Thursday, February 05, 2009

R.I.P. LUX INTERIOR

Poster by Psychotonic
Erick Lee Purkhiser, better known as Lux Interior, the voice of The Cramps, died Wednesday due to heart problems. There are conflicting reports of his age. Some say 60, some say 62.

His Los Angeles Times obit is HERE.

I'll give him a decent tribute Sunday night on Terrell's Sound World, probably just after the 11th Hour (Mountain Time) on KSFR.

In the meantime, here's a couple of videos.





Lux Poster above by Psychotonic

eMUSIC FEBRUARY

For those counting you'll see there's more than 90 tracks here. I still had some bonus tracks left over from recruiting a new eMusic member. Also, for those of you who count the tracks -- GET A DAMNED LIFE!



* Stop Talking About Music (Let's Celebrate That Shit) by Thee Butchers' Orchestra. You can't blame this on the bosa nova. If the Girl from Ipanema was kidnapped by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion ...

Oh Hell, I'm not going to bother with any more cheesy rock critic metaphors. This is just good bluesy garage grease music from São Paulo, Brazil. Naturally it's on Voodoo Rhythm.

The trio, which has been together for a decade or so, romp and stomp through songs like "Everybody's Got the Devil Inside," "Drama Queen" and "Coconut Heart." I don't think Sergio Mendes done it this way ... There I go again!


* The Day the Music Died by The Big Bopper (and others). I stumbled upon this while looking for stuff to play on my tribute to Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Bopper on Terrell's Sound World last week.

J.P. Richardson, aka The Big Bopper, is the only one of those musicians who never got a movie made about his life story. I don't know the cinematic quality of his life, but the man was a fine songwriter. His one big hit was "Chantilly Lace," but he's also responsible for George Jones' "White Lightning" and Johnny Preston's "Running Bear."

This album shows the Bopper had a knack with novelty songs. There's "The Big Bopper's Wedding," "Bopper's Boogie Woogie," "The Preacher and the Bear" (an old tune, later recorded by Jerry Reed, which might have roots in minstrel shows), "The Monkey Song (You Made a Monkey Out of Me)" and perhaps the ultimate '50s novelty song, "Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor."

There's also some non-Bopper tracks including a spooky little Buddy Holly song I'd never heard before called "Valley of Tears," "We Belong Together" by Valens and a maudlin little talking-song tribute to Holly, Valens and Richardson called "Three Stars" by someone named Tommy Dee.


* The Radio One Sessions by Elastica. Justine! You just don't treat me right. What the hell ever happened to this band? They are one of the major shoulda-beens of the '90s. Justine Frischmann and her band were critical darlings for about twenty minutes back then after Elastica, their first album. In retrospect they seem like a poppier, British version of Sleater-Kinney. But, due mainly to all those typical '90s rock band problems, they didn't come out with a followup for another five years. The original spark was gone.

This is a Peel Sessions album and it shows Elastica at their best. Even when they started fooling around with techno sounds (the last few songs in this collection) Justine and Elastica sound fresh. And there's even a couple of Christmas songs here. There's "I Wanna Be a King of Orient Aah" And "All For Gloria," which I've been playing on my Sound World Christmas shows for more than a decade. (It was on a Geffen sampler called Just Say Noel, under the title of simply "Gloria," along with Sonic Youth's "Santa Doesn't Cop Out on Dope" and other classics.)


* Slow Death by The Flamin' Groovies. I'm not sure how The Groovies pulled it off. One could argue that they were just a glorified bar band, covering well-ploughed ground like "Roll Over Beethoven" and "Jumpin' Jack Flash." But glorified is right. There was such spirit in their attack on these and most all of their material, they really did live up to this album's subtitle, "Amazin' High Energy Rock 'n' Roll."

This is a collection of live cuts and demos from the early '70s, the dawn of their post-Roy Loney era. The title is a lo-fi demo that's anything but slow. The slide guitar sounds is straight out of Beggar's Banquet-period Stones, mixed in with a little Velvet Underground. And there's an early version of one of the Groovies' greatest, "Shake Some Action" that should make you wonder why this group didn't make it bigger.


* You Without Sin Cast The First Stone by Isaiah Owens. I was looking for something wild for my recent gospel podcast. Somehow I stumbled upon Isaiah. Just what the mad doctor order. This Montgomery, Alabama native just might be the Hasil Adkins of gospel music. Owens wails and pounds his electric guitar, tuned to the key of H. And this isn't some field recording from some long-gone era. All these tracks were recorded, mostly from radio broadcasts, in the late 90s and early '00s.

This album gives 17 amazing testimonials for Jesus, and one fine pitch for a local auto mechanic if you're down in Montgomery and need your brake pads fixed.

* The Best of the War Years and More by Louis Prima. All too often the origins of rock is boiled down into the over-simplified story of white country boys trying to imitate blues singers and accidentally inventing rockabilly. But it's way more complex than that. You could make the argument that flamboyant jazz band leaders like Cab Calloway and Louie Prima were proto-rock stars.

Consumer alert here. The first track, "White Cliffs of Dover" begins with a weird electronic glitch. But even worse, Track 20, "That's my Desire" is so digitally damaged, the last part is unplayable -- it caused by iTunes to freeze up. eMusic made good on my complaint and gave me a free track to compensate, but as of today, they still haven't fixed it, so do not download!

Sunday, February 01, 2009

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, Febuary 1, 2009
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

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Drop Kick Me, Jesus by Bobby Bare
Coney Island Baby by Lou Reed
Journey to the Center of the Mind by The Amboy Dukes
Baron of Love Part II by Ross Johnson with Alex Chilton
Ruins of Berlin by Dex Romweber Duo
I'm Gona Booglarize You Baby by Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band
Charlie by Gibby Haynes & His Problem

The Day the Music Died: Feb. 2, 1959
(Newscast)
Three Stars by Tommy Dee
Reminiscing by Buddy Holly
That's My Little Suzie by Ritchie Valens
Big Bopper's Wedding by The Big Bopper
Words of Love by The Beatles
Oh Boy by The Sir Douglas Quintet
Midnight Shift by Los Lobos
We Belong Together by Ritchie Valens
Walking Through My Dreams by The Big Bopper
Valley of Tears by Buddy Holly
Peggy Sue by Buddy Holly
Not Fade Away by The Rolling Stones

VOODOO RHYTHM SET
Everybody's Got the Devil Inside by Thee Butcher's Orchestra
Holy Juke Joint Beat by The Juke Joint Pimps
Demolicion by Wau y Los Arrrghs!!
Jesus Christ Christ Twist by Reverend Beat-Man
Dark Sunday Evening by Roy & The Devil's Motorcycle
Here Comes the Terror by King Automatic
Looking for a Girl by Stinky Lou & The Goon Mat with Lord Bernardo
Three Hairs and You're Mine by King Khan & His Shrines
What Do You Look Like by Hipbone Slim & The Knee Tremblers with Holly Golightly

Shape Shifter/Saguaro by Lone Monk
Palestine, Texas by T-Bone Burnette
Tearin' Up the Town by Billy Miles Brooke
Sharkey's Night by Laurie Anderson
My Night With the Prostitute from Marseille by Beirut
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

I CAN'T REMEMBER IF I CRIED WHEN I READ ABOUT HIS WIDOWED BRIDE


"But February made me shiver, with every paper I'd deliver
Bad news on the doorstep, I couldn't take one more step ..."
-- Don McLean --

I'm just sitting here reminiscing ...

Monday is the 50th anniversary of the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson, aka The Big Bopper.

Here's a link my good Lubbock buddy Paul Milosevich sent me about how they've commemorating The Day the Music Died in Lubbock. CLICK HERE .

I'll play some Buddy tunes on Sound World tonight. (The show starts at 10 p.m. Mountain Time on KSFR. )

VOODOO RHYTHM IN TROUBLE

One of my favorite reecord companies in the world, Switzerland's Voodoo Rhythm, is in a real bind.

Here's a message from Beat-Man that was posted in The GaragePunk Hideout:


APPEAL FOR FUNDS

Hello, this might be a bit of a strange E-Mail. I have treated bands very fairly since I've started Voodoo Rhythm and have given them their records for cost price so that they could make a solid profit when selling their records on tour (we all know payouts are lousy nowadays). I did approach the SUISA (Copyright Company, musicians' union) and informed them of the nature of my agreement with the bands. Unfortunately I never put it in writing.

Now that is exactly the problem: The SUISA demands payback of a total of 42.500 Swiss Franks (roughly 38.000 US $). Basically they want money for productions that had long been settled. The bitter irony is that bands of course prefer free copies of their album, yet the Suisa is oblivious to this fact and demand the money within 30 days.

If we cannot meet their demands we might have to shut down business, since it is completely impossible to for us to raise that kind of money.

Therefore we kindly ask for your support. Even if we can pay we will not be able to offer the bands the same deal as before, in spite of the fact that they would much rather get free copies from us as opposed to Suisa money (especially American bands since they don't get any Suisa money at all).

We hope you can help us. We don't want to quit, we want to resume or work and our journey. Plea se transfer funds to the following account and forward this message.

Sincerely,
Reverend Beat-Man

So there you have it.

Voodoo Rhythm in the past few years has provided some of the craziest sounds in pyschobilly, punk blues, garage music and even alt county. You've heard a lot of Voodoo Rhythm acts on my radio shows -- Hipbone Slim & The Knee-Tremblers, Stinky Lou & The Goon Mat, Wau y Los Arrrghs!!, The Dead Brothers, Zeno Tornado, Mama Rosin, John Schooley, The Monsters, King Automatic, Roy & The Devil's Motorcycle, The Watrzloves, The Juke Joint Pimps ... and of course Rev. Beat-Man, aka Lightning Beat-Man aka Jerry J. Nixon ("The Gentleman of Rock 'n' Roll" from, so the story goes, Santa Fe, N.M.)

Help them if you can. At least buy some Voodoo Rhythm CDs. You can get 'em directly from the Web site. Plus. for eMusic members, there's 25 Voodoo Rhythm albums, including King Khan & His Shrine's Three Hairs and You're Mine you can find HERE.




My review of the documentary Voodoo Rhythm: The Gospel of Primitive Rock ’n’ Roll is HERE.

The true shocking story of Jerry J. Nixon -- how I became acquainted with Voodoo Rhythm -- is HERE.

UPDATE: What the heck, here's a trailer from that documentary:

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

  Sunday, March 24, 2024 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM, 101.1 FM  Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell E...