In celebration of Tom Trusnovic's impending 40th birthday there's a big bash tonight at Corazon. For the first time in 15 years 27 Devils Joking rears its ugly head. Plus other Trusnovic bands like Monkeyshines, The Floors and The Blood-Drained Cows (featuring ex-Angry Samoan Greg Turner) as well as Two Ton Strap and Lenny Hoffman.
And yes, if I can remember how to play guitar by 9 p.m., I'm going to sing a couple of songs myself.
That's 9 pm at Corazon, 401 S. Guadalupe St. $5 Cover
Sunday, October 4, 2009 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 Bing Bong There's a Party Goin' On by The A-Bones Kissing Tree by Barrence Whitfield I Want Your Body by Screamin' Jay Hawkins Skanky Puddin' by The Soldedad Brothers Hallucination Generation by The Fuzztones Monster Blues by Dexter Romweber I Found a Peanut by Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds Love Special Delivery by Thee Midnighters Muchos Burritos by The Come n' Go Good Cabbage by Victoria Spivey
Spreading the Love Vibration by 27 Devils Joking Get Your Kicks on Route 666 by Monkeyshines The Kingdom of My Mind by The Mistaken The Man in Your Bed by The Hormonauts Little Tease by Goshen Snuff Time by Willie Weems & The Outlaws Talkin' Trash by The Marathons
March of Greed/Less Said the Better by Pere Ubu It's a Gas by Alfred E. Neuman Back in Hell by Rev. Beat-Man & The Un-Believers Big Mouth Mickey by The Gulty Hearts Red Wine by The Juke Joint Pimps Your Woman by Andre Williams & The New Orleans Hellhounds I'm Not Like Everyone Else by The Rockin' Guys Do the Funky Walk by King Salami & The Cumberland 3 Mad Dog On My Tail by Paul "Wine" Jones
Nudist Camp by Ross Johnson Living For the City by The Dirtbombs If I Ever Kiss It, He Can Kiss It Goodbye by Swamp Dogg Messed Up World by Wiley & The Checkmates Sapphire by Big Danny Oliver El Pescador Nadador by Los Lobos Precious Lord Hold My Hand by Sister Rosetta Tharpe CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
The band is fronted by Herbert Wiley is a veteran journeyman soul singer whose career goes back to the 1960s — although he also had a day job for a few decades, operating a cobbler shop in Oxford, Miss. (My favorite biographical tidbit was Wiley says that, as a child, he used to work on William Faulkner's shoes.)
While I prefer We Call It Soul, (9 times out of 10, I'm going to prefer any album that includes a cover of "Ode to Billy Joe"), Introducing is a fine effort full of good funky Southern soul that recalls the good old Stax/Volt era without sounding precious or retro. I love the horn duel in "Dog Tired" and the Blaxploitation strings, congas and screaming guitar in "Messed Up World." And when Wiley sings that he's in "deep shit" in the song of that title (over a bass-heavy musical backdrop that might remind you of psychedelic-era Temptations), he sounds like he knows what he's talking about.
In addition to this album, I also downloaded a Wiley & The Checkmates single, "Milk Chicken". It's good, but I have to admit I was a little disappointed to find out it's an instrumental and not a continuation of Wiley's chicken phobia he sang about on "I Don't Want No Funky Chicken" on We Call It Soul.
* Dracula Boots by Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds. Now here's a musician with a pedigree. Brian Tristan, better known as Kid Congo Powers has been a member of The Cramps as well as Nick Cave's Bad Seeds and The Gun Club.
This record, however doesn't sound much like any of those. It's pretty darn impressive though. There's lots of instrumentals with Kid Congo laying down cool basic psychedelic guitar riffs as the bass rumbles, the drums send coded messages from the jungle and electronic effects sizzle in the background. Sometimes there's New Wavey keyboards adding some science-fiction zing to the mix.
Where there are vocals, they are mostly spoken by Powers. He can sound sinister in songs like "La Llorona" (yes, that's my favorite tune here) or goofy, like "Found a Peanut," a cover of a Thee Midnighters tune.
* Raw, Raw Roughby Barrence Whitfield. Barrence still is a savage!
Released earlier this year, Raw is his first solo album in years. But he's still got that early rock 'n' roll/crazed R&B spirit that was so refreshing when he burst out of Boston with his band The Savages in the mid-80s.
Here he plays with a basic stripped down band -- guitar, bass, drums a sax. I'm not sure who the group is, but they stomp and wail. And Barrence shouts with such abandon he makes Screamin' Jay Hawkins look downright shy.
There's lots of original -- or at least obscure enough to be original -- tunes here including shouters like "Early Times," "Kissing Tree" and the opener "Geronimo." Also, Whitfield pays tribute to not one but two classic Pacific Northwest garage bands, covering "Strychnine" by The Sonics and a near-forgotten classic by The Kingsmen, "Long Green." (This also was a minor hit for New Mexico's Fireballs back in the '60s.)
Though the shouters are his main strength, Whitfield also shows he can handle some "slow dances." "I Wouldn't Want to Be in Your Shoes" and "One More Time" are nice and purdy in an Otis Redding kind of way.
* Talkin' Trash by The Marathons and Friends. They call it trash, but I treasure this stuff. This is a collection of 26 R&B obscurities from the '50s by seven vocal groups.
The Marathons, The Olympics, The Danliers , The Lions, The Lexingtons, The Boulevards and The Robins.
I have to confess, the latter group is the only one of these with which I was even halfway familiar. They're best known for Leiber & Stoller tunes "Riot in Cell Block #9" and "Smokey Joe's Cafe." (neither of which are here) and for spawning The Coasters, which became known as the funniest R&B group in the '50s.
But even though they weren't nearly as well known, The Marathons, who have 11 songs on this collection, could give The Coasters a run for their money. They did novelty tunes like "Peanut Butter" and "Tight Sweater" (written by Sonny Bono!), and funny story tunes like "Chicken Spaceman" (did this insoire the Don Knotts movie The Reluctant Astronaut?) and "C. Mercy Percy of Scotland Yard."
But the craziest -- and most addictive -- song on this album is the title song by The Marathons. It features a girl who responds to the singer's advances with the craziest laugh ever recorded.
Plus:
* 11 Tracks from Live at the Double Door 1/16/2004 by Robbie Fulks. I downloaded most of this album years ago when I first joined eMusic. At the time I just downloaded songs that I didn't have on other Fulks album. (A lot of those would later appear on Fulks' album Georgia Hard.) Thanks to eMusic's new policy of offering complete albums for the cost of 12 tracks, I was able to pick these up for just a couple of track credits. And I'm glad I did. Among the ones I just downloaded are fine versions of Fulks standbys "Dirty Mouth Flo," "I Push Right Over" (though I still prefer Rosie Flores' cover), "She Took a Lot of Pills (And Died)," "Parallel Bars" (with the under-rated Donna Fulks singing Kelly Willis' part) and "Knot Hole."
Taking advantage of the eMusic album-price policy, I also picked up six tracks I skipped from another live album I downloaded years ago, The Handsome Family Live at Schuba's, a December 2000 show. True, all these tracks were between-song patter and most were only a few seconds long. But what the heck, they were free.
* 8 tracks from A Country Legacy 1930-1939: CD B by Cliff Carlisle. Cliff was born in Kentucky in 1904. My grandfather's name was "Clift" and he was born in Kentucky in 1903.
Coincidence?
Carlisle, who began recording in the '30s, might be described as Jimmie Rodgers with a dirty mind. Lots of his songs. He had the Singing Brakeman's yodel, but he had Blowfly in his soul. His tunes were full of hell-raising, barnyard humor and sex. I believe he was the only white guy included on the Dirty Blues Licks compilation, which I downloaded last month. (He also did some occasional powerful religious material, perhaps to atone for his rough and raunchy ways.)
My favorites from this batch I downloaded include "That Nasty Swing" -- yes, it's about what you think -- which 60-some years later was covered by Blue Mountain, as well as "Shanghai Rooster Yodel," a precursor to Howlin' Wolf's "Little Red Rooster."
I downloaded the first disc from this collection years ago. I can't wait to download the rest of Disc B when my account refreshes this week.
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OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos Get Up and Go by David Bromberg Penny Instead by Charlie Pickett Feel Good Again by Charlie Feathers Don's Bop by Artie Hill & The Long Gone Daddies Girl Called Trouble by The Watzloves The Taker by Waylon Jennings Fools Fall in Love by Katy Moffatt Swing Troubador by Christine Albert
Took My Gal Out Walkin' by Loudon Wainwright III with Martha Wainwright Ramblin' Blues by Charlie Poole Chatanooga Sugar Babe by Norman Blake That Nasty Swing by Cliff Carlisle Three Times Seven by Doc & Merle Watson See That Coon in a Hickory Tree by The Delmore Borthers I'm a Rattlesnakin' Daddy by Blind Boy Fuller The Sad Milkman by The Handsome Family
See Willie Fly By by The Waco Brothers Power of the 45 by Big Sandy & The Fly-Rite Boys Got Me a Woman by Andy Anderson Fruit of the Vine by Nancy Apple Honky Tonk Heroes by Billy Joe Shaver Man in Black by Johnny Cash Dolores by T. Tex Edwards & Out on Parole Drinkin' and Smokin' Cigarettes by Rev. Horton Heat I Got Your Bath Water On by Butterbeans & Susie
The Gypsy by Cornell Hurd Wild Bill Jones by Jim Dickinson Everybody's Clown by Skeeter Davis & NRBQ Opportunity to Cry by Wilie Nelson The Highwayman by Zeno Tornado Tumblin' Tumbleweeds by Sally Timms Surface of the Sun by Exene Cervenka Potter's Field by Dave Alvin & The Guilt Women featuring Christy McWilson CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican October 2, 2009
I’ve loved Pere Ubu — the avant-weirdo band originally from Cleveland — for years, but I was ready to be put off by the group’s latest album, Long Live Père Ubu!, because of some of the statements in the project’s press material.
The album is a musical adaptation of Ubu Roi, an 1896 play by Alfred Jarry, whose work influenced the Surrealist and Dada movements and later the Theater of the Absurd. The band took its name from the play’s protagonist.
Long Live Père Ubu! is not background music. It’s not ‘fun’ music,” the press release says. “It’s an intellectual and conceptual challenge and as viciously satirical as Jarry’s original.”
Then it quotes David Thomas, the band’s frontman: “If you’re not going to listen to this with the same effort you’d devote to a literary novel, you’re wasting your time. ... It’s long past time for rock music to grow up and move past the simpering platitudes or Tom Joad cant that passes for serious thought. All hail the survival of the Unfit!”
Thomas also claims that Long Live Père Ubu! is “the only punk record that’s been made in the last 30 years.”
First of all, as an Okie, I resent that disparaging remark about the hero of The Grapes of Wrath. But even more troubling is all the highfalutin art talk. What is this, Emerson, Lake & Palmer? It sounds like the condescending gibberish spouted by ivory-tower culture critics who bestow artistic legitimacy upon Sgt. Pepper and haughtily dismiss Beatles ’65.
But then again, Thomas probably delights in provoking the primitivists. In fact, I’m pretty sure he’s mocking the high-art culture vultures.
Flashback to 1896: When Ubu Roi had its premiere in Paris, riots broke out from the very first word of the play — merdre, a variation on the French word for "shit." (Didn’t the French also riot at the opening of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring? What is it with them?)
Set in Poland, Ubu Roi is the tale of the hideous Père Ubu and his shrewish wife who urges him to seize power by murdering the king. After the crime is committed, Ubu becomes a cruel tyrant and is eventually overthrown himself. On one level, the play is a parody of Macbeth, but it also satirizes the politics of the nation-states of Europe that culminated in World War I.
Ubu is not just a terrible dictator. He is repulsive beyond belief — cruel, loutish, petty, venal, gluttonous, coarse, and pompous; Jabba the Hutt and Idi Amin have nothing on him. He was also the protagonist of two sequels, Ubu Cocu (Ubu Cuckolded) and Ubu Enchaîné (Ubu Enchained), neither of which was performed during the playwright’s lifetime.
Ubu does Ubu: While Thomas took Pere Ubu as the name of his band in the 1970s, he had never attempted to perform Jarry’s work until last year’s adaptation in London of Ubu Roi, called Bring Me the Head of Ubu Roi. Thomas starred as the title character, with singer Sarah Jane Morris, from a band called The Communards, as his wife. The bickering couple portrayed by Thomas and Morris were two parts Mr. and Mrs. Macbeth and one part Jiggs and Maggie. The first half of a radio adaptation of this is available as a series of free podcasts.
The album starts off with the word that sparked the 1896 riot, growled by Thomas. When I first heard it, I thought he was saying “murderer.” Considering that the King of Poland doesn’t have long to live, “murderer” isn’t an inappropriate word to set the mood.
With the additions of Morris and electronic whiz Gagarin, the ever-changing Ubu band here is the same group that played on the previous Ubu album, 2006’s excellent and underrated Why I Hate Women.
Like any Pere Ubu album, this record is filled with electronic bells, whistles, squeaks, and squawks that hark back to Plan 9 From Outer Space and Thomas’ yelps, warbles, and tasty guitar licks (the one on “Watching the Pigeons” is right out of the Jesus Christ Superstar overture).
There is also some belching. The song “Less Said the Better” is almost as funny as a it is disgusting. It’s the best use of burping in a rock song since Alfred E. Neuman’s “It’s a Gas.”
Because it is a dramatic presentation, there is a lot of spoken-word dialogue (as well as some that’s sung), most of which is fascinating. My favorite is the conversation between Mère and Père Ubu on “The Story So Far.” He’s in a hallucinatory daze while she tries to convince him that she’s a supernatural natural spirit — an angel, to be exact. But even in his delirious stupor, Père Ubu knows she’s no angel.
“Long Live Père Ubu!” is a compelling and dark album, if not an all-out rocker. The press material is right — it’s not background music. It certainly isn’t easy listening. But if you’re twisted enough, it’s a lot of fun, no matter what the press release says.
Blog bonus: Check this animated Brothers Quay video of “Song of the Grocery Police” below
And there's another one HERE, but embedding has been disabled. Probably for some highfalutin artistic reason.
* 11 Tracks from
