TERRELL'S TUNEUP: Music from the Black Lodge

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
Nov. 11, 2011


Have you heard the latest David Lynch movie?

Actually, it’s not a movie at all. Not even a TV show like Twin Peaks or the lesser-remembered On the Air. Crazy Clown Time is an album — the first “solo” album by the 65-year-old Montana-born director of Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and other surreal, dreamlike cinematic endeavors.

But as Lynch fans know, the man is no stranger to making music. Since the lady came out of the radiator in Eraserhead in 1977, music has been an essential factor in creating the mood.

Along with Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous, Lynch was part of 2009’s Dark Night of the Soul, a trip-hoppy work featuring a small army of guest vocalists, including Iggy Pop and Frank Black. (Sadly, two of the album’s vocalists, Linkous and Vic Chesnutt, committed suicide.) Lynch also wrote and produced the lush but mostly plodding This Train by Chrysta Bell, released a couple of months ago.

Crazy Clown Time is Lynch’s peculiar vision. One might argue that it’s a continuation of the dark electro-pop of Dark Night of the Soul and that he picked up a lot of musical ideas from Angelo Badalamenti, the composer responsible for Lynch’s best soundtracks.

There’s truth to all that, but through his past work, he’s established what can only be called a David Lynch sound. This album, with its slow minor-key sonic backdrops and distorted vocals, builds on that.

Lynch saves his best on the first track on the album. “Pinky’s Dream” features the vocals of Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Over heavy drums, tremolo guitar, and otherworldly squiggle noises, Karen O seems as if she’s scared and desperate. I’m not sure who Pinky is, but it sounds as if someone could get killed any minute.

The title song features Lynch singing in falsetto over an ominous soundscape. He sounds like a little kid talking about a wild teenage party he witnessed. “Suzy ripped off her shirt completely. ... They all ran around. It was crazy clown time. ... We all ran around. It was real fun.”

Some of these horny teenage high jinks reappear in “Speed Roadster,” but here the narrator is a jealous, lovelorn, obsessed boy. (“Why won’t you answer the phone? Billy’s having a party, I wish you were goin’.”)

Then there’s “Strange and Unproductive Thinking,” in which Lynch’s voice sounds like it was stolen from an old Laurie Anderson record. This is a seven-minute monologue featuring a funky beat and a bass line reminiscent of David Byrne and Brian Eno’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Here Lynch speaks authoritatively about the connection of dental and mental health.

Put Crazy Clown Time on and close your eyes. The visions dancing in your head will provide images to create stories as spooky, mysterious, and funny as any Lynch film. Check out www.davidlynch.com.

Lynch party: 

As far as movie soundtracks go, in my book (an admittedly strange book), nothing compares with those of Lynch’s films, for both the original scores and the existing songs chosen for the movies. Here’s my favorite music from the world of Lynch.

* “Up in Flames” by Koko Taylor. The late Chicago blues queen appears singing this song only for a few seconds in the movie Wild at Heart, but it’s there in all its eerie glory on the soundtrack album.

* “In Dreams” by Roy Orbison. Nobody who saw Blue Velvet can ever hear this song again without thinking of Dennis Hopper, Dean Stockwell, and Lynch’s “joy ride.” Another Orbison song, “Crying” was used in Mulholland Drive, performed by Rebekah Del Rio. But it wasn’t a fraction as fearsome as “In Dreams.”

* “In Heaven.” In one of the most bizarre scenes in one of the most bizarre movies Lynch ever made (and that’s saying something!), the protagonist of Eraserhead (Jack Nance) has a vision of a tiny woman with horrible growths on her cheeks coming out of his radiator and singing this strange little tune, accompanied only by what sounds like a pump organ. The singer is portrayed by an actress named Laurel Near, but I’m not sure whether she actually sang it. A decade or so later, The Pixies recorded a wonderful cover.

* Floating by Julee Cruise. Cruise provided the ethereal soprano voice and Badalamenti wrote the wispy, frequently foreboding melodies and arrangements on this 1989 album. Lynch wrote the deceptively innocent lyrics. “Mysteries of Love” had been used in Blue Velvet, while several of these haunting tunes ended up in Twin Peaks (the show and the subsequent movie). An instrumental version of the song “Falling” became the show’s opening theme, while Cruise sometimes appeared as a nightclub singer performing songs from this album.

* “Sycamore Trees” by Little Jimmy Scott. This song was performed by the elderly high-voiced R & B singer in the very last episode of Twin Peaks — in the Black Lodge, with the dancing dwarf, no less.

* “Wicked Game” by Chris Isaak. His voice is often compared with Orbison’s, and maybe Lynch was conscious of that connection when he chose it for the Wild at Heart soundtrack. But it’s mainly the smoky, sinister, twangy guitar in the song, not the voice, that we hear in the scene in which Sailor makes a startling revelation to Lula as they drive through the night.

* “Love Letters” by Ketty Lester. This is a gospel-flavored torch song that was a hit in the early ’60s. It’s used in Blue Velvet as Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlin) discovers a grisly murder scene.

* “The Loco-Motion” by Little Eva. Somehow, a line of naked prostitutes dancing to this song in Inland Empire helped me appreciate this early ’60s hit far more than Little Eva did on her own. And unlike some scenes in that three-hour mess of a movie, this scene didn’t make me doze off.

Radio Lynch: I’ll take you on a joy ride, neighbor, and send you some love letters straight from my heart on Terrell’s Sound World this Sunday night. The show starts at 10 p.m., and I’ll do my Lynch set shortly after the 11th hour on KSFR-FM 101.1 or www.ksf.org .

Lynch Music on Spotify: Check out my World of Lynch Spotify playlist HERE

BLOG BONUS: Enjoy some new and old Lynch sights and sounds:

Ride Easy, Kell Robertson

R.I.P. Kell Robertson

Kell Robertson heard that long-promised call this morning: "Come on in, it's cool and dark inside."

He died this morning on the property where he lived for about 15 years. One friend said he'd had a peaceful night surrounded by loved ones, including his daughter Penny who flew out from San Francisco to say goodbye.

Kell, who was in his early 80s, had been hospitalized for about three weeks. (I'm not sure about the specific reasons.) He was released Saturday but told he just had a few days left.

I got to say goodbye to him yesterday. He wasn't conscious when I was there, though his friends said they believed he could hear us talking to him.

I wrote a profile about him for No Depression magazine seven years ago:

 A poet and self-described “old drunk,” Robertson has lived the life he’s written about in his songs and poems. “I’ve always thought that my biography is in my poetry and songs,” he said ...

He was born in 1930 in Codell, Kansas, the son of a saxophone player who abandoned the family when Kell was a toddler. His mother remarried a man who kicked Kell out of the house at age 13. He’s been rambling ever since.

He’s earned a living as an usher in a movie theater, a fruit picker, a dishwasher, a soldier in the Korean War, a disc jockey at country and jazz stations, a bartender, and an insurance salesman. At one point, he says, he took classes at a police academy in California before deciding against a career in law enforcement. ...

Robertson has been picking and singing and writing his songs for decades now, ever since having an epiphany as a youth when he saw Hank Williams play in Louisiana. “It turned my head around,” he remembers. “I realized that I don’t care what I do with the rest of my fucking life, I’m going to do that or try to do it. I’m going to do what he does, somehow.”

But, as I said in that story, Kell was better known as a poet. He was part of San Francisco’s North Beach scene in the 1950s and ’60s, where he published a mimeograph poetry magazine called Desperado in the ’60s. Lawrence Ferlinghetti once said, “I would say Kell Robertson is one fine cowboy-poet, worth a dozen New Yorker poetasters. Let them listen and hear the voice of the real America out there.”

I loved the old bastard and I miss him already. I'm going to miss him calling me during my radio show to request songs by Hank Williams, Waylon Jennings and himself. I'll miss him saying, "Ride easy!" instead of "goodbye." I hate the fact that he'll never appear live on The Santa Fe Opry again.

I'll close hear with the same song quote with which I concluded the No Depression piece, from his song, "I Always Loved a Waltz."

“Just write on my tombstone, Lord if I get a tombstone/Or maybe just a honky-tonk wall/That he was crazy for ladies, Lord, and guitars and babies/And a damned old fool for the waltz.”

Ride easy, Kell.

UPDATE: 11-8-11 Kell's full obituary in today's New Mexican is HERE

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, November 6, 2011
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(at)ksfr.org

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Boogie Til You Puke by Root Boy Slim & His Sex Change Band
Something Else by The Headcat
Who Do You Love? by The Doors
Love Miner by O Lendario Chucobillyman
Run Through The Jungle by Gun Club
Ce Soir by The Monsters
(Hot Pastrami With) Mashed Potatoes by Joey Dee & The Starliters

Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell by Iggy & The Stooges
Joan Dark by The Bassholes
Homunculus by Manby's Head
South Texas by Cold Sun
This Crushing Thing by The Blood Drained Cows
You're Gonna Miss Me by The Frontier Circus
Officer Touchy by The Scrams
North Wind by Houston Wells & The Marksmen

Raised Right Men/Talking at the Same Time by Tom Waits
Snatch It Back And Hold It/Mustang Ranch by Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears
Whiskey Wagon by Barrence Whitfield & the Savages
I Got High by JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound
Burnin' Inside by King Khan & The Shrines
Blue Moon by The Marcels

Noah's Ark by David Lynch
Werewolf Dynamite by Kim Fowley
Melody by Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings
The Other Side Of This Life by Jefferson Airplane
 CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

 Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE

BLACK JOE LEWIS in SF on TUESDAY

My very favorite of the new breed of retro-soul or punk-soul or whatever kinda sol you wanna call it bands, Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears is coming to Santa Fe Sol Tuesday, Nov. 8.

They will glaze your ham!

Tickets are a mere $13 bucks. Info HERE

I've reviewed a couple of young Black Joe's albums. You can find those words of wisdom HERE and HERE

Better yet, enjoy a couple of his tunes below. See you there Tuesday.

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, November, 2011
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Halden is a Hell-Raisin' Town by Rick Brousard & Two Hoots and a Holler
Wake Up Sinners by The Dirt Daubers
I Want My Mojo Back by Scott H. Biram
Ding Dong Mama From Tennessee by Jimmy Myers
Skid Row Girl by Wanda Allred
Roll Truck Roll by Bill Kirchen
Move It by T. Tex Edwards & The Saddletramps
Drive, Drive, Drive by Dale Watson
Big Joe & The Phantom 309 by Red Sovine
Guns, Guitars and Women by Kell Robertson

Let's Go Through Menopause Together by Jim Terr (as "Buddy")
Jesus Car by The Yawpers
I'm So Happy I Found You by Lucinda Williams
The Way It Goes by Gillian Welch
Rita's Breakdown by Mama Rosin
Clap Hands by C.J. Chenier
The Devil's Gotta' Earn by Brett Detar

Nails in the Pine by Poor Boy's Soul
My Gal Sal Medley by Howard Armstrong
Where Should I Lay My Head, Lord? by O Lendario Churcrobillyman
Texas Rose by Possessed by Paul James
Learn to Say No by Lydia Loveless
Sweet Kind of Love by Pine Valley Cosmonauts
Johnson To Jones by The Milo Twins
Cool and Dark Inside by Kell Robertson

The Ghost and Honest Joe by Pee Wee King
Uncle Sam by Anthony Leon & The Chain
Perfect Far Away by The Bottle Rockets
Fallen Angel by Jimbo Mathus
I Pity The Poor Immigrant by Richie Havens
I'll Walk Around Heaven With You by Kell Robertson
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE

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

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: Bellowing Like the Immortals

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
Nov. 4, 2011

Here’s a cheesy blurb for Tom Waits’ new album: Bad as Me is as good as it gets.

I can’t help it. It’s true.

In these difficult economic and political times, hearing music this excellent from an old master who is well along the road to senior citizenship is a sweet and welcome beacon in the fog — even when much of the music is dark and threatening. It’s reassuring that Waits is awake and creating, making music that still matters, growling with the alley cats and bellowing like an immortal.

It’s his first album of new material since 2004’s Real Gone, and definitely his most powerful album of new material since 1999’s Mule Variations.

His output since the beginning of this century has been sparse and uneven. In 2002 he had the dual releases of Alice and Blood Money — both soundtracks from theatrical productions, each of which have some good songs but neither of which really seems like a Waits album. Real Gone is a strange album with lots of experimental human-beat-box effects, lots of anti-war lyrics, and not a trace of Waits’ trademark piano. (Rereading my review of it, I think now I was too generous at the time.) Two years later came his excellent but probably too long three-disc rarities compilation, Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, followed in 2009 by Glitter and Doom Live.

Waits is such a monster that he attracts a whole boatload of star performers as sidemen, and yet you never once forget that Bad As Me is a Tom Waits album, not a guest-star extravaganza.

He has Marc Ribot and Keith Richards playing guitar (Richards joins on harmony vocals on some tracks), David Hidalgo of Los Lobos on a whole bunch of instruments, Augie Meyers on keyboards, Les Claypool, Flea, and longtime Waits compadre Larry “The Mole” Taylor (formerly of Canned Heat) on bass and guitar, and blues great Charlie Musselwhite on harmonica. Lesser artists would have these names plastered all over the album cover.

The album starts off with a bunch of Waits blues songs — blues from Pluto (more the god than the ex-planet). “Chicago” is charged with Balkan-like horns (has Waits been listening to Beirut?). The rhythm is tense and foreboding. Musselwhite blows his harp like a train whistle. It’s about a desperate family pulling up stakes and moving to another city. The song is new, but Bo Diddley, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and countless others had it in their hearts during the migration from the South in the past century. (The theme is repeated later in the album with the starker, wearier-sounding “Face to the Highway.”)

“Raised Right Men” is outright spooky, with its staccato guitar and Meyers’ creepy organ fill. The song is about domestic discord. A guy quarrels with his woman, who finally gets fed up enough to knock out a tooth. And now “He’s that lonely man on the turnpike in the toll-takers booth.”

Things slow down a little with “Talking at the Same Time,” in which Waits sings, “Well, we bailed out all the millionaires/They’ve got the fruit/We’ve got the rind/And everybody’s talking at the same time,” in his greasy falsetto over a sinister, atmospheric Twin Peaks- style guitar twang.

This is followed by “Get Lost,” some mutant rockabilly with Ribot and Hidalgo dueling on guitar.

“Hell Broke Luce,” more than any other track on this album, will remind listeners of Real Gone — except it’s better than anything on that album. This is a horrifying tale of war in which Waits is mostly backed by crazy tape-loop percussion and frantic, disjointed guitar riffage by Ribot and Richards, and, at one point, a dreamlike horn section that sounds like a Salvation Army band.

Like many of the songs on that album, this is a topical song, dealing with a wounded veteran of the war in Iraq — or is it Afghanistan? Waits starts out with a soldier’s marching rhyme: “I had a good home, but I left. I had a good home, but I left, right ...” T-Model Ford fans will instantly recall the elder blues hound’s “To the Left, to the Right.” But Waits’ song is far more pointed. His lyrics sink into rants against military brass, the tedium of military life, and the ravages of war (“That big fucking bomb made me deaf ... My face was scorched, scorched ... Kelly Presutto got his thumbs blown off/Sergio’s developing a real bad cough ... Left, right, left”).

Then there’s “Satisfied,” a hard-edged blues (with a strange shout-out to Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards) with an underlying gospel fervor. And don’t forget the title song, in which the singer tells a lover, “You’re the letter from Jesus on the bathroom wall/You’re mother superior with only a bra. ... You’re the same kind of bad as me.”

If these are brawlers, there are also plenty of bawlers on this album.

“Pay Me,” with accordion by Meyers and fiddle by Hidalgo, has a back-street Parisian feel. “Back in the Crowd,” with an acoustic Spanish guitar, could be a lost Gene Pitney song. “Kiss Me” is a slow, smoky, tune with jazz guitar played by Waits himself. It sounds like the little brother of Waits’ old tune “Blue Valentines.” And “Last Leaf,” featuring Richards on wino harmonies, should remind Waits fans of their classic duet “That Feel” from almost 20 years ago.

There are two versions of Bad as Me — the regular and the “deluxe edition,” which has three extra songs. (I saved a little money, but not much, by buying the regular CD and downloading the bonus tracks from eMusic.) It’s worth picking these up. “After You Die” is a banjo-based hobo meditation on the afterlife. “She Stole the Blush” is more junkyard blues. “Tell Me” is a pretty tune that’s close to radio ready — you can almost imagine Glen Campbell doing this one. It will appeal to those who might be scared off by some of the darker, crazier tracks on Bad as Me.

The disc ends with “New Year’s Eve,” a bittersweet waltz featuring Hidalgo’s accordion. Waits sings of moving on, as well as drunken bonding. “I ran out on Sheila and everything’s in storage./Calvin’s right, I should go back to driving a truck.”

This song should be played in every household in America at the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31.

Every year.

Forever.

Blog Bonus: Check this out for laffs

BUTCH CROUCH MEMORIAL

I just received this from Alan Ackoff. The memorial is 3-5pm Sunday Nov. 13 at El Farol. The cover charge is "a story about Butch."