Sunday, August 16, 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 OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
The Claw by Barrence Whitfield
Nightclub by Andre Williams & The Goldstars
Misunderstood by Sons of Hercules
Double O Bum by Gas Huffer
Rimbaud Diddley by Churchwood
I Found Out by Nathaniel Mayer
Fall on You by The Plimsouls
Lucy Baines by The A-Bones
Bittersweet Candy by The Barbarellatones
Vegetables by The Beach Boys
Me and Mr. Jones by Amy Winehouse
Miss Beehive by Howard Tate
No No No by Die Zorros
Blindness by The Fall
The Hink-a-Dink by Chuck E. Weiss
Strobe Light by The B-52s
South Street by The Orlons
Shake Me by Motobunny
It's a Gas by Alfred E. Neuman
Conjuring the King
Heartbreak Hotel by The Cramps
Marie's the Name by Elvis Presley
En El Barrio by El Vez
One Night of Sin by Simon Stokes
Baby Let's Play House by Elvis Presley
Trouble by Danzig
You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet by Lisa Marie Presley
Rockabilly Rebel by Orion
Promised Land by Elvis Presley
Queenie Wahine's Papaya by Elvis Presley
Mystery Train by The Band
Jailhouse Rock by Patti Smith
Suspicious Minds by Dwight Yoakam
Little Sister by Elvis Presley
Hound Dog by Big Mama Thornton
Crying in the Chapel by Elvis Presley CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis Like the Terrell's Sound World Facebook page
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Friday, Aug. 14, 2015 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org Here's my playlist : OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens
Gettin' High for Jesus by Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs
Keep on Truckin' by Hot Tuna
Meat Man by D.M. Bob & The Deficits
Yes Ma'am, He Found Me in a Honky Tonk by Miss Leslie
Have You Heard the Gossip by Charlie Brown Jr.
Banana Puddin' by Southern Culture on the Skids
Knock Off Your Naggin' by Stonewall Jackson
Dixie Flyer by Mose McCormack
Robot Drone by Holly Wood
Losing Faith/ Hey Warden/ Bound for Glory by Audrey Auld
Rock-a-bye Baby Rock by Connie Dycus
My Old Man Boogie by The Rev. Peyton's Big Damn Band
Let's Get Wild by Rudy Grayzell
Owls by The Handsome Family
The Other Side of Nowhere by John Prine & Mac Wiseman
$2,000 Navajo Rug by Joe West & The Sinners
The Cat Never Sleeps by Mama Rosin with Hipbone Slim & The Knee-Tremblers
Mr. Garfield by Johnny Cash
White House Blues by Merle Travis
White House Blues by Jadoo
Marie Laveau by Bobby Bare
Monkey on a String by Charlie Poole
Still I'm Travelin' On by The Mississippi Sheiks
LSD by T. Tex Edwards
A Death in the Family by The Malpass Brothers
I Need Somebody Bad Tonight by Rhonda Vincent
My Reasons Why by Blaze Foley
Sin City by Chris Hillman & Herb Pedersen
Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues by Elvis Presley
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican August 14, 2015 A few years ago, when rock ’n’ soul shouter Barrence Whitfield first reunited with guitarist Peter Greenberg and bassman Phil Lenker — all original members of The Savages, who tore up the East Coast back in the mid-1980s — my biggest concern was that their excellent comeback album, Savage Kings, might be a one-shot deal.
But since then, Whitfield and his Savages have faithfully released an album every two years, Dig Thy Savage Soul (2013) and now Under a Savage Sky (official release date Aug. 21).
Once again, Whitfield and crew have laid down a record full of high-charged, hopped-up, rough, rowdy and raw tunes that should make you remember why you loved rock ’n’ roll in the first place.
There’s no mistaking this album for anything but a Barrence Whitfield record. It’s got your basic rocking guitar, screaming sax, and soulful shouts from Whitfield. There are musical nods to Little Richard, The Sonics (the immortal Washington state garage giants, with whom Barrence & The Savages toured earlier this year) and soulsters like Don Covay and Otis Redding.
But while the album retains all those elements that Whitfield fans expect, Under the Savage Sky has a harder edge — faster rhythms, louder drums, crunchier guitar — than the group’s previous efforts. As a band, The Savages are still extremely tight. Here they just seem more ferocious.
Barrence live in Santa Fe a few years ago
The core of the album consists of tunes written by Greenberg and fellow New Mexico resident Michael Mooney. (The two played together in a Taos garage band called Manby’s Head, which I haven’t seen in a couple of years.)
Among these are “Angry Hands,” which has a melody similar to Alice Cooper’s “I’m Eighteen” and — like “Willie Meehan” on Savage Kings — is about a washed-up boxer; “Incarceration Casserole,” which is about a guy whose wife is locked up in jail — causing him to obsess over who’s going to fix his dinner; and “Adjunct Street,” a slow, minor-key blues that Whitfield sings the hell out of.
Then there’s “Katy Didn’t,” written by Greenberg, Mooney, and Whitfield himself. Starting off with a guitar hook that reminds me of “Kicks” by Paul Revere & The Raiders, the song begins, “She had a hollow leg/Knew how to make me beg/She drank me under the table.”
As usual, Whitfield includes some inspired covers from deep in the bowels of Greenberg’s fabled record collection. “I’m a Full Grown Man,” which was originally called “I’m a Man” when soulman Timmy Willis recorded it decades ago, has sweet echoes of the Stax/Volt sound; “The Wolf Pack” goes all the way back to Kid Thomas (Louis Thomas Watts), who recorded it in 1955; and “I’m a Good Man,” an Eddie Snow song from the ’50s, which sounds like a rewrite of “Shake, Rattle and Roll.”
Under the Savage Sky ends with “Full Moon in the Daylight Sky,” an intense minor-key workout written by Whitfield and Lenker. It is scheduled for release on Aug. 21 but is ready for pre-order on all your favorite online shops.
Also recommended:
* Jamie Was a Boozer: Special Edition by Joe West & The Sinners. Back in 1998, Joe West was living in Austin. I hadn’t met the guy at the time, but I was starting to get familiar with his music. He’d sent me his first album, Trip to Roswell, N.M., which had some good songs on it. But I didn’t officially become a West fan until he sent me his second album, Jamie Was a Boozer.
Backed by a snappy little saloon band called The Sinners (and on some cuts, former True Believer Jon Dee Graham on lap steel), Jamie Was a Boozer was no sophomore slump. The album has been out of print for years, but last month a company called Baby Black Panda released a new version, featuring all 15 of the original songs, plus three previously unreleased live tunes.
I looked up my old review of the original version, which was in a column about several local releases. Enjoy some recycling: OK, officially Joe lives and works in Austin but his Santa Fe ties are legit. His dad, artist Jerry West lives here. And Joe frequently pays tribute to Santa Fe in song, such as “$2000 Navajo Rug,” a sarcastic toast (with an authentic Santa Fe $5 cerveza) to the ricos who keep our cost of living so high.
Jpe West in Santa Fe Railyard Plaza a few weeks ago
Joe has a knack for writing funny tunes — Jim Terr would have killed to have written “Trailer Park Liberal” — but the main strength of this album is a core of songs, some funny, some not, related to alcohol and the abuse thereof. The title song is an unflinching tribute to a friend who drowned in liquor. “The Ballad of Terri McGovern,” about a woman who got drunk and froze to death, is even more startling. “Rehab Girl,” about a guy with a crush on a lady who works at a rehab center, is lighter but it’s got an edge.
I’ll stand by what I wrote, adding that the songs have passed the proverbial test of time.
Well, maybe some of those Santa Fe places that sold “$5 cervezas” are no longer so cheap. Otherwise it doesn’t sound dated at all. And the live bonus tunes, while not on the same level as “Rehab Girl,” fit in well.
So even if you haven’t heard the original album — and in fact, if you’ve never heard Joe West, my advice is to dive in.
Video time!
Here's an Barrence set recorded last November at the Jazz Cafe in London
An editorial cartoon about McKinley's murder, apparently
from some old newspaper in The Republic of Toads
Yesterday for Wacky Wednesday, I featured songs about Watergate in a slightly belated celebration of the anniversary of Nixon's resignation. One of those songs was Tom T. Hall's "Watergate Blues," which I noted has a melody lifted from an old folk song called "White House Blues," which was about the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901,
So why the heck not, for this Throwback Thursday, let's have some variations of that song by some of the cooler artists who have performed it .. plus a couple of tunes about the other more obscure presidential assassination.
McKinley was shot while on vacation in Buffalo, N.Y. by a self-described anarchist named Leon Czolgosz.
According to the Old Weird America blog, which examines songs from Harry Smith's Anthology of AmericanFolk Music:
It seems that the ballad originated with Afro-American “songsters” and, like “Stackalee”, was a kind of proto-Blues with a melody and a verse structure very alike another murder Blues ballad, “Delia’s gone” ... in his book Long Steel Rail, Norm Cohen tells about the writer D.H Lawrence, who used to sing a version of “White House Blues.” A friend of Lawrence recalled that in 1915, as he was singing several Negro Spirituals, he also “…set our brains jingling with an American ballad on the murder of president McKinley with words of brutal jocularity sung to an air of of lilting sweetness …
Brutal jocularity will do it every time.
It's been known by many names. Bascom Lamar Lunsford called his version “Zolgotz.' Ernest Stoneman called it “Road to Whashington” (sic) or “Unlucky Road to Whashington” (double sic)
One of, if not the earliest recorded versions of the song was by North Carolina singer/banjo man Charlie Poole. He did it like this:
Bill Monroe brought "White House Blues" to the world of bluegrass. He did a wondrous version, but this more recent version by Del McCoury may be my favorite.
Did I mention another assassination? President James Garfield was shot and fatally wounded in June 1882. His murder at the hands of Charles Guiteau -- who felt The president owed him some patronage job.
The Field Trip South blog, dedicated to the Southern Folklife Collection has two (sadly way too short) sound clips by Bascom Lamar Lunsford singing two different Garfield assassination songs.
YouTube has one of the songs, "Mr. Garfield," which Lunsford says he first heard in 1903. It's an eight minute murder ballad odyssey.
But I first heard the report of the report of Guiteau's pistol done by Johnny Cash, probably on his TV show in the late '60s.
The second Garfield song also appears on Harry Smith's magical Anthology, recorded in 1927 by Kelly Harrell & The Virginia String Band "Charles Guiteau" is from the jailed assassin's perspective as he awaits his date with the hangman.
According to Bob Waltz in an article in Inside Bluegrass , this song is a "touch-up" song.
... the unknown author simply took the earlier ballad "James A. Rogers" (executed in New York in 1858) and "zipped in" the details of the Garfield case. This is no surprise; the same tune carried at least two other murder/confession ballads, "John T. Williams" and "Ewing Brooks."
Here's Harrell's version:
Nixon was driven from power by what became known as the Watergate scandal.
Watergate, as it turns out, inspired a number of songs in the realms of blues, soul, country and rock, several of which are included here. Some were bitchen tunes by great artists. Some aren't. You decide which is which.
Let's start out with the great Howlin' Wolf. His "Watergate Blues" celebrated Frank Wills, the security guard at the Watergate who discovered the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters.
Another "Watergate Blues" is a wry little country tune by Tom T. Hall. But by the last verse the Storyteller gets pretty serious. The melody is lifted from the song "White House Blues" (performed by Charlie Poole, Bill Monroe and others), which was about the assassination of President McKinley
Fred Wesley, best known for his work with James Brown did "Rockin' Funky Watergate" with The New J.B.s
Even better is proto-rapper Gil Scott Heron's caustic "H2O-gate Blues."
I'm not really familiar with bluesman Bobo Jenkins, but his "Watergate Blues" is pretty spooky. Listen closely and at the 1:03 mark you can hear a phone ringing.
Here's an obscure country singer named Les Waldroop applying some Cash-style Chunka chunka to the Watergate saga. It's called "Watergate Bugs." (Update 8-9-2017: The only version currently on Youtube has a second Waldroop song attached.)
This one, by someone called "The Creep" is just plain tacky.
And here is some incisive commentary from sampling pioneer Dicky Goodman.
Do you ever get Dick Nixon mixed up with Billy Jack? Me neither. But this band, appropriately called The Dick Nixons, did.
They say that on a full moon night you can see Nixon's ghost
peering out of a sixth foot window of the Watergate
A few weeks ago former Santa Fe musician Tony Gilkyson made a rare local appearance at the Make Music Santa Fe show at the Railyard Plaza.
Well he's back.
Tony -- who has been a member of Lone Justice, X and Chuck E. Weiss's G-d Damn Liars-- is playing at Skylight Tuesday night.
He'll be playing with a band made up of Santa Fe all-star cronies including David Gilliland, Arlen Johnson, Mark Clark, and Steve Lindsay, who is visiting Santa Fe after several years in exile.
Lindsay told me, "We'll be unrehearsed and winging it, but they are all great players and it's a one-off occasion so it might even be OK. "
Sunday, Aug. 9, 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
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Better Off by The Routes
Putty in Your Hands by The Detroit Cobras
Andres by L7
House on Fire by The Electric Mess
Rogue Planet by Thee Oh Sees
Man With Soul by Alex Maiorano & The Black Tales
I Wanna Be a Girl by King Khan & The Shrines
Dog Tired by Wiley & The Checkmates
Want More by J.C. Brooks & The Uptown Sound
Katy Didn't by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
Little Girl by John & Jackie
Duende by Churchwood
Chupacabra Rock 'n' Roll by The Blood-Drained Cows
Little Electric Chair by Iggy & The Stooges
Heart Attack and Vine by Tom Waits
Shy Guy by Juke Joint Pimps
Diddy Wah Diddy by Ty Segall
Shout Bama Lama by The Detroit Cobras
Sucker Punch by New Bomb Turks
Drug Through the Mud by Joe "King" Carrasco
Snake Drive by R.L. Burnside
Wax Dummy by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Saved by Boss Hog
Fire on the Moon by The Bell-Rays
My Baby's Comin' Home by Big Clyde Allen & His Movin' Masters
Sugar on Top by The Dirtbombs
Doug the Thug by The 99ers
Funny by The Black Lips
The Other Side of This Life by Jefferson Airplane
Crazy West Virginia Mutant Water Woman Blues by The Slow Poisoner
Broken Bones & Pocket Change by St. Paul & The Broken Bones
Magic Touch by Sam The Sham & The Pharaohs
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Friday, August 8, 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 :
OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens
Maybelle by Jackie Cray
Out All Night by The Riptones
The Holygram's Song (Back From The Shadows Again) by The Firesign Theatre
A Day at a Time by Dale Watson
Maybe Little Baby by George Jones
I'll Be There if Ever You Want Me by The Rizdales
Rated X by Loretta Lynn
Cowboy in Flames by The Waco Brothers
Thank You Lord by James Hand
Ballad of Waterhole #3 by Roger Miller
Alone And Forsaken Social Distortion
Another Great Dream Of You by Eric Hisaw
Sleep With A Stranger by Nikki Lane
Choctaw Bingo by James McMurtry & The Heartless Bastards
One Road More by Butch Hancock & Jimmie Dale Gilmore
Big Fat Nuthin by The Bottle Rockets
I Want to Be a Cowgirl's Sweetheart by Lynn Anderson
This is one of those great songs that I used to assume was part of every American's DNA. I'm talking about tunes like "The Man on the Flying Trapeze," "I'll See You in My Dreams," "Shine on Harvest Moon" or "I'm in the Mood For Love."
Notice I said "used to assume." Maybe I'm getting old and cynical, but these days I wonder if many people under the age of, say, 40 would even recognize those songs.
Kids these days ...
But I didn't come here to grumble. I came to celebrate one of those great old songs, one that pops in and out of my skull when I least expect it:
"Moonlight Bay"
The song, originally published in 1912, features lyrics written by Edward Madden and music by Percy Wenrich.
So where is Moonlight Bay? I found a Moonlight Bay Resort & Campground in Minnesotta. And there is a Moonlight Bay Resort on Spider Lake in Traverse, Mich. Somehow I think these were named for the song, not the other way around. And why didn't anyone ever write, "We were sailing along on Spider Lake ..." ??
The lyrics to "Moonlight Bay" are below. You probably won't recognize the verse. I suspect most people who know the song are familiar only with the chorus.
Voices hum, crooning over Moonlight Bay Banjos strum, tuning while the moonbeams play
All alone, unknown they find me Memories like these remind me Of the girl I left behind me Down on Moonlight Bay Chorus We were sailing along On Moonlight Bay We could hear the voices ringing They seemed to say: "You have stolen her heart" "Now don't go 'way!" As we sang love's old sweet song On Moonlight Bay Candle lights gleaming on the silent shore Lonely nights, dreaming till we meet once more Far apart, her heart, is yearning With a sigh for my returning With the light of love still burning As in of days of yore
I'm not 100 percent sure this is the earliest version on record, but the American Quartet, featuring Billy Murray, a huge star in his day, recorded it in 1913.
Skip ahead a little more than 30 years, and we find Bing Crosby singing it with a vocal quartet called
The Charioteers -- a group that started out singing gospel but later branching out in to pop and jazz.
The Charioteers was the studio chorus from on der Bingle's Kraft Music Hall between 1942 and 1946. (A few years later Crosby recorded it with his son Gary in a faux Dixieland style.)
In the 1951 Doris Day vehicle called On Moonlight Bay, leading man Gordon MacRae, following a smug tirade against baseball, gives a harsh review of the song that gave the movie its title. My favorite line is when Bow-tie Daddy tells popcorn muching Doris, "That must have been written by a man with a glass of beer in one hand and a rhyming dictionary in the other."
Speaking of beer, often, epecially in cartoons, "Moonlight Bay" is associated with sentimental drunks. In this Porky Pig clip a bunch of drunken cats serenade. (UPDATE: The original video posted featured drunken fish. That one disappeared from YouTube.)
And in this early '60s British variety show, the comedy team of Morecambe & Wise team up with the Fab Moptops to sing ... you guessed it!
For more than 10 years, WFMU's Beware of the Bloghas served as a wellspring of the weird, the wild and the quirky. It didn't have to be Wednesday for Beware of the Blog to get wacky. It's part of the New Jersey-based independent public radio station WFMU's web of craziness, and many of the station's DJs have contributed blog posts though through the years. But during its time the blog has taken a life of its own.
But here's the bad news: On July 30, station manager Ken Freedman officially posted that the party is over.
You No Longer Need to Beware of the Blog After ten fun-filled years, we're packing up shop here at WFMU's Beware of the Blog. Many thanks to the dozens of volunteer authors who put in so much time and love into their posts and articles, and thanks to the commenters and trolls who almost feel like part of our dysfunctional family.
Damn! Another good thing has done gone on. Freedman doesn't really say why the station is ending the blog, though he mentions the thing hasn't had an administrator in several years.
Also, a recent post on WFMU's Facebook page said, "Social micro posts have killed blogs, more or less, but there is great reading and strange truth to be found on the blog archives. Also lots and lots of links to great audio."
So, thanks Twitter! Perhaps WFMU should start a new feed called "Beware the Tweet."
To commemorate the passing of Beware, I'm just going to post a few links to some of my favorite music posts.
* One of coolest was a post about "Country Fuzz"-- the use of fuzz-tone guitars in the 1960s and '70s. Some of the best-known country stars of that era -- Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, (who sounds outright grungy on this one), Wanda Jackson -- all went fuzzy for a while back then. Greg G, who posted this credits Nashville cat Grady Martin for inventing fuzztone -- with the help of a malfunctioning channel on the control board -- during a Marty Robbins recording session in 1960.
Here's one of the later examples of country fuzz featuring Webb Pierce:
* Speaking of country music, Greg G. also had a post about songs about them women's libbers burning their bras. I've played "Burn Your Bra, Baby" by Benny Johnson many times on the Santa Fe Opry. But there actually are TWO songs by that title, the other being the one by a ventriloquist named Alex Houston and his dummy, Elmer. It'll be worth your while to read the post, which unveils a woman's bizarre conspiracy claim that Alex Houston hypnotized her into becoming part of a government cocaine smuggling ring. It's not clear what role Elmer played in the conspiracy.
* Beware the Blog regular Bob Purse (a musician I wrote about in my very first Wacky Wednesday last year) is fond of "vanity records" -- self-financed recordings by amateur singers. This is a recent one by a guy named Scotty Scott. Purse posted both the A-side, "Chattanooga, Nashville, Battlecreek Trek" (my favorite) and the B-side "Antique Hunter's Craze." The first song includes some real poetry: "One man gets a job, then his brother gets one, too / Then his Uncle Bob, with or without a shoe."
* Back in 2008 Beware had an entire series of posts aboutFake Beatles bands. One of my favorites was the one about The Beagles, a short-lived Saturday morning cartoon about a group of rock 'n' roll canines.
Another post in the Fake Beatles series featured a bunch of advertising jingles for Hoagiefest -- a convenience store's big sale sale on hoagie sandwiches. So the bad news is that there will be no new posts -- no fake Beatles or weird vanity records or anti-feminist rants -- on Beware of the Blog.
But the good news is that Freedman promised: We will keep every single post up here for all of eternity, and someday, WFMU may resume online publishing. And you can still find plenty of crazy sounds over at WFMU's Rock & Soul Ichiban(which has its own 24-hour online stream for rockabilly, soul, R&B, garage, surf and hillbilly music.)
