WHERE'S MY CHECK?

I reviewed The Overman Family Trio's Cerrillos Islanders in Tune-up a couple of weeks ago. One of my favorite songs there was "Where's My Check?" Sky Fabin just made a video of that song.

Enjoy.

COLON ENDORSES OBAMA

State Democratic Party Chair Brian Colon made it official, endorsing Barack Obama today. He's the fourth New Mexico superdelegate to endorse Obama. Six others have gone for Clinton, while two, including Rep. Tom Udall, are undecided.

Here's the press release:

Albuquerque, NM - Today, New Mexico State Party Chair and superdelegate Brian S. Colón endorsed Senator Barack Obama, citing Obama's ability to bring new voters into the process as well as the positive campaign Obama has run.

State Party Chair Brian Colón said, "Barack Obama has proven to inspire a movement that has brought a record number of people into the process. He's proven to be a candidate who can compete and will fight hard to expand the Democratic Party's reach and put Western states in play in the general election. His message of change is resonating across all ages, races and economic backgrounds in New Mexico.

"As I talk to Democrats all over New Mexico they are increasingly concerned with the negative tone that the campaign has taken. I believe that Senator Obama has presented a positive message of change while continuing to focus on our real opponent; a John McCain presidency and another four year term of failed Bush policies.

"Barack Obama has run a different kind of campaign - one that goes beyond the things that divide us and is driven by a commitment to real change that starts at the grassroots level. Here in New Mexico, where we had a very close election on February 5th, the excitement I saw throughout the state is good for our Party and good for our State. While there are two very talented candidates in this race, I am proud to make this announcement today because I want to see Barack Obama's positive movement for change continue to transform the Democratic Party and this country."

The endorsement brings the total number of superdelegates to endorse Barack Obama to 254. Senator Obama is 278 delegates away from securing the Democratic nomination.

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, May 2, 2008
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

Now Simulcasting 90.7 FM, and our new, stronger signal, 101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell@ksfr.org

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Wild Wild Young Men by Rose Maddox
I've Always Been Crazy by Waylon Jennings
$30 Room by Dave Alvin
Rita's Breakdown by Mama Rosin
Love's Disease by Possessed by Paul James
LSD Made a Wreck Outta Me by T. Tex Edwards & Out on Parole
Satan Gave Me a Taco by Beck

In the Summertime by Roger Miller
I'm Gonna Love You Too by Buddy Holly
Hopes Up High by The Flatlanders
Get Happy by Simon Stokes
Down Here Below by Steve Earle
Howard Hughes Blues by Laura Cantrell
Wild Old Nory by The Wilders
Bottle of Wine by The Fireballs
Dick Shake by The Juke Joint Pimps
Help Me Scrape the Mucus Off My Brain by Ween


HAPPY 75th BIRTHDAY WILLIE, Born April 30, 1933
(All songs by Willie Nelson, except where noted)

Intro/Where's the Show/Let Me Be a Man
Time of the Preacher by Johnny Cash
Lumberjack
Mr. Record Man
Funny How Time Slips Away by Elvis Presley
So Much to Do
My Life's Been a Pleasure by Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard & Ray Price
Are You Sure? by Ray Price
I Just Can't Let You Say Goodbye

What Would Willie Do? by Bruce Robinson
Pretend I Never Happened
When the Silver Eagle Meets the Great Speckled Bird by Porter Wagoner & Willie Nelson
Something to Think About
Can I Sleep in Your Arms by Carla Bozulich with Willie Nelson
A Couple More Years by Jerry Lee Lewis & Willie Nelson
Pick Up the Tempo

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

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: DANG ME, I LOVE MISSION OF BURMA!

There are lots of reasons people get into certain bands or musicians. Most folks go for whatever they hear on the radio 17 times a day. A cousin of mine once postulated that most people like whatever they liked in high school and don’t progress much from there.

There are also reasons people don’t get into certain bands or musicians. Lots of people, maybe the majority, aren’t interested in music they don’t hear 17 times a day on the radio and that doesn’t sound like the stuff they liked in high school.

But I’ve got an even stupider reason for avoiding a particular band: the name of the singer.

The band in question is Mission of Burma, a “post-punk” group from Boston that first arose in the early 1980s and whose early work has recently been reissued on Matador Records. MOB was a guitar-dominated band whose raging attack was akin to that of Hüsker Dü and even Sonic Youth — at least the latter’s more melodic tunes. It was an unfettered, dare I say “grungy,” sound played with wild urgency.

But I chose to ignore MOB the first time around because the band’s guitarist and lead singer is a guy who, through no fault of his own, was born with the name Roger Miller.

Due to my fierce loyalty to the King of the Road, (who was living in Santa Fe during those years) I just couldn’t bring myself to give a do wacka do about some weird little band where the singer didn’t even have the decency to use his middle name or even middle initial to distinguish himself from the hillbilly hipster from Eric, Oklahoma. I’d read some critic raving about Mission of Burma and “Roger Miller,” and I’d think, “This snot-nosed upstart probably never even heard ‘Engine Engine Number 9’ or ‘Dang Me,’ much less ‘One Dyin’ and a Buryin’ ’ or ‘Lou’s Got the Flu’.”

I told you it was a stupid reason. But I’m not kidding.

Years later I became a major fan of a band called The Afghan Whigs (who, it could be argued, owed a sonic debt to Mission of Burma.) I’m lucky that it was the drummer, not the singer, who was named “Steve Earle.”

By the mid ‘80s, Mission of Burma had broken up and I didn’t give them much thought. The band never was that big out here in New Mexico, so I never really heard them on the radio and none of my friends were beating me over the head telling me what I’d been missing.

So I never really sat down and listened to MOB until 2004, when I got a review copy of OnOffOn, the group’s “comeback” album (featuring three of the four original members — Mr. Miller, bassist/singer Clint Conley, and drummer Peter Prescott — and newcomer Bob Weston).

It was MOB’s first release in about 20 years. Normally such products tend to be rather pitiful, but this one was excellent. And two years later, the band’s follow-up, The Obliterati, was even better.

So I was happy when Matador decided to rerelease three albums’ worth of early-’80s MOB in March. Under the umbrella title Mission of Burma: The Definitive Editions, the three CDs are Signals, Calls, and Marches, which includes all the songs from the original EP of the same name plus other recordings; Vs., which, along with some bonus tracks, contains the group’s only proper studio album until OnOffOn; and The Horrible Truth About Burma, a remastered version of a live album originally released in 1985.

In addition, each disc comes with a bonus DVD of live MOB shows from those golden years. Although these videos aren’t going to win any cinematography awards, they do capture some of the band’s raw energy. The Signals DVD includes performances from as early as 1979, when some of the Burmese could almost pass for high-school kids. The other two DVDs consist of 1983 performances. The band members look more mature and sound slightly more refined, but their power is still there. (Miller, whose hearing problems would lead to the group’s 1983 breakup, is seen wearing headphones onstage.)

Signals, Calls, and Marches includes two of the band’s greatest songs: their first single, “Academy Fight Song,” which reminds me a little bit of R.E.M.’s maiden single “Radio Free Europe,” though “Academy” is rougher; and “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver,” which sounds as desperate as the title implies.

Vs. starts out with some fuzzy, high-reverb guitar notes that almost suggest the record is going to be an Electric Prunes tribute album. There aren’t any vocals, except for a couple of screams, until two minutes into the three-minute opening song. Despite some titles like “Fun World” and “Laugh the World Away,” this can hardly be called a lighthearted album. Some of the rhythms are downright brutal, and guitarist Miller rides the feedback like a rodeo star.

Highlights on Vs. include “The Ballad of Johnny Burma,” the closest thing to a theme song MOB ever had; the frantic “Mica”; and the slow-grooving “Einstein’s Day.”

The live Horrible Truth is just a real treat. Surprisingly, it contains few repeats of songs from previous recordings — “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver” from Signals and “Trem Two,” “Learn How,” and the brontosaurus stomp “Weatherbox” from Vs. being exceptions. There’s an early take on “Dirt,” which nearly 20 years later would turn up on OnOffOn. The live album also includes some innovative covers of songs like The Stooges’ “1970” and Pere Ubu’s “Heart of Darkness,” which, in MOB’s hands, becomes a nearly nine-minute odyssey.

While it’s great to see the early Mission of Burma works available again, I’m hoping the band releases a new album in the not-too-distant future. I might have missed them the first time around, but they still sound fine on the rebound.

Mission of Radio: You can hear a big chunk of Mission of Burma on Terrell’s Sound World, free-form weirdo radio on KSFR-FM 101.1. The show starts at 10 p.m. on Sunday (the MOB set will happen shortly after 11 p.m.). And I’ll play some music by that other Roger Miller (and maybe even some Steve Earle) on The Santa Fe Opry, country music as the good Lord intended, same time, same channel, on Friday.

ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: NM, CRADLE OF POLITICAL ADS

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
May 1, 2008

It’s good to know national political types seem to think of New Mexico first these days, at least when buying television air time.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain a few weeks ago chose New Mexico as the place to debut the first ad of his campaign for November’s general election.

Now the pro-Democrat MoveOn.org has selected New Mexico and fellow battleground state Iowa to air an ad attacking McCain. The spot is scheduled to begin running on Albuquerque stations today, which is the fifth anniversary of President Bush’s oft-mocked “Mission Accomplished” speech. MoveOn is spending $160,000 between the two states to run the ad.

Why New Mexico? “Because McCain has been (advertising) in New Mexico,” said Trevor Fitzgibbon, a MoveOn publicist who volunteered as Barack Obama’s press spokesman in this state during the New Mexico Democratic Caucus campaign. “MoveOn is looking to hit McCain in the places where he is up because the Dems keep fighting with each other.”

The ad features a narrator, along with recorded voices of President Bush and McCain.

“Five years ago, George Bush stood under a ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner and announced: (Bush’s voice) ‘Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.’ John McCain said the end of the Iraq war was very much in sight. Now, we need to know how long we’d be in Iraq if John McCain were president. (McCain’s voice) ‘And then I don’t think Americans are concerned if we’re there for 100 years or 1,000 years or 10,000 years.’ 100 years in Iraq? And you thought no one could be worse than George Bush.” (see YouTube below)

Unsurprisingly, Republicans — including New Mexico Republicans — aren’t that wild about the ad.

Various e-mail rapid responses by Republican organizations point to various sources, including Factcheck.org that say attacks on McCain’s “100 year war” statement are misleading. In a critique of a recent spot by the Democratic National Committee, Factcheck said the ad “doesn’t mention that McCain was speaking specifically about a peacetime presence.”

State GOP chairman Allen Weh said Wednesday, “This ad is deliberately misleading which, coming from this far left organization, shouldn’t surprise anyone. If the two Democratic candidates wanted to show they were made of presidential timber, they’d criticize this ad and ask them to pull it. It’s certainly appropriate to point out that Senator McCain hasn’t been shy about repudiating ads that he thinks aren’t honest or lack civility, which speaks volumes about his statesmanship and character.”

Democrats, however, have criticized McCain for first repudiating a Republican ad in North Carolina — which tied local Democrats to the now-infamous clip of former Obama pastor Jeremiah Wright’s most controversial sermon — then, a few days later, bringing up Wright’s relationship with Obama and saying Wright is fair game.

Maybe both sides could turn this argument into TV commercials. To be shown first in New Mexico, of course.


Panderama: Gov. Bill Richardson, who has taken a lot of flack from the Hillary Clinton campaign ever since he endorsed Barack Obama, is now accusing Clinton of “pandering.”

Oh well, it’s not as bad as comparing someone with Judas Iscariot.

Richardson appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball Tuesday to talk with host Chris Matthews about the federal gas-tax “holiday” idea proposed by McCain and endorsed by Clinton.

Richardson called the idea a “quick fix that doesn’t work,” adding, “When I was energy secretary with President (Bill) Clinton, we were faced with the same situation — high gasoline prices, high oil prices. The last thing you want to do is a gimmick like a three-month tax holiday. Not only is it bad energy policy, but this is money that goes away from the highway trust fund. We need to rebuild our highways, our infrastructure, our electricity grid. My state, for instance, would lose about $60 million if we did this gimmick for three months.

“The right policy is what Obama says,” Richardson continued, “a new policy that shifts dramatically from fossil fuels to renewable energy to new technologies, energy efficiency, conservation, the American people being more energy-conscious and conserving. ... We need a long-term policy that is going to mean a lot of sacrifices and changes in the way we live.”

Matthews asked him: “Do voters see through this? Do they see what’s an open and obvious pander, or do they say, ‘Wait a minute, I need a break; I’ll take anything I can get’?”

The governor replied, “I think voters see a pander. They know that the half a gas tank that they’re going to save over a three-month period is not the answer. They know that the major oil companies today are making huge profits, that what we need is a long-term policy that shifts away from fossil fuels, that we need strong conservation measures, that we need new investments in solar, wind and biomass. ... We’ve got to be more energy-conscious and not have a quick gimmick for three months that is going to end and is going to hurt the basic infrastructure of this country. We need to rebuild those highways. Look what happened in Minneapolis with that bridge. We need to repair those bridges around the country.”

(The above quotes were taken from a copyrighted transcript provided by Federal News Service Inc., a private Washington, D.C., company that was nice enough to send me a copy.)

Not that Richardson is averse to all tax holidays. For the past three years, New Mexico has had one in August, in which school clothes, school supplies and some computers are exempt from state gross-receipts tax.

A big difference, of course, is that our back-to-school tax holiday lasts only three days instead of three months.

Last year, according to the Associated Press, the state Tax & Revenue Department estimated the holiday created a statewide revenue loss of between $1.9 million and $ 3 million and $1.3 million to $2.1 million to local governments.