Monday, June 29, 2009

BIG ENCHILADA PODCAST 11: AN AMERICAN IS A VERY LUCKY MAN



Hey Baby, it's the Fourth of July! (Well, almost.)

This month The Big Enchilada is going to look at life in the USA, the wonders, the weirdness, the inspiration, the insanity. It's one firecracker of a show, featuring music by Chuck Berry, The Blasters, The Fleshtones, The Dictators, The Dick Nixons, Wayne Kramer, Drywall Jon Langford, Shane McGowan, Dave Van Ronk, Fred Waring & His Pennsylvanians and much more.

CLICK HERE to download the podcast. (To save it, right click on the link and select "Save Target As.")

Or better yet, stop messing around and CLICK HERE to subscribe to my podcasts and HERE to directly subscribe on iTunes.

You can play it on the little feedplayer below:



My cool BIG feed player is HERE.


Here's the playlist:

An American is a Very Lucky Man by Fred Waring & The Pennsylvanians
(Background Music: El Capitan by John Philip Sousa)
The Outcast by Dave Van Ronk
American Music by The Blasters
American Beat by The Fleshtones
The Patriot Song by The Dick Nixons
A. on Horseback by Charlie Pickett

(Background Music: Washington Post March by John Philip Sousa)
The Country is Young by Jon Langford
The Body of an American by Shane McGowan & The Popes
American History by Carey Swinney
America the Beautiful by The Dictators
Burn the Flag by The Starkweathers

(Background Music: El Capitan by John Philip Sousa)
200 Years by David Gowans
Something Broken in the Promised Land by Wayne Kramer
Big American Problem by Drywall

(Background Music: The Star Spangled Banner by Wendy Chambers)
Back in the USA by Chuck Berry
Coda by Little Jack Horton

Sunday, June 28, 2009

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, June 29, 2009
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell
Guest Co-host: Tom Trusnovic
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell@ksfr.org

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Tijuana Hit Squad by Deadbolt
Nice Try by The Sinners
Speed Racer by The Monsters
I Feel Like Giving In by The Delmonas
Working Men Are Pissed by The Minute Men
Here Come the Mushroom People by The Molting Vultures
Useless by The Cynics
The Hammerlock by Shrunken Heads
Ghoul au Go Go by The TexRays

Sour and Vicious Man by The Strawmen
Melville by Movie Star Junkies
T.V. Eye by Iggy Pop
It's a Lie by King Khan
Ain't That Lovin' You Baby by Link Wray
Black Beard by The Universals
Meat Man by Jerry Lee Lewis

Sky Saxon Tribute
All Songs by The Seeds unless otherwise noted

Pushin' Too Hard (Original demo)
Evil Hoodoo
Chocolate River
Can't Seem to Make You Mine by The Ramones
Lose Your Mind
Flower Lady and Her Assistant
Wild Blood
Seven Mystic Horsemen by Sky Saxon
A New Therom by The Blood-Drained Cows

Go Down Old Hannah by Scott H. Birham
Little Queenie by Chuck Berry
Harlem Nocturne by Kustomized
Mercury by Los Straitjackets
Venus in Furs by The Velvet Underground
Stranger in the House by Wayne Kramer
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

A FIX OF HICKS

FANCY PICKIN' FROM DAN HICKS Dan Hicks put on a fine, fun show at the Santa Fe Brewing Company last night.

He's touring to promote his latest album Tangled Tales, (See My review of that HERE.) In fact he's taking that promotional aspect so seriously he's even written a song he performed last night about buying Tangled Tales for your baby. Like so much of Hicks' material, this shameless, ironic (or is it?) plug is both hilarious and lovely at the same time.

Hicks is playing with a new troupe of Hot Licks, except perhaps for bassist Paul Smith, I think it's an entirely different line-up than the band he brought to the Thirsty Ear Festival back in 2002. His latest Lickettes are Roberta Donnay and Daria, who are almost as impressive on percussion as they are on vocals.

Besides songs from Tangled Tales, such as "Blues My Naughty Baby Baby Gives to Me," "The Rounder," "The Diplomat" and the bosa-nova-like "Song For My Father," Hicks played a nice selection of his old favorites from the '60s and '70s.
THE FABULOUS LICKETTES
These included "She Made Her Getaway" (a personal favorite that invoked personal flashbacks about a strange romantic situation in the mid '70s). "I Feel Like Singin'," "Milkshakin' Mama," "How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away," "The Buzzard Was Their Friend," and, of course, "I Scare Myself," which was performed far more light-heartedly than other times I've seen Hicks do this signature tune.

I was a little disappointed not to hear "Payday Blues." And I'd love someday to hear him do a live version of "It's Not My Time to Go." Elvis Costello sited this as his favorite Hicks song, besides "I Scare Myself" -- and he's right. But it's never appeared on any of his live albums and I've never heard it at a concert. So come on, Dan, revive it.

In case you missed Hicks & Licks last night, here's a link (sorry, no embed) of an April show, courtesy NPR. Several of the songs are the same, and he even tells some of the same jokes.


Dan's Bitchen Sneakers. Last night I reported on Twitter they were yellow. I was standing way back in the crowd at that point and had only caught a glance. As you can see the shoes are multi-colored. Never trust Twitter

Friday, June 26, 2009

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, June 27, 2009
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
I've Got $5 and It's Saturday Night by George Jones & Gene Pitney
Poor Litttle Critter on the Road by Trailer Bride
Come on Danger by Genuine Cowhide
I've Still Got My Mind by Cornell Hurd
You Wanna Give Me a Lift by Ruthie & The Wranglers
Down to the River by Rosie Flores
Mud Rasslin' at Pinky's by Trailer Park Troubadors
Rockabilly Hop by Bill Moss

Look What Thoughts Will Do by Lefty Frizzell
Don't You Want Me by Moonshine Willie
There Stands the Glass by Webb Pierce
Ben Dewberry's Final Run by Steve Forbert
Shake Rattle and Roll by Patsy Cline
Love Bug Crawl by Jimmy Edwards
I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter by Willie Nelson
I'm Can't Get Used to Being Lonely by Amber Digby
Waitin' by Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks
Funky Tonk by Moby Grape

Screwtopia by Patterson Hood
Puttin' People on the Moon by Drive-By Truckers
Lower 48 by The Gourds
Nanna and Jimi by Dave Alvin & The Gulity Women
Peach Blossom by Hundred Year Flood
Silent Partner by Big Sandy & Los Straightjackets
Slow Motion Daddy by Guy Davis

Slurf Song by Michael Hurley
Got the Jake Leg Too by The Ray Brothers
Do You Call That A Buddy? by Martin, Bogan & Armstrong
El Corrido de Johnny El Pachuco by Steve Jordan
Gonna Raise a Ruckus Tonight by Gus Cannon
In New Orleans by C.W. Stoneking
No Good For Me 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 TUNEUP:PATTERSON HOOD FROM the 90s TIL NOW

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
June 26, 2009


Remember those fabulous '90s? Nirvana, the dot-com boom, Monica Lewinsky, Tonya Harding, Kato Kaelin, cell phones as big as walkie-talkies, irrational (or were they?) fears of Y2K, those innocent days when you didn't have to have your shoes X-rayed before you got on a plane ... Yes, those were the daze!

There's definitely a '90s edge to Patterson Hood's new solo album, Murdering Oscar (and other love songs). Listen to the opening guitar riffs on the first track, the title song. If you didn't know better, you might think it's an outtake from some Neil Young & Crazy Horse album somewhere in the period between Ragged Glory and Sleeps With Angels.

There's a reason for that. Most of the 13 songs on the CD were written in the last decade of the last millennium. There's also a cover of an obscure Todd Rundgren song, "The Range War." I'm not sure when that was written.

But once Hood's vocals come in, you might think it's a new album from his regular band, Drive-By Truckers. (Actually, most of the Truckers are playing on the opening song and pop up in various combinations on other songs throughout, especially drummer Brad Morgan and steel guitarist John Neff.) So the origins of Murdering Oscar go back more than 15 years — but the recording of the album actually took place in January 2005. I'm not exactly sure what's behind the four-year delay in releasing it, but I'm glad it's finally here.

There's a real dark and violent spirit working through many of the album's songs. It starts right on the first tune.

"I killed Oscar, shot him in the head. Put the gun in his mouth, watched his brains fly out/Saw my worries fade as the hole got bigger. Solved all my problems with a trigger."

You never find out exactly what Oscar did to deserve this gruesome fate (except that "he was destroying me").

But Hood wickedly alludes to some New-Age pop psych, declaring "I killed Oscar and I forgave me." It's good to be your own best friend.

Though not overtly violent, "Screwtopia" is even more twisted. It'sabout a man proposing to a woman, apparently the girlfriend of a deceased buddy.

"Buy a house in the burbs, two-car garage, shrubberies, and a birdbath/Keep you safe warm and dry, keep the tears from your eyes/Keep you pregnant all the time. ... Keep you happy and sedated, who needs to be liberated?/ You've got me, you've got me/If you got something in your head that makes you think there's something else/Maybe the doctor can give you something to make you forget."

Is this an invitation to an empty stifling suburban existence? Or is this a deranged lunatic trying to lure some sex slave to be locked, "happy and sedated" in his basement?

And there's even a song about Kurt Cobain on the album. In "Heavy and Hanging," the narrator is an electrician who found Cobain's body on that awful day in April 1994. "On the morning I found you, I was fixing the alarm/Called the papers before 911/Now they're asking me questions 'bout this thing that I found

No, the story here is not all about Cobain. The protagonist has troubles of his own. "Like what to do tomorrow and the day after that/And where I left that ski mask."

The song that follows, "Walking Around Sense," could almost be about Cobain's infamous Mrs., Courtney Love.

"They caught your mama underneath the Jaguar/She was acting so mad, I never seen her so sad/I told her that I'd try to help her get treatment. ... Met her at the rock-and-roll induction/Liposuction/Another shot of headlines."

Not all the songs are so violent or tragic. One of the newer songs, "Granddaddy," inspired by the birth of Hood's daughter, is basically his "When I'm 64." With a sweet folky melody, Hood earnestly sings, "Someday when I'm a granddaddy/Be as sweet as pumpkin pie, just wait and see/We'll hide chocolate candy all around the house/So all the little ones will come and see me."

Of course, this is followed by a nasty little rocker, written in 1994, called “Belvedere,” which is a fantasy about picking up and having his way with a long-legged high-school girl.

("It almost didn't even make the record," Hood said in a recent interview in Nashville Scene. "Even though I liked the song a lot, I wasn't really comfortable with what it said and how it said it." Spoken like a true father, whose daughter will be in high school in 10 years or so.)

The best new song here is the wistful "Pride of the Yankees." Yes, it mentions Lou Gehrig, but it's not about baseball. The song deals with the terrible blows to the national soul that occurred starting with that awful day nearly eight years ago.

"Too many firemen and virgins in heaven/It's all been fucked-up since 9/11/ What we're all fighting and what we're defending/One big long story with two different endings today."

Hood wrote this in 2005. And again, he's talking to his daughter when he sings, "Problems so big and you're so tiny today."

Sometimes the album seems kind of long. It's not without some filler. (And the vinyl version apparently has three additional tunes not on the CD.) But generally, Murdering Oscar can stand proudly with some of my favorite DBT albums.

*******

Upcoming concerts:


* Don't forget that Saturday night it's Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks at Santa Fe Brewing Co.


* The Process has announced its venue for the Rev. Beat-Man Trio on Monday July 13.

It'll be at Corazon on Guadalupe & Montezuma Street. Don't miss the Dark Prince of Voodoo Rhythm. Opening is Sean Healen's Goth Brüks.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

R.I.P. SKY SAXON


This just in from Austin: Sky Saxon, lead singer of The Seeds, who was hospitalized this week, died this morning.

Losing Sky Saxon and Lux Interior in the space of a few months is a terrible blow.

Saxon's biggest hits with The Seeds were "You're Pushin' Too Hard" and "I Can't Seem to Make You Mine." I'll play those and more Sunday night in a proper tribute on Terrell's Sound World (101.1 FM in northern New Mexico, http://www.ksfr.org on your Internet dial.


Wednesday, June 24, 2009

GET WELL SKY SAXON

Bad news. Sky Saxon of The Seeds has been hospitalized in Austin, where recently moved, and is in critical condition.

From the Austin Decider:

Saxon reportedly felt under the weather late last week, but still managed to perform a short set of Seeds songs at Antone's this past Saturday. He was admitted to the hospital on Monday and diagnosed with an undetermined infection of the internal organs.


There's a video of "Pushin' Too Hard" at The Decider. Here's The Seeds' second most famous tune:

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

  Sunday, March 17, 2024 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM, 101.1 FM  Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Te...