Big show coming to Santa Fe this Sunday. And it's free.
The Santa Fe Music Alliance is presenting Make Music Santa Fe 2015 at Santa Fe Railyard Plaza, featuring a boatload -- or maybe a trainload -- of Santa Fe musicians.
On the bill are a couple of siblings -- Tony Gilkyson and Eliza Gilkyson -- who lived and played here years ago but moved on to bigger towns and bigger things. Eliza has had a successful career as a singer-songwriter, while Tony has been a guitarist for Lone Justice, X, and Chuck E. Weiss' G-d Damn Liars. He's great as a solo artist too. His solo album Goodbye Guitar was near the top of my Best of 2006 list.
The show starts at 2:30 pm Sunday and goes on until 10 p.
(Full disclosure: I recently became an advisory member of the Santa Fe Musical Alliance, which is a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering creativity and community by supporting a sustainable and vital environment for music of all genres in Santa Fe, N.M.)
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican June 12, 2015 For about a decade after the nation’s independence from France in the early 1950s, there was a great cultural bloom in Cambodia. The country was relatively prosperous. Phnom Penh, its capital, was alive and thriving. The ancient culture was strong — in fact, strong enough not to be threatened by encroaching modern Western culture.
During this time, before the war in neighboring Vietnam spilled over and eventually engulfed the land, Cambodians joyfully welcomed the outside world: motorcycles, miniskirts, and long hair. They didn’t miss out on the ’60s in Cambodia. They loved the cha cha cha from Cuba. They loved soul music and rock ’n’ roll from the U.S.A. — and from France, England, and wherever else it drifted in from.
As shown in the new documentary Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll, by John Pirozzi, this was a sweet dream that ended brutally. Communist rebels known as the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in 1975. Led by a shadowy figure named Pol Pot, the new leaders forced mass evacuations from Phnom Pehn and other cities, and for the next four years, in their effort to build a socialist paradise, they basically turned the whole nation into a big agricultural prison camp. With grim vehemence the Khmer Rouge targeted intellectuals, professionals, artists, and, yes, musicians. They almost destroyed a nation, including its music.
Another terrible truth: Some of the biggest stars of Cambodian pop and rock — including Sinn Sisamouth, Ros Serey Sothea, Pen Ran (sometimes spelled Pan Ron), and Yol Aularong — apparently ended up in unmarked graves in the killing fields during the Khmer Rouge years. Nobody, not even their surviving family members, knows exactly when or where they died.
Although Pirozzi certainly doesn’t pull any punches about the Khmer Rouge, fortunately the documentary is not just about slaughter, repression, and horror. The first part of the film deals with the good times, the crazy music, and the amazing musicians who made it.
My name is Prince ...
During that heady golden age, Cambodia was ruled by a prince named Norodom Sihanouk. He might be the closest thing to a benevolent dictator the world has seen in modern times. You might say he governed with a velvet fist. Not only was he the man in charge, Sihanouk was an artist, a poet, a filmmaker — and a musician. He sang, and he played sax. He was a prince, and he was funky! Sihanouk composed music, including a patriotic anthem called “Phnom Penh,” which appears in the documentary and on its excellent soundtrack album, performed by members of the Royal University of Fine Arts. (The song originally appeared in Sihanouk’s mid-’60s movie, The Enchanted Forest.) Sihanouk ordered government departments to start their own orchestras. His regime sponsored singing contests around the country. The national radio station moved away from focusing on dull government propaganda to blasting cool music.
It is true Sihanouk didn’t put up with much dissent. As the film points out, he cracked down hard on Commie insurgents from the rural areas. Watching the movie, it seems Sihanouk considered these rebels not only to be traitors but party poopers as well. He adopted a policy of neutrality during the Cold War. That became harder as the fighting in Vietnam escalated next door. The drums of war would eventually drown out even the loudest Cambodian rock bands and spell doom for Cambodia’s cultural oasis, but in the meantime, the kids there rocked out to those wild American sounds brought there by tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming.
Sihanouk was overthrown by a right-wing, U.S.-backed coup in 1970. He later joined forces with the very Communist insurgents he’d once repressed. But as soon as the Khmer Rouge took power, Sihanouk basically ended up under house arrest.
I’ve been listening to Cambodian rockers like Sisamouth (who Pirozzi has described as the Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley of Cambodia) and Sothea for nearly a decade, ever since I became a fan of Dengue Fever, a California band that was sparked by Cambodian rock from this era. But until watching Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten, I didn’t know anything about their lives — except that they probably were killed by Pol Pot’s bully boys.
Despite facing some obvious limitations, Pirozzi brings these artists to life. Unfortunately, not much footage of the musicians survived the great destruction. However, the filmmaker found tons of great photos, including an amazing colorful gallery of record covers. He tracked down surviving family members — Sothea’s sister and Sisamouth’s son, Sin Chanchhaya (who died earlier this year shortly after winning the legal rights to more than 70 of his dad’s songs).
He also found some musicians who survived the Pol Pot years. There is Mol Kagnol of the band Baksey Cham Krong — the group could play surf music as well as what sounds like a twangy country ballad (the song “Full Moon”).
There is also an interview with a female singer named Sieng Vannthy, who recalls Nancy Sinatra in miniskirt and go-go boots in her star years. Vannthy, who died in 2009, tells how she avoided probable execution by lying and telling the Khmer Rouge soldiers that she was a banana vendor, not a singer.
I once wrote that Dengue Fever, by turning so many people on to long-forgotten Cambodian rock, represented “a sweet, symbolic triumph of freedom over totalitarianism; of rock ’n’ roll over the killing fields; of sex, joy, fast cars, and loud guitars over the forces of gloom and repression.” That goes triple for Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten. This story needs to be told, and this music needs to be heard.
The film opens on Friday, June 12, at The Screen.
Here's the trailer:
And here's some Cambodian rock strating with Sinn Sisamouth doing the monkey
Ros Sereysothea rocks!
On this next one by Yol Aularong, try not to think of "Pagan Baby" by Creedence Clearwater Revival
Reviewing the movie Love and Mercy last week sent me on Beach Boys kick. One of my favorite songs of theirs for decades has been "Sloop John B," the tale of a miserable sea voyage that started in the Bahamas.
Released first as a single in March 1966, then included a few months later on Pet Sounds, the John B story told goes way beyond cruising to the hamburger stand in your daddy's car:
We come on the sloop John B My grandfather and me Around Nassau town we did roam Drinking all night Got into a fight Well I feel so broke up I want to go home So hoist up the John B's sail See how the mainsail sets Call for the Captain ashore Let me go home. Let me go home I wanna go home, yeah yeah Well I feel so broke up I wanna go home The first mate he got drunk And broke in the Cap'n's trunk The constable had to come and take him away Sheriff John Stone Why don't you leave me alone, yeah yeah Well I feel so broke up I wanna go home So hoist up the John B's sail See how the mainsail sets Call for the Captain ashore Let me go home, I wanna go home Why don't you let me go home I feel so broke up I wanna go home Let me go home The poor cook he caught the fits And threw away all my grits And then he took and he ate up all of my corn Let me go home Why don't they let me go home This is the worst trip I've ever been on
No, Brian Wilson didn't write this song. It was brought to him by Al Jardine, the Beach Boys' resident folkie, Jardine had picked it up from a version, titled "Wreck of the John B," by The Kingston trio.
Take a listen:
The Trio was not the only folk group that did this song. Cisco Houston recorded a version, as did The Weavers in the '50s. Country singer Johnny Cash, who also moved around folk music circles, included it under the title "I Wanna Go Home" on his 1959 album Songs From Our Soil.
But the song goes back much further. It came from the Bahamas. It was transcribed by British author Richard Le Gallienne in a 1916 issue of Harper's Monthly in an travel piece called “Coral Islands and Mangrove-Trees” We should thank Le Gallienne for introducing the song -- under the title "The John B. Sails" -- to mainstream culture. And we should try not to puke at his condescending, racist tone:
These negro songs of Nassau, though crude as to words, have a very haunting, barbaric melody, said to come straight from the African jungle, full of hypnotizing repetitions and absurd choruses, which, though they may not attract you much at first, end by getting into your blood, so that you often find yourself humming them unawares.
Thank you, great white father.
Poet Carl Sandburg collected it a decade later in his 1927 book of folk songs American Songbag.
Roger McGuinn of The Byrds, who recorded his own version a few years ago, did a little research on the song. (Click that link. McGuinn has a nice, free MP3 for you.) On his website, he quotes Sandburg:
'John T. McCutcheon, cartoonist and kindly philosopher, and his wife Eveleyn Shaw McCutcheon, mother and poet, learned to sing this song on their Treasure Island in the West Indies. They tell of it, 'Time and usage have given this song almost the dignity of a national anthem around Nassau. The weathered ribs of the historic craft lie embedded in the sand at Governor's Harbour, when an expedition, especially set up for the purpose in 1926, extracted a knee of horseflesh and a ring-bolt. These relics are now preserved and built into the Watch Tower, designed by Mr. Howard Shaw and built on our southern coast a couple of points east by north of the star Canopus.'
Nassau singer Blake Alphonso Higgs, who went by the name "Blind Blake" (but was not the American bluesman!) did a calypso version in the early 50s. Another Bahamian, guitar picker Joseph Spence recorded it in his own peculiar way, on his 1972 Arhoolie album Good Morning Mr. Walker.
Van Morrison teamed up with skiffle king Lonnie Donegan at the turn of the century to do this mighty keen rendition. Donegan had recorded a lush version of it in 1960 under the title "I Wanna Go Home." I especially like his verse about the captain being a "wicked man.'
With all the drinking, fighting and other mayhem in this songs it's a wonder that there aren't more punk rock versions. But this Italian band, Devasted, had the right idea
This is a musician I stumbled across several years ago when messing around on
the still wonderful
Free Music Archive.
I'll admit, what first drew me to Al Duvall was the fact that he'd actually
teamed up
with one of my other FMA discoveries, the lovely
Singing Sadie.(Whatever happened to her? Someone lemme know!)
Usually accompanying himself on banjo, sometimes doubling on kazoo, Duvall seems
like some medicine-show performer from some past century come to life.
Vaudeville for the criminally insane. His pun-heavy lyrics are dark and wicked,
in a
Tom Lehrer sort of way. Not hard to imagine Lehrer and Duvall sitting on a park bench
together poisoning the pigeons.
Not much is known about Duvall. There are a couple of interesting bios online.
This one appears on his FMA page:
Born June 31, 1877 in Pahrump, West Virginia, Algernon Otmer Duvall began
his musical career on the vaudeville stage as end-man in Lew Dockstader's
Minstrels. He fought in a bicycle squadron in Ypres during World War I,
where he received a crippling dose of the Hun's mustard. Returning home, he
made ends meet working at a sausage factory in Harrington Delaware from 1921
until 1989. He took up the banjo in 1991 as physical therapy for his
pleurisy. He went on to master the alto kazoo at the age of 118. "Al" Duvall
attributes his remarkable longevity to a daily dram of Hamlin's Quinsy
Balsam.
A slightly different version of the Duvall biography can be found at his
Reverb Nation site.
Al Duvall, a grandchild of the Great Depression, was one of many unemployed
musicians in 1932 who was sent via time machine into the future to find
work, as part of the WPA program. His timing couldn't have been better, for
IN TIMES LIKE THESE (SM) we could all use an entertainer whose charm and
musicianship once made the Great Depression so great. Hopefully, Al will
bring a little bit of Depression to you with his cloud-scattering mirth.
I don't know which one to believe.
Actually, I understand he lives in Brooklyn and might not really be over 100.
Here is a tune called "Bareknuckle Ballerina" There's a classic Duvall line in
this one: "I still cherish that night in Paris / When you were in St. Paul
..."
Apparently Duvall found religion. In fact he's been washed in the "Blood of the
Hog." (Warning: This melody might remind you of a Lovin' Spoonful song.)
Below is Duvall's most recent album, Insomnibus available at
Bandcamp. You
can listen to it for free. But if you like it, buy the darn thing. I just
did.
Sunday, June 7, 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
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Love is Like A Blob by Quintron & Miss Pussycat
Fire in the Western World by Dead Moon
Lesson of Crime by YVY
Sugar Buzz by The Ruiners
It's Gravity by T. Tex Edwards
Marijuana Hell by The Rockin' Guys
Spy Boy by Graceland
Blame it on Mom by Johnny Thunders
J'vais m'en j'ter un derrière by Tony Truant & The Fleshtones
Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby by Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Bowlegged Woman, Knock-Kneed Man by Bobby Rush
I'm Not a Sicko, There's a Plate in My Head by The Oblivians
Black Snake by Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears
Backstreet Girl by Social Distortion
Heroes and Villains/ Melt Away/Surfs Up by Brian Wilson
Cambodian Rock Set
Phnom Penh by The Royal University of the Arts
Under the Sound of the Rain by Sinn Sisamouth
Dondung Goan Gay by Meas Samoun
What Girl is Better Than Me? by Ros Serey Sothea
B.E.K. by Baksey Cham Krong
Dance Soul Soul by Liev Tuk
Taxi Dancer by Dengue Fever
Cyclo by Yol Aularong
Pedestrian Blues by Jody Porter
Please Judge by Roky Erikson
The House Where Nobody Lives by King Ernest
Hang Down Your Head by Petty Booka
I Wish I Was in New Orleans by Tom Waits CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Friday, June 5 , 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! terrel(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist below:
OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens
Long Hauls and Close Calls by Hank 3
Harm's Way by The Waco Brothers
Bad on Fords by Ray Wylie Hubbard
West Nashville Boogie by Steve Earle
Name Game by D.M. Bob & The Deficits
Still Drunk, Still Crazy, Still Blue by Whitey Morgan & The 78s
The Old Man From the Mountain by Bryan & The Haggards with Eugene Chadbourne
Closing Time by The Pleasure Barons
Coffee Grindin' Blues by Asylum Street Spankers
Don't Touch My Horse by Slackeye Slim
Here Lies a Good Old Boy by James Hand
Truck Driver's Queen by Louie Setzer
Honky Tonk Queen by Moe and Joe
Diggy Liggy Lo by Commander Cody & His Last Planet Airmen
I'm a Nut by Leroy Pullens
Hiram Hubbard by Jean Ritchie with Doc Watson
It's All Going to Pot by Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard with Jamey Johnson
Love and Mercy on Wilco
My Blood is Too Red by Ronny Elliott
The Devil, My Conscious and I by Billy Barton
Hell's Angels by Johnny Bond
Banjo Lovin' Hound Dog by Johnny Banjo
Rubber Doll by The Lone X
Shot Four Times and Dyin' by Bill Carter
Back Street Affair by Webb Pierce
Ragged But Right by George Jones
What Made Milwaukee Famous by Johnny Bush
I Can Talk to Crows by Chipper Thompson
Roll on Colorado by Fred Shumate
Whiskey and Cocaine by Stevie Tombstone
Sleep with Open Windows by Chip Taylor with Lucinda Williams
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican June 5, 2015 “A choke of grief heart hardened I/Beyond belief a broken man too tough to cry.”
Those lines, from Brian Wilson’s greatest song, “Surf’s Up,” sum up a good portion of the new biopic Love and Mercy. I don’t know whether Wilson’s lyricist Van Dyke Parks was consciously describing Wilson’s emotional state when he was collaborating with him on the songs for the album Smile in the mid-’60s, but the words fit.
And indeed, it’s a broken man at the center of Love and Mercy. Wilson, portrayed by Paul Dano (’60s Brian) and John Cusack (’80s Brian) is psychologically shattered despite his popularity, wealth, and accomplishments.
In the two main periods covered by this movie, Wilson is seen as the victim of loathsome bullies. First, there his father, Murray, who physically beat and psychologically abused him (“It’s not a love song, it’s a suicide note,” he growls when Brian plays him an early version of “God Only Knows.”).
And then there’s Wilson’s cousin and bandmate Mike Love, one of the most annoying jerks in the history of rock ’n’ roll, who fought, criticized, and humiliated Wilson at every turn during his most creative period, the Pet Sounds and Smile years. “It’s not Beach Boys fun!” he snaps at Wilson during the Pet Sounds sessions. “Even the happy songs are sad.”
But the most intense and fearsome bully in Wilson’s life is Dr. Eugene Landy (played magnificently by Paul Giamatti). He was hired as a psychotherapist to help Wilson overcome his addictions, but turned into a virtual captor who overmedicated him and ripped him off financially. “I have it under control,” he says to Wilson’s girlfriend Melinda. “I am the control.”
A fun family barbecue with Dr. Landy
With all these villains here, there has to be a hero, and that’s Melinda Ledbetter, played by Elizabeth Banks. A former model who meets Wilson when she’s working as a Cadillac saleswoman, Melinda is not a fraction as forceful as Landy. And as hard as she tries, she’s unable to make Wilson stand up for himself.
But her compassion and her determination eventually succeed. (In real life, she and Wilson married in 1995, several years after Landy was vanquished.)
Speaking of real life, I’m not sure how close the movie is to actual events. The film was made with the cooperation of Wilson. (He appears in the closing credits, singing the title song.) So it’s bound to be the version of events that he wants to tell – even though he doesn’t come out looking so gallant. I don’t think anyone would deny that Wilson was as helpless and befuddled as he appears in the film.
But was Landy really as deplorable as Giamatti makes him? Was Ledbetter really as angelic?
Paul Dano as Brian Wilson in the studio
For a 50-plus-year Beach Boys fan like myself, the best scenes are the ones in which Wilson is in the studio recording tracks for Pet Sounds and the ill-fated original Smile with that tight-knit gaggle of studio cats nicknamed the Wrecking Crew. Dano portrays Wilson as wide-eyed and on fire with crazy ideas, much of which worked.
You see the infamous scene in which Wilson makes all the studio musicians wear firemen’s helmets while recording a track about fire. You see Wilson putting bobby pins on piano strings to get a crazy sound. And there are Wilson’s dogs in the studio barking for the final fade-out of “Caroline No.” (“Hey Chuck, do you think we could get a horse in here?” Wilson asks an engineer.)
One of my favorite elements of this movie are the lush, eerie sound collages representing the music, and sometimes the demons, in Brian’s head. Recognizable snippets of Wilson/Beach Boys music rise and fall back into the swirling vortex of sound. I had to check the credits to make sure it wasn’t Animal Collective on the soundtrack, a Wilson-influenced group if ever there was one.
It’s not. The man responsible is Atticus Ross, who has won awards including an Oscar and a Grammy for his soundtracks for The Social Network and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, respectively. These strange sonic montages – sometimes sweet and heavenly, sometimes dark and tormenting – are essential to the story. The nonstop crazy symphony in Wilson’s head seems to be the source of his greatest works, though it often sounds like a direct and terrifying reflection of his inner turmoil.
I’m not sure how much Love and Mercy will appeal to those who don’t know or don’t care about Wilson’s music. (And believe it or not, there are people like that who walk the Earth.) But for those of us who have known and loved the Brian Wilson songbook, it’s a must-see.
The real Brian Wilson and
The real Dr. Landy
New Mexico side trip: They aren’t mentioned in Love and Mercy, but there are a couple of obscure New Mexico connections in the Wilson/Landy saga.
In August 1994, Beach Boy Al Jardine and two companies representing the band — Brother Records and Brother Tours, Inc. — filed a lawsuit in Santa Fe, accusing Wilson, Landy, and HarperCollins publishers of defaming the Beach Boys with the now discredited 1991 Wilson “autobiography” Wouldn’t It Be Nice.
That book painted an ugly portrait of the other band members and made Landy look as heroic as he appears villainous in Love and Mercy. (Wilson has since said he skimmed a draft of that book and did none of the writing.)
The plaintiffs also filed a virtually identical suit in New Hampshire. Wilson’s court-appointed conservator at the time, Jerome S. Billet, told me in 1994 that those were the only states that allowed suits to be filed three years after the alleged defamation.
But no Beach Boy ever had to appear in a Santa Fe courtroom. According to court records, a year later, Wilson was quietly dismissed as a defendant. The case was dismissed in early 1999.
After Landy lost his license to practice psychology in California, he still retained his license in two states: Hawaii and – you guessed it – New Mexico.
I don’t know how active he was here, but state records show he was licensed here between 1981 and his death in 2006. He’d had his license renewed in the state the year before. There are no violations or discipline reports on his record here.
Here is the official trailer:
Here is a frightening profile on ABC's Prime Time Live in 1991 when Wilson was still being "treated" by Landy.
And here is one of the most moving versions of the title song I've ever heard.
Jean Ritchie, an important figure in the New York folk revival -- and one of the sweetest voices ever captured on tape -- died Monday at the age of 92.
She one of 14 children in her family in Viper, Kentucky. Her dad let her play his dulcimer when she was seven years old. Now she's credited with reviving interest in that instrument.
Yes, Ritchie was a Kentucky farm girl. But she was no rustic bumpkin. She graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1946 with a degree in social work. She moved to New York City in the late '40s to work at at the Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side.
There, according to her obituary in the New York Times, "she routinely calmed the urban street children in her care with songs from the Cumberlands, which, with their haunting modal melodies and tales of simple pastimes, were so alien as to stun her young charges."
She became a regular on the Greenwich Village coffee house scene, did radio appearances with Oscar Brown and eventually was recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress.
Here's an appreciation by fellow Kentuckian Walter Tunis, a music writer for the Lexington Herald-Leader.
I've put together a Spotify playlist featuring about 35 minutes of her music.
But in the days before smoking bans, cigarettes -- made their smokey mark on various strands of American popular song.
Country singers poke fun at their addictive qualities. Sometimes their used as a metaphor of loneliness or a symptom of an empty, sinful life.
Listen to all of these tunes and you'll be coughing and hacking by the end of this blog post.
xxx
First let's start with the song that inspired this week's theme. A couple of weeks ago my old pal Mark asked me if I remembered a song that referred to a cigarette as something that had "fire on one end a fool on the other." I didn't recall this but went searching through cig songs to try to find it. Mark found it before I did, a novelty tune called "Cigareets & Whuskey and Wild, Wild Women." Mark found a good version by Ramblin; Jack Elliott. But I decided to use this goofy one by a group called Red Ingle & The Natural Seven. I never realized before that The Hombres lifted Ingle's introduction for the introduction to their own 1967 hit "Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out)."
I don't think hokum bluesman Bo Carter actually was singing about tobacco products in this 1936 love song, "Cigarette Blues."
One of the most famous country tunes about cigarettes was this talking song by Tex Williams, which he co-wrote with Merle Travis -- "Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette."
Here's a sad and sultry one called "Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray" by Patsy Cline.
Tiny Tim (you've read about him recently) reached back to 1898 to find a song defending nicotine addiction with "Sly Cigarette," performed here with Brave Combo.
Speaking of sly, Robbie Fulks paid tribute to his boyhood home, the great state of North Carolina in his song, "Cigarette State."
I'm not sure where Ry Cooder found "Fool for a Cigarette," but it appeared on his album Paradise and Lunch as a medley with J.B. Lenoir's "Feelin' Good."
If "Cigarettes and Coffee" were what powered Otis Redding, then they should be mandatory.