Sunday, December 16, 2018

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST





Sunday, December 16, 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
TV Eye / Dirt by The Stooges
We Made It by Cedric Burnside
C by Thee Oh Sees
Alien Humidity by Jon Spencer
You're Telling Me Lies by Question Mark & The Mysterians
The Man of Your Dreams by Johnny Dowd

Hanging by a Thread by Cowbell
Reckless Rider by The Thick 'uns
Baby I'm Doomed by Bad Mojos
Valium Queen by The Vagoos
Beautiful Gardens by The Cramps
We're Gonna Crash by The Electric Mess
Hemmin' and Hawin' by Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears
That's What I Want by Muck & The Mires
Jeep Cherokee Laredo by The War and Treaty
Love at First Sight by Hamell on Trial

Trouble Everyday by The Chocolate Watchband
Heed This Message by Mark Sultan
I'm Wise (Slippin' and Slidin') by Eddie Bo
Baby Fang Thang by Ghost Wolves
I Had a Dream by Charlie Pickett
Go Fritz Go bt Dirk Geil
Night and Fog by Mudhoney
Storied by Harlan T. Bobo

I Dreamed I Had to Take a Test / Sharkey's Night by Laurie Anderson
A Meaningless Conversation by Thought Gang
Mysteries of Love by Julee Cruise
Down the Dirt Road Blues by Tony Joe White
Turn it On by Lindsey Buckingham
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.

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Thursday, December 13, 2018

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Some Kind Words for the Ghost of Geeshie



I'm not sure what led me recently to go seek out different versions of one of the most mysterious blues songs ever recorded.

But diving into Geeshie Wiley's "Last Kind Words has its own rewards.

Who is this Lillie Mae "Geeshie" Wiley?

The New York Times Magazine in 2014 published a lengthy story John Jeremiah Sullivan, who was obsessed with Geeshie's "Last Kind Words" and another song recorded in 1930, Elvie Thomas' "Motherless Child Blues."

I have been fascinated by this music since first experiencing it, like a lot of other people in my generation, in Terry Zwigoff’s 1994 documentary Crumb, on the life of the artist Robert Crumb, which used “Last Kind Words” for a particularly vivid montage sequence....

... Geeshie’s “Last Kind Words,” a kind of pre-blues or not-yet-blues, a doomy, minor-key lament that calls up droning banjo songs from long before the cheap-guitar era, with a strange thumping rhythm on the bass string.

"Last Kind Words" reminds me of a Dadaist exhibition I saw at the Smithsonian a few years ago. It's
full of death and dread with that "German war" looming in the background. All sorts of references to corpses and deathbed wishes: If I get killed, please don't bury my soul /
Just leave me out, let the buzzards eat me whole."

Here's how Geeshie sang it:



Former New York Doll David Johansen sang the song in Searching for Wrong-Eyed Jesus.



Former Carolina Chocolate Drop Rhiannon Giddens does a moving version



The Dex Romweber Duo teamed up with Jack White for this one



Meanwhile "Last Kind Words" inspired The Mekons to record this song called "Geeshie" on their Ancient & Modern album a few years ago. A wise critic once wrote that Sally Timms "sings it sultry, like a temptress in a speakeasy near the gates of Hell."







Sunday, December 09, 2018

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST





Sunday, December 9, 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 Holygram's Song (Back from the Shadows Again) by The Firesign Theatre
Nerve Attack by Mudhoney
Trash Can by Jon Spencer
Negative Girls by Wayne Kramer
Whatever It Takes by The Fleshtones

Far Out by The Vagoos
Got it In My Pocket by Reverend Horton Heat
White Lily by The Ghost Wolves
The Other Two by Mark Sultan
Chicago Seven by Memphis Slim

So Long Johnny by Charlie Pickett
Sabrina by Dirk Geil
The Law by A Pony Named Olga
Trouble and Desire by The Callas with Lee Ranaldo
Wild Man by Being Dead
Johnny's Quest by Modular Sun
Conway Twitty by Johnny Dowd
Mr. Slater's Parrot by Bonzo Dog Band

Show Stopper by Deen Ween Group
Suit or Soul by Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears
Gravy for My Mashed Potatoes by Dee Dee Sharp
South Street by The Orlons
That Old Black Magic by Louie Prima
Give Me a Fix by Maiorano
Let's Go to Mars by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
Till the Daylight Comes by The Chocolate Watchband
Velcro by Hamell on Trial

Done Got Old by Junior Kimbrough
Stay All Night by Buddy Guy
The Truth Shall Make You Free by The Mighty Hannibal
Factory Girl by The Rolling Stones
Streets of Laredo by Buck Owens
Zoysia by The Bottle Rockets
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.

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast CLICK HERE

Friday, December 07, 2018

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: Jon Spencer's New Hits


A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Dec. 7,  2018


Jon Spencer has been on a roll the past six years or so. After an eight-year hiatus, in 2012 the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion crashed back onto the stage with Meat + Bone, an exuberant blast of twisted blues- and soul-tinged raw and crazy clunk-punk, which was their best work since the mid-’90s. That was followed in 2015 by another mighty album called Freedom Tower - No Wave Dance Party 2015. Last year, one of Spencer’s other bands, Boss Hog, released a cool album, Brood X, but Spencer’s wife Cristina Martinez is the real star of that group.

And now, Spencer is back, this time with a solo album called Spencer Sings the Hits! Don’t let the “solo album” thing scare you away. Spencer ain’t singing sensitive, introspective acoustic songs or recording with the London Philharmonic or stinking up the place with usual-suspect guest vocalists. And despite the title, none of the dozen songs here have ever been hits for Spencer or anyone else.

No, this is just Jon Spencer as we love him. As a matter of fact, had I not already known it was a solo album, you could have fooled me into thinking it was a new one by the Blues Explosion. However, for reasons I don’t know, Explosion members Judah Bauer (guitar) and Russell Simins (drums) are absent here. They’re replaced by keyboardist Sam Coomes (from Quasi) and drummer M. Sord, with Spencer’s guitar and shouted vocals as crazed as ever.

Jon Spencer
Spencer in DC, 2015
From the opening drumbeats of “Trash Can” — soon joined by Spencer singing, “Do the Wobble, Do the Wiggle … Kick that can/Do the Trash Can ...”— through the last song, “Cape” (which has a similar guitar hook as The Cramps’ version of Charlie Feathers’ “Can’t Hardly Stand It”), Spencer fans will immediately know that they’ve come to the right party.

Among the highlights are “Love Handle,” slower than most of the tunes here, in which the guitar licks of the verses have echoes of Memphis soul. “Time 2 Be Bad” features keyboards that sound like Devo on a skid-row bender, and “I Got the Hits,” the closest thing to a title song here, is a tongue-in-cheek brag: “I got the hits ... I got corruption, malice, I got deceit, I got lies, I got it all baby, and it’s all for you ...”

But it ain’t all fun and games. While Spencer usually sounds as if he’s bemused by the world, in a couple of songs he sounds downright angry. I don’t know the “counterfeit punk” Spencer is eviscerating in the song “Fake” (“Your ideas are wrong/You’re lukewarm/Washed-up and bland …”) but I’m glad it’s not me.

Maybe it’s the same target he unloads on in “Beetle Boots.” He starts that song growling about some poser in “imitation leather and plastic zipper.” Then later in the song, Spencer seems like he’s taking personal offense at this jerk. “You think it’s easy being in a band?/Wrong priorities/Misguided intentions/Ironic distance just reinforces convention ...”

It’s a cruel world, and the plastic-zipper phonies are way more likely than Spencer to get the hits. But as long as he keeps raging and playing his goofball Frankenstein blues, Spencer’s call of the wild will continue to resonate with those of us who love to wobble and wiggle.

Also recommended:
* Digital Garbage by Mudhoney. Speaking of angry lyrics, this album is basically Mudhoney’s state of the union address, and they aren’t very happy about what’s going on here during the Trump era.

Among the topics of disgust on this album by these Seattle grunge survivors are white supremacists (“Listen to the footsteps/Echoing in the streets/Here come the footsteps/Echoing in the hall/These are the footsteps/That echo through history,” Mark Arm sings in “Night and Fog”); conspiracy loons (“Vaccines, chemtrails, false flag plots/Government camps, Sharia law,” from “Paranoid Core”); mass shooters (“We’d rather die in church,” the narrator of “Please Mr. Gunman” pleads); and the religious right. Lordy, how Mudhoney loathes the religious right. “21st Century Pharisees” lambastes evangelicals’ loyalty to the current chief executive. “He doesn’t give a fuck about your Jesus,” Arm wails.

Topical songs might be a turn-off to a lot of rockers. But don’t worry. This ain’t Joan Baez. Mudhoney rocks just as ferociously as they did when they unleashed the song “Touch Me, I’m Sick” back in the late ’80s. With his garage-psychedelic licks, guitarist Steve Turner is every bit the monster he was in the early days. So if it’s politics that’s getting them charged up these days, then so be it.

* Trouble and Desire by The Callas, with Lee Ranaldo. A former guitarist with Sonic Youth,
Ranaldo is more than sixty years old, but on this record he shows he’s still got some “Teenage Riot” in him.

I admit that I was a little apprehensive when I heard he was teaming up with a Greek art-rock band I’d never heard of. After all, as much as I loved most of Sonic Youth’s impressive three-decade catalog, I tended to avoid most of their forays into artsiness — and much of the post-breakup output of Sonic Youth members falls into that category.

Fortunately, however, Trouble and Desire sounds a lot more like Daydream Nation than Sonic Youth’s journeys into artistic pretentiousness like Koncertas Stan Brakhage prisiminimui.

You can hear echoes of the Sonic Youth spirit in “The Magic Fruit of Strangeness,” the first real song on the album. It’s a hard-driving, minor-key rocker with a little bolero in its urgent rhythm. “Μελανιά” (which in English means “bruise”) reminds me a lot of the bass-heavy verses in Nirvana’s version of “Love Buzz.”

Meanwhile, the pounding “Acid Books,” featuring the women of The Callas providing shout-along vocals in the choruses, is some of the wildest rock ’n’ roll you’ll hear all year. I don’t know what they’re shouting, but I’m not about to argue about it.

Here are songs from each of these albums. First Spencer:


Now Mudhoney


Now, The Callas with Ranaldo






Wednesday, December 05, 2018

WACKY WEDNESDAY: Happy Birthday Walt Disney!



 NOTICE: 9-4-19 Just a few months after i posted this, all but one of the videos I'd posted had been yanked down. I've posted other versions. Please let me know if these -- or videos on other posts -- get pulled off and I'll try to fix


On this day in 1901, Walter Elias Disney was born in Chicago. You probably know him better as "Walt."

I don't know whether he has internet access in his frozen cryonic chamber, but if so, happy bithday, Walt!

He brought us movies, cartoons, laughter, amusement parks ... and music. So here's a musical tribute to Mr. Disney,

Tom Waits performed a classic tune from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs -- in his own peculiar way -- for a 1988 tribute album called Stay Awake produced by Hal Willner.



The late Sun Ra was such a big Disney fan, he did an entire album of songs from Disney movies called Second Star to the Right in 1989. Here's one from the movie Dumbo.



Also from the Stay Awake compilation, Los Lobos covered this Jungle Book song.



Speaking of monkeys, those of us who grew up in the '60s know that Disney didn't only deal in cartoons. He made some pretty lame comedies too, such as The Monkey's Uncle. I remember that one mostly for the opening scene, where The Beach Boys teamed up with Annette Funicello.



I don't think the Disney empire ever approved of this song by Timbuk 3. In fact they may have been the force that had the previous version I'd posted here yanked down.

But I approve.

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

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