Potatoheads & Panda Juke Now on Soundcloud

Here's full versions of all the songs from Picnic Time For Potatoheads & Best-Loved Songs from Pandemonium Jukebox via Soundcloud.

First, Potatoheads ...



Game of Thrones fans should check out "Rock and Roll Hell" below if you want to hear George R.R. Martin repeatedly calling me an "asshole." (This, as all Pandemonium Jukebox songs was recorded at Tom Dillon's house in Santa Fe circa 1983. Tom played steel guitar and co-produced the cassette only album.)


These Soundcloud players will have a permanent home on this blog's "My Own Music" page. And yes, you freeloaders, all these songs are for sale at CD Baby and other fine establishments.

A Ronny Elliott Video for a Tuesday Morning

Tampa roots rocker Ronny Elliott has just released a new album, his first in several years, called I've Been Meaning to Write.

Hopefully I'll be playing it on the Santa Fe Opry in the not-too-distant future.

Ronny's also been posting some videos on his blog. The ones I've seen are older songs, not from the new album. Not sure why he's doing that, but who cares. They're fun and the music sounds great.

Here's the latest.

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, August 5, 2012 
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
Jesus' Chariot by Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Mas y Mas by Los Lobos
Comin' After Me by The Flamin' Groovies
The Doorway by Pierced Arrows
Long Green by L7
Back In Hell by The Reverend Beat-Man & The Un-Believers
I'm Waiting by The Nevermores
Bad Neighborhood by Mac Rebennack

Call the Zoo by The A-Bones
Man Taken from Guts by Thee Mighty Caesars
California Swamp Dance by Kim Fowley
Ain't Dumbo by The Night Beats
Oh Mary by Ty Segall
We're Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together by The Velvet Underground
It's Great by Wau y Los Arrrghs!!!
English Civil War by The Clash
Georgia Slop by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
Tell Me You Love Me by Frank Zappa
Rock Bottom by The Rams

Vamos a Matar El Chango by Joe "King" Carrasco & The Crowns
I Hear an Echo by Hipbone Slim & The Knee Tremblers
Woo by Gibby Haynes
Gravity by Buick MacKane
Red River Street by The Angel Babies
Tyger by Arrington de Dionyso and the Old Time Relijun
Bubble City by Pong
National Hamster by The Melvins

Get Happy by Simon Stokes
Levitation by 13th Floor Elevators
Head by 60 Noses
The 5th by Kustomized
Lightning Struck the Poorhouse by Cousin Joe
Codine by James Luther Dickinson
A Very Good Year by Jackie "Teak" Lazar
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
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BIG ENCHILADA 51: Kicks from the Sticks

Welcome to the new hillbilly episode of The Big Enchilada podcast. To paraphrase Johnny Hicks in the opening song here, we're going to get some kicks from the hicks way back in the sticks. Besides the twisted honky-tonk and hopped-up hillbilly sounds you've come to expect from these shows, Kicks from the Sticks also includes a set of old-time string band, jug band and country blues songs inspired by the latest South Memphis String Band album ...Old Times There.

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Here's the playlist:

(Background Music: Cowbell Polka by Spade Cooley)
Get Your Kicks from the Country Hicks by Johnny Hicks
Baby, Baby, Don't Tell Me That by James "Slim" Hand
Jack's Red Cheetah by Cathy Faber's Swingin' Country Band
Show Me the Way by The Great Recession Orchestra
Honky Tonk Rhythm by Bobby Sisco
Raise the Moon by The Goddamn Gallows

(Background Music: Rambler's Stomp by Doug Bine & His Dixie Ramblers
Can You Blame The Colored Man by South Memphis String Band
My Money Never Runs Out by Banjo Joe (Gus Cannon)
John Law Burned Down the Liquor Store by Chris Thomas King
My Four Reasons by Banjo Ikey Robinson & Howard Armstrong
Dona Got a Ramblin' Mind by Carolina Chocolate Drops
What's That Taste Like Gravy by King David's Jug Band

(Background Music: Banjoreno by Dixieland Jug Blowers)
I Said My Nightshirt and Put On My Prayers by June Carter with Homer & Jethro
Hot Water by Big Sandy & The Flyrite Trio
Restless by Eilen Jewell
Goddamn Blue Yodel #7 by Slim Cessna's Auto Club
Then I'll Be Movin' On by Mother Earth (featuring Powell St. John)
Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother by Eugene Chadbourne

Play it Here:

You like this hillbilly stuff? If so, then you'll probably like some of my previous episodes like:

Episode 48: Honky Tonky Wacky Woo
Episode 44: Moonshine Becomes You
Episode 39: Podunk Holler Hoedown
Episode 36: Sweathog of the Rodeo 
Episode 31: Below Tobacco Road
Episode 26: Hillbilly Pigout
Episode 22: Honky in a Cheap Motel
Episode 16: Hillbilly Heaven
Episode 10: More Santa Fe Opry Favorites
Episode 8: Santa Fe Opry Favorites Vol. 2
Episode 2: Santa Fe Opry Favorites

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: The Return of Joe "King"

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Aug. 3, 2012

Seeing Joe “King” Carrasco & The Crowns — the original Crowns, by golly! — kicking off the Santa Fe Bandstand series in July brought back a lot of memories from 30 years ago. But their performance that night, as well as Que Wow, the new CD I bought after the show, was not mere nostalgia. Carrasco’s music is as timeless as it is fun.

Back in the day — the early 1980s to be exact — the group called this sound Nuevo Wavo.

Carrasco and the band seemed to come out of nowhere right about the time New Wave was starting to fade. Elvis Costello had repopularized the Farfisa/Vox organ sound a few years before (on his album This Year’s Model), but Carrasco, keyboardist Chris Cummings, and the others took it further, creating spirited music that sounded like a joyful blend of The B-52s and Question Mark & The Mysterians.

Carrasco was just a gringo loco (born Joseph Teutsch in Dumas, Texas), but his love for Tex-Mex music and Chicano rock in general propelled his Nuevo Wavo sound.

Carrasco and The Crowns seemed to be everywhere for a brief moment. They played “Don’t Bug Me Baby” on Saturday Night Live. Later, “Party Weekend” became a staple on MTV. Carrasco was interviewed in Rolling Stone. After a chance meeting at a recording studio, he did a duet with (pre-Thriller) Michael Jackson.

And for a few years it seemed he was at Club West in Santa Fe at least every few months. He was the one of the first national acts, if not the very first, to play there, treating local folks to his crazed, high-energy, hopped-up, crowd-surfing, wall-crawling antics in a stage show that was part James Brown, part Sam the Sham, and part Spider-Man.

Truth is, Carrasco and The Crowns became more of a regional phenomenon. Here in the Southwest, we still loved them long after the trendies and the mainstream forgot about them.

But at some point Carrasco’s Santa Fe appearances became more and more infrequent. It seemed as if he dropped off the face of the earth.

Actually, he moved to Mexico, where he established a home base in a Tex-Mex restaurant/bar in Puerto Vallarta called Nacho Daddy. That’s also the name of one of the songs on Que Wow. (No, this bouncy ranchero featuring Carrasco’s dogs barking in the background is not an advertisement for the restaurant.)

Carrasco started getting a little political in the mid ’80s with songs like “Who Buys the Guns” (“that killed the nuns” completed that couplet; he lived in Nicaragua for a while during that period). But a quarter century later, if there’s any trace of politics on the new album, it’s so subtle that I missed it.

A snappy little rocker called “Drug Through the Mud” opens and closes Que Wow, the final version being a live one. Cummings’ electric organ plays riffs straight off of “96 Tears” (Carrasco name-checks the Question Mark hit in the lyrics). Meanwhile, another one of Carrasco’s chief influences, the Sir Douglas Quintet, is righteously evoked in (at least) a couple of other songs, “Havin’ a Ball” and the bilingual “Yo Soy Tuyo.”

There’s an irresistible little polka called “Right On Catcheton”; a Caribbean-flavored, Tiki-touched groover called “Vamos a Matar El Chango”; and a sweet ode to Carrasco’s dog, “My Lil Anna.”

 Carrasco reached back into his songbook for a couple of tunes here. Both “Bandido Rock” and “Pachuco Hop” have appeared on previous albums, but both are excellent tunes that deserve to be heard again. (On YouTube, thanks to Santa Fe Music Video, you can find a good quality video of “Bandido Rock” from the band’s appearance on the Plaza last month.)

If you dug Carrasco’s show on the bandstand (or his subsequent shows in Los Alamos, Taos, or Albuquerque), or if you missed him this time but have great memories of his Club West performances, I’d bet you’d love Que Wow.

Also recommended:

* The Angel Babies. This is a band with New Mexico roots that rose out of a rough night of karaoke.

As the band explains in its official bio, one night last year Frankie Medina and Calida Salazar were hanging at a “rough karaoke bar” at an unnamed location in New Mexico, when “suddenly a ex-con/pachuco took the stage and blew them away with his kitschy performance of ‘Billy Jean.’ ” The tough-guy crooner became violent, the story goes, when he insisted that the song “Angel Baby” — which some refer to as the national anthem of the South Valley — be cued up for his next number.

 “Unfortunately he was arrested,” the band’s bio says. But, inspired by this experience, Medina and Salazar decided they wanted to make music together as The Angel Babies.

Medina is a New Mexico native, born in Santa Fe and raised in Española. I first became aware of him in the late ’90s through his band Electricoolade, a cool little two-man show that played a potent blend of power-pop and garage rock. After that, he moved to Austin, forming a band called The Kill Spectors before The Angel Babies took wing.

This self-titled album is a real sonic pleasure. It starts off with what sounds like a Mexican folk song, with Medina singing and playing acoustic guitar. But this song lasts only a little more than a minute before a big throbbing electric fuzz bass riff comes in, then some thunder drums on “Tone Deaf.”

When the guitar joins in, the song sounds like a slowed-down Canned Heat boogie, except way more ominous. Medina and Salazar’s harmonies here remind me of another Austin couple from a previous era — Timbuk3.

What I like about the The Angel Babies is that while they aren’t shy about using synthesized sounds, they’re a rock ‘n’ roll group at heart. “Drugs Guns Hookers” and the more upbeat “Red River Street” are upstanding examples of good trashy rock ‘n’ roll performed through an electronic filter, while “After the Party” sounds like a long-lost Prince song, perhaps from the Sign ‘O’ the Times era.

The album ends with a song, sung by Salazar, called “Angel Baby.” It’s not the same song that the guy at the karaoke bar wanted. It’s as pretty as it is dark.

Blog Bonus

Here's Joe "King Carrasco & Tye Crowns on The Plaza last month:




And here's a song by The Angel Babies