HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR BLOG

Actually I'm a couple of days late.

Dec. 28 was the fifth anniversary of this here blog. Yes, I started this mess with this post

Please, in lieu of champagne, just donate to your favorite charity.

But seriously, as this blog goes into its sixth year, there's going to be a major change.

Beginning on Jan. 1, I'll be launching a blog dedicated to state politics -- and sometimes national politics when New Mexico is affected. Roundhouse Roundup: The Blog will be the new home of my weekly column by that name as well as other political observations, insights, wisecracks and links to my newspaper stories and other noteworthy sites. For the past several years I've done a Legislature blog. The new blog will be where I do that from now on.

You might already have noticed the altered title here on this site. This joint is going to remain the home of Terrell's Tuneup, the play lists for my KSFR radio shows, my podcasts, my monthly eMusic download reviews, my rants against the music industry, my love letters to former New Mexico Music Commissioner Tony Orlando, etc.

I haven't done any demographic studies of my readership or anything, but I'm pretty sure there's two major factions -- political junkies and music freaks. I know the two groups do intersect to some degree. For you folks, you can just open this blog in one tab and the political blog in another and toggle fiercely between the two.

I'll announce the link to the new blog on New Year's Day.

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, December 29, 2008
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell@ksfr.org

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
America the Beautiful by The Dictators
All Dressed Up by The Yayhoos
Oowee Baby by The Cramps
Walking Down the Aisle by Ike Turner
Kewpie Doll by The Birthday Party
Alexander by The Fuzztones
Waddlin' Around by The King Khan & BBQ Show
Out of My Head by The Green Hornets

Glam Racket by The Fall
Grown So Ugly by Captain Beefheart
What's Under the Log by Bichos
Special Rider by Insect Trust
Life Stinks by Pere Ubu
New York City by The Fleshtones
And the Shimmering Light by Mudhoney
Thunderbird (Part 1) by Ravi Harris & The Prophets
Get Me to the World on Time by The Electric Prunes

WORLD BEATERS SET
Into the Go-Go Groove by Little Gerhard (Sweden)
Busco un Camino by Grupo 606 (Bolivia)
Easy as Can Be by The Stalemates (Papua New Guinea)
Voice From the Inner Soul by The Confusions (India)
Angelita by Mod East (Hong Kong)
Al Capone by The Salvajes (Spain)
He's a Man by The Savages (Bermuda)
Soldado by The Beatniks (Argentina)
This Bad Girl by The Golden Cups (Japan)
But Why I Can't by The Brightness (Greece)
More by Los Shakers (Uruguay)

Dancing Choose by TV on the Radio
Talking Main Event Magazine Blues by Mike Edison & The Rocket Train Delta Science Arkestra
It's No Secret by The Jefferson Airplane
If I Had Wings by T-Model Ford
This Is My Life by Firewater
Bob by Primus
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, December 26, 2008
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell@ksfr.org

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Long Hauls & Close Calls by Hank Williams III
Camel Walk by Southern Culture on the Skids
My Name is Jorge by The Gourds
Alligator Man by Jimmy C. Newman
Pine Grove Blues by Mama Rosin
Sadie Green the Vamp of New Orleans by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
Albuquerque Rainbow by Chris Darrow
Drums from New Orleans by Gurf Morlix with Ruthie Foster
Funky Tonk by Moby Grape

Festival Acadiens Two Step by The Pine Leaf Boys
Diggy Liggy Lo by John Fogerty
One Foor in the Honky Tonk by The Starline Rhythm Boys
Hold Back the Tears by Miss Leslie
Dollar Bill the Cowboy by The Waco Brothers
Ridin' with the Blues by Ry Cooder
Play it Cool by Ray Campi
My Baby in the CIA by Asylum Street Spankers

The Ballad of Patch Eye and Meg by Joe West
It Took Four Beatles to Make One Elvis by Harry Hayward
The Ballad of Wayward by Ronny Elliot
Acres of Heartache by Johnny Dilks
Sittin' and Thinkin' by Ray Price
Sorrow on the Rocks by Porter Wagoner
Saturday Night Midnight Bop by Jerry J. Nixon
A Couple More Years by Jerry Lee Lewis with Willie Nelson
There's a New Moon Over My Shoulder by Gov. Jimmie Davis

There's Nothing to Eat in Tucumcari by Andy Mason
Don't Blame Me by Flat Duo Jets
Railroad Lady by Lefty Frizzell
Lonesome Hearted Blues by Cornell Hurd
Build Me a House by Kim & The Cabelleros
Down Through the Holler by Hundred Year Flood
Two Seconds by The Volebeats
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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

LEGISLATURE PREVIEWS

The New Mexican published a couple of my preview stories of the upcoming session of the state Legislature.

My story on the American Civil Liberty Union's "Spying on Freedom" bill is HERE.

And my story on the looming battle over domestic partnerships is HERE

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: A FAMILY TRADITION

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
December 26, 2008

Hank Williams III, as he shows on his latest album, Damn Right Rebel Proud, has a punk-rock soul, though he’s got pure country blood. Apparently his grandfather was some kind of country singer back in the old days.

After years of playing in hardcore punk bands, young Hank’s first couple of stabs at country music — Risin’ Outlaw (1999) and Lovesick, Broke & Driftin’ (2002) — showed plenty of talent, plenty of dedication to traditional country-music values, and an uncanny vocal resemblance to Hank Sr. But while both albums are decent examples of good retro country — the kind of music that his friend and mentor Wayne “The Train” Hancock is so good at — they aren’t much more than that.

His artistic breakthrough didn’t come until a couple of years ago, with the release of Straight to Hell. With its dark imagery of backwoods violence, drinking, drugging, hell-raising, devil worshipping, and manic-depressive Southern-fried insanity, this two-disc album has a truly dangerous aura. All those themes have been well covered by previous artists, but somehow, Hank III presents them with demonic authority. The project culminates on the second disc with “Louisiana Stripes,” which consists of an acoustic murder ballad (“Louisiana Stripes” proper) followed by a 40-plus-minute aural collage featuring snatches of lo-fi, sometimes sonically distorted songs; ambient noises; a fragment of a religious sermon; creepy laughter; train whistles; wolf howls; and other frightening sound effects — kind of a hillbilly “Revolution 9.”

The album ensured that, unlike his father, Hank III would never be invited to share the stage with John McCain and Sarah Palin.

While there’s no 40-minute honky-tonk Hades tour on Damn Right Rebel Proud, the new album continues down the same basic path as Straight to Hell, with Hank III struggling with and frequently celebrating his demons — as the fiddles, banjo, and steel edge him on.

Unfortunately the album starts with a misfire. “The Grand Ole Opry (Ain’t So Grand)” basically deals with how the modern-day Nashville music establishment sucks the warts. It’s true, but it’s been said too many times before.

For me, the most interesting part of the tune is the refrain, in which he holds his dad, Hank Jr. (aka Bocephus), up as a rebel hero. “They were nervous about Waylon ’cause he had a crooked smile "For many many years they never wanted Bocephus ’cause he was too goddamn loud.”

Though Hank Jr. gets his praise in “Grand Ole Opry,” he doesn’t come off so well in a subsequent tune, “If You Can’t Help Your Own.” It’s a bluesy little number — one that Jr. might be partial to — that refers to rich relatives who never came around. If that’s a dig at dear old dad, who by all reports was absent during most of his son’s life, Hank III doesn’t dwell on it. In the last verse, the focus is on an uncaring government.

There’s a funny little ode to the late punk monster G.G. Allin here called “P.F.F.” (For the record, this isn’t the first country-rock tribute to Allin. The Drive-By Truckers did “The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town” years ago.) Hank’s song goes on for more than 10 minutes and comes in two parts — some good honky-stomp craziness for the first half or so and then an acoustic reprise with some sweet Dobro offering a counterpoint to the profane lyrics.

There’s tons of fun on the album. “Long Hauls & Calls” is a celebration of drunken craziness that could be used for the soundtrack of a chase scene in a Burt Reynolds hicksploitation comedy, as could “Six Pack of Beer.”

But Hank III doesn’t ignore the downside of nonstop hell-raising. The somber “Three Shades of Black,” with a melody that might remind you of “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” sounds like a song that Johnny Cash would have recorded on one of his latter-day albums. “Three shades of black is where I come from/Depression, misery and hellacious fun. ... We are a certain breed and we don’t like you/Some are junkies, some are freaks, and some are everyday ghouls.”

Definitely the most shocking song here is “Candidate for Suicide.”rhythm, but the lyrics tell the story of a “busted up and beaten down” soul for whom drugs have taken a heavy toll. Hank sings, “I’m a candidate for suicide/I was raped at 8 years old.”

That lurking death wish is also heard on the slow, dreamy “Stoned and Alone.” There he instructs a loved one, real or imagined, to “pick up the gun, dear, and put me to sleep.”
It’s hard to tell whether this album is a cry for help or a roar of defiance. Probably both. But it’s a noise worth hearing.

Also recommended:

* If the World Was Upside Down by Joe West. This one might be good to cleanse your musical palate after Hank Williams III’s tales of drugs and depression.

It’s an album of children’s music — perhaps the world’s first children’s record made by a guy who spends part of his time on stage as a time-traveling transvestite.

I’ll be honest — I vastly prefer Joe’s albums for adults. Give me South Dakota Hairdo or Human Cannonball any day.

But, as always with West, the music is top-notch. He’s backeders of the Santa Fe All Stars (Susan Hyde Holmes on bass, Sharon Gilchrist on mandolin, and guitarist Ben Wright) as well as by members of Hundred Year Flood and other Frogville cronies.

And yes, there are songs those of us over 3 feet tall can enjoy. “My Grandma” is a Southwestern answer to Bill Withers’ “Grandma’s Hands.” “Robots of Rayleen” is weird enough to love. He sings a good version of Michelle Shocked’s “The Ballad of Patch Eye and Meg.” And the simple yet beautiful melody of “On the Banks of the Rio Grande” is downright irresistible.

ROUNDHOUSE ROUNDUP: INDEPENDENTS UNITE

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
December 25, 2008

Here’s a little Christmas gift from a New York City-based organization for the rapidly growing group of voters in New Mexico who declined to affiliate with either the Democratic or Republican Party.

The Committee for a Unified Independent Party has launched a national petition asking President-elect Barack Obama to initiate federal legislation “to create open primaries for election to federal office in all 50 states that guarantees full access for independent voters.”

New Mexico, according to CUIP, is one of only 17 states in which independents — or “declined-to-states” as we’re known here — are barred from voting in state primaries.

Notice, I used the first person in the previous paragraph. As I’ve disclosed before, I’m a proud DTS. I probably ought to make clear also that I’m not affiliated with CUIP or any other political organization.

I’ve beat this drum before. The fact that the state primaries are paid for by all taxpayers, yet only Democrats and Republicans are allowed to participate seems a clear case of taxation without representation.

I’m talking about the primaries that occur in June every even-numbered year and not about the February presidential caucuses that the state Democratic Party has run — and paid for — in the previous two presidential elections. That’s the party’s event, and they’ve got the right to include or exclude anyone they want.

But if they wanted to be really cool ...

The Democrats, thanks mainly to the appeal of Obama to new and infrequent voters, were able to register loads of new voters in New Mexico (and elsewhere) this year.

But independents made some great gains, too. Registered DTS voters in New Mexico rose from 164,986 four years ago to 184,846 by Oct. 31, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.

And here in Santa Fe County, DTS overtook the GOP. As of Oct. 31, there are 16,891 declined-to-states, compared with 16,590 Republicans in the county. The Dems still have everyone beat by far, with 61,603 registered voters in Santa Fe County. Other parties such as Greens and Libertarians have a combined total of 2,620 registered voters in the county.

The petition to Obama implies the owes the independents, pointing out that 33 states allowed independents to participate in primaries and caucuses:

“Independent voters were proud to be a vital element of your winning coalition during the presidential campaign of 2008. Your appeal to Americans — that the country must move beyond partisanship and toward a more participatory and open political culture — resonated strongly with independent voters, who have been voicing these concerns for many years. Your invitation to all Americans to reshape our country’s future — without regard to political affiliation — was a refreshing change for independents and Americans of every political persuasion.”

For the record, Obama lost the closed New Mexico Caucus to Hillary Clinton by a tiny margin. Perhaps independent voters could have won the state for him had they been allowed to participate.

But I still like my taxation-without-representation argument better. That’s an argument I believe would hold up in court.

I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for Obama to get behind the legislation CUIP is calling for. And I really wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the New Mexico Legislature, which remains firmly in the hands of the Democrats, to correct this injustice.

But it’s Christmas, so we can wish.

Still no feeding frenzy: In fact there’s been surprisingly little attention paid by the national media to the grand jury investigation of certain political contributions to Gov. Bill Richardson and how that might affect his confirmation as commerce secretary.

A grand jury in Albuquerque, meeting, as all grand juries do, behind closed doors, is hearing testimony about CDR, a Beverly Hills financial firm that won state contracts totaling almost $1.5 million. According to The Associated Press and other media organizations, the grand jury is looking at whether Richardson or his staff pressured the state Finance Authority to award the contracts to CDR.

But there have been a couple of major news organizations to run stories about the grand jury in recent days. The New York Times on Thursday did a story that laid down the basic facts, including the standard comment from the Governor’s Office — the administration is cooperating with the investigation — and denial of wrongdoing from CDR.

On Tuesday, NBC Nightly News ran a two-minute-plus report that also had the basic elements of the story. It included footage of Richardson bolting from last week’s news conference and comments from Melanie Sloan, head of the Washington, D.C.-based Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

“There’s only a few months between the donations and the award of the contract, which is generally what your campaign finance lawyers and ethics lawyers will tell you to avoid,” Sloan said. She was referring to a $75,000 CDR contribution to a Richardson political action committee, which was made only three weeks or so after CDR won the contracts.

Plugs: I’m off next week, so there will be no Roundhouse Roundup next Thursday. But if you need a fix of my political insights, be sure to listen to a 2008 year-in-review panel discussion on KUNM, 89.9 FM. It airs at 11 a.m. Sunday.

On Dec. 31, I’ll be talking about the year in politics with Diane Kinderwater on her show Issues and Answers on Channel 11. The show will air at 4:30 p.m. and will repeat several times during that next week.

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, December 21, 2008
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@ksfr.org

THE STEVE TERRELL CHRISTMAS SPECIAL
With Guest Host Scott Gullet

Silent Night by Bad Religion
Santa Doesn't Cop Out on Dope by Sonic Youth
Santa Claus Is a Black Man by Akim & The Teddy Vann Production Company
Come on Santa by The Raveonettes
If It Doesn't Snow on Christmas by Joe Pesci
Cool Yule by Louis Armstrong
Christmas 1979 by Wild Billy Childish
Back Door Santa by Clarence Carter
We Three Kings by Mojo Nixon & The Toadlickers
Jingle Bell Rock by Lumbre del Sol

Champagne of Christmas by The Fleshtones
Jinglecide by The Rockin' Guys
6 Bullets for Christmas by Angry Johnny & The Killbillies
Christmas at K-Mart by Root Boy Slim & The Sex Change Band
Even Squeeky Fromme Loves Christmas by Rev. Glen Armstrong
Lonely Christmas Call by George Jones
Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy by Buck Owens
Hark the Herald Angels Sing by The Fall
Gloria by Elastica

Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto by Snoop Dogg
Santa Claus Boogie by Hasil Adkins
Santa Came on a Nuclear Missile by Heather Noel
Happy Birthday Jesus by Little Cindy
Merry Christmas Elvis by Michelle Cody
All I Want For Christmas is My Methadone by The Scabs
Merry Christmas From the Family by Robert Earle Keene
Santa Can't Stay by Dwight Yoakam

You're All I Want for Christmas by The Persuasions
Fairytale of New York by The Pogues
Christmas Lullaby by Shane McGowan & The Popes
Oh Holy Night by Brian Wilson
Can Man Christmas by Joe West
No Vacancy by Marlee MacLeod
Star of Wonder by The Roches
Old Toy Trains by Roger Miller

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, December 19, 2008
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell@ksfr.org

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
If We Make It Through December by Merle Haggard
We'll Burn Together by Robbie Fulks
The Check's in the Mail by Johnny Dilks
Me and My Friends by Hank Williams III
Qualudes Again by Bobby Bare
I'll Walk Out by Miss Leslie
Dream Vacation by The Gear Daddies
I'm Barely Hangin' On by Johnny Paycheck
May the Bird of Paradise by Little Jimmie Dickens
Man Overboard by Libby Bosworth & Toni Price
The Tail of the Night Before/Dinosaur Christmas by Wee Hairy Beasties

Freight Train Boogie by The Maddox Brothers & Rose
Don't Miss That Train by Sister Wynona Carr
This Train by Sleepy LaBeef
Gotta Travel On by The Starline Rhythm Boys
That Truck by The Texas Rubies
Dying Breed by Kim & The Cabelleros
Hogtied Over You by Billy Bacon & The Forbidden Pigs with Candye Kane
Beer Can Christmas Tree by Jimmy Baldwin & Michael O'Neal
River of Crystal by Roy Acuff

I'll Have to Forget You by The Pineleaf Boys
Uncle Bud by Boozoo Chavis
Let's Talk About Drinking by The Balfa Brothers
Biker Boys by Rosie LeDet
Sugar Bee by Cleveland Croket
Fonky Bayou by Michael Doucet
Saturday Night Special by Lesa Cormier & The Sundown Playboys
Johny Can't Dance by Mama Rosin
Creole Stomp by Jimmy Breaux

Firewater Seeks Its Own Level by Butch Hancock
Summer Wages by David Bromberg
On the Banks of the Rio Grande by Joe West
Crooked Mile by Peter Case
Have Mercy by Steve Earle
That's the Way Love Goes by Lefty Frizzell
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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

RIAA TURNS FOCUS TO SOMALIAN PIRATES

Not really. But they apparently will stop suing 11-year-old girls for illegally downloading "Happy Birthday to You."

See Wall Street Journal article HERE.

Yo ho Ho!

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: IN PRAISE OF FUZZ

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
December 19, 2008

The Fuzztones is one of those groups that seems to have been around forever. Given my taste for basic, loud, snotty psychedelic/garage/trash/primitive rock, I’m surprised that I’ve never been exposed to their music before. And now that I finally have — with their new album Horny as Hell — I think that they may be on the cusp of a major transformation.

First, a little Fuzzy history.

The Fuzztones have been around, in various forms, since the ’80s. They claim they used the description “grunge” years before the Seattle sound. Like The Fleshtones and The Cramps, they started out in New York. But The Fuzztones have gone through a number of personnel shifts and have moved around. The group was in California for a few years but broke up in the early ’90s after a major label deal flopped. T

he Fuzztones re-emerged this century, this time in Europe. Fuzzmeister Rudi Protrudi and his latest incarnation of the band have been based out of Berlin in recent years.

The ’08 model of The Fuzztones includes a horn section and a female chorus. King Khan & The Shrines, also based in Germany, must be a major influence on this punchy garage/soul sound.

Most the songs are Protrudi originals, though they cover a Pretty Things tune (“Alexander,” which features a guest appearance by Pretty’s bassist Wally Waller) and a Billy Gibbons tune — “99th Floor,” which he used to play with his pre-ZZ Top band, Moving Sidewalks.

There are some fine tunes here. “Black Lightning Light” features a lengthy minor-key spook-house-organ instrumental odyssey. This is one of several songs that originally appeared on The Fuzztones’ 2004 “comeback” album, Salt for Zombies.

Protrudi goes back even further in the Fuzztones’ catalog. For instance, my favorite song is probably a new all-hornied-up version of the old Fuzztones song “Ward 81” — which first appeared on their early ’80s debut album Lysergic Emanations. It’s a horrifying little tale of a psychiatric hospital: “Administer the medicine to my heart /Behind barred windows/The walls are whisperin’/Gotta flip a switch, pull out the stitches.”

If I’d been a Fuzztones fan since the start, I’d probably complain about all this recycling and demand more new material. But since I’m not familiar with the originals, I’m not complaining. It just makes me want to go back and catch up.

There’s some good junior-high humor here, Beavis. Besides the album title, which obviously refers to the new horn section (though the sax-playing she-devils on the cover are pretty sexy), some of the songs have titles like “Highway 69” (also from Lysergic Emanations) and the uncomfortable sounding “Johnson in a Headlock” (which originally appeared on Salt for Zombies).

So if you’ve got a dirty mind and a rock ’n’ roll heart, Horny as Hell will put your soul in a headlock.

Also recommended:

* Wrestling Rock ’n’ Roll by Lightning Beat-Man & His No Talent. On the subject of headlocks ... Here’s a Swiss-born one-man band in a lucha libre mask with a cheap four-track tape recorder. This is a rei(with three bonus tracks) of the long, long out-of-print first album by Voodoo Rhythm Records founder Beat-Man — also known as Rev. Beat-Man and also known briefly as Jerry J. Nixon.

The Lightning Beat-Man character came about circa 1992, when the young Beat-Man saw some Mexican wrestling on a trip to Los Angeles and was inspired to combine elements of that with the trash-rock that was his first love. The motto of his act in those days was “I fight on stage against me and my guitar and beat the shit out of it and win every night.” As this recording shows, he did his damnedest to live up to that and usually succeeded.

“Don’t want to talk like Hasil, don’t want to rock like Gene,” he sings in the opening tune and title song, evoking his heroes Mr. Adkins and Mr. Vincent. “I just want to be myself — wrestling rock ’n’ roll, that’s me/My name is Beat-Man.”

Most of the songs feature Beat-Man pounding the you-know-what out of his guitar and shredding his vocal chords as he sings bare-bones basic rock. One of my favorites is “Wild Baby Wow.” There aren’t many more words than the ones found in the title, and a couple of times Beat does a bridge that consists mainly of incomprehensible stuttering gibberish.

Sometimes words just can’t describe a feeling.

Many of these tunes would later appear on LBM’s Voodoo Rhythm album Apartment Wrestling Rock ’n’ Roll, recorded with a merry band of miscreants called The Never Heard of Ems. The song “Wrestling Rock ’n’ Roll Girl,” for instance, became “Apartment Wrestling Rock ’n’ Roll Girl.” If you’re hip to apartment wrestling then you’re probably a perv — and should enjoy this music as much as I do.

BONUS

This review was published with the Christmas CD reviews in this week's Pasatiempo:

* Holidays Gone Crazy by Wee Hairy Beasties. Would you trust your children with members of The Mekons and their disreputable friends? Heck, I would. This holiday album is the second release from the Beasties, which specializes in children’s music. The group is made up of Mekons Jon Langford and Sally Timms, along with Bloodshot Records chums Kelly Hogan, Rick “Cookin’” Sherry, Tom Ray and Joel Patterson.

Warning Christmas purists: Despite the title and the funny reptile in a Santa hat on the cover, not all the songs here are holiday tunes — and some of the holiday songs are for other holidays. In fact, there’s just as many Halloween songs here.

But there are a couple of oughta-be Christmas classics here.

“The Night Before ...” is a spoken-word piece by Timms that joyfully mixes "A Visit from St. Nicholas" with Immanuel Velikovsky’s Worlds in Collision to create a weird dinosaur fable.

“Long long long ago, long before the world we know/a fiery comet struck the earth/ and filled the air with dust and dirt/ Blocking out the sunlight so/ that all was white with ice and snow.”
These naturally leads into “Dinosaur Christmas,” which ce lebrates “Santasaur,” “stegosaurus eggnog and “Jurassic bells.”

The Steve Terrell Christmas Special: It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Join me and my old pal Scott Gullet for two hours of yuletide cheer with my special friends, including Bobby “Boris” Pickett, Rev. Glenn Armstrong, Soupy Sales, Shane MacGowan, and oh so many more. The festivities start at 10 p.m. Sunday on KSFR-101.1 FM and streaming on the web at ksfr.org. (And don’t forget The Santa Fe Opry, country music as the good Lord intended it to sound. Same time, same station, Friday night.)

Speaking of Christmas Music: If you haven't heard my latest podcast, get to it! There's an hour’s worth of my favorite Christmas music. Take a listen to that and to my previous podcasts HERE. Listen at the Web site, download, subscribe — whatever makes you happy.