Mekons to Record New Album, Langford Says

The Giant Skype Head of Jon Langford

I caught the sneak-preview of The Revenge of The Mekons last night at the Center for Contemporary Arts here in Santa Fe. And, as promised, after the film was a Skype session with The Mekons' Jon Langford and director Joe Angio.

And I actually got a little news out of this. Langford, answering my question, said The Mekons will be recording a new album -- their first since 2011's Ancient & Modern -- this summer. It will be a live album, he said, recorded in New York at the end of what Langford said will be a short tour of the American Midwest. (Langford was booed when he said that tour wouldn't be coming to Santa Fe.)

Asked what songs would be on the album, Langford said he didn't know They haven't been written yet.

So that's something to look forward to.

The Revenge of The Mekons is showing at the CCA today and Saturday at 3:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 pm. in case you missed my review of the documentary CLICK HERE.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Getting Ready for 4-20

Next Monday is April 20, or "4-20" as the youngsters say.

I'm not exactly sure how those magic numbers came to be associated with marijuana. And I don't really care. All I know is decades before that happened some of the most respected names in the world of jazz were celebrating the joys of the weed in song.

And that didn't escape the notice of the drug warriors of that era. The infamous Harry Anslinger, the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics for more than 30 years, pursued the menace of reefer-smoking jazzbos with the same grim determination with which J. Edgar Hoover hounded John Lennon years later.

Larry "Ratso" Sloman, in his book Reefer Madness: A History of Marijuana (1979) quotes Anslinger's testimony before a Congressional committee in 1949.

"We have been running into a lot of traffic among these jazz musicians, and I am not speaking about the good musicians, but the jazz type, " he said. "In North Carolina we arrested a whole orchestra, everybody in the orchestra."

I'm sure Anslinger would have loved to have collared Cab Calloway, who sang several reefer tunes in his time, including this 1932 ode to a favorite purveyor known as "The Man from Harlem."



Meanwhile, Fats Waller was dreaming of reefer five feet long. He recorded the song commonly known as "If You's a Viper" in 1943 (That was seven years after the original recording by a jazz violinist named Stuff Smith.). Waller made this for Armed Forces radio, and, according to Sloman, he basically took the opportunity to thumb his nose at Anslinger, who only 16 days before had pledged to make mass arrests of "swing bands" who indulged in reefer smoking.

Don Redman wasn't as famous as Cab or The Ink Spots. But he was a member of McKinney's Cotton Pickers and played with the likes of  Fletcher Henderson, Pearl Bailey and Eubie Blake. And he was well acquainted with that reefer man.



To be honest, I'm not really familiar with Jazz Gillum. But I do like his song "Reefer Head Woman."

But wait a minute ... WHAT KIND OF MESSAGE ARE WE SENDING TO THE CHILDREN????

In the spirit of equal time, here's some messages from the other side.

First, an informative little botany lesson about the Devil's flower from a country singer who called himself "Mr. Sunshine." (Mr. Sunshine? Was this some kind of weird drug code?) This video uses footage from a classic docu-drama called Reefer Madness that tried to set the record straight.



Next is a song with the same title by someone named "Johnny Price." The true message of this song is that an obsession with marijuana can lead to crime ... at least the crime of plagiarism. This funky dude stole the title from Mr. Sunshine and the tune from Johnny Cash's "San Quentin."



And here's "The Story of Susie," a sad tale about a young girl for whom marijuana was a gateway drug: The gateway to doom!



I wonder if Susie was a friend of Jeannie in the next song, "A Box of Grass." The two girls met the same tragic fate and it's all because of the Devil's Flower.



So kids, stay away from gangs and drugs. But have a safe and happy 4-20 however you celebrate.

THE ROCK 'N' ROLL TOURIST: Watching the Blues Explode in Washington, D.C.

Instead of Wacky Wednesday this week, here's the latest installment of The Rock 'n' Roll Tourist.
Wacky Wednesday will return next week.

Jon Spencer uses his head

Two thirds of an Explosion

As much as politicians love to bash Washington, D.C. -- even a lot of those cynical ones who spend millions of bucks to get there and stay there -- it can be an inspiring place to visit. I was there last week during a short vacation, And several of the Capitol's beautiful shrines -- the Martin Luther King Memorial, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial -- were truly uplifting. Even the modest World War One Memorial had its own quiet power. Walking by it reminded me of that heartbreaking line, as sung by The Pogues, in "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" about "the forgotten heroes of a forgotten war." I couldn't get it out of my head.

And yes, I saw some inspiring music too, music that makes me proud to be an American.

That's the sound of The Blues Explosion!

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, touring behind their rollicking new album Freedom Tower: No-Wave Dance Party 2015,  played The Black Cat Club last Saturday night.

Judah Bauer

They roared, they thundered, they rolled, they tumbled. Spencer and fellow guitarist Judah Bauer made their guitars scream while drummer Russell Simins was, well, explosive.

And Spencer sweats more than any singer I've ever seen with the possible exception of James Brown.

I'd seen this group live twice before. Once here in Santa Fe back in 1994 when they opened for The Breeders at the old Sweeney Convention Center. The next time was 1997 when I was playing Rock 'n' Roll Tourist in New York and JSBX was playing at the Freedom Tibet festival.

Making the theremin holler

But 21 years after I saw them for the first time, I have to say The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion was louder, wilder, more distorted, more screechy than they were back in the day.

It sometimes seemed they were emphasizing the "No-Wave" aspect of the album title on Friday night. Yet still, it was a "Dance Party." The music always is more fun than artsy -- even when it's artsy, Through the wall of noise, distorted blues, soul and funk riffs provided a framework for the sonic madness. And though sometimes the vocals were buried beneath the chaos, Spencer's charisma, his sly grin and his unabashed enthusiastic showmanship carried the night.

And the boy plays a mean theremin!

Daddy Long Legs

I'd purchased my tickets for this show weeks ago. But I was surprised to learn just a couple of hours before the concert that Spencer's opening act was going to be none other than Daddy Long Legs, a dapper trio from Brooklyn (by way of St. Louis) of whom a wise critic once said "is the most exciting blues/punk group, this side of Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band, on the scene today."

Led by the tall gawky red-headed singer and harmonica honker (who also goes by the name Daddy Long Legs) the group ripped through tunes from their Norton Records albums Blood from a Stone and Evil Eye on You.

I've been wanting to see this band for a couple of years. To be able to see them on the same bill as The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion was a special joy.

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But by far the weirdest show I saw in Washington, D.C. was by one of my favorite cowpunk groups, Jason & The Scorchers, who provided the music for a modern dance performance at The Kennedy Center.

You read that correctly. Jason & The Scorchers. Kennedy Center. Modern dance performance. Cowpunk.

The idea for the performance, titled Victory Road  (from an old Scorchers tune) came from  Lucy Bowen McCauley, artistic director and choreographer of the dance company bearing her name.

 “It’s a journey,” McCauley told The Washington City Paper. “There’s a reason there’s one song after the other. It’s not like Broadway; there’s no talking among the dancers and the dancers don’t sing. But there is a storyline, a riff on [The Scorchers] history.”

Last Friday night was the world premier of Victory Road.

Basically, singer Jason Ringenberg stood at one end of the stage while lead guitarist Warner Hodges was at the other end. The rest of the Scorchers were below in the orchestra pit. In the middle of the stage, the dancers did their thing.

Look, I'm a complete rube when it comes to dance performances, modern or otherwise. I'm a rock 'n' roll guy, not a dance guy. So I won't pretend to review that aspect of the show. I was there for Jason and the boys -- though I suspect most of the audience there were modern-dance fans.

Scorchers '97

And they sounded good, tromping through some of my favorite rocking Scorchers hits like "Gospel Plow," "White Lies," "Shop It Around" "Self Sabotage," and the Dylan-penned "Absolutely Sweet Marie." Several of the tunes in the show -- including "Getting Nowhere Fast," "Days of Wine and Roses" -- were from their most recent (2010) album, Halcyon Times.

However, probably due to the elite setting of the Kennedy Center and the whole dance thing, the Scorchers were more subdued than the wild men I saw tear up the Liberty Lunch in Austin at South by Southwest in 1997. They never turned it up to 11 at the Kennedy Center. Kept it about 8 and a half, even for their encore songs they played following the regular Victory Road program.

Still, it was great to see them again. I have to respect their willingness to try something like this.

Come to think of it, Jason & The Scorchers doing music for a modern dance troupe makes me proud to be an American also.

Final Bow.
Photo by Chuck McCutcheon

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: Sweet Revenge for The Mekons

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
April 10, 2015

Ed Roche, the former head of Touch and Go Records, summed up the appeal of the longest surviving punk band in the world: “The joke around the label is that every critic loves The Mekons. Unfortunately, they get free records.”

Roche made those remarks in the documentary Revenge of The Mekons, which is playing at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe next week. And the underlying truth of Roche’s joke can be seen at the Metacritic page for the movie. There are 10 reviews of critics listed (and only one bad review). And no “users” (non-professional critic) reviews.

Devout Mekons fans probably will become devout fans of this movie, directed by Joe Angio, (whose previous film was a documentary about  actor/director Melvin Van Peebles called How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (And Enjoy It).)

Revenge tells the story of how The Mekons came together as students in Leeds in 1977 and how they’ve they’ve kept going through the years -- with an amazingly stable roster for the last 20 or 25 years -- remaining true to their vision and consistently producing inspiring work.

“We were a bunch of art students when we formed, and it was an at project bascaly,” singer/guitarist Jon Langford says on camera. “We weren’t musicians. We were just seeing how far we could take it.”

As faithful readers of this column can attest, I’m one of those critics who loves the damned Mekons. I’ve seen them live twice (both during South by Southwest festivals in Austin) and I think I’ve reviewed every album the band has released in the past 20 years, plus many of the offshoot projects like The Waco Brothers and various Langford and Sally Timms solo records.

And it never fails to frustrate me that no matter how I’ve tried to spread the word about this wonderful musical collective of visionaries, rebels and oddballs – and how writers far more talented and influential than I have tried to do the same -- The Mekons’ audience never seems to rise beyond the level of small-but-rabid cult.

In an interview at a Minnesota radio station shown in the film, the host notes the longevity of the group – their first incarnation was in 1977 – and asks the band, “What’s the key to your success?” Members look around at each other, grinning, possibly suppressing laughter.

Singer Timms, a Mekon since the mid 80s, answers: “Success is the thing that usually kills bands in the end. So we haven’t had any success. We’ve had none of the attendant problems. It’s easier than fighting over huge sums of money. We fight over $10 or $15.”

The Mekons in the 80s

So what’s the key to their lack of success? Probably it’s because of the band’s uncompromising nature – and their precarious relationship with the music industry.

Kevin Lycett, a founding Mekon who was with the band until 1989, summed it up in the movie while talking about their brief association with Virgin Records, which released their first album:

“We wanted total control. They couldn’t say what was released; they couldn’t put anything out without our say-so. Couldn’t do posters without our say-so. Couldn’t package it without our say-so. We removed every possible incentive for Virgin to be interested in us. It was a masterpiece of flushing ourselves down the loo.”

Likewise, longtime Mekons drummer Steve Goulding says, “I don’t think it’s anti-capitalist so much as just having an ideal that you want to stay with … It’s not really a political stance. It’s an artistic stance.”

Fans will appreciate these interviews with various members past and present. Listing to Langford and the equally witty Timms talk is always a pleasure. But I came away with new appreciation for Susie Honeyman, the band’s fiddler for more than 30 years, whose day job is running a London art gallery with her husband. Honeyman talks about how she was terrified of Timms at first (“… she was extremely rude and vicious. She’s toned down the viciousness.”)

Langford with The Waco Brothers

And while other Mekons laugh off their bad luck in the music biz, Honeyman tells a story of attending a party thrown by A&M Records, the band’s label for a couple of albums in the late ‘80s. The new management was announcing all the artists signed with the label but didn’t mention The Mekons. The group knew their time with A&M was over and you can see the heartbreak in Honeyman’s eyes.

Also excellent is the live footage of The Mekons on stage through the decades including some extremely rare clips of early shows. You’ll see Timms forgetting the lyrics to “Ghosts of American Astronauts” and Langford doing a hilariously obnoxious rock-star dance as the rest of the band sits in an “unplugged” set.

So go see Revenge of The Mekons. And bring a friend or two to try to expand the cult just a little.

There will be a sneak preview of Revenge of The Mekons at the Center for Contemporary Arts at 6:30pm  Thursday, April 16 at 6:30pm, followed by a Skype Q&A with Langford. Regular showings begin Friday, April 17.

Kenny Delgado as I remember him

Canutofest!  Friends and family of the late Kenny “Canuto” Delgado are organizing a fitting tribute to the man that many have described as Santa Fe’s number one music fan. Delgado died last Thanksgiving  after struggling many years with cardiac problems.

Delgado was a longtime member of the Santa Fe Bandstand Committee, which is responsible for the free music program on the Plaza every summer. And was a constant presence at concerts from rock 'n' roll to mariachi.

Canutofest will take place Saturday, April 18 at 4 pm – 10 pm at El Museo Cultural De Santa Fe, 555 Camino De La Familia in Santa Fe. Musical acts playing,  playing, according to a preliminary list, include Sean Healen,  Ramon Bermudez, The Mikey Baker Trio, The Chris Abeyta Quartet Strings Attached  and Sweet Sister Gospel Band withTerry Diers.

There is no charge, but those attending are asked to bring supplies for the Santa Fe Animal Shelter – high end dog and cat food (the shelter refers Purina), non-clumping kitty litter etc.

Video treats: Here's a whole lotta Mekons, starting with the trailer for Revenge of The Mekons












I'm not sure why, but since watching Revenge of The Mekons, "Beaten and Broken" has become my favorite Mekons song. Here's a version from last summer with Robbie Fulks. (Unfortunately the sound isn't great but the performance is great fun. I'm not sure what cracked up Sally and the others. Maybe it was Lu's strange saz solo.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: It's Almost Ruination Day

The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. The sinking of the Titanic, The Black Sunday dust storm of 1935.

What do these great American disasters and tragedies have in common?

They all occurred on April 14.

Gillian Welch dubbed it "Ruination Day."

It's also the day that Don Ho died in 2007. But I won't go there.

There is no national holiday next Tuesday, but we can remember the victims and the the historical consequences of all three events through songs like these:


 

And here are the two songs called "April 14 Part 1" and "Ruination Day Part 2" on Gillian Welch's 2001 album Time (The Revelator). In  both there are images of Lincoln, the Titanic and Okies fleeing the Dust Bowl. She makes direct reference to "God Moves on the Water," from the refrain of Bessie Jones' song about the Titanic.





Oh, what the hell?

WACKY WEDNESDAY: Happy Birthday (in Advance) Tom Lehrer

Tom Lehrer, satirist, math professor and high-ranking "sicknik" (at least according to Time magazine) turns 87 tomorrow.

Known for his tinkling piano and a poisoned mind, Lehrer hasn't been active in the music world for decades, but during his brief heyday he was one of the musical heroes of the grim, gray '50s.

Behind his piano in  a jacket, tie and horn-rimmed glasses, he looked like the ultimate square. And yet he was singing subversive themes about nuclear bombs, lynching, pollution, the military .. and poisoning pigeons in the park. And unlike some of the people he lampooned in his song "Folk Song Army," he pulled it off without sounding self-righteous.

I've enjoyed Lehrer's music for years, but I like him even more since reading what Time magazine had written about him  -- as related in an excellent profile published last year in BuzzFeed by editor-in-chief Ben Smith.

In July 1959, Time featured Lehrer alongside Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl as the avatars of a new “sick” comedy, which it played as the symptom of a sick society. “What the sickniks dispense is partly social criticism liberally laced with cyanide, partly a Charles Addams kind of jolly ghoulishness, and partly a personal and highly disturbing hostility toward all the world,” the magazine wrote.

That's great company to be in, Lenny, Mort and Charles Addams too. Damn, I want to be a sicknik!

So go read Smith's article and enjoy this sampler of Leher tunes below. Happy birthday, Tom!

It's probably a good thing that PETA wasn't around when Leher recorded this one



And here's one about Los Alamos -- where Lehrer once worked for "the old AEC.".

This next one was written decades before 50 Shades of Grey,



As for the next one: WHAT KIND OF MESSAGE DOES THIS SEND TO THE CHILDREN?



Not many singers have covered Tom Lehrer songs. But one who did was Barbara Manning in the late 1990s. Backed by members of Calexico, she played with Leher's melody, bringing out all the latent creepiness and wisely omitted the first and last verse's of Leher's song, the ones that basically wink and tell listeners the whole thing is a joke. With her wide-eyed delivery, Manning creates something that is no longer a clever goof, but something that could be ripped from today's headlines..

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, April 5, 2015 
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

Here's the playlist below

Like the Terrell's Sound World Facebook page

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, April 3, 2015 
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM 
Webcasting! 
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell 
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist below:

Like the Santa Fe Opry Facebook page 

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list
ksfr.org

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Let's Celebrate Lead Belly

Lead Belly in Life magazine, April 1937.

Just 78 years ago this month, Life magazine did a three-page spread on Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly. who was well on his way to becoming one of the titans of 20th Century music.

There was a full-color picture, of the barefoot singer in overalls, sitting on grain sacks and playing guitar, his mouth wide open in song.

O.K., so the rustic image was pretty hokey. But what was really shocking about the Life article was the headline:

Lead Belly - Bad Nigger Makes Good Minstrel.

And just so we're clear, this was Life magazine. the epitome of mainstream American publications, not some KKK hate pamphlet.

And part of the photo spread was a black and white close-up of Lead Belly's hands playing a guitar. The caption: "These hands once killed a man."

Again, this wasn't the Police Gazette, it was Life magazine!

To say the least, Lead Belly deserved better.

I'm not going to go into his whole life story here. If you're not familiar with the man and his music, Check out the documentary Legend of Lead Belly, which will be airing on the Smithsonian channel later this month. (Or watch it right now, free, HERE)

It's sad that Lead Belly never lived to see it --  he died in  1949 at the age of 61 -- but through the years he really has gained a tremendous degree of respectability.

Like so many true avatars of American music, Lead Belly never sold many records himself. His biggest "hits' -- like "Goodnight Irene," "Midnight Special," "Rock Island Line," "Gallis Pole" (redone by Led Zeppelin as "Gallows Pole" and "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" (made famous by Nirvana) were all done by other singers. Musicians from Judy Garland to Nirvana have recorded Leadbelly songs.

With his 12-string guitar (and sometimes piano or even accordion) He sang sweet love songs; work songs; dirty blues; raw versions of pop songs; outlaw ballads; story songs retelling the news of the day; protest songs like "Bourgeois Blues"; cowboy famtasies and more.

Perhaps the cruelest irony was that "Goodnight Irene" became hugely popular -- the year after he died. The folk group called The Weavers was the best-known cover, but Frank Sinatra, Ernest Tubb and countless others covered it too.

Last month, Smithsonian Folkways released a five disc collection called Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection featuring five hours of music including 16 unreleased tracks. It's got most of his better-known tunes plus a bunch of obscurities. There's even a recording of a radio show in which Lead Belly starts singing along with a Bessie Smith song.

Leadbelly's most famous tunes are so much a part of our collective musical wiring, it's the less-famous ones I've been enjoying the most since the Smithsonian collection. So I'm going to embed a few of the great obscurities here.

Bob Dylan, as a horny teen, wrote a song for Brigitte Bardot. Lead Belly wrote this one for a movie sex symbol of his day.



Here's a more serious song, the story of nine Black teenagers accused of raping a white woman in Alabama. They were found guilty by (you guessed it) an all-white juries, The story of the Scottsboro Boys is widely considered an astonishing miscarriage of justice. Lead Belly thought so too. ("Stay woke," Lead Belly warned in the interview following the song)


 I think this song was on the first Lead Belly record I ever heard. My high school friend Paul Songer had it on some album and it made me an instant Lead Belly fan.



And here's one for the iddies-kay.

WACKY WEDNESDAY: A Twisted Rock 'n' Roll Prank

HeWhoCannotBeNamed

Here's a Wacky Wednesday April Fool's Day tribute to one of the craziest rock 'n' roll pranks of all time.

It involves a punk band called The Dwarves and their guitarist known as HeWhoCannotBeNamed.

In April of 1993 (I can't swear that the date was April 1, but the holiday was bound to have had something to do with this) The Dwarves announced that HeWho had been stabbed to death in a barroom fight in Philadelphia.

The horror! Dying in Philly!

But it turned out to be a little joke.

Their label at the time SubPop, was not amused.

Click to enlarge 

The label issued a press release on June 23, 1993, saying that Dwarves vocalist Blag Dahlia had provided the label "with detailed, repeated and convincing evidence that Hewho had been killed in what appeared to be  an anonymous `bar fight' in Philadelphia last April, a few months following their winter European tour.

I'm still not sure what an "anonymous" bar fight is, but let's continue:

"The information was even detailed enough to have included an address to send flowers and condolences, for which we received a thank-you card from Hewho's `family' in Wisconsin. ...

"When we discovered it was a hoax, we accepted Blag's defense that it was a 'punk rock thing to do,  in keeping with the spirit of the band, a simple experiment in media exploitation, and at very least a long-overdue spark of something remotely interesting in a supposedly `alternative' music scene that , as recently evidenced by Lollapalooza, has become as staid, corporate and boring as the institutions it originally sought to shatter.

"While all of the aforementioned may be true, it is also true that the whole ordeal unforgivably overstepped the bounds of media manipulation and self-promotion. ...[it's] an inexcusable exploitation and trivialization of death itself."

The release went on to mention two musicians who actually had recently died "whose deaths were most readily associated with the purported death of HeWhoCannotBeNamed. ... the obvious fact remains that everyone has been affected by death, and crass exploitation of these emotions in what essentially amounts to commercialism is inhuman."

But this public upbraiding wasn't the only consequence of the hoax. In the same press release, SubPop announced that the upcoming Dwaves album Sugarfix would be the last one on the label. And it was.

At that point it was too late to change the artwork in the CD booklet, which had a black-and-white photo of the masked guitarist with the inscription "He Who Cannot Be Named 1972-1993."

If that birthdate is more trustworthy than the death date. he would have been 20 or 21 when all this came down.

And the album ended with a song that would have looked prophetic had the beans not been spilled on the hoax. It was called "Wish That I Was Dead." The liner notes said that was for Del Shannon, whose suicide in 1990 was not a hoax.

Asked about the death prank in Eric Davidson's (New Bomb Turks) 2010 book We Never Learn: The Gunk Punk Undergut, 1988-2001 Blag said, "Well, HeWho transcended life and death, he is a great figure and he fucking dies for your sins. I told them that at SubPop. How was I supposed to know he would rematerialize? Meanwhile, they had no sense of humor about it ..."

So you decide: was this good rock 'n' roll fun or a sick example of bad taste? But, as Charlie the Tuna might say, do you want rock 'n' roll with good taste or rock 'n' roll that tastes good?

Whatever, everyone survived The Dwarves' little prank. Subpop's still around, The Dwarves are still around ...



Hewho's still in the band, though he's done some solo stuff as well ...



And you can still find this magic song:



(Thanks to FLICKR member warrenjabali for preserving the SubPop press release)