Wednesday, October 03, 2018

WACKY WEDNESDAY: It's Twilight Time


It was 59 years ago -- actually 59 years and a day -- when CBS premiered a new drama anthology series seeped in science fiction, Kafkaesque horror, thinly disguised political and social commentary and just plain weirdness.  Written and produced by Rod Serling, the series was called The Twilight Zone.

"There is a sixth dimension beyond that which is known to man," Serling told America atthe outset of the show. (This later was changed to "fifth dimension.") "It is a dimension as vast as space, and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, and it lies between the pit of man's fears, and the sunlight of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area that might be called, The Twilight Zone."

The show lasted five seasons on CBS, but was syndicated for years. There have been a few attempts to revive The Twilight Zone, but none were as successful as the original.

While not directly related to the show, The Twilight Zone has inspired a number of songs -- after all it is "the dimension of imagination" -- through the years. So when the aliens serve man, they should include these musical side dishes.

The Dutch group Golden Earring had a hit with this in 1982. (Though it's not nearly as bitchen as their hit from the previous decade, "Radar Love.")



In the early '70s, Dr. John, in his Night Tripper phase, had this peppy little ditty:



In 1979, The Manhattan Transfer incorporated The Twilight Zone's TV theme for this number:



Finally, here's Ministry's take on that place between the pit of man's fears, and the sunlight of his knowledge:





Monday, October 01, 2018

Here's the New Big Enchilada Podcast Episode

THE BIG ENCHILADA



It's chile today, hot tamale! And these are the most red hot sounds on the Internet -- Joe "King" Carrasco, Billy Childish, Mark Sultan, Charlie Pickett, The Morlocks and much much more. So grab a bowl of chili beans at Jack's or John's or Jim's or Jean's and let this month's Big Enchilada warm up your eardrums.

Remind your loved ones that The Big Enchilada is officially listed in the iTunes store. So go subscribe, if you haven't already (and gimme a good rating and review if you're so inclined.) Thanks. 

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Here's the playlist:

(Background Music: Congo Mando & The Chili Peppers)
Current Events by Joe "King" Carrasco
Punk Rock Enough for Me by CTMF
Kick Ass Rock by The King Brothers
Travelust Revisited by Charlie Pickett
What You Do by The Ar-Kaics
Little Girl by John & Jackie 

(Background Music: Taco Wagon by Man or Astroman?)
Invisible People by Marshmallow Overcoat 
Just a Sign by Maiorano
Coffin Nails by Mark Sultan
You're So Sorry by The Budget Girls
The Bear by Johnny "Guitar" Watson
Satan Gave Me a Taco by Beck

(Background Music: Chili Beans by Felix & His Guitar)
Til My Mojo Works by The Peawees
Coffee Grounds by The Moonbeats
Crystal Clear by Johnny Mafia
The Swamp by Sloks
No One Rides for Free by The Morlocks
Dancing on the Razor's Edge by The Cavemen
(Background Music: Chili with Honey by Danny Bell & The Bell Hops)

Play it below:


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Sunday, September 30, 2018

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST





Sunday, September 30, 2018
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist :

OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
This Year's Girl by Elvis Costello
Kill Yourself by Mudhoney
Era Axial by Hollywood Sinners
Jack Pepsi by TAD
Yeah! by The Cynics
Current Events by Joe "King" Carrasco
Kick Ass Rock by The King Brothers
Hialeah Backstretch by Charlie Pickett
Your Past's Gonna Come Back and Haunt You by Emily Kaitz

Plastic Fantastic Lover / It's No Secret by Jefferson Airplane (R.I.P. Marty Balin)
Swimsuit Issue / Youth Against Fascism by Sonic Youth
Saxophone by Bottle Rockets
What You Do by Ar-Kaics
Crystal Clear by Johnny Mafia
Easy Action by The Morlocks

Natural Ball / Gambler's Blues by Otis Rush
Monkey in My Head by Maiorano
Let's Get a Groove On by Lee Fields
Phil Spector by The Peawees
My Favourite Place by J. Church
Uum Uum Uum by The Fox Sisters

BLAZE FOLEY SET

Cold Cold World by Blaze Foley
Blaze Foley's 113th Wet Dream by Gurf Morlix
A Song for Blaze by Elliott Rogers
Springtime in Uganda by Blaze Foley
Blaze's Blues by Townes Van Zandt
Rainbows and Ridges by Blaze Foley
Friend of Mine by Michele May
Drunken Angel by Lucinda Williams
If I Could Only Fly by Blaze Foley
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

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Want to keep the party going after I sign off at midnight?
Go to The Big Enchilada Podcast which has hours and hours of music like this.

And there's a brand new one posted earlier tonight!



Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast CLICK HERE

Friday, September 28, 2018

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: Blaze on Film

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Sept. ,28 2018


Ben Dickey as Blaze Foley with Alia Shawkat as Sybil Rosen.

One of the sturdiest genres of cinema is the biopic — and a lucrative subgenre of the biopic in the last several decades has been the movie about celebrated popular musicians.

There have been biopics about Hank Williams (I Saw the Light in 2015 and Your Cheatin’ Heart in 1964); Billie Holiday (Lady Sings the Blues, 1972); Sid Vicious (Sid and Nancy, 1986); Buddy Holly (The Buddy Holly Story, 1978); Loretta Lynn (Coal Miner’s Daughter, 1980); NWA (Straight Outta Compton, 2015); Charlie Parker (Bird, 1988); Ritchie Valens (La Bamba, 1987); The Runaways (The Runaways, 2010); Patsy Cline (Sweet Dreams, 1985); Ray Charles (Ray, 2004); Glenn Miller (The Glenn Miller Story, 1954); Bessie Smith (Bessie, 2015); Brian Wilson (Love and Mercy, 2014); Johnny Cash (Walk the Line, 2005); and who knows how many more.

One thing all those films have in common (not counting the fact that most of them had tragic endings) was that every subject was famous in their respective fields, and well-known hit-makers of their times.

That’s not the case with singer-songwriter Michael David Fuller, aka Blaze Foley. But Foley, who died virtually penniless nearly 30 years ago, now has his own biopic. Blaze stars Ben Dickey, an actor who, at least up to now, probably is even less famous than Foley — though hopefully his future is brighter. The film opens in Santa Fe on Friday, Sept. 28.

A man called Blaze
Foley turned out to be a respected songwriter, though much of that respect came years after his death. Like so many rough-hewn geniuses, his life was a mess.

A self-destructive alcoholic, he was essentially homeless during the last months of his life, sleeping under pool tables at bars. He’d patched up old shoes — and basically everything else — with duct tape.

He was shot and killed in a drunken argument in Austin, in 1989, just a few months after his 39th birthday.

Actor-director Ethan Hawke was familiar with Foley’s story. Hawke — who starred in a 2015 biopic about jazz trumpeter Chet Baker — set out to make a film about a musician who never achieved actual fame but was true to his art, though enslaved by his demons.

Instead of thrilling scenes in which the hero fights his way through the star-making machinery, plays that big important concert, or makes that big important record and conquers the world, this movie shows the bumbling Foley screwing up every opportunity ever presented to him.

He unwittingly pushed away the one woman he really loved and hurtled toward his senseless and violent fate. There is no big important concert here — much of the film shows Foley playing somberly at an Austin dive called The Outhouse. He played there the night he was killed, capturing 24 songs in a two-hour gig before a small audience that didn’t seem to care.

No, Foley didn’t set the music industry ablaze. His biggest impact on the business side of music was bankrupting a small record company that gambled on him. One of the movie’s funniest scenes, in a dark sense, was when the three former Texas oilfield roughnecks in charge of Zephyr Records — played by Sam Rockwell, Richard Linklater, and Steve Zahn — confront a drunken Foley over his role in the company’s demise.

While Foley remains unknown to most of civilization, he caught the eyes and ears of many major players in country, alternative-country, and folk circles.

Lucinda Williams eulogized him in her song “Drunken Angel,” as Townes Van Zandt — Foley’s most famous crony — did in “Blaze’s Blues.” John Prine recorded Foley’s song “Clay Pigeons” for his 2005 album Fair & Square. Lyle Lovett sang a Blaze tune called “Election Day.” Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard recorded a 1987 duet of Foley’s greatest song “If I Could Only Fly.” And then Hag re-recorded an even more heart-wrenching cover of that song, making it the title track of his excellent 2000 comeback album.

Much of the story in Blaze is based on Living in the Woods in a Tree, the memoir of Foley’s girlfriend and muse for many of his greatest songs, Sybil Rosen (who is portrayed in the film by Alia Shawkat, best known for her role as Maeby in the TV comedy Arrested Development). Rosen (who has a cameo as her own mother in the movie) co-wrote the screenplay with Hawke.

The movie is framed by a recurring radio interview featuring an unnamed radio host played by Hawke (we only see the back of his head during these scenes) and Van Zandt, who is impressively played by Austin guitar picker Charlie Sexton.

The interviewer isn’t hip to Foley — he calls him “Blaze Folly.” Sexton’s Van Zandt corrects him and fills him in on the life of his friend — some of which, like his infamous twisted tall tale about digging up Foley’s grave to get a pawn ticket out of the dead man’s jacket — are likely more fiction than fact. But I bet Blaze would have gotten a kick out of most of the stories.

Dickey is the real star of the show. He captures Foley’s lumbering presence, his menacing scowl, his mumble, and his vulnerability underneath a thick beard and oversized cowboy hat.

And he even sounds a lot like Foley when he sings. There is an album to go along with the movie, Blaze (Original Cast Recording), featuring Dickey’s versions of Foley tunes. It’s decent, but I suggest that before you buy that, seek out Foley’s original material. Though — as the film makes clear — Foley was a flawed human, his soulful music deserves wider recognition. ◀

Blaze opens at Violet Crown Cinema on Friday, Sept. 28.

Video Time!

This is the official trailer for Blaze.



Here's one of my favorite Blaze tunes



Another Foley classic. John Prine thought so too.



Some hard-hitting political commentary.



And here's Blaze's greatest



Thursday, September 27, 2018

THROWBACK THURSDAY: The Death of Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith didn't have a tombstone until 1970. Janis Joplin helped pay for it.

Eighty-one years ago yesterday, Sept. 26, 1937, Bessie Smith, the Queen of the Blues, died from injuries she received in a car wreck in Coahoma, Miss., between Clarksdale and Memphis. She was 43.

According to American Blues Scene, she and her boyfriend/manager Richard Morgan were traveling down Highway 61 in an old Packard. They hit a truck that was parked on the side of the road. The man in the truck fled. A doctor named Hugh Smith and a fishing buddy stopped.


It was 2 a.m. Smith and his associate jumped out of the car, and by the light provided by the headlights, examined Bessie. Her right arm had been torn completely loose at the elbow. Dr. Smith said “..in essence, a traumatic amputation…”. The artery in her arm was still intact, and she was bleeding profusely. Dr. Smith applied a tourniquet. Bessie also had severe internal injuries to her chest and abdomen. She was conscious.

Then another car smashed in the doctor's vehicle.

It has been largely reported, most notably in Down Beat, that Bessie Smith was taken by ambulance to a white hospital, where she was turned away. From there, she was taken to G.T. Thomas Afro-American Hospital (now the Riverside Hotel) where she was pronounced dead. No records, if they ever existed, were found concerning her stay at the hospital. Could the white hospital have saved her? The short answer is no. First of all, the two hospitals were not even a half-mile apart. Secondly, in 1937 in the deep south, where almost everything was segregated, no ambulance driver would even think of taking a black patient to a white hospital.

According to the American Blues Scene article, "Dr. Smith would later say Bessie would have died from her injuries even if the accident happened outside the city hospital. They were simply that severe."

But enough about Bessie's death. Let's celebrate her art.

Below is "Wild About That Thing," the first Bessie Smith song I ever heard, as a college freshman at the University of New Mexico in 1971. Either this song or the very similar "You've Got to Give Me Some."



"Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Bear" is one of Bessie's most popular tunes.



Another longtime favorite, "Send Me to the 'Lectric Chair."



Finally, Bessie even tried a little gospel music -- though I'm pretty sure her tongue was in her cheek when she sang "Moan You Moaners."














Sunday, September 23, 2018

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST




Sunday, September , 2018
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist :

OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
The AARP is After Me by Drywall
Slay Me by The Darts
Evil Woman by Gogo Loco
Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby by Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Rub It Til It Bleeds by PJ Harvey
Coffee Grounds by The Moonbeats
Distemper by The Ar-Kaics
Country Blues by William Elliott Whitmore
That's What She Said Last Night by Billy Joe Shaver

The Crusher by The Novas
Paula by Harlan T. Bobo
Pain by Pussycat & The Dirty Johnsons
Bastard by The Mekons
Psycho Bitch From Hell by Roger Alan Wade
I'm Bad by Bo Diddley
Where Are you Going? by Travel in Space
It Makes Me Belch by Wat Tyler
Dad Can Dance by Sloks
Look at Granny Run by Howard Tate

Globalquerque 2018
Lemon Bucket Orkestra at Globalquerque
Sept. 22, 2018
Globalquerque Set

Crooked by Lemon Bucket Orkestra
Bapasi by Jupiter & Okwess
Vodka is Poison by Golem
Porro Maracatu by Ladama
Dos Caras by Ladama Blanche
The Herdsman by Anda Union
Asa Branca by Coreyah
Jaguar Nana by Orlando Julius
Intra La Danza by Canzoniere Grecanio Salentino

I Got You by Maiorano
Flower of My Heart by Sparkle Moore & Dan Belloc
Strange Conversation by Many Barnett
Tower of Song by Leonard Cohen


CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

Like the Terrell's Sound World Facebook page


Want to keep the party going after I sign off at midnight?
Go to The Big Enchilada Podcast which has hours and hours of music like this.

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast CLICK HERE

Thursday, September 20, 2018

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Leonard Cohen's Birthday Eve


Tomorrow is Leonard Cohen's birthday. Cohen, who died in 2016, would have been 84.

His voice would have been 1,000.

Here are a few of my favorite Leonard songs, starting with the first one that grabbed me, "So Long Marianne," which was on his first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967). The version below is from a German TV appearance in 1979. (The violin solo that comes in right before the 3-minute mark is jaw-dropping.)



Here's a slow-and-low version of "Tower of Song" on Night Music in 1989



Leonard went full-blown Old Testament prophet on "The Future" -- afterall, as he said himself, he's "the little Jew who wrote the Bible." It's weird that this "official video" from 1993, censors the words "anal sex" and "crack."

Thank you for guarding my morality!



I know that we celebrated The Austin Lounge Lizards only yesterday, but I'd be remiss if I didn't include the greatest Leonard Cohen spoof in human history.


TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

  Sunday, March 24, 2024 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM, 101.1 FM  Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell E...