Monday, June 30, 2014

Family Lotus Rises Again

I missed the big Family Lotus reunion last year. (Good excuse: I was kidnapped by Satan's minions to make a blasphemous video)

But they're back and they're playing at Sol Santa Fe Thursday night. (It's a benefit for the Madrid Ball Park, but the show is at Sol Santa Fe south of the city.)

"We put the band together in 1968," Lotus mainstay Jerry Faires told The New Mexican last year. "Our first gig was at Quixote's Horse, which was a bouillabaisse restaurant on Galisteo Street. We played for tips and soup. Then we were at Claude's Bar on Canyon Road for a long time. Lumbre Del Sol, The Last Mile Ramblers, and Family Lotus -- between the three of us we were the house band in this whole area."

That New Mexican article, by Paul Weideman, went on

"In the summer of 1974, the group played the Institute of American Indian Arts, accompanying bluesman Taj Mahal performing `the people's revolutionary music of Jamaica.' A pair of gigs at St. John's College featured Family Lotus along with Allen Ginsberg, Ram Dass, Gary Snyder, and Alan Watts. The band opened for R & B guitarist Bo Diddley and jazz saxophonist Charles Lloyd; the latter told Faires, `Your music touches many shores.'"

I first saw The Family Lotus at the UNM Student Union Building Ballroom, when they opened for Bo Diddley the first week I went to college. The event was called The Second Annual King Kong Memorial Tribal Stomp. The Lotus became my favorite New Mexico band that night.

Speaking of videos, here's one I spotted on Youtube of the Lotus at the honky-tonkin' Gold Inn in the early '80s (before it burned to the ground).




Sunday, June 29, 2014

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

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Sunday, June 29, 2014 
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
Special co-hosts: Chuck, Liisa, Scott

Here's the playlist below

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Nice Sunday Read: Buddy Holly in Carlsbad

A reader of this blog, Tom from Pitman, N.J. alerted me to this story published in the Carlsbad Current Agus a couple of months ago.

John R. Smith, 74, of Center, Texas, was seeking a copy of a public service announcement in the Little Argus section of the Carlsbad Current-Argus that occurred on July 11, 1957. The PSA was about a rock 'n' roll band appearing in Carlsbad. The band was Buddy Holly & The Crickets and they played for a dance on July 13.

The notice read: "Another lively rock 'n' roll session is planned for Carlsbad. Local Does will sponsor a dance for youngsters of the community at the Elks Ballroom Saturday night featuring Buddy Holly and his popular rock 'n' roll band from Lubbock. Profits will go for youth activities."

Smith said he had read that this was the first time, on stage, the rock 'n' roll group was introduced as "Buddy Holly and The Crickets."

Read the whole thing HERE

Friday, June 27, 2014

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST


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Friday, June 27, 2014 
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:






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Monday, June 23, 2014

Experience the Joy That a new Big Enchilada Episode Brings


THE BIG ENCHILADA





Welcome to the Big Enchilada Canteen Dance! Dance all night to the crazed garagepunk sounds that's just as jittery and even more buggy than the jitterbug ever was. Got some brand new sounds from Norton Records, some offerings from a bunch of GaragePunk Hideout pals and a set of Celt-punk sounds guaranteed to smack you on the head like a hundred-pound shillelagh.

 SUBSCRIBE TO ALL GARAGEPUNK PIRATE RADIO PODCASTS |

Here's the playlist

(Background Music: I Got Rhythm by Bennie Morton with Don Redman & His Orchestra)
Leavin' Me Hangin' by The Electric Mess
Summer Boyfriend by The Manxx
No No No No No by Kristy & The Cracks
You Bring the Thunder, I'll Bring the Lightning by Red Hot Rebellion
Not Like You by The Vagoos
Corrupt Democracy by G. Wood with Markdog
Rockin' at the Dog House by The Love Dogs

(Background Music: Happy Feet by Paul Whiteman)
Castin' My Spell by Daddy Longlegs
Just a Little Bit of You by The A-Bones
Walking Down the Street by Miriam
Hey There Stranger by The Compressions
Riot by The Naxalites
Lips of the Apocalypse by The Yowl
Crazy People by The Boswell Sisters
(Background Music: Bugle Call Rag by Benny Goodman)

CELT-PUNK SET
Across the USA by The Mahones
Backup Man Greenland Whalefishers
Good Morning Da by The Tossers 
Poor Old Jimmy Biscuit by Paddy & The Rats
Breaking Through by Blood or Whiskey
Wild Rover by Dropkick Murpheys wtith Shane MacGowan
(Background Music: Full of Joy by The Chieftains)



Play it below:


Sunday, June 22, 2014

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST





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Sunday, June , 2014 
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
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Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE

Friday, June 20, 2014

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST


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Friday, June 20, 2014 
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:





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Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

Thursday, June 19, 2014

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: Hanging from the Clothesline

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
June 20, 2014

If Alan Lomax made field recordings on another planet, it might sound something like the new Clothesline Revival album, The Greatest Show on Mars.

“Oh, won’t you steal up young lady, oh, happy land,” sings a voice that probably sounds familiar to those who know Lomax’s  “Southern Journey”  recordings from the late ’50s and early ’60s.

It’s Bessie Jones from the Georgia Sea Islands Singers, one of Lomax’s greatest discoveries (who I think should have become as big as Leadbelly), singing a children’s game song. There’s some crazy percussion behind her and what sounds like some electronic bass lines. But Jones keeps singing, and a dobro or slide guitar comes in. The percussion gets louder. It’s irresistible, and “O Happy Land” is only the first song on the album.

Clothesline Revival isn’t actually a band. It’s the work of musician, producer, former archaeologist, and visionary Conrad Praetzel. What Praetzel does on most of the tracks is take old field recordings by Lomax (made on Earth) and others and build instrumental backdrops around them. He plays all the instruments — guitar, banjo, dobro, bass, percussion, and all sorts of electronic doohickeys.

Praetzel is not the first or only one to experiment with such ideas. Moby did it with his album Play a few years back. And there’s a definite kinship with David Byrne and Brian Eno’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981), which built wild dance funk and brooding weirdness around samples of songs, sermons, and political diatribes snatched from shortwave radio broadcasts.

In fact, I immediately flashed back to “Help Me Somebody” on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts when I first heard Clothesline Revival’s “Not Have No Spot,” which features a funky little swamp groove backing a radio sermon by an elderly preacher in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works himself into a frenzy when he finds some elusive religious truth in comparing modern washing machines to his mama’s old rub board. The song ends with the preacher explaining, “I’m 80 years old, I’m 80 years old, you got to respect me, I’m 80 years old.”

The main difference between The Greatest Show on Mars and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and Play is that Praetzel’s music is far rootsier, grounded in the soil where Lomax found his unknown heroes of American song. Yes, Clothesline Revival often sounds “otherworldly,” but that other world is hauntingly familiar to earthlings.

Take Praetzel’s “Leather Britches,” which starts out with some Space Invaders electronic beats and pounding synthetic drums. For a second it sounds like it might burst into a full-blown industrial-rock bruiser. But then the banjo comes in. And then we hear the voice of Sidney Hemphill Carter, another titan of the Lomax stable (and daughter of Lomax discovery Sid Hemphill). It turns out to be a sweet, gentle song.

The source material for “Move Up” is a Lomax recording of gospel singer Ed McNeil (backed by a vocal group of “unidentified men,” which sounds more sinister than it actually is) taped in 1959 in Como, Mississippi. Praetzel’s embellishments are subtle — some guitar and bass. For a while it sounds as if the backup singers might be from a modern gospel group, at least until those pile-driver drums come in.


“A Mysterious Light” is a monologue about a UFO delivered by a West Virginia man named Howard Miller in front of a dreamy soundscape (with banjo). He was walking in the mud with his dogs after midnight. In 1995 he was interviewed by folklorist and ethnographer Mary Hufford.

“It was dark, no moon, no stars, no nothin’,” Miller says. “All at once it was daylight. So I looked up to see what had happened, and there was a light about that big driftin’ — up the hill. And when I looked an’ seen it, it just faded out. And I’d been in the Marines and knew what airplane lights looked like, and it was too big for that. ... There was no noise, no sign of nothing ’cept that one light. … If there is any such thing as a UFO, that’s what that was.” It’s a strange tale that seems worthy of being honored in a Clothesline Revival song.

My only quibble is that The Greatest Show on Mars has too many instrumentals. Most of them are good tunes. “Barnum’s Boogie,” for instance, is a fine neo-Canned Heat stomp. In the end, most of those tracks come off as filler or background music. I prefer hearing the strange magic Praetzel makes using those hoary ghost voices of yore.

Murph is back: One of the original cosmic cowboys -- and a former Taos resident -- Michael Martin Murphey is playing at the James Little Theater Saturday June 21.

Murphey is the man responsible for hits like "Wildfire," "Carolina in the Pines" and "What's Forever For" as well as songs that should have been massive hits like "Geronimo's " Cadillac," "Cowboy Logic" and of course "Cosmic Cowboy."

He's the link between The Monkees (the Prefab 4 covered Murph's "What Am I Doing Hanging Around") and Urban Cowboy. (His song "Cherokee Fiddle" was in that film, sung by Johnny Lee.)

Plus, Murphey is the creator behind one of the greatest overlooked outlaw-songs collections ever, his 1993 Cowboy Songs III – Rhymes of the Renegades. (I was proud -- and relieved -- that Murphey told me he liked my review of it even though it was in the same column that I reviewed a re-release of an album by a real outlaw, Charles Manson album -- and we used the Manson cover for the column art.)

Murphey's Santa Fe show starts at 7:30 p.m. Saturday. It's at the James A Little Theater at the New Mexico School for the Deaf, 1060 Cerrillos Road. Tickets are $29 and $59. For more information call 505-476-6429 or visit www.SouthwestRootsMusic.org

In addition to his show here Saturday, Murphey once again is doing his outdoor Rocking 3M Chuckwagon shows this summer at his personal amphitheater in Red River. Murphey and a partner bought the old Lazy H Ranch, which was a guest ranch that doubled as a refuge for old cosmic cowboys like Jerry Jeff Walker and Gary P. Nunn -- not to mention Murph himself.

Tickets to these shows, which include a "chuck wagon" dinner catered by Texas Red Steakhouse, are $58 for adults, $29 for children under 12, and $52 for seniors (65 and over.)
For more information see Murphey's website

Video time:




And even though I like Clothesline Revival, the proper music for this Betty Boop cartoon is Cab Calloway


And here's a cool outlaw song from Murphey

Monday, June 16, 2014

R.I.P. Little Jimmy Scott

One of the most haunting voices in popular music is now quiet. Little Jimmy Scott died last week at the age of 88.

Scott started his career in the '40s. He sang with the Lionel Hampton Band, scoring the hit in 1949 with "Everybody's Somebody's Fool." 

According to Rolling Stone:

His vocals influenced a generation of diverse singers, ranging from Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington to Marvin Gaye and Madonna. As the Washington Post noted, Madonna said of the vocalist, "Jimmy Scott is the only singer who makes me cry."

Many of us in the Rock 'n' Roll era discovered him via Lou Reed. Scott sang on Reed's 1992 album Magic and Loss.

And around the same time, Scott appeared in the Black Lodge on the final episode of Twin Peaks. This sounded beautiful, if not a little evil.



And here's Jimmy in later years.



Sunday, June 15, 2014

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

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Sunday, June , 2014 
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


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Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE

Friday, June 13, 2014

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST


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Friday, June 13, 2014 
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:






Like the Santa Fe Opry Facebook page 

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: Messing with The Electric Mess

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
June 13, 2014

Chances are, unless you live in New York or unless you religiously listen to my radio show, Terrell’s Sound World (which, by the way, you should), you haven’t heard of The Electric Mess. Actually, if not for the glory of the internet — and, specifically, my favorite musical community of recent years, The GaragePunk Hideout — I wouldn’t have heard of this Mess either.

But, by golly, if you like wild, frantic, high-energy rock ’n’ roll, you really need to acquaint yourself with this New York band. The group’s third album, House on Fire, is as good a place as any to start. All 13 tracks are full of fire and craziness. The sound is not drastically different from the band’s first two albums (its self-titled debut from 2009 and 2012’s Falling off the Face of the Earth). But that’s a good thing. If you like this one, you’ll want to seek out those first two.

Fronted by singer Chip Fontaine (real name Esther Crow), the group has a sound rooted in 1960s garage rock but not shackled in nostalgia. True, The Mess is a guitar-based band that features an electric organ (Oweinama Biu), but you won’t get the idea that the musicians are trying to sound like Question Mark & The Mysterians or The Standells (though, at least in their early days, they were known to cover “Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White”).

Fontaine/Crow’s voice reminds me a little of Joan Jett’s. (Here’s a fantasy: a Jett/Crow duet on The Replacements’ “Androgynous.”) House on Fire’s highlights include the opening song, a crazed little rouser called “Better to Be Lucky Than Good,” which could be a grandchild of The Velvet Underground’s “White Light/White Heat.” (One recurring lyric: “They did it all for the white light.”) This is followed by the album’s title song, in which the speed is just as breakneck and intense.

“She Got Fangs,” which starts out with a throbbing bass line from Derek Davidson, is a hoodoo-heavy song about vampires: “Vampire woman, can’t you see/What your hunger does to me?” I’m not sure what Jimi Hendrix’s “Third Stone From the Sun” has to do with any of this, but it’s there, courtesy of guitarist Dan Crow (Esther’s husband), during one of the song’s instrumental breaks.

Then there’s “The Thing That Wouldn’t Leave” (the title is from a classic John Belushi Saturday Night Live skit), which is about folks who always wear out their welcomes. And even fiercer is “Leavin’ Me Hangin’,” a song in which the singer expresses displeasure at being stood up. In the middle of the song is a weird spoken-word segment:

“Girl, you ain’t no Queen of Sheba, and I ain’t no piece of liver, but you never deliver. Man’s ego is like a fragile bird, but you step on that bird’s wings one too many times, and he turns into an evil hawk with red fiery eyes, on the hunt for you girl. ’Cause you’re my bird of prey, and this is what I have to say.” 

This is followed by a 10-second (yeah, I timed it) scream as the band goes into overdrive.

The final track, “Every Girl Deserves a Song,” starts off fast but then, after a minute or so, slows down into a wah-wah-enhanced groove. (Am I crazy, or do I hear a faint echo of The Allman Brothers’ “Midnight Rider” in here?) “Why don’t you bring some Percocets just to help me cool my jets,” Crow sings. No, you can’t exactly call this song mellow, but after the pace of the first dozen songs, The Electric Mess deserve to cool their jets a little.

Now go get yourself a copy of this album. And tell at least five of your friends. Next time I review an Electric Mess album, I don’t want to talk about how undeservedly obscure this band is.

Also recommended:



* Drop by Thee Oh Sees. I was just beginning to come to terms with last year’s announcement by Thee Oh Sees frontman and resident wizard John Dwyer that his prolific band was going on “indefinite hiatus.” The group’s album Floating Coffin, you might recall, was my pick for the best of 2013, and its Albuquerque show last fall was one of my favorite concerts of the year.

Now here comes a new album by Thee Oh Sees. And no, it’s not an odds ’n’ sods collection of old tapes, demos, and stuff from long-forgotten tribute albums. It’s actually a new album. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the band we came to know and love as Thee Oh Sees — vocalist and keyboardist Brigid Dawson, bassist Petey Dammit, and drummer Mike Shoun — seems to be, well, on indefinite hiatus. Dwyer moved from the group’s home base of San Francisco to Los Angeles. I think some of the other Oh Sees scattered as well.

But more good news. Even without the old lineup, Drop is a pretty decent album. Although not as overtly powerful as the magical Floating Coffin, it still has several mighty examples of Dwyer’s fuzzed-out, rubbery psychedelic excursions.

He saved his best for the first three tracks: “Penetrating Eye,” “Encrypted Bounce,” and “Savage Victory,” which make up nearly half the album. These could almost pass for outtakes from Coffin, or perhaps Carrion Crawler/The Dream (2011). One could make that argument for the garagey “Camera (Queer Sound)” as well.

While this is clearly Dwyer’s show, he’s aided on Drop by Chris Woodhouse — a longtime associate of the band — on bass, drums, and Mellotron and Mikal Cronin on alto sax. Cronin is best known as a guitarist (if you saw Ty Segall at High Mayhem a few weeks ago, you saw Cronin). There’s also someone called Casafis on sax.

Unfortunately, after such an auspicious beginning, the album ends with a three-song fizzle. “King’s Nose” sounds like an attempt to channel Electric Light Orchestra. “Transparent World” is plodding and over-synthy. And the closing number, “The Lens,” is uninspired wimp rock. Come on, Dwyer, lose the damned Mellotron!

Although Drop is a welcome addition, I’m not sure what the future of Thee Oh Sees is. Dwyer recently released an electronic album called Hubba Bubba under the name of Damaged Bug.

But he’s one prolific guy, so Oh Sees fans shouldn’t abandon hope.

Here's some videos from these bands




Thursday, June 12, 2014

The Manxx Invades NM

A cool power-punk, lo-fi, trash-rock trio from Denver who I met at The GaragePunk Hideout is coming to downtown Albuquerque in the very near future.

The Manxx, led by singer Sara Fischer, will be at the Bluebird Buvette, 509 Central NW, on Saturday June 28. You've heard them many times on Terrell's Sound World as well as The Big Enchilada podcast.

They're also playing at The Trainyard in Las Cruces on Sunday June 29

Denver Westword said of The Manxx: "Playful confidence combined with a sense of youthful innocence has always set this band apart from other garage-rock acts."

The group is about to release a 4-song EP called Take Away Your Brain. It's on cassette (!) and will be on vinyl later this summer. One of the songs, "Summer Boyfriend" is below and I'll be playing another one of the songs this Sunday on Sound World.

Do check out this band.



And here's a video of an older Manxx hit

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

SINGING DIRGES IN THE DARK

A few weeks ago I was arguing on Facebook with my old pal Gary Heffern (a wonderful songwriter and singer by the way) about which year it was that we saw Tom Waits during South by Southwest. I said 1999. He thought it was a few years before that. That prompted me to look up the article I did about SXSW that year.

Re-reading the article I realized this time, right before the turn of the century was a strange time for the music industry. The old world seemed ready to crumble. Big changes seemed to be in the air.

A lot has changed in the past 14 years. But much has remained the same in the music world. Worthless crap still dominates the mainstream. Weasels still run the show. And there's still plenty of great stuff for those bothering to look for it,

Here's that article from the mists of time. And, dammit, I was right about the year we saw Waits.


A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
April 11, 1999
 
AUSTIN -- His name was up on the theater marquee:
Yes, I spent $30 for  a crappy bootleg of that show

Tom Waits.

Hundreds of people snaked around the block in a long, unruly line waiting for the doors of the stately old Paramount Theater to open.

Waiting for Waits. The Big Time!

An old rock critic cliche‚ goes something like, ``In a just world, (Tom Waits, Richard Thompson, Lucinda Williams, or whatever brilliant but under-recognized performer is being reviewed) would be a major star.''

Well, here was that ``just world'' where Waits' show one of just a handful of public concerts he has performed in the past decade was being treated as the second coming of Frank Sinatra.

Waits' wonderful Saturday night/early Sunday morning performance was clearly the highlight of this year's South by Southwest Music Festival, and certainly the most talked-about show of the 800 or so ``official'' festival shows between March 17 and 21.

And gravel-voice Tom wasn't the only non-mainstream performer whose show drew a capacity crowd. The avant-garde band Mercury Rev as well as rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson, who hasn't had a hit in 40 years, packed 'em in as well.

But there was something ironic about this ``just world.'' Here was Waits being honored by a convention full of music industry heavies at a time when he is about to release an album on an independent punk rock label (Epitaph, owned by Brett Gurrewitz of Bad Religion) after 20-plus years on major labels.

Indeed, while the music, merriment and Mexican food, the bands, beer and barbecue were as great as ever during South by Southwest, there was a distinct undercurrent of doom at the convention. Much of this was brought on by the current flurry of corporate mergers, which has resulted in consolidation of labels and massive lay-offs in the industry.

There's the ever-worsening problem of commercial radio becoming more staid and irrelevant as radio stations continue to tighten play lists. This trend coincides with that of more stations being bought up by fewer owners.

And then there's that looming 500-pound gorilla known as the Internet. MP3 technology, which allows computer owners to download near-CD-quality music directly from Web sites, is seen as a ray of hope for independent musicians and music lovers and as a threat by the major record companies.

(Last month, according to a report on Sonic Net, an Internet music news site, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries filed a legal complaint in Oslo against FAST Search and Transfer, the Norwegian technology company that powers Lycos' ``FAST MP3 Search'' site. The Recording Industry Association of America, which is affiliated with the international organization, announced last week that it is considering a lawsuit against Lycos.)

One way or another radical changes are in the air.

Oh, My Baby!
Lucinda

``I don't think major labels are working anymore,'' singer Lucinda Williams told hundreds of music-bizzers gathered for the convention's keynote address. About half the audience sat silent while others applauded wildly. ``I think it was a good idea at one time, but it has just crumbled.''

At a press conference after her speech, Williams said she is considering starting her own company, as her friends Steve Earle and John Prine have done. She noted how Prine, who started Oh Boy! Records years ago, has made a comfortable living without the pressures and creative restrictions that go along with working under contract for a large corporation.

But the state of the music industry is just a reflection of the country itself, Williams said. Then she added sadly that she believes America is ``dying a slow death.''

But she also said, ``I'm one of those people who still believe that music can change the world.''

Williams whose Car Wheels on a Gravel Road recently won a Grammy (``Best Contemporary Folk Album'') and was voted top album of the year by hundreds of music critics from across the country in the annual Village Voice poll also spoke about the importance of standing up to would-be censors in the media.

She told how on a recent appearance on the Today Show, she was asked to change the lyrics of her song "Right in Time." The line, ``I lie on my bed and moan at the ceiling/Oh, my baby'' was, well, a little suggestive, some producer told her.

But on the same show, Williams noted, a guest was there to ``discuss the stain on Monica Lewinsky's dress.'' Said the singer, ``I went ahead and sang the song as I had written it. Nobody got hurt.''

She told about her appearance on the Crook and Chase show, in which she was asked not to do "Pineola," a song about suicide, because it was ``too dark.'' (She said she did the song anyway.)

While there was no shortage of good-time tunes played during the festival, often heard were ``dark'' songs that highlighted these tensions.

Cowboys in Flames

On Friday night, Santa Fe resident Terry Allen performed a song from his new album Salivation, a Mideastern-influenced dirge called "The Doll," a cry against the rampant materialism that seemingly drives the country today.

``So we kneel down at the altar/ Of the Church of the Bought and Sold/pray the dollar does not falter/makes us rich before we get old ... and the money changers come howlin'/Through the temples of our needs/ while the doll is out there prowlin'/holding notes on all our dreams ...''

Earlier that night, the raucous Waco Brothers romped through a fire-breathing set in the tent-covered back yard of the Yard Dog folk art gallery for the annual party for Bloodshot Records, a small but influential independent ``insurgent-country'' label from Chicago. But beneath their drunk, cowpunk exterior are doom-laden lyrics that ensure they will never be asked on The Today Show.

``That good old rock where we once stood has got too old to do much good/And the good old ways are sick and lame/Third World on horseback/Cowboy in Flames!'' singer Jon Langford (also from the band The Mekons) snarls.

Kramer
Then Langford sings about "The Death of Country Music: ``So we spill some blood on the ashes/ of the bones of the Joneses and the Cashes/ Skulls in false eyelashes, ghost riders in the sky.'' A listener realizes that indeed the stale music product coming out of Nashville today indeed is lifeless. But there is so much life in the Wacos' death dance, it's obvious that the old spirit is springing up in new forms.

That spirit can be heard in the hard rock of Wayne Kramer, an old member of the MC5, a Detroit band of the late '60s known as much for its radical politics as its music. Kramer, who has released several solo albums on Epitaph Records in recent years, has lost his hair and ditched his old drug habit, but not his political attitudes.

In his song "Revolution in Apt. 29," he chided armchair revolutionaries: ``We'll write a manifesto after chips and pesto ... the beer is imported/We refuse to be thwarted.''

But that Friday night at Emo's, Kramer got his biggest crowd reaction with his version of the old MC5 classic battle cry, "Kick Out the Jams." Despite all the ridicule and derision of the past three decades, it seemed that a spark of that old '60s revolutionary zeal was still alive.

The Heart of Saturday Night

Wanderingly blissfully out of the Paramount Theater, the melody of Tom Waits' "Innocent When You Dream "lingering in his head, the happy critic wandered over to Sixth Street, hoping maybe to catch the last song or two of the Waco Brothers' ``official'' showcase at the Jazz Bon Temps club. Alas, he was too late. The Wacos audience was already streaming down the stairs of second-story room. By the smiles and the sweat on their faces, it was obvious they had just experienced a great show.

Going back to his rental car, the critic comes upon a street busker playing guitar for a small crowd of Sixth Street revelers that had gathered. They were all singing Don McLean's old hit about the day the music died:

``Bye bye, Miss American Pie/drove my Chevy to the levy but the levy was dry ...''

It seemed like a Tom Waits kind of thing to do, so the critic joined in the drunken street choir: ``Them good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye/singing this'll be the day that I die ...''

Even though some believe the music industry is in its death throes, it was obvious on that Austin street corner that the music will never die.

xxx

I couldn't find any videos of that Waits show in Austin. But here's Waits on Letterman that same year.




Fun Time: Me and Heff SXSW1999





Sunday, June 08, 2014

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

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Sunday, June , 2014 
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


Like the Terrell's Sound World Facebook page

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Friday, June 06, 2014

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST


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Friday, June 6, 2014 
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
Heart Wrenching Lovesick Memories  by Rhonda Vincent
Tallacatcha  by Alvin Youngblood Hart
Long White Line  by Sturgill Simpson
Monroe  by The Howlin' Brothers
Whiskey and Women and Money to Burn by Joe Ely
Little Sadie by The Sadies
Been Meaning to Do  by The Dashboard Saviors
That Liquor  by Husky Burnette
Death Don't Have No Mercy  by Reverend Gary Davis

Glory of True Love  by John Prine
Don't You Hear Jerusalem Moan  by Asylum Street Spankers
The Cold Hard Facts of Life  by Porter Wagoner
The Rubber Room  by T. Tex Edwards & Out on Parole
Here Kitty Kitty  by Jimmy Murphy
Silver Threads and Golden Needles  by Skeeter Davis
Sad, Horny and Blue by Pork Chop Party

Hard to Be an Outlaw by Billy Joe Shaver with Willie Nelson
I Ain't Living Long Like This by Rodney Crowell
I Walk the Line (Revisited) by Rodney Crowell with Johnny Cash
Gimme a Ride to Heaven Boy by Terry Allen
The Definitive Tom Jones Medley (Live)  by The Pleasure Barons
Third Rate Romance  by The Amazing Rhythm Aces
A Little Wind (Could Blow Me Away)  by Peter Case

O Happy Land (feat. Bessie Jones)  by Clothesline Revival
I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am  by Bryan & The Haggards
24-Hour Store  by The Handsome Family
The Love That Faded  by Bob Dylan
Be Careful of Stones That You Throw by Hank Williams
My Morphine by Gillian Welch
Closing Theme: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets


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Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

Sunday, June 01, 2014

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST


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Sunday, June 1, 2014 
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:


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TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, September 29, 2024 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM, 101.1 FM  Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrel...