Thursday, January 31, 2013

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: The Honky Tonk Lives!

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Feb. 1, 2013



Honky-tonk music is alive.

Alive? It’s rarely sounded healthier, judging by Dale Watson’s latest album.

The record is called El Rancho Azul. There on the back cover you see Watson and his band, the Lone Stars, standing beside their tour bus in front of the Broken Spoke in Austin. That’s the famous old saloon where I last saw Watson play. (He did a solid three-hour-plus set without taking a break.) Even though this was a couple of years ago, I’m pretty sure I heard at least a couple of these songs that night.

This is no song cycle or rock opera, but El Rancho Azul does deal with certain recurring themes. Number one is drinking. Four of the album’s 14 songs have the word “drink” in the title. There’s “I Lie When I Drink” (“and I drink a lot,” Watson sings in the refrain), “Drink to Remember,” “I Hate to Drink Alone,” and “Drink Drink Drink.”) Then there’s a song called “Smokey Old Bar” (in which Watson enjoys drinking cold Lone Star) and one called “Thanks to Tequila” (in which Watson makes fun of the way cactus juice slurs his speech).

There are a couple minor themes at work on the album, as well. One is dancing and the other is weddings. Come to think of it, drinking, dancing, and weddings go together. On the dancing front, there are two similar songs that deal with a woman teaching a man how to survive on the dance floor. These are “Quick Quick Slow Slow,” followed by “Slow Quick Quick,” which is about waltzing. Then there’s “Cowboy Boots,” in which Watson sings of his love for women dancing in such footwear.

Watson’s wedding tunes are quite different. “We’re Gonna Get Married” is a fast song sung from the perspective of an enthusiastic groom. This is followed by “Daughter’s Wedding Song,” which is sung from the viewpoint of the bride’s father. “It’s hard to let go of that little girl whose whole body would sleep on my chest,” Watson says, starting off the second verse. It’s slow, pretty, heartfelt, and overtly sentimental. Merle Haggard fans will note similarities between this and Hag’s “The Farmer’s Daughter.”
Dale Watson at Broken Spoke 3-23-11
Watson at the Broken Spoke, March 2011

Watson finally got around to recording “Where Do You Want It,” his black-humor outlaw song celebrating the shooting incident near Waco that involved the mighty Billy Joe Shaver. Billy Joe was eventually acquitted of aggravated assault charges connected with the confrontation. (What Texas jury is going to convict Billy Joe Shaver when Willie Nelson is sitting right there in the courtroom?) Though Watson wrote this song, it was originally recorded by Whitey Morgan & The 78s about two years ago.

Watson’s on a real roll lately. I thought his previous album, The Sun Sessions — recorded at Sun Studio in Memphis with a stripped-down version of his band and an early Johnny Cash feel — was the best thing he’d done in years. But this one is even better.

^

Also recommended:

* Be Right Back! by Chris O’Connell. Even if you don’t recognize her name, chances are you’ve heard the voice of Chris O’Connell.

She was the original female with Asleep at the Wheel, before those latter-day saints of western swing moved to Texas.

Yes, she was the female singer on the early Wheel hit “The Letter That Johnny Walker Read.” And, from the same album, Texas Gold, she sang lead on “Bump Bounce Boogie,” which was one of the sexiest songs to come out of the Cosmic Cowboy era.

O’Connell worked with the Wheel on and off for a couple of decades. She has collaborated with a bunch of folks, including Wheel alums like Floyd Domino and Maryann Price (one of Dan Hicks’ most famous Lickettes). And she even took a 12-year break from the biz of show before coming back to record her first solo record.

There are plenty of tunes here — opener “A Little Mo’ Love,” “Everything Is Movin’ Too Fast,” and “One More Day” — that wouldn’t seem out of place on an Asleep at the Wheel record. “My Baby Don’t Love Me Any More,” written by Johnny Paycheck, is a fine country song that features two of country rock’s greatest guitarists, Bill Kirchen and Junior Brown, backing O’Connell.

She takes a bluegrass turn with “City Water,” with another former Wheel member, Cindy Cashdollar, on dobro. Cashdollar also plays on O’Connell’s nicely understated version of “Shenandoah.”

O’Connell ventures out of the country/western-swing realm, getting jazzy on some tracks and going to the cocktail lounge on others like “When Love Was New” and “Skid Row in My Mind.” She draws from a variety of sources including Rodgers and Hart (“Everything I’ve Got Belongs to You”), Irving Berlin (“It’ll Come to You”), and Elvis (a strong performance on “(Marie’s the Name) His Latest Flame.”

BLOG BONUS: Enjoy some videos






A Small Bit of Good News: There's a Johnny Cash Stamp

Johnny Cash joins Elvis Presley, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Muddy Waters, The Gershwin Brothers  and other American music titans in being honored with his own U.S. postage stamp.

I'm not sure of the release date, but it'll be at post offices everywhere later this year as a part of a new "American Icon" series.

From Beyond the Perf, a stamp collector site ("online extension of the USA Philatelic catalog" to be exact):


Resembling the appearance of a 45 rpm record sleeve, the square stamp features a photograph taken by Frank Bez during the photo session for Ring of Fire: The Best of Johnny Cash (1963). In the photo, Cash stares out at the viewer through a veil of shadow, his brooding expression fitting for an artist known to so many people simply as “the Man in Black.”


Let's celebrate with a great old song from the early '60s by JC himself

Sunday, January 27, 2013

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST


Terrell's Sound World Facebook BannerSunday, Jan. 27, 2013 
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
A. on Horseback by Charlie Pickett
Putty in Your Hand by Detroit Cobras
New Rocket Train Boogie by Edison Rocket Train
Land of a Thousand Dances by Little Richard
You're the Doctor by Ty Segall
Take it Like a Man by Mudhoney
Hnaky Panky by The Cramps
Eviction Blues by Poison Gardner & His All Stars
Willie Meehan by Manby's Head
I Feel Good by Lee & Shirley

Sister Midnight by Iggy Pop
Fried Neckbones by King Khan & The Shrines
Jim Dandy Got Married by Lavern Baker
Goin' to the River by The Gories
Til the End of the Day by The Kinks
Just Want Your Love by Big Maybelle
Dirty Blue Gene by Captain Beefheart
The Monkey by The Great Gaylord
Two Wings by Alvin Youngblood Hart

Entrance Song (Rain Dance Version) by The Black Angels
The Other Side of This Life by Jefferson Airplane
Little War in the Midwest by The Nighbeats
Teen-age Prostitute by Frank Zappa
Carrion Crawler by Thee Oh Sees
Skid Row Wine by Maggie Estep & The Spitters

Cry Me a River Blues by Little Esther Phillips with Johnny Otis
Realm of the Pirate Kings by Wayne Kramer
Fever by Elvis Presley
It's All Over Now Baby Blue by Chocolate Watch Band
Night Shift by The Commodores
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

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Friday, January 25, 2013

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST


Santa Fe Opry Facebook BannerFriday, Jan. 25, 2013 
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
Honky Tonk Merry Go Round by Patsy Cline & Lonesome Spurs
:Mama Hated Diesels by Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen
Let's Jump the Broomstick by The 99ers
Hello Walls by Jason & The Scorchers
Pigfork by The Imperial Rooster
I Hate to Drink Alone by Dale Watson
Oklahoma Bound by Joe West
Hole in the Ground by Iggy Yoakam & His Famous Pogo Ponies
The Night That Porter Wagoner Came to Town by Tabby Crabb

New Lee Highway Blues by David Bromberg
Convoy by New Duncan Imperials
White House Blues by Loudon Wainwright III
Glendale Train by New Riders of the Purple Sage
Tank by Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs
Voodoo Queen by Country Blues Revue
Rejected Television Theme Song by Shooter Jennings

Ode to Billy Joe by Susan Voelz
The Clothesline Saga by Bob Dylan
Manhattan Hotel by Joe Buck (the band)
13 Roses by Beth Lee & The Breakups
Sadie Was a Lady by Johnny Bond
Sage Advice by Paul Burch
American Trash by Betty Dylan

Going Down That Road Feeling Bad by Habib Koite & Eric Bibb
Battle of Love by Mose McCormack
It Won't Be Long (and I'll Be Hating You) by Rex Hobart & The Misery Boys
3 Rounds Left by Pearls Mahone
Lackin' in Nothin by Amanda Pearcy
Sweet Rosie Jones by Buck Owens
Sweet Thang! by Michael Combs
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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TERRELL'S TUNEUP: Dance, Puppet Dance!

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Jan. 25, 2013

When I first heard that Pere Ubu’s new album was called Lady From Shanghai, I figured it might have some weird connection with the 1947 Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth film with a similar title. Ubu has already saluted the shadowy world of noir with its 2006 album Why I Hate Women, which Ubu’s singer David Thomas described at the time as “my idea of the Jim Thompson novel he never wrote.”

However, if there is a connection between the new Ubu album and Orson Welles, I’ve yet to unravel that thread. Instead, Thomas and crew, this time around, are apparently obsessed with dance music.

I’m not kidding.

“Smash the hegemony of dance. Stand still. The dancer is puppet to the dance. It’s past time somebody put an end to this abomination. Lady From Shanghai is an album of dance music fixed.” Cryptic as it is, this quotation from Ubu’s website just about says it all.

Just about.

Pere Ubu has some strange parallels with “dance music.” The band arose from the Cleveland rock ’n’ roll scene, recording its first album, The Modern Dance, in 1977, around the same time that disco music began to sweep the world.

Of course, even back in the hazy ’70s, nobody in his right mind would confuse The Modern Dance with disco. (It wasn’t really punk rock either — Ubu was more complex — though that’s how the group was tagged in its early days.)

Synthesizers have been a key part of Pere Ubu’s sound, as they had been in disco and the electronic dance music that followed. However, Ubu’s synths — otherworldly, post-apocalyptic soundscapes provided by Allen Ravenstine (who eventually quit the band to become an airlinepilot) — were a lot different from the clean, corporate sounds heard in disco.

On the new album, synth man Robert Wheeler goes for those Ravenstinesque effects, all the screeches, beeps, bleeps, buzzes, gurgles, and whooshes. Those, along with Thomas’ wounded warble and oblique lyrics, reassure listeners that this is indeed a Pere Ubu album. But the band also incorporates elements of dance electronica — a throbbing bass line and industrial drum sounds.

Lady From Shanghai sounds as if the Huns have laid siege to the dance floor, with frightened club kids fleeing for their lives as the beat goes on. It’s New Year’s Eve in the nuthouse, and the party is beginning to get dangerous.

Thomas decided to record this album as a game of “Chinese whispers,” another name for the game also known as “telephone” and “town gossip,” in which the first player whispers something to the next; that person whispers what he heard, or thinks he heard, to the next person; and so on down the line. Usually, by the time the message reaches the last person, it has changed dramatically.

Doing this in a musical context means that the band did not rehearse, and each member recorded his or her part in isolation from the others. Lyrics were improvised with no vocal retakes.

“The musician should not be allowed to see the Big Picture until the composition exists in a near-finished form, and, ideally, only after he has contributed to it,” Thomas writes in Chinese Whispers, a recently released book about the making of Lady From Shanghai.

“The goal should be to capture the unique and distinctive voice of the individual as he struggles to cobble Meaning together out of a soup of confusions, contradictions, hopes, and fears, information, and misinformation. Such is the nature of real life. Real life is the only worthwhile ambition for art.”

Don’t ask me to explain the exact logistics of how this worked. But considering all these strange self-imposed rules, it’s a wonder the album is as cohesive as it is. Somehow, it hangs together in its own peculiar way.

The album kicks off with a song called “Thanks,” but gratitude doesn’t seem to be the major theme. It’s a bizarre regurgitation of the old disco hit “Ring My Bell.” But Thomas changes the refrain to “Go to hell.”

This isn’t the only song with strong echoes of an old pop hit. Fans of The Chambers Brothers will recognize that group’s late-’60s hit “Time Has Come Today” coming through the fog in Ubu’s song “Musicians Are Scum.” This cut also has my favorite lyric on the album: “Why don’t you get in line with all those others whose lives I have ruined?”

The beginning of “Free White,” which starts with Thomas crooning, “It’s a wonderful world, it’s a beautiful thing,” reminds me a little bit of another Ohio band that started out about the same time as Ubu. I’m talking, of course, about Devo and the song “Beautiful World.” But while Devo was obviously being ironic, with singer Mark Mothersbaugh sounding purposefully smarmy, Thomas, as he sobs the lyrics, sounds like some nuclear-winter survivor trying to convince himself that all is well.

The drums turn fierce on “Feuksley Ma’am, the Hearing.” There are no vocals here except some spoken-word mumbling and some wind sounds that make this track sound like winter in hell. Meanwhile the song “And Nothing Happened at All” starts out urgent, like some forgotten Pearl Jam song. But about a minute and a half into it, the whole thing seems to dissolve into a sound collage.

Another standout is “Lampshade Man,” a sturdy tune that starts out with Thomas moaning, “They say the truth hurts.” Actually there’s not much more to the lyrics. The beat intensifies as the song goes on. “The Road Trip of Bipasha Ahmed” sounds like variations on a horror-movie theme. Thomas sings, “She calls me Johnny Rocket, but I don’t know why.”

Unfortunately Lady From Shanghai ends not with a bang but a thud. “The Carpenter Sun” features Thomas singing a ploddingly slow tune (“She is a curtain” is one of the few lines I can make out) over what comes off as spare Wheeler sound effects that didn’t fit anywhere else. It’s a pretty safe bet that nobody will dance to this one.

But even though the band doesn’t leave its best for the last, the latest offering makes me happy to share a planet with Pere Ubu.

BLOG BONUS:

Here's a song from the album



You can also hear another song from Lady From Shanghai HERE

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...