Sunday, Sept. 15, 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
Sewer Fire by Thee Oh Sees with Lars Finberg
Seething Psychosexual Conflict Blues by Figures of Light
Jesus Christ Twist by Rev. Beat-Man
The Wolf Song by LoveStruck
Hey Jackass by Geek Maggot Bingo
Love All of Me by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Negative and Hostile by The Grannies
The Cutester Patrol by The Grandmothers
No More Rainy Days/ Interlude by The Dirtbombs
Vampire by Black Joe Lewis
Lockdown Blues by The Angel Babies
Head-On Collision by Big Ugly Guys
Drug-Stabbing Time/Sean Flynn by The Clash
Another Toe by The Pixies
Journey to the Center of the Mind by The Ramones
Don't Be Angry by Nick Curran & The Nightlifes
Baby Doll by The Del Moroccos
The Corner Man by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
Dreaming by The Go-Wows
Like a Pill by The Nevermores
She Said Yeah by The A-Bones
A House is Not a Motel by Marshmallow Overcoat
Stoned by The Black Lips
Trash Truck by TAD
Lumumba Calypso by E. C. Arinze
The Sky is a Poisonous Garden by Concrete Blonde
Weight by Chief Fuzzer
Night of Broken Glass by Jay Reatard
The North Seas by Thee Verduns
Malandrino by Gogol Bordello
Too Dry to Cry by Willis Earl Beal
Lonesome Stranger by Pietra Wexstun & Hecate's Angels
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Friday, Sept. 13, 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 Single Girl by The Dirt Daubers
You Knee'd Me by The Hickoids
Truck Drivin' Son of a Gun by Dave Dudley
Trashy Women by Jerry Jeff Walker
Too Much by Rosie Flores
White Freightliner Blues by Halden Wofford & The Hi Beams
Gimme a Ride to Heaven Boys by Terry Allen
Honey, Do You Love Me, Huh? By Hank Williams with Curley Williams
Pig Fork by The Imperial Rooster
Road to Ruin by Anthony Leon & The Chain
Everybody's Getting Paid But Me by The Rev. Peyton's Big Damn Band
I Can't Make It Without You by The Haddix Family
11 Months and 29 Days by Johnny Paycheck
Warmed Over Kisses. By Dave Edmunds
One Swell Foop by The Honkey Tonk Merry Go-Round
The Rains Came by The Sir Douglas Quintet
Sleepless Nights by The Mekons
Artificial Flowers by Cornel Hurd featuring the Sex-Sational Blackie White
Highway Cafe by Kinky Friedman & The Texas Jewboys
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Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly
Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican Sept. 13, 2013 An actual bubblegum album by a serious grown-up band in 2013?
Yes indeed. Ooey Gooey Chewy Ka-blooey is a bubblegum album by The Dirtbombs, long promised by the group’s singer and guitarist Mick Collins.
The Dirtbombs are a serious band, right?
In my book they are. Started by Collins in the ’90s following the demise of his previous group, The Gories — an inspired blues/punk/slop band — The Dirtbombs were the best (if not the most famous, which would be The White Stripes) group to come out of the Detroit garage scene.
But bubblegum? Those of you who weren't around when bubblegum ruled the AM airwaves might not know what the term means. Sometimes “bubblegum” is used to describe any vapid teen pop, but that’s not what The Dirtbombs are doing on this album.
According to the All Music Guide, “Bubblegum is a lightweight, catchy pop music that was a significant commercial force in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Bubblegum was targeted at a preteen audience whose older siblings had been raised on rock & roll. It was simple, melodic, and light as feather — neither the lyrics or the music had much substance. Bubblegum was a manufactured music, created by record producers that often hired session musicians to play and sing the songs.”
The true giants of the genre were Buddha Records groups like The Ohio Express (known for hits like “Yummy Yummy Yummy” — yes, there was love in their tummies — and “Chewy Chewy”); The 1910 Fruitgum Company (“1, 2, 3, Red Light,” “Simon Says”); The Kasenetz-Katz Singing Orchestral Circus (“Quick Joey Small”); and made-for-TV bands like The Partridge Family, The Banana Splits, The Archies, and Lancelot Link & The Evolution Revolution.
Now technically, The Archies weren’t human. They were, in fact, cartoon characters. And the Banana Splits were human, but they were humans dressed like cartoon animals.
But even more out-there is the fact that Lancelot Link and his band were trained chimpanzees dressed in wigs and hippie costumes who appeared on Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, a live-action Saturday-morning kiddie show in the early ’70s. An album of their music was actually released back then, and a video of the Lancelot Link song “Wild Dreams (Jelly Beans),” posted in a recent Ooey Gooey preview piece on Spin.com, shows these chimps indeed sounded a little like the Dirtbombs do on their new album.
Back during the great bubblegum scare, I was a little older than the target age group for this stuff, and for the most part I didn't share Collins’ affection for it. In fact, I hated the stuff. But little by little, I began to see at least a little value in the genre. Wilson Pickett had a hit with The Archies’ “Sugar Sugar.” A few years later, The Talking Heads covered “1, 2, 3, Red Light.” Meanwhile, The Dickies, an L.A. punk group, did a magnificent version of The Banana Splits theme song. And The Cramps covered “Quick Joey Small.”
And now The Dirtbombs have bubblegum on the soles of their shoes. They didn’t do covers of bubblegum hits. Instead, as Collins explained in an interview in Ghetto Blaster, “I wasn’t trying to make a period piece; I was more seeing if I could pick up where bubblegum left off ...”
If nothing else, Collins and crew capture the weird essence of many bubblegum elements. Just look at the song titles: “Sunshine Girl,” “We Come in the Sunshine,” “Sugar on Top,” “No More Rainy Days,” “Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet,” “Hey! Cookie,” etc. I don’t know whether I’m in more danger of sunstroke or a diabetic coma after listening to this.
There are several songs that — apart from the candy-coated lyrics — don’t sound like a big stretch for The Dirtbombs. “Hot, Sour, Salty Sweet” is one of those, and so are “Sugar on Top” and “It’s Gonna Be Alright.” Collins’ guitar is righteously raunchy in these songs, even if the melodies are poppier than your usual Dirtbombs tune. And “Hey! Cookie” sounds like, well, a garage-rock number. It would have fit seamlessly in early Dirtbombs albums.
Mick Collins playing with The Gories
Lincoln Center, NYC, 2010
But other tunes sink deeper into the bubblegum goo.
“We Come in the Sunshine” owes a big debt to “Good Vibrations,” but there also are strange components such as the Bobby Sherman-style horns and vocal harmonies that sound closer to The Cowsills than The Beach Boys. “The Girl on the Carousel” is a dreamy slow dance featuring an oboe.
But the biggest leap is “No More Rainy Days,” which, after a minute or so of what sounds like an Oompa Loompa march, goes into a weird interlude featuring the voice of the sun. That’s right, the actual sun, whose droning rumble was recorded by a solar observatory run by Stanford University.
I’ll admit, these tunes all are fun and catchy, even if the childlike lyrics and lollipops and rainbows start to wear down a listener used to grittier themes. My main beef is that this is the second genre exercise in a row for the Dirtbombs — the previous album, Party Store, being a tribute to Detroit techno bands. I just hope the next album by this band I love so much is less gooey and has more ka-blooey.
Also recommended:
* Electric Slave by Black Joe Lewis. This is the hardest-edged record so far in the short but thrilling catalog of Lewis, an Austin native who, according to a recent piece in his hometown paper, recently moved to Montreal.
Unlike his previous two albums, this one is released under Lewis’ name alone, not with his band The Honeybears. The horn section is still there, but the soul and funk elements of Lewis’ early work are less apparent.
Also missing are any obvious crowd-pleasers, such as the funny spoken-word segments like “Mustang Ranch” from previous albums. I’m not saying crowds won’t be pleased. Electric Slave is raw, punk-infused electric blues rock. Less jive and more wallop.
The album starts out with “Skulldiggin’,” which has such a distorted, fuzzed-out bass that in a just world, every obnoxious kid with a weapons-grade car stereo would be blasting this at every intersection in America.
Black Joe in Santa Fe
“Guilty” is a frantic rocker with tasty guitar-sax interplay. The nearly seven-minute “Vampire” sounds like a stripped-down cousin of Concrete Blonde’s “Bloodletting (The Vampire Song).” Screamin’ Jay Hawkins could have done this one.
Two other standouts are the highly-caffeinated “Young Girls,” which reminds me of Barrence Whitfield & The Savages, and “The Hipster,” a ferocious cruncher built on a mutated “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” guitar riff and incorporating some lyrics of “Wang Dang Doodle.”
I bet the Electric Slave song that gets the most airplay is “Come to My Party.” I hope a lot of new fans respond to that invitation. Black Joe Lewis always throws an amazing musical party.
Blog bonus: Lotsa videos this week
And a little history for you, kiddies:
Talking Heads liked bubblegum when bubblegum wasn't cool
If you watched television in Southern California in the 1970s and beyond, it was impossible to miss Cal Worthington, the lanky pitchman in the cowboy hat touting deals on a sprawling car lot with his "dog Spot."
"Spot," however, was anything but a dog — think lion, tiger, bull, penguin, anteater, iguana, even a whale. And Worthington, the Oklahoma transplant who rode and wrestled with the exotic creatures in one of TV's wackiest and longest-running ad campaigns, kept the gag going for decades, building a cult following along with one of the most successful car dealerships west of the Mississippi. "Go see Cal" became a part of Southern Californians' vocabulary.
If you had cable TV in Santa Fe in the '70s chances are you saw Cal and his dog spot too. Back then the cable system mainly ran L.A. stations.
I thought Cal was a genius. I just regret I never had the opportunity to buy a car from him -- and maybe get a free elephant ride for the kids.
Sunday, Sept. 8, 2013 KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M. 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell, Guest Co-host Stan Rosen Webcasting! 101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
ANNUAL POST LABOR DAY SONGS FOR THE WORKIN' MAN Plenty Tuff and Union Made by The Waco Brothers
Solidarity Forever by J. Michael Combs & Stan Rosen (live)
Working Man's Blues by Merle Haggard & Willie Nelson
Union Fights the Battle of Freedom by Bucky Halker
There is Power in the Union by Solidarity Singers
Big Boss Man by Jimmy Reed
J. Michael Combs live set
Which Side Are You On
Babies in the Mill
Gone, Gonna Rise Again
Arizona Estada de Verguenza
Banks of Marble
By the Sweat of My Brow
Roll the Union
Bread and Roses
Pie in the Sky by Utah Phillips & Ani DiFranco
Talking Union by The Almanac Singers
Pastures of Plenty by Cedarwood Singers
Joe Hill by Paul Robeson
Brother Can You Spare a Dime by Phil Alvin
Working Man by Bo Diddley
Union Medley by Peter, Paul & Mary
Red Neck Blue Collar by James Luther Dickinson
Republic Steel Massacre by Acie Cargill
Don't Look Now by Creedence Clearwater Revival
I Say Union by The Rabble Rousers
How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live by The Del-Lords
Call My Job by Son Seals
The Work Song by The Animals
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Friday, Sept. 6, 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
Cool Arrow by Hickoids
Leavin' Amarillo by Billy Joe Shaver
Whiskey's Gone by Kirk Rundstrom
Hooker Bones 2 by DM Bob & The Deficits
The Women ('Bout to Make a Wreck Out of Me) by Buddy Jones
Oklahoma Bound by Joe West
This Life of Mine by Two Tons of Steel
Gettin' High For Jesus by Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs
The Pharmacist from Walgreen's by Gregg Turner
47 Crosses by The Goddamn Gallows
Do You Know Thee Enemy by Slim Cessna's Auto Club
Hellfire Remedy by Big John Bates
They Raided the Joint by Chuck Murphy
In My Time of Dyin' by Dad Horse Experience
Nine Miles Over the Limit by Rob Nikowlewski
I'm Sending Daffydills by The Maddox Brothers & Rose
The Pill by Loretta Lynn
Yet Another Dang Self Portrait set
Songs from Self Portrait, Another Self Portraitand Self Portrait songs by others
(All songs by Bob Dylan except where noted)
All the Tired Horses ( original version)
Annie's Going to Sing Her Song
Little Sadie by The Sadies
Working on a Guru
It Hurts MeToo by Elmore James
Railroad Bill by Hobart Smith
Belle Isle (Another Self Portrait version) Wallflower by David Bromberg The Mighty Quinn by Bob Dylan & The Band
Days of '49 by Doughbelly Price
Take a Message to Mary by The Everly Brothers
Pretty Saro by Iris Dement
Tattle O'Day
Over There's Frank by James Hand
Don't Monkey ' Round My Widder by Doc Watkins & Chet Atkins
You're All Bad (and That's Why You've Been Invited) by Eleni Mandell
Mr. Jukebox by Ernest Tubb CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
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Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly
Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list
My old pal and former Santa Fe musician John Egenes, who has been living in New Zealand for the past several years (rumors that he earns his living as a hobbit trapper are utterly false and hurtful), is bringing a New Zealand singer to town tonight.
Donna Dean is playing at 7:30 p.m. at Garrett's Desert Inn, 311 Old Santa Fe Trail. I've heard her and she's good. (I forgot to get a sub for The Santa Fe Opry tonight, or I'd be going.) Santa Fe's own Jono Manson is opening.
Tickets are $15 advance/$20 at the door. So take a break from Fiestas and check it out.
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican Sept. 6, 2013
It's interesting that Columbia Legacy would release an two-disc "bootleg" set of unreleased Bob Dylan recordings centered around one of his most critically un-acclaimed albums in his 50-year career.
But that's the case of Another Self Portrait (1969-1971) The Bootleg Series Vol. 10. About half the songs are alternative versions, demos, or cutting-room-floor songs originally meant for Self Portrait, Dylan's album (it was a double album in the days of vinyl, though it all fit on a single CD) Released in the summer of 1970. There also are several different versions of songs that appeared on New Morning, (which came only months after Self Portrait), plus a smattering from Nashville Skyline and other projects.
At the time of its release, Self Portrait was the most controversial thing Dylan had done since "going electric" at the Newport Folk Festival five years before. In his autobiography, Chronicles, Vol. One, Dylan described this album: "I just threw everything I could think of at the wall and whatever stuck, released it, and then went back and scooped up everything that didn't stick, and released that too."
The critics raved. Actually, the critics ranted and it wasn't pretty. It was as if they felt personally that the most important artist of a generation had released a record that wasn't a grand revelation. Instead, despite the portentous title, Self Portrait was just a fun and sometimes sloppy musical notebook of Dylan singing some favorite folk and country songs, mixed in with a few live recordings and musical experiments.
"What is this shit?"was the opening sentence of the review in Rolling Stone (in those days a rock 'n' roll magazine, believe it or not) by Greil Marcus. Marcus, in the liner notes for the new collection, wrote that those were "the words that were coming out of everybody's mouth" when first hearing Self Portrait.
But not everybody.
I was just a high school kid when Self Portrait came out and, for the most part I liked it. And for the most part, I still do. Sure there were some clunkers -- his undercooked version of Simon & Garfunkel's "The Boxer," the bafflingly over-produced "Bell Isle," the mediocre take on Elmore James' "It Hurts Me Too," and the outright bizarre "In Search of Little Sadie," which sounded like a stoned private joke. And, as is the case with many other classic double albums, Self Portrait could have, should have been boiled down to a single disc.
But there was so much to love in Self Portrait. The first song was the enigmatic "All the Tired Horses." Dylan didn't sing this. It was a chorus of three women singing, "All the tired horses in the sun / How am I supposed to get any riding done / Ummm ummm..." over and over again like some plantation dirge with a string section coming in. There was a raucous live version of "Quinn the Eskimo" (with The Band) that sounded like a saloon fight. And there was a straight version of "Little Sadie" on which Bromberg on guitar sounded so much like Doc Watson, I had to check the credits.
The Original
Speaking of "Little Sadie," my favorite aspect of Self Portrait was what seemed to be an Old West/frontier/gunslinger undercurrent. One of the best was "Alberta #1," a funky old folk song (I remembered it from seeing Parnell Roberts, Adam from Bonanza, perform it on some TV variety show.) "I'd give you more gold than your apron could hold" sounds like a love-sick promise by the world's horniest prospector.
Dylan's laconic version featured a tasty dobro by David Bromberg and call-and-response vocals by the same trio that sang "All the Tired Horses." Later in the album there was a slightly faster "Alberta #2" and I liked that too. (And, to get ahead of myself a little, I also like "Alberta #3" on Another Self Portrait, despite its abrupt end.)
One of the most moving songs on the album was a moonshiner ballad, "Copper Kettle" where Dylan, in the voice of a proud defiant hillbilly Everyman, sings, "My daddy he made whiskey, my granddad he did too / We ain't paid no whiskey tax since 1792." There was The Everly Brothers' "Take a Message to Mary," with that haunting introduction by a female chorus, "These are the words of a frontier lad, who lost his love when he turned bad..."
But best of all was Dylan's version of "Days of 49," an old gold rush song about a sad '49 lamenting the loss of old compadres, a motley, whoring gaggle of drunks, brawlers and card-cheats -- the kind of men who built this great land of ours. "They call me a bummer and a gin-shot too, but what cares I for praise?" Dylan snarls. The verses document the lives and violent deaths of pals like Poker Bill, New York Jake and Ragshag Bill.
David Bromberg, the secret hero of the
Self Portrait sessions.
The devastating final verse puts it all in perspective: "Of all the comrades that I've had, there's none that's left to boast / And I'm left alone in my misery, like some poor wandering ghost ..." Makes you wonder whether Dylan has harbored a fear of being the last man standing among his glory-days contemporaries.
"Railroad Bill," a fine old American outlaw ballad included in Another Self Portrait, would have fit in perfectly among the Old West tunes on the original album. Why it was excluded while "The Boxer" was included we'll never know.
While any fan of any performer enjoys hearing out-takes and versions of familiar songs at various stages of development -- "New Morning" with horns, "Wigwam" without the horns, "Sign on the Window" with orchestra! -- my favorite tunes on the new collection are the ones like "Railroad Bill," that I'd never heard Dylan do before. There are a few, such as "Annie's Going to Sing Her Song" (written by folkie Tom Paxton) and a folk song called "Pretty Saro" that can only be described as gorgeous.
For sheer fun, it would be hard to beat the bluesy "Working on a Guru," featuring George Harrison on guitar, from the New Morning sessions. And for the pure mystery of folk music, Dylan, backed by Bromberg's guitar and pianist Al Kooper, sings a song called "Tattle O'Day," full of nonsense lyrics of animals with fantastic powers.
While I prefer the familiar versions of the Self Portrait songs to the versions on the new "bootleg" collection, there are exceptions. Both "Copper Kettle" and "Belle Isle" are stripped of their over-dubbed sweetening strings, leaving performances that only seem more passionate.
If nothing else, Another Self Portrait is forcing a second look of the original Self Portrait. Maybe it wasn't as big of a revelation as Highway 61 Revisited or Blonde on Blonde. But in its own strange way, it had its own revelatory power.
Some video for yas:
Dylan's "Alberta"s are cooler, but Pernell's is the first version I heard.
I'm very honored that my pal Gregg Turner and I have been asked to be the first musical entertainers to perform at George R.R. Martin's newly re-opened Jean Cocteau Cinema. This Turner/Terrell Tango will take place 9 p.m. this Saturday night, Sept. 7.
Tickets are $5 (cheap).
Turner, a mild-mannered math professor by day, is best known for being a former member of the Southern California punk rock band The Angry Samoans. His latest album is simply called Gregg Turner Plays the Hits.
I'm probably best known as a newspaper reporter, though in a former life I had delusions of being a musician and actually released two albums -- Picnic Time for Potatoheads and Pandemonium Jukebox -- on the dynamic Blue Elf label.
J Sunday, Sept. 1, 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
Murky Waters by Big John Bates
Some Other Guy by The Hentchmen
Astral Plane by The Malarians
Mo Hair by Hickoids
Eviler by The Grannies
La Carta by Los Mustangs
Waiting for the Next Check by The Terrorists
Big Ass on Fire by The Pocket FishRmen
Thrift Baby by J.J. & The Real Jerks
Jump and Shout by The Dirtbombs
You Better Run by Iggy & The Stooges
Devil Again by Thee Oh Sees
Oscar Levant by Barrance Whitfield & The Savages
A Different Kind of Ugly by Sons of Hercules
Nice Guys Finish Last by The Electric Mess
The Train by Big John Hamilton
Shout by Question Mark & The Mysterians
Puzzlin' Evidence by Talking Heads
Hang Up by The Cramps
Nancy Sinatra by Johnny Dowd
Lightning's Girl by Nancy Sinatra
Sick Bed by The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black
Pretty Girl Snatcher by Lovestruck
Switched to Drinkin' Gin by Mojo Juju
See It on Your Side by Dinosaur Jr.
Starry Eyes by Gregg Turner
Little War Child by The Oblivians
She Done Him Right (Mae West Sutra) by Pietra Wexstun & Hecate's Angels
Don't Taser Me Bro by Carbon Silicon
When I Rise in the Morning byThe Drinkard Singers
All the Way by Richard Hell & The Voidoids
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis