.

On the new (I)NC CD, Armed Love, Dennis Lyxzen and the boys continue on their strange path of aggressive socialist lyrics and even more aggressive music.

While The Hives are armed with personality and humor in addition to their musical chops, these guys are all hopped up on rhetoric.

“The (International) Noise Conspiracy calls for a change,” proclaims the band’s Web site bio. “Now is the time for questioning, organizing and action. The political left needs to take the step back into the mainstream and the open air to let people know that there's an alternative to this barbaric state of the world today.”

(They’re not completely humorless. An earlier (I)NC song was titled "Capitalism Stole My Virginity.")

“To have rhythm and revolution/Seems like an easy solution/But right now we‘re gonna set it all on fire” Lyxzen sings on the title song, basically proclaiming the Conspiracy’s underlying philosophy.

“We got guns for everyone … We got love for everyone,” he proclaims on one song.

The Conspiracy comes across like a modern -- but not too modern -- version of the MC5. Or imagine if Rage Against the Machine had started out on Shindig?

Few other bands could get away with singing lines like “No more dreams about the power structure/Now we’re on the move,” (from “Landslide”) or “I don’t want to have to wait forever/I want freedom on this side of Heaven,” (from “This Side of Heaven.”) Few bands could even get away with having a song titled “Communist Moon” these days: “Let’s share all our dreams tonight under a communist moon,” Lyxzen bubbles.

All this would sound like so much left-wing flotsam and dribble except one thing.

These damned commies are good!

Armed Love is produced by Rick Rubin, who contrary to popular notion doesn’t just work on reviving the careers of senior citizens like the late Johnny Cash, Donovan and, most recently Neil Diamond. He’s captured the sweaty essence of the band.

One strange aspect of this album: Somewhere along the line the group lost its keyboard player, Sara which is an important part of their sound. (Reviewing their set last year at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin I compared them with Steppenwolf, a truly underrated band from the late ‘60s known for their keyboards as well as their guitars.)

Rubin compensates for this loss by supplying guest keyboardists, including the likes of Benmont Trench (of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers) and, even more impressive, Billy Preston. It works on this album, but I hope they find a permanent organist.

Also recommended

Beachhead by The Fleshtones. There’s a song on this album called “Late September Moon.” I don’t think it’s a communist moon. When they sing “I Want the Answers,” I don’t think they are addressing the song to The White House. Indeed you won’t find much in the way of politics on this or any other other Fleshtones album I’ve heard. (O.K., they had an early song called "Atom Spies," but that was a surfy instrumental that sounded a lot like the "Batman" theme.) Their only mission is to praise “Pretty Pretty Pretty” women, encourage good lovin’ in every state of the union and spread the gospel of what they call “Super Rock.”

But like the (International) Noise Conspiracy, this American band revels in old-fashioned fuzzed-up guitar/cheesy keyboard rock. In fact The Fleshtones are one of the only contemporary “garage” bands that enthusiastically embraces the term and the concept of “garage-band” rock.

Maybe it’s their age. The band has been around for almost 30 years now, starting out in the mid ‘70s in Queens, New York. Singer/organist Peter Zaremba, guitarist Keith Streng and drummer Bill Milhizer have been the band from the start.

They were contemporaries of The Cramps, a band with whom they often are compared. However, while The Cramps leaned more towards horror and other B-movie imagery, The Fleshtones tended to avoid obvious shtick.

Still, they sounded -- and still sound -- like they memorized every song of the entire Nuggets box set.

About half of Beachhead was recorded in Detroit and produced by Jim Diamond of The Dirtbombs, while the other half was recorded in North Carolina by Southern Culture on The Skids’ Rick Miller. Although the band touts this as some kind of “North vs. South” concept, Diamond and Miller have similar sensibilities, at least when it comes to The Fleshtones.

You won’t find much artsy stuff here, just the hard-driving Fleshtones Super Rock. A little retro -- “I Want the Answers,” for instance, has a melody similar to The Standells’ “Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White” and The Romantics’ “What I Like About You” -- but vital enough to rock without nostalgia.

ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: POLL DANCING

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
Dec. 1, 2005

That Richardson. His suits don’t fit, but his latest poll numbers ought to make him feel pretty comfortable.

In fact, a statewide tracking poll shows Gov. Bill Richardson with a 63 percent approval rating, a full 10 points higher than his approval number just four months ago.

The poll was conducted between Nov. 11 and 13 by a New Jersey firm called SurveyUSA and paid for by KOB TV in Albuquerque. It is based on automated phone calls to 600 New Mexican adults. The margin of error is 3.9 percent.

Participants were asked “Do you approve or disapprove of the job Bill Richardson is doing as Governor?” Only 34 percent said they disapproved.

The gap between his approval and disapproval numbers also is widening. “Richardson has gone from Plus 13 in June to Plus 29 in November, which is singularly impressive,” said Jay Levy, an editor with SurveyUSA.

According to the poll, which tracks numbers for governors in all 50 states, Richardson is now the 13th most popular governor in the nation. That’s up from July when he was merely the 20th most popular governor.

Suiting Up: So what’s happened since July to help Richardson’s approval numbers?

There was the trip to North Korea in October, allowing Richardson to wear his diplomat suit.

There was his quick and widely praised appointment of Doug Brown — a Republican — to fill out the term of indicted state Treasurer Robert Vigil, allowing Richardson to wear his bi-partisan suit.

Then there were the energy-rebate checks — sent to virtually every taxpayer in the state — allowing Richardson to wear his Santa Claus suit.

And there were television commercials airing all over the state in early November with actors posing as cowboys touting those energy-rebate checks (and poking some good-natured fun at the governor’s suits.)

New Mexico pollster Brian Sanderoff said the ads — which weren’t countered by any GOP commercials — could be a factor in the better poll numbers.

Greg Graves, who is managing the gubernatorial campaign of Republican J.R. Damron of Santa Fe, said Wednesday he believes the commercials are a major reason for Richardson’s improving numbers.

One problem with this theory though. According to SurveyUSA, Richardson’s numbers rose most between September and October, before the commercials were aired.

Automated calls: About a month ago Sanderoff conducted a poll for The Albuquerque Journal that included a question about Richardson. He found Richardson’s approval rating at 53 percent.

Sanderoff on Tuesday pointed to the fact that SurveyUSA’s poll uses an automated system.

He said that people who aren’t interested in state politics or who don’t have an opinion on Richardson — not to mention those among us who get angry when we get calls at home from automated androids — are more likely to hang up on such a call than they are when there’s a live human on the other end of the line.

Therefore, Sanderoff said, the percentage of “undecideds” is going to be much lower in automated polls, while the percentage for approval and disapproval tend to rise. In the new poll a measly three percent were undecided.

But even with this factor, Sanderoff noted that the overall trend in Richardson’s SurveyUSA polls is upward.

Graves said he’s not daunted by Richardson’s high numbers.

“He’s got a record he’s going to run on and he’s got a record we’re going to run on,” he said.

Richardson, Graves said, “is going to be under more scrutiny and more of his foibles are going to be reported. You’ll see how quickly 10 points can be made up.”

No Joy in Mudville: The poll was taken before the story broke about Richardson admitting that he indeed was not drafted by the Kansas City Athletics in the mid ‘60s as he’d previously claimed.

The national response to that story has not been pretty.

Bob Warner of Cincinnati Enquirer wrote.

“Richardson has had hopes of making it to the big show — as a Democratic presidential nominee. Maybe someday he will have to research how he didn't get that call either.”

But Richardson has at least one defender. Local gallery owner and activist Steve Fox took time out of his recent crusade against the sweetener aspartame to write a letter to the online edition of Editor and Publisher.

There Fox called the baseball story “a dismal and failed attempt at character assassination.”

“How about the other party's leaders' protracted and elaborate lies about Iraq's ‘weapons of mass destruction,’” Fox asked.