I kid you not, this is seriously the finest rock 'n' roll on the face of the planet. (Earth.) You'll hear lots of new garage-punk, mutant blues and other madness here -- including Imperial Wax, The Jackets, The Mystery Lights, Nots, Daddy Long Legs, Left Lane Cruiser -- and immortal sounds of yesteryear like The Trashmen, Sweetie Jones and more.
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On this day in 1926 in Tyler, Texas, Johnny Gimble, one of the greatest western-swing fiddlers ever to grace American music, was born. He would have been 93 today.
Happy birthday, Johnny!
Rolling Stone in its 2015 obituary had this to say about him:
He learned fiddle and mandolin and began his professional career while in his teens, playing tenor banjo in the band of Louisiana’s then-Governor Jimmie Davis. After serving two years in the Army, Gimble formed a band with his brothers before joining Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys in 1949. One of his first major successes as a session player was “I’ll Go on Alone,” the Number One debut single from Marty Robbins in early 1953. In 1955, while living with his family in Waco, Gimble hosted his own TV show, Johnny Gimble and the Homefolks, which featured a young Willie Nelson playing bass in the band. He would later tour as a member of Nelson’s band. After leaving Wills’ Texas Playboys, Gimble moved to Nashville in 1968, becoming one of the most sought-after session players in town.
The first time I ever became aware of Gimble was not on a Bob Wills or Marty Robbins record. It was on a 1969 album called Make a Joyful Noise by a renegade gaggle of hippies called Mother Earth, led by a blues belter named Tracy Nelson and a psychedelic poet named R.P. St. John. They joined up with Gimble and other country music vets including another venerated fiddler Grover C. “Shorty” Lavender and steel-guitar master Pete Drake.
It sounded like this:
Below are some videos of Johnny playing the music he loved best, Here's his own band in 1990:
Here's Johnny jamming with Chet Atkins
This is Johnny with Roy Clark on Hee Haw.
And this is what you might call quadruplet fiddles featuring Merle Haggard, Tigar Bell, Tiny Moore and Johnny.
Sunday, May 26, 2019 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
Take Off Your Clothes by The Goon Mat & Lord Bernardo
Rotten to the Core by Ty Segall
It's Alright by The Mystery Lights
Half-Painted House by Nots
Evil Hoodoo by The Seeds
What I Like About Miami by Charlie Pickett
Wild Wild Women by Tav Falco
The Message by The Four Plaid Throats
Election Day in Satchidannanda by Unknown Instructors
On Broadway by Esquerita
Two Girls (One Bar) by Pere Ubu
Plant the Seed by Imperial Wax
Man as Ghost by The Yawpers
Back Door Fool by Daddy Long Legs
The Man With the Weird Beard by The Play-Rite Boys
I'm Gonna Love You Too by The Hullaballoos
Wilderness by Jon Spencer
Heart by REQ'D
Deeper Way by The Jackets
Dance Like a Monkey by New York Dolls
Harlem Shuffle by The 5678s
Lost Memories by Sloks
I Hate CDs by Legendary Stardust Cowboy
Rock 'n' Roll Polka by The Polkaholics
Give it Up by Jack Mack & The Heart Attack
Strange Night by Tony Joe White
Fishing Blues by Taj Mahal
Not a Problem by Black Lips
Starry Eyes by Roky Erickson with Lou Ann Barton
John Walker's Blues by Steve Earle CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican May 24, 2018
Here’s some recent hip, mod rock ’n’ roll the kids are going ape and blowing their tops over.
Or maybe not the kids. But I am.
* Too Much Tension! by The Mystery Lights. It’s been nearly three years since I discovered this band. For a while there I started to think the self-titled album of this wailing, psychedelia-touched, garage-fueled outfit — the first release on the influential independent soul label Daptone subsidiary, Wick Records — perhaps could be their swan song.
Fortunately, I was wrong. This new high-energy record is just as good, if not better, than the previous album. In other words, it’s a real humdinger (and I like ’em like that).
For those who haven’t seen the light of The Mystery Lights, singer Mike Brandon and guitarist Luis Alfonso Solano started playing together as teenagers in Salinas, California. These were kids who were hip enough to love the old Nuggets compilations — which consisted of first-wave garage-rock madness — as well as bands like The Velvet Underground and Suicide.
Somehow Brandon and Solano ended up in Brooklyn, where apparently they crossed paths with Daptone, which helped them win a wider — if not yet gigantic — audience.
There are many notable songs on Tension. After a 46-second spook-house intro by keyboardist Lily Rogers (titled “Synthtro”), the whole band comes in with “I’m So Tired (of Living in the City),” which seems to have sprung from the guitar riff of “I Wanna Be Your Dog” by The Stooges. “Wish That She’d Come Back” is informed by both Del Shannon and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. And I hear distant echoes of The Talking Heads in “Someone Else Is in Control.” Meanwhile, the slow, soulful minor-key track “Watching the News Gives Me the Blues” could be something the late Daptone star Charles Bradley might have taken a crack at.
I strongly advise: Go toward the Lights.
* Gastwerk Saboteurs by Imperial Wax(Saustex). After they buried the Lizard King, the surviving members of The Doors decided to go on as a trio without Jim Morrison. They released one pretty good album, Other Voices. While it was packed with fun (songs like “I’m Horny, I’m Stoned” and “Variety Is the Spice of Life”), it didn’t sound much like The Doors. (I’ll be nice and not mention the Morrison-less Doors’ subsequent, final and forgettable album, Full Circle.)
After Mark E. Smith — founder, frontman, and frothing prophet of The Fall — died last year, surviving members of his band also decided to go on. I should clarify that guitarist Pete Greenway, bassist Dave Spurr, and drummer Keiron Melling, while they backed Smith for The Fall’s final decade, are far from the only surviving members of that band, which first reared its ugly head in the late ’70s and reportedly has nearly 70 former members, including a couple of Smith’s ex-wives.
But unlike Morrison’s old band, these guys wisely decided not to keep the old band name. They named the group Imperial Wax, a nod to the first 2008 album on which they backed Smith, Imperial Wax Solvent. And they hired a new singer, Sam Curran, who can get manic like Smith, but otherwise doesn’t sound much like him.
I was prepared to be cynical about Gastwerk Saboteurs, the group’s first album, but I was pleasantly surprised. In fact, I’m pretty sure that if someone had played me these songs without mentioning anything about The Fall, I would have liked them anyway — and not even thought about Smith. It’s just good, aggressive, guitar-driven, punk-painted rock.
Standouts here include “Turncoat,” which sounds a little like Frank Zappa’s “Trouble Every Day,” except with nastier guitars; “Plant the Seed,” which has more than a little “Radar Love” in it; and “Rammy Taxi Illuminati,” which is nearly 10 minutes long but doesn’t get old.
I somehow don’t think Imperial Wax will ever become as influential and important as the band that spawned them. But they sound like they’re having a great time trying.
*Fall in Love on Hate Streetby REQ’D (Wondertaker). This basically is a solo record by Sluggo Cawley, best known as the guitarist of the outrageous Bay Area punk band The Grannies. The two times I’ve seen that group, Sluggo was never singing. Both times his mouth was hidden by a gruesome-looking monster mask of some sort. (The Grannies are known for their colorful and hilarious costumes, wigs, granny gowns, etc.) But with his new band REQ’D (pronounced “wrecked”), we get to hear the monster behind the mask.
The music isn’t nearly as ferocious as The Grannies’. In fact, Sluggo even strums an acoustic guitar in some songs. Several tracks feature female background singers (Mrs. Sluggo — Laurian Rhodes — is one of them). And while Grannies songs are typically funny (and frequently obscene), Sluggo bares his soul on many of these tunes. “Cancer,” for instance, is about his young son who survived leukemia.
But don’t think the album doesn’t rock. His electric guitar on the opening song, “Blood,” should dispel any such notion, especially the feedback freakout at the end. Thomas Quinn’s wild sax on “Trash” reminds me of Steve Mackay’s work with The Stooges. And “Car” is funky in a swampy kind of way.
Sluggo wrote all the songs here except three covers: Nick Cave’s “The Ship Song”; “Don’t Let the Sunshine Fool Ya,” written by Texas troubadour Guy Clark; and a surprisingly good — and unironic — version of Bonnie Tyler’s cheesy ’70s hit “It’s a Heartache,” on which Sluggo shares vocals with Hilary Reed.
Here's some videos:
First, a live radio set by The Mystery Lights
Now some Imperial Wax playing "Art of Projection"
Finally, here's Sluggo and REQ'D
Sluggo with The Grannies,
Triple Crown, San Marcos, Texas 2014
It's been several years since I did a Bollywood post on Wacky Wednesday, so why the heck not.
As I said before, I don't speak Hindi and I've never seen the movies these clips come from so I won't pretend to know what's going on in any of them.
But trust me, you won't need to know what's going on in these videos. Just sit back and enjoy the work of people having a lot more fun that you!
This one's from Meri Jung (1985) starring Anil Kapoor, Meenakshi Seshadhri, Nutan, Javed Jaffrey, Amrish Puri.Besides the wonderful dancing, it ends with a cool sax solo from a guy in a cowboy hat. So welcome friends, to the show that never ends.
These next two my friend Sean alerted me to. He described this one as "Every 80's video cliche rolled into one song."
And this one's short but twisted:
And for those who don't want to see or hear Michael Jackson anymore but still like the song "Thriller" ...
Sunday, May 19, 2019 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
What a Wonderful World by Joey Ramone
Jolie's Nightmare by Chuck E. Weiss
Black Magic by Mark Sultan
Goin' Down by The Mystery Lights
Glad Rag Ball by Daddy Long Legs
Buy a Gun Get a Free Guitar by Deadbolt Oh My Darling Clementine by Johnny Dowd
Gallows Pole by Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Run to Jesus for Refuge by Charles Barnett
Dancing with Mr. D by The Rolling Stones
The Bear by Johnny "Guitar" Watson
She's a Rainbow by The Barbarellatones
Don't Leave Me Alone by The Jackets
The Art of Projection by ImperialWax
Sir William Wray by The Fall
Haunt by REQ'D
The Polka Inquisition by The Polkaholics
Dancing on My Knees by The Yawpers
Legs by PJ Harvey
I'm Hurtin; by Cedric Burnside
We Spartan Dreggs (Be Fine) by The Spartan Dreggs
Bong Song by Butthole Surfers
Smooth Commander by Left Lane Cruiser
Hey Gyp by The Orphans
Insect Collector by Shonen Knife
Spider by They Might Be Giants
Isolation by Ty Segall
Low by Nots
Biological Speculation by Funkadelic
Weimer Vending Machine / Priest by The Mekons
Tower of Song by Tom Jones
Hell Yeah by Neil Diamond CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Here's a song I first heard by the Original Blue Dog Democrat:
To this day, I can't hear the song "Oh My Darling Clementine" without thinking of ol' Huck.
The lyric of the song are credited to Percy Montrose, who wrote it and published it in 1884. The melody is similar, if not identical, to an earlier song called "Down the River Liv'd a Maiden," published in 1863, by one Henry S. Thompson.
In the liner notes of his five-volume series American Favorite Ballads (recorded 1957-1962), Pete Seeger wrote "The tune is probably much older. Sounds German to me, but I've been told it was Mexican, early 19th Century."
Who knows? But even by the late 19th Century, people were already messing with poor Clementine. Writer Shaleane Gee, in the excellent blog Murder Ballad Monday says, "In versions of the song credited to Barker Bradford circa 1885, the miners ... make it clear that she gave them a good time. ...
In some versions, the lyrics suggest Clementine was charging the miners fees for her favors, sometimes with the approval or even at the prodding of her poppa."
Sample lyrics from the Bradford version:
Her noble father was the foreman Of every valued mine, And ever miner and every ranchman Was known to Clementine.
But as Gee observes, most modern versions of the song have "scrubbed" such lyrics.
According to some sources, including Seeger's liner notes, the first recording of "Clementine" was in 1928 by a group called Floyd Thompson and His Hometowners, then six years later by Kentucky country singer Bradley Kincaid.
But I couldn't find either on YouTube or in the Internet Archives. The earliest one I did find was by a singer named John McCready was recorded by ethnomusicologist, Sidney Robertson Cowell at the Arizona Bar in Groveland, Calif. on August 2, 1939 for the W.P.A. California Folk Music Project collection.
Der Bingle did a slightly smoother version just two years later.
In 1946 the song was turned into a movie by director John Ford. It starred Henry Fonda and Linda Darnell as Clementine and a soundtrack by British composer Cyril J. Mockridge. Here's the title song:
Tom Lehrer had some fun with the song he said had "no recognizable merit whatsoever."
In the early '60s Bobby Darin turned the song into an exercise in fat-shaming. How fat was she? She broke the damned bridge, hardy har har. Then in a moment of raw compassion, Bobby sings, "Hey, I'm no swimmer, but were she slimmer / I might have saved fat Clementine"
What a card ...
Neil Young & Crazy Horse did a mighty version on their album Americana, taking Clementime to new levels of bitchenicity.
And more recently, Johnny Dowd took the song to Mars on his 2018 album Twinkle Twinkle. I think I hear more than a little bit of Huckleberry Hound in this one.
