TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: I've Been to Mekonville and Back!

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Aug 11, 2017

When The Mekons first emerged as a young, brash, ragtag, loose-knit art-school punk-rock band in Leeds, U.K. in those golden late ’70s, I bet nobody who heard or saw them — or even the band members themselves — ever envisioned that in 2017, hundreds of people from many nations would answer the band’s call to “destroy your safe and happy lives before it is too late,” and gather in rural England to celebrate the band’s 40th anniversary at a three-day music festival.

But that’s what just happened. And I was there.

Where were you?

The Mekonville festival took place from July 28 to July 30 in Suffolk, northeast of London. The bill featured The Mekons — both the current musicians (a lineup that has been relatively stable since the mid-1980s) and the original 1977 crew — as well as various bands involving Mekons members (Jon Langford’s Men of Gwent was a highlight), solo spots by Mekons Sally Timms and Rico Bell, as well as friends, family (4DGs, which is made up of Mekons singer Tom Greenhalgh’s young children), and assorted allies of the group.

About 90 percent of the people I know gave me blank stares when I told them I was going to England for a Mekons festival. That’s not surprising. The group has never had a really big hit. They haven’t even been on a major label in a quarter century or so. How many bands these days have eight members — including three or four lead singers — and feature fiddle, accordion, and oud?

The Mekons sprang out of the punk world, but they went on to incorporate elements of folk and country music, reggae, and other sounds. Whether they are playing an original rocker, some mutated sea shanty, or a Hank Williams song, The Mekons don’t sound much like anyone else.

Langford shines!

The 2017 Mekons played a set on each day of the festival. Their magical Friday night performance spotlighted the band’s (relatively) best-known songs like “I Have Been to Heaven and Back,” “Beaten and Broken,” “Millionaire” and, of course, their hard-driving battle cry, “Memphis, Egypt” (“The battles we fought were long and hard, just not to be consumed by rock ’n’ roll”), which they played during all three of their sets.

The band did a couple of newer songs the first night, including “Simone on the Beach,” sung by Timms, one of the more rocking songs from their latest album Existentialism (for my money, the best Mekons album of this century so far), along with their latest single, a slow, dreamy “How Many Stars Are Out Tonight,” which features Greenhalgh on lead vocals and his kids singing backup on the choruses.

This set could have been marred by the sound problems, as the amps for some of the instruments went off several times. But the band just made a joke of it and plowed through like pros.

Saturday afternoon’s performance, which took place on the festival’s smaller second stage, had been billed as an acoustic set, but wasn’t anything close to an “unplugged” show. As one band friend explained: “They just used smaller amps.”

With the exception of “Memphis, Egypt” there were no repeats from Friday’s set list. The best songs here included Timms’ signature “Ghosts of American Astronauts,” “The Olde Trip to Jerusalem” — one of the group’s most intense latter-day rockers — “Sometimes I Feel Like Fletcher Christian,” performed in a mariachi-influenced style, and the rowdy “Big Zombie,” in which Bell’s accordion drives the almost Cajun-sounding tune.

But the highest-energy number was a take-no-prisoners version of “Where Were You?” in which The Mekons were joined on stage by their road manager, emcee, and sometimes singer Mitch Flacko.

Chalkie wails!

Later that night on the main stage there was a punk set by the original 1977 Mekons. Langford (switching from guitar to drums) and Greenhalgh were joined by singers Andy Corrigan and Mark “Chalkie” White, guitarist Kevin Lycett, and bassist Ros Allen (who had her back turned away from the audience during virtually the whole show).

I knew this was going to be good, but I had no idea that these guys would be this good. They ripped through their early songs such as “32 Weeks,” “Never Been in a Riot,” and, once again, “Where Were You,” this time with lead vocals by Chalkie and Langford pounding his drums as if he were auditioning for a spot with The Surfaris.

The grand finale Sunday afternoon started off with the current Mekons, but eventually they were joined on stage by the original Mekons and later by Bonnie Prince Billy, aka Will Oldham (a longtime devotee, who on Saturday night performed a solo set of songs written or inspired by the Mekons) for songs including “Curse” and “Beaten and Broken.”

Following a couple of country covers (“Help Me Make It Through the Night” and Hank Williams’ “Lost Highway”), Mekons past and present as well as other musicians who had performed at the festival took to the stage for one final rousing, messy, ridiculous “Where Were You?” with Mitch and Chalkie sharing lead vocals.

The Grand Finale

As a wise critic wrote just a couple of years ago, “It never fails to frustrate me that no matter how I’ve tried to spread the word about this wonderful musical collective of visionaries, rebels, and oddballs — and how writers far more talented and influential than I have tried to do the same — The Mekons’ audience never seems to rise beyond the level of small-but-rabid cult.”

Personally, I guzzled the spiked Kool-Aid served up by The Mekons years ago. And I took an even bigger gulp at the festival in Suffolk. I’m proud to be a member of this crazed congregation. And it was a true joy to be a citizen of Mekonville.


Mekonville Video

First here's Jon Langford's Men of Gwent


Here's the 1977 Mekons with "Where Were You?"



And what the heck, here's the entire final Sunday set with Mekons old and new, assorted friends and who knows who. (Thanks, Norbert Knape.)

THE ROCK 'N' ROLL TOURIST: Watching the Blues Explode in Washington, D.C.

Instead of Wacky Wednesday this week, here's the latest installment of The Rock 'n' Roll Tourist.
Wacky Wednesday will return next week.

Jon Spencer uses his head

Two thirds of an Explosion

As much as politicians love to bash Washington, D.C. -- even a lot of those cynical ones who spend millions of bucks to get there and stay there -- it can be an inspiring place to visit. I was there last week during a short vacation, And several of the Capitol's beautiful shrines -- the Martin Luther King Memorial, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial -- were truly uplifting. Even the modest World War One Memorial had its own quiet power. Walking by it reminded me of that heartbreaking line, as sung by The Pogues, in "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" about "the forgotten heroes of a forgotten war." I couldn't get it out of my head.

And yes, I saw some inspiring music too, music that makes me proud to be an American.

That's the sound of The Blues Explosion!

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, touring behind their rollicking new album Freedom Tower: No-Wave Dance Party 2015,  played The Black Cat Club last Saturday night.

Judah Bauer

They roared, they thundered, they rolled, they tumbled. Spencer and fellow guitarist Judah Bauer made their guitars scream while drummer Russell Simins was, well, explosive.

And Spencer sweats more than any singer I've ever seen with the possible exception of James Brown.

I'd seen this group live twice before. Once here in Santa Fe back in 1994 when they opened for The Breeders at the old Sweeney Convention Center. The next time was 1997 when I was playing Rock 'n' Roll Tourist in New York and JSBX was playing at the Freedom Tibet festival.

Making the theremin holler

But 21 years after I saw them for the first time, I have to say The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion was louder, wilder, more distorted, more screechy than they were back in the day.

It sometimes seemed they were emphasizing the "No-Wave" aspect of the album title on Friday night. Yet still, it was a "Dance Party." The music always is more fun than artsy -- even when it's artsy, Through the wall of noise, distorted blues, soul and funk riffs provided a framework for the sonic madness. And though sometimes the vocals were buried beneath the chaos, Spencer's charisma, his sly grin and his unabashed enthusiastic showmanship carried the night.

And the boy plays a mean theremin!

Daddy Long Legs

I'd purchased my tickets for this show weeks ago. But I was surprised to learn just a couple of hours before the concert that Spencer's opening act was going to be none other than Daddy Long Legs, a dapper trio from Brooklyn (by way of St. Louis) of whom a wise critic once said "is the most exciting blues/punk group, this side of Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band, on the scene today."

Led by the tall gawky red-headed singer and harmonica honker (who also goes by the name Daddy Long Legs) the group ripped through tunes from their Norton Records albums Blood from a Stone and Evil Eye on You.

I've been wanting to see this band for a couple of years. To be able to see them on the same bill as The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion was a special joy.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



But by far the weirdest show I saw in Washington, D.C. was by one of my favorite cowpunk groups, Jason & The Scorchers, who provided the music for a modern dance performance at The Kennedy Center.

You read that correctly. Jason & The Scorchers. Kennedy Center. Modern dance performance. Cowpunk.

The idea for the performance, titled Victory Road  (from an old Scorchers tune) came from  Lucy Bowen McCauley, artistic director and choreographer of the dance company bearing her name.

 “It’s a journey,” McCauley told The Washington City Paper. “There’s a reason there’s one song after the other. It’s not like Broadway; there’s no talking among the dancers and the dancers don’t sing. But there is a storyline, a riff on [The Scorchers] history.”

Last Friday night was the world premier of Victory Road.

Basically, singer Jason Ringenberg stood at one end of the stage while lead guitarist Warner Hodges was at the other end. The rest of the Scorchers were below in the orchestra pit. In the middle of the stage, the dancers did their thing.

Look, I'm a complete rube when it comes to dance performances, modern or otherwise. I'm a rock 'n' roll guy, not a dance guy. So I won't pretend to review that aspect of the show. I was there for Jason and the boys -- though I suspect most of the audience there were modern-dance fans.

Scorchers '97

And they sounded good, tromping through some of my favorite rocking Scorchers hits like "Gospel Plow," "White Lies," "Shop It Around" "Self Sabotage," and the Dylan-penned "Absolutely Sweet Marie." Several of the tunes in the show -- including "Getting Nowhere Fast," "Days of Wine and Roses" -- were from their most recent (2010) album, Halcyon Times.

However, probably due to the elite setting of the Kennedy Center and the whole dance thing, the Scorchers were more subdued than the wild men I saw tear up the Liberty Lunch in Austin at South by Southwest in 1997. They never turned it up to 11 at the Kennedy Center. Kept it about 8 and a half, even for their encore songs they played following the regular Victory Road program.

Still, it was great to see them again. I have to respect their willingness to try something like this.

Come to think of it, Jason & The Scorchers doing music for a modern dance troupe makes me proud to be an American also.

Final Bow.
Photo by Chuck McCutcheon

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: What I Did on My Summer Vacation

This week's Tune-up column is a recap of all the great shows I saw in Portland last week, nearly all of it based on my accounts published here in this blog.

So I'll just post the section on Mission of Burma here (I saw them Saturday night and had to catch a plane early Sunday, so I didn't have much on them that day) then the links to the posts on the other shows. Hail Portlandia!

Mission of Burma at the Doug Fir, Aug. 30: I have to admit that after four straight nights of concerts — and knowing that I had to catch a 7:35 a.m. flight the next day — I was feeling pretty burned out just before the start of MoB’s set. I even started having troubling thoughts like “Are you getting too old for this kind of thing?”

But then I remembered that the members of this band are about my age. If they can be up there playing, I should be able to make it through a performance.

And indeed, from the opening guitar blast through the last chord of their final encore, “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver,” I was rejuvenated. (This feeling lasted until the alarm clock rang at 6 a.m. Sunday morning)

And the band was in top form as well. They roared; they soared; there was blood on their swords.

On a Mission in Portland

Onstage were original members Roger Miller (who looks like he could be Neil Young’s tougher little brother) on guitar, Clint Conley on bass, and Peter Prescott on drums. And somewhere offstage was longtime member Bob Weston, who does tape loops and electronic effects.

Normally classified as “post-punk” (whatever that means), the Mission sound is most like that of Hüsker Dü. Both groups released their first recordings in 1981, and both were stripped-down guitar bands playing raw, urgent music.

As I’ve written before in reviewing their last few albums, since the beginning of the second phase of their career (which began about 10 years ago, following a 20-year layoff), MoB is as fiery as ever.

OK. Here are the links to the other posts:

* The Afghan Whigs
* Southern Culture on the Skids
* Negativland

And here are some videos

The Afghan Whigs also played The Doug Fir in April. Here's a video of the opening song "Parked Outside" (They opened with it when I saw them too.)



Here is Southern Culture on the Skids in Portland -- a few years ago at the Doug Fir



And here is 49 minutes (!) of the very Negativland show I saw last week at the Crystal Ballroom. You probably can see the back of my head up front.

The Rock 'n' Roll Tourist 2014: Mission (of Burma) Accomplished

No, this is not a real review of The Mission of Burma show in Portland last night. I made the mistake of bookings flight back to New Mexico at the ungodly hour of 7:35 am the morning after a Mission of Burma show.

But suffice it for now to say that they were tremendous. I'll have more details in Friday's Terrell's Tune-up column. And HERE is my review of their most recent album.

Now back to my daze.

The Rock 'n' Roll Tourist 2014: An Evening with Negativland

PORTLAND, OREGON _ And now for something completely different ...
No, there wasn't a guitar in sight. But this was rock 'n' roll.

Negativland, a sonic-collage, multi-media, socio-political art collective from San Francisco that's well into their fourth decade as an entertainment unit, headlined a show at Portland's Crystal Ballroom Friday night. 

Negativland is an unlikely crew of revolutionaries, all four members wearing gray plaid shirts that might have come off the rack at K-Mart. But don't be fooled. They are subversive. 

Employing sound and video from TV news, radio talk shows, government training movies, commercials, old educational films, all chopped up, manipulated and distorted on top of electronic noises and sound effects, this show the group has named "Content" was thought-provoking, hilarious, incomprehensible, annoying and almost mystical  -- sometimes all at once. 

They take all these messages -- political, commercial, religious education -- that we're bombarded with constantly, throw it into an electronic blender and create new, frequently hilarious art. 


More than once an old Frank Zappa lyric popped into my overwhelmed mind: "American way, try to explain / Scab of a nation, driven insane."

Here are a few notes I pecked out on my iPhone during the show. If any of this makes some se to you, please report to the Department of Homeland Security:
"Leave the premises"

"Never forget the fact that we are all just content..."

(Footage of mashing potatoes with M.A.S.H. logo occasionally flashing. Chopping vegetables with an LP)

A bearded guy, could pass for a scientist in a 1950s B movie, talking about Congress considering a plan that involves melting the North Pole.

Report on a county fair. Guy starts talking about oil wells.

Gun toting granny on wheel chair.
An angry  woman, looks kind of like a Fox News blonde, angrily ranting that she spends all day on Facebook but NOBODY SHARES MY POSTS! At one point she yells, "Get the fuck off the Internet!"

"Guns and the bible carved this nation out of the wilderness."

"It's easy to imagine the end of the world but you cannot imagine the end of capitalism."

The word "Cadillac" is put on a loop, sped up. Becomes a bizarre chant.

A distorted ad for the Playboy Channel. Train going in and out of tunnel A Guy talks about some kind of. interference wrecking his orgasm on the Playboy Channel.

"This statement is false. This statement is true ...."

And now the voices of Negativland are stuck in my head. 

The Rock 'n' Roll Tourist 2014: Gettin' Some Culture

PORTLAND, OREGON _ I think Rick Miller was wearing the same  "Hillbilly Surf Club" T-shirt when I saw Southern Culture on the Skids 14 years ago at Santa Fe's Paramount club. Oh well. He wears it well.

Or maybe I was just having a flashback, one induced not by illegal and dangerous drugs, but by the fact that I think Southern Culture on the Skids were playing most of the same songs they played in Santa Fe all those years ago.

"Banana Puddin'," "Too Much Pork For Just One Fork,"  "House of Bamboo," "Liquored Up, Lacquered Down," "Nitty Gritty" ... All the hits, (speaking relatively, of course. Very few of the music acts around today that I like have actually had anything approaching a "hit.")

Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I would have been bitterly disappointed if Mary Huff hadn't done "Daddy Was a Preacher, Mama was a Go-Go Girl" (my favorite SCOTS song of all time) or if Miller hadn't called out "Little Debbie, Little Debbie!" during "Camel Walk."

And yes, I thoroughly enjoyed the fried chicken-tossing during the song "Eight Piece Box," which is a frequent ritual during a SCOTS show. Several enthusiastic audience members joined the band on stage for the fun during this. My biggest accomplishment of the evening was hitting Miller in the face with a piece of wing that had landed near my feet.

The band did perform a couple of tunes from their 2010 Kudzu Ranch album ("Bone Dry Dirt" and "Pig Pickin' "). But I wouldn't have minded if they'd done some of their more recent material like "Zombified" (maybe they save that one for Halloween) or their heartfelt cover of The Kinks' "Muswell Hillbilly" or some obscure older tunes like "The Man Who Wrestles the Bear" or "Carve That Possum."

I know I'm sounding like a finnicky, know-it-all critic here, and that misses the point of a Southern Culture on the Skids show.
This North Carolina trio, which includes drummer Dave Hartman, celebrates all the gloriously trashy things that make America great -- not just the South -- great. Greasy food; hotrods; sex; loud, twangy guitars; tacky tiki bars; voodoo ...

Their name might invoke an image of a culture in decline -- and maybe it was suppose to back in the '80s when they started. But SCOTS' upbeat, swampy mix of hillbilly, surf, rockabilly, exotica and soul actually is an expression of a culture I'm proud to be part of.

The Rock 'n' Roll Tourist 2014: Afghan Whigs Are the Fire

PORTLAND, OREGON _ The Afghan Whigs left us on an artistic high note back at the end of the last century. Their album 1965 was full of the crazy, burning, obsessive passion that characterized their greatest work throughout the '90s.

The group didn't sound much like Roy Orbison  -- they were more like an insane cross of Dinosaur Jr. and Isaac Hayes' band at Wattstax -- but singer Gregg Dulli's songs share some emotional traits with those of Orbison. Like the older singer, you can imagine Dulli becoming spiritually obsessed with a pretty woman walking down the street, and having his spirit cruelly demolished when the stranger keeps walking even after his best "Rrrrrrrrwwwwwllllll!" Of course, Dulli would take it further. It's easy to imagine him following the poor girl home and howling at her window until the dawn.

So The Afghan Whigs broke up. Dull carried on without the rest of the band. But despite some occasional intriguing flashes from The Twilight Singers or The Gutter Twins of his solo work, nothing reached the dizzying heights of the Whigs.


I was skeptical earlier this year when I found out that a new version of The Afghan Whigs had risen from the rock 'n' roll tarpits. I was so apprehensive of possible -- I thought probable -- disappointment, that I put off checking out their new album, Do the Beast for nearly four months. (Only two original members, Dulli and bassist John Curley are part of the album.)
But all my fears were for naught. The album is one of the best of the year so far. And their show at The Doug Fir, a cellar full of noise, as Petula Clark would say, in east Portland, showed them full of the power and rage that made us love them in the first place.

And yes, the new songs stand proudly with the old. They opened with a couple of the most intense songs from Do the Beast, "Parked Outside," which began with a weird violin solo by multi-instrumentalist Rick Nelson (yes, that's his name) before launching into its frightening robo-blues beat. This seamlessly was followed by another Beast song, " Matamoros," which is more ferocious live than on the record. Another standout Wednesday from the the new album was "The Lottery," which starts out with drums straight out of the Shaft soundtrack.
They didn't forget their '90s work. The Whigs cranked out amazing renditions of "John the Baptist,"  (my. Favorite song on 1965), an explosive "My Enemy" from Black Love, and the title song of Gentlemen.

They also did a handful of covers, including a slow, twisted Whigs-eye take on The Police's "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" (Dulli hops off the stage and walks among the crowd during this) and, in the encore, the first verse of the overture from Jesus Christ Superstar.  (Longtime fans will recall that The Whigs covered "The Temple" from JCSS way back on their album Congregation. On Wednesday this served as the introduction to "Something Hot," another 1965 tune.

The best number of the evening though was the wild medley of a couple of Do the Beast  songs, Royal Cream,"  which starts out, "I know you've been sleepin' with another demon..." and the spooky "I am Fire," on which Dulli emphasizes his lyrics by pounding on a floor tom. And somehow this mutates into a dark take on Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk."

"Don't say that you love me! Just tell me that you need me!"

Damn! After 16 years or however long it's been I almost forgot how much I needed The Afghan Whigs.

This post has been edited for an embarrassing number of typos.

PONDEROSA STOMP: The Finale

Tom McLoughlin of The Sloths preaches the Gospel of Garage

After Friday night's crazy performance at the Rock 'n' Bowl in New Orleans by The Sonics, I had this nagging fear yesterday that the second night of The Ponderosa Stomp might be something of a letdown. How could anyone match that level intensity and wild abandon?

Well, here's the deal. It's still obvious that the best show of this festival was The Sonics.

But Saturday night's lineup, especially The Standells and The Sloths -- the latter band being joined for a couple of tunes by the mysterious Ty Wagner -- was nothing short of amazing.


The Standells impressed me last night even more than they did when they first twisted my head off when I was in 7th grade. Of all the 2013 Ponderosa Stomp lineup they were the most commercially successful (except maybe Chris Montez. More on him later.) Is there anyone around my age who doesn't remember "Dirty Water" or, my favorite, "Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White" ?

They played these hits as well as others from that era -- "Riot on Sunset Strip" (the title song of a teen exploitation movie from the mid 60s. Standells singer Larry Tamblyn said at a panel discussion a couple of days ago that he truly enjoys that film. The same way he enjoys Plan 9 From Outer Space) -- and some of my favorites from the Dirty Water album like "Rari" and "Medication."

Cyril Jordan (center) with The Standells

Late in the set they were joined onstage by Johnny Echols, a former member of Love (The Standells' John Fleckenstein also was a Love man in that group's early days), and Cyril Jordan of The Flamin' Groovies. They played some Love songs, including a fiery "Seven and Seven Is," "Little Red Book" and "Hey Joe," which both Love and The Standells covered (as did about 98 percent of all American bands in the mid '60s)

All too often when you hear old bands play their old songs from decades past, it's sad and cheesey. But these Standells aren't ready for the casino circuit, and hopefully they never will be. They play like they could start a real riot on Sunset Strip.

And the reconstituted Sloths were no slobs either. Unlike The Standells, they never had a massive "Dirty Water"-level hit, but their song "Makin' Love," featured on one of the Back from the Grave compilations a few years ago is one of the finest examples of snarling minimalist, primitive angst-rock you'll ever hear.

Waving the flag

They're fronted these days by singer Tom McLoughlin, who was with a '60s L.A. garage band called The May Wines with some members of The Sloths (I can't keep up with this cross-pollination) He's got more of a "rock star" aura than most the other garage-band performers I saw this weekend.

He also has a weird knack for silly props. During The Sloth's rendition of "Hey Joe" (I told you, all the bands back then did this song) he held up a hand-written hitchhiker sign that said "Mexico" as he sang "I'm goin' way down south to Mexico ..." Then he whipped out a Mexican flag, which he wore as a cape. In one song he tried to blow up a cheap plastic sex doll, but ran out of time before he had to start singing the next verse.

After their own raucous set, The Sloths were joined onstage by Ty Wagner, another L.A. garage-rocker whose most famous song is "I'm a No Count." He sang that one as well as one by his rock 'n' roll hero Eddie Cochran, "Come On everybody." My only complaint about Wagner is that I wish he's have done more. He's got a moody intensity about him and sings every word as if his life depended on it.

Other music of note Saturday night was The Gaunga Dyns, a New Orleans garage group who had a local hit in the late '60s with "Rebecca Rodifer," a sad tale about a girl who died from an illegal abortion. This group recently reformed and are a tight outfit with hints of folk-rock, featuring three guitarists. My only gripe about them is that they opened with not one, not two, but three songs of The Animals. Each one sounded good, especially "I'M Cryin'," but for a while I thought it was an Eric Burdon cover band. On the other hand, their version of Paul Revere & The Raiders' "Just Like Me" was a complete delight.


Charley Gracie, a rockabilly from Philly, was a complete delight. Backed by a band that included guitarist Deke Dickerson, Gracie really shined in his cover of "Just a Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody."

Dickerson and company also backed Chris Montez. Though Montez is best known for late '60s pop hits like "Call Me" and "The More I See You," he wisely concentrated on music from his early, Ritchie Valens-influenced days. "Let's Dance" with its spot-on Farfisa organ, can't help but make you smile.

I wish I would have stayed for R&B shouter Eddie Daniels. But after Ty Wagner and The Sloths, I was afraid I was going to end up like this guy below.

All Stomped Out

But it was a fantastic festival.

Stomp on!







More Ponderosa Stomp Coverage:

* First Report: CLICK HERE
* Second Report: CLICK HERE

Photos (of the Stomp and other New Orleans craziness) CLICK HERE

PONDEROSA STOMP: SECOND REPORT

I always liked The Sonics and thought they were pretty cool. But after seeing them tonight in New Orleans I'm a complete zealot. I'm actually embarrassed that I'm going to have to explain just who these guys from Tacoma, Washington are to so many of you gentle readers. Fact is, The Sonics -- who played at the Midtown Rock 'n' Bowl in New Orleans on the first concert of The 2013 Ponderosa Stomp -- are woefully under-recognized and under-appreciated by the masses.

So here's the nutshell history of The Sonics starting back in the mid-'60s: They were teenagers in Tacoma who worshiped another influential local band The Wailers. They recorded two albums -- Here Are The Sonics and Boom -- on the tiny Etiquette label (both produced by Wailers bassist Buck Ormsby). In those two albums were some of the rawest, wildest rock ever heard. Little Richard was the main inspiration, one of the band members said at a panel discussion Friday. It showed. On top of that, Gerry Roslie's voice lived up to the title of one of the group's signature songs: "Psycho." He sang as if he was being burned alive.

Larry Parypa

Much of The Sonic's material was fairly typical for garage bands of the day. "Money," "Do You Love Me," "Roll Over Beethoven," Good Golly Miss Molly," and, like all those other Pacific Northwest groups like the Kingsmen and Paul Revere & The Raiders, "Louie Louie."

But it was The Sonics' original songs that set them apart. "Psycho,"  "The Witch," and "He's Waitin'" (which is about Satan!) all show a gleefully twisted, sardonic sense of humor. And had The Sonics ever become as famous as they deserved to be, the federal government would have produced overwrought public service announcements warning America's youth about the dangers of drinking strychnine, was the topic of one of their finest songs.

It's probably for the best that The Sonics never got to be that famous. They never had the temptation to do anything as embarrassing as Paul Revere & The Raiders' teen idol period. They never went artsy during the flower-power era. Basically, they broke up, did other things in their lives and reunited decades later when they were old enough not to care about show-biz career pressures.

Gerry Roslie

The 21st Century Sonics include three members from their glory days -- Roslie (who plays keyboards as well as handling about half the vocals), guitarist Larry Parypa and sax man Rob Lind. They're rounded out these days by singer/bassist Freddie Dennis and drummer Dusty Watson.

I shouldn't even have to say this, but just because Roslie, Parypa and Lind are in their late 60s doesn't mean they don't rock like crazy. They blazed through their tunes like "Boss Hoss," "Have Love Will Travel," and those others I mentioned above with crazed intensity. It seemed that everyone I encountered after The Sonics' set had wide eyes and dazed grins. Frankly I can't see how anyone on the Ponderosa bill tonight is going to top that.

While The Sonics were by far the highlight of Friday's show, there was lots of other great music at the Rock 'n' Bowl. 

Trouble ahead, Swamp Dogg in red

Swamp Dogg, wearing a bright red suit, didn't disappoint. The iconoclastic soulman performed a set populated mostly by his best-known songs like "Total Destruction of Your Mind," "Synthetic World," and his wondrous, emotional cover of John Prine's "Sam Stone."

His grand finale also was a cover, The Bee Gee's "I've Just Got to Get a Message to You." At the end of the song, he stepped off the stage and walked out into the audience shaking hands while repeatedly singing the refrain, "I've just got to get a message to you / Hold on, hold on ..." Sometimes he'd complete the chorus, "One more hour and my life will be through ..." After several minutes of this I almost started to believe that he was going to take that whole hour.

Long, tall Chris Clark, the first white singer on the Motown label (reportedly she was known as "The White Negress"), said she had a cold, sounded fine. Any hoarseness just added to the  charm of her husky voice. She reminded me of Dusty Springfield and Jackie DeShannon.

Richard Caiton throws out the Mardi Gras beads

And I was happy to see that the sets of Charles Brimmer and Richard Caiton got an enthusiastic reception from the crowd. This was the first time on stage for decades for both these New Orleans soul singers. I heard them on a panel discussion Thursday and both seemed anxious about their respective performances. Both men can be proud. (I just wish I'd gotten a decent photo of Brimmer's cool golden alligator boots.)

I hate to admit that after The Sonics I had to go outside, so I missed James Alexander's set. And my brain was still so scrambled after the boys from Tacoma, I just couldn't into zydeco man Lynn August. I hope to catch him again when I'm not on Sonics sensory-overload.

Tonight ... The Standells (with Love's Johnny Echols), The Sloths (with Ty Wagner), Charlie Gracie and more ... Stay tuned.

Check out my Ponderosa Stomp/New Orleans snapshots HERE

Ponderosa Stomp: First Report

NEW ORLEANS -- I'm originally from the Sooner State. That's the excuse I use when I show up somewhere way too early. (When I'm running late I have to get more creative with my excuses.) So blame it on Oklahoma for me arriving at the DBA club an hour before the party was supposed to start.

Luckily, I was in the Frenchman Street area of New Orleans, so I didn't have a problem finding a party while I waited. It's an artsy and very lively little district with bars and bookstores, less sleazy (I didn't see any Larry Flynt clubs) and overtly touristy than Bourbon Street. 

Right down the street from DBA, a brass band had begun to congregate. When I first was heading for The club there was just a drummer and tuba player pooting forth some semblance of song. But by the time I checked out the empty club and headed back, they had grown into a full band. Several folks were dancing in the street, cab drivers patiently negotiating their way around them. Some of the crowd that had gathered looked like tourists or college kids.

By the time I got back to DBA, the event that attracted me there had started. This was the annual Hip Drop, the first official musical event of The Ponderosa Stomp. This basically is an all-night (well, close. It's supposed to go on until 3 a.m.) record hop. The show features DJs from all over the doing 30-minute sets featuring cool old 45s.

In these troubled times, when someone sees "DJ" they automatically think of techno, house or even disco. Not so here. Like the music celebrated at the Ponderosa Stomp itself, the music featured at the Hip Drop consisted of old R&B, soul, rockabilly with some '60s garage-band sounds and a little surf music thrown in -- mostly by bands and singers who never became famous. In a small town like Santa Fe sometimes I feel fairly alone in my love for this stuff. So it was a real pleasure seeing a packed club full of people dancing and shouting to these crazy sounds.

Among the DJs last night were Miriam Linna and Billy Miller the owners of the much beloved Norton Records in New York. Reissuing these crazy sounds -- forgotten works by forgotten artists is the major part of Norton's business, so Billy and Miriam (pictured above) know their way around this material.

And speaking of Norton Records, earlier in the day, over at the Ponderosa Stomp Record Show, I bought a bunch of 45s that had been salvaged from the Hurricane Sandy disaster at Norton's warehouse last year. Then walking from the conference center at the Wyndham Riverfront back to my hotel, I got caught in an afternoon rain and my bag got soaked. I took the records out of their jackets and let them dry. I think they survived yesterday's lesser storm. (I'll play some on Terrell's Sound next week to see how they sound.)

The conference on Thursday also was fun. One of the speakers was Jerry Williams, Jr., better known as Swamp Dog. Born in Virginia to parents who were musicians, Swamp started recording in the mid-1950s under the name of Little Jerry and later “Little Jerry Williams.” His Swamp Dogg persona didn’t emerge until 1970, after working for years as an in-house songwriter for music publishing companies.

"I thought I was a great songwriter," he said, talking about his early career. "I thought I would set Tin Pan Alley on its ass."

Recording on a myriad of different labels, and starting his own company, Swamp Dogg Entertainment Group, the price of independence was leaner record sales and relative obscurity.

Although he's known to be cranky at times, ("I'm not as political as I am angry and belligerent," he told the Ponderosa Stompers)  unlike many overlooked musicians from his era, Swamp Dogg doesn't seem bitter.

"I really feel God is watching over me. And He likes me," Swamp said.

That also was the case with two New Orleans soul singers who spoke at the conference Thursday.

Both Charles Brimmer and Richard Caiton, who recorded in the '60s with New Orleans R&B icons like Dave Bartholomew, Wardell Quezergue and Senator Jones, both realized at some point that the music biz was not for them. "I thought I was going to have hit after hit after hit," Caiton said. "Instead, I had miss after miss after miss."

Both men went on to college -- Brimmer financing his studies by constant gigging -- and both did ok for themselves in their chosen fields (Brimmer in business, Caiton with a career in education.) Each talked about how the music industry cruelly takes advantaged of young people with starry-eyed ambitions of fame. But neither let such experiences sour their lives.

Brimmer, Caitron and Swamp Dogg will be playing tonight at the Ponderosa Stomp at the Rock 'n' Bowl.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: What I Did on My Spring Break

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
April 1, 2011

I had to attend to some (happy) family matters in Austin, Texas, last week. But even if music wasn’t the prime purpose of this little vacation, you just don’t go to the Live Music Capital of the World without catching some shows.

I was there during the week immediately following the South by Southwest Festival. The whole town seemed to be kind of hung over, but there were still plenty of good shows from which to choose (without the crazy crowds and impossible parking you find during SXSW). Here’s what I heard:

* Dale Watson at The Broken Spoke: Seeing Watson at the Spoke is pretty much the full-on Texas honky-tonk experience. This place is an authentic musical institution in Austin. A sign on the building outside said the joint has been open for 46 years. Bob Wills, Ernest Tubb, and Willie Nelson have graced its stage.

I almost didn’t recognize Watson when I first walked in. His jet-black pompadour has turned to a rich silver since the last time I saw him. (He’s not even 50 yet.) But his music hasn’t changed a lick. If he looks older, his stamina onstage is as strong as ever. Watson played more than three hours without taking a break.

He and his band, The Lone Stars, which includes a steel guitar, fiddle, and a stand-up bass, play pure, raw, unadorned beer-drinkin’ honky-tonk. Watson’s voice has a lot of Hag in it, as well as a touch of Waylon.
Watson mostly performed his own tunes.

There were plenty of recent ones, such as “Hey Brown Bottle,” an ode to Lone Star beer. He did a song called “Big Daddy,” about a shoeshine man who was doing business in the Broken Spoke that night. Watson frequently plugged him on stage: “Get a shoeshine, a boot-shine, anything but moonshine.”

He also played some older songs in his repertoire such as “Truck Stop in La Grange,” in which he included a part of the ZZ Top boogie classic of similar name. In fact, Watson included a whole mess of covers of country classics like “Silver Wings,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” and Jim Ed Brown’s “Pop a Top.”

A little sociological phenomenon I observed at the Spoke: It was ladies’ night at the club, and the place was full of cute college-age girls dancing with old guys who looked like Hank Hill and his friends. I asked my daughter, an Austin resident, about this. She said it’s because the old redneck guys know how to dance. “The young guys don’t know what they’re missing,” she said. Being an old guy myself, I probably shouldn’t tell them.

*  Ralph White, John Schooley & Walter Daniels at Beer Land: Schooley normally is a one-man band, a wild blues stomper who records on Voodoo Rhythm Records. That’s what I was expecting to see last week at this free show. White, who was a founding member of The Bad Livers, recently played Santa Fe, opening for Scott H. Biram at Corazón. I caught Biram there but arrived too late to see White. I figured he must like playing on bills with these crazy one-man band types.

But instead, at the Beer Land show, Schooley was part of an acoustical trio. He played slide (mostly on a resonator guitar) and a little banjo with White (who sings and plays fiddle and banjo) and harmonica player/singer Daniels. Though I would have loved to have seen Schooley in his usual hands-on-guitar/feet-on-drums mode, I wasn’t disappointed with this team-up.

Basically, the trio played mournful, spooky old mountain songs, country blues, and proto-bluegrass, sometimes veering off into John Fahey territory. They covered tunes by Muddy Waters, Dock Boggs, and R.L. Burnside and even took a shot at Charlie Walker’s honky-tonk classic “Pick Me Up on Your Way Down.”

The opening acts here were also worth noting. There was Wes Coleman, a singer/guitarist backed only by a drummer, whose melodious melodies reminded me a little of the old band House of Freaks. And there was an extremely fun little scuzzgrass band called Dad Jim, whose frontman Robert Allan Caldwell is related to the famous Caldwell brothers of the Marshall Tucker Band. Besides its rowdy version of “Ya’ll Come,” the thing I liked most about Dad Jim is the fact that the band had a black dog that made itself comfortable onstage throughout the set.

* Exene Cervenka at The Mohawk: Cervenka kicked off her tour for her new album, The Excitement of Maybe, in Austin last week. As anyone who has followed her knows, Cervenka solo is far more low-key than her work with the band that made her famous, X. In fact, on her own, she sounds closer to The Knitters, that X offshoot folk group of which she was part.

I appreciated her Austin show more than I did her new album. The record is quite enjoyable, with some nice tracks with Dave Alvin on guitar and Maggie Bjorklund on dreamy steel. But her stage sound was more stripped-down than that of the album.

Cervenka’s band was a hearty little ensemble with Austin guitar stud Will Sexton and, on the last couple of tunes, banjo picker Gretchen Phillips. But my favorite part of the band was the drummer, whose name I didn’t get. She used a washtub as a bass drum. She’s no Buddy Rich, but she banged that tub with spirit.

And, oh yeah, Exene sings her guts out.

My favorite songs she did were the upbeat “I’ll Admit It Now” (which works better without the horn section on the studio version) and the wistful, countryish “Dirty Snow,” both from the new album, as well as one of the songs she did with Phillips, “I Wish I Was A Single Girl Again” — an old folk song performed by The Maddox Brothers and Rose.

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
August 6, 2010

Here’s what I did last week on my summer vacation.

I spent several days last week in New York City. The major chunk of my time was spent at musical events (and riding the subways to get to them).

It was a near-impromptu trip, an impulse vacation. What sparked it was something I saw on the internet about The Detroit Breakdown, a free outdoor show at Lincoln Center sponsored by The Ponderosa Stomp Foundation. On the bill were two bands that rocked my reality as a junior high kid: Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels and ? & The Mysterians.

Even more interesting were slightly more recent Detroit groups including garage/punk heroes The Gories and Death, a resurrected proto-punk group.

Here’s the magical part. Only moments after I made my plane and hotel reservations, I got an email invitation from the promoters of another free show: Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds — led by a guy who’s been a member of The Cramps, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and The Gun Club — who were playing at The Knitting Factory in Brooklyn.

To me, this was a cosmic confirmation from the universe. Then later I learned that Gogol Bordello would be playing with Primus the night before the Detroit Stomp. Glory hallelujah!

Here’s a rundown of the music I saw last week:

* Sweatin’ to the oldies: ? & The Mysterians and Mitch Ryder offered a sharp contrast in their different approaches. And I have to say that ? and his band kicked major rump. From the moment he bounced onto the stage wearing a cowboy hat and a pink-and-purple jacket with Buffalo Bill fringes, ? was a psychedelic sprite belting out his rock ’n’ soul.

The Mysterians included all their original members — five Chicanos who grew up hanging out and playing music with one another. They’re tight and yet have an easy way together. They’ve done all these songs a jillion times, but they still look like they’re having the time of their lives playing them.

Ryder, on the other hand, had a bunch of new players who looked young enough to be his grandkids. These Wheels weren’t even hub when Ryder was tearing up the charts with “Devil in a Blue Dress” and “Jenny Takes a Ride.” All were proficient musicians, but they lacked that warriors’ bond that comes from years on the road.

But the main difference between the two is that ? and crew have retained their garage-band spirit, while Ryder’s band had a classic-rock edge. Ryder’s band even had a big production number that started out with tinkly-winkly piano versions of Rolling Stones songs like “Ruby Tuesday” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” leading with epic guitar crescendos to an overwrought version of “Gimme Shelter.” (I left during the drum solo. I just couldn’t take it.)

On the other hand, The Mysterians did a version of The Stones’ “Satisfaction.” But there was nothing grandiose about it. They played the song as I imagine they did in 1965.

The Mysterians got a little outside help. Soul singer Louise Murray of the Jaynetts dueted with ? on “Sally Go Round the Roses.” Murray sang on the original recording of this cool tune. But more impressive, the one and only Ronnie Spector joined the group on their big hit “96 Tears.” It was an unbelievable moment. She basically vamped on the “you’re gonna cry, cry, cry, cry” outro, teasingly adding an occasional “be my baby” to the proceedings.

* The Gories: This was Mick Collins’ group before The Dirtbombs. Collins along with fellow guitarist Dan Kroha and drummer Peggy O’Neill started out in Detroit in 1986 and lasted until the early ’90s. They got back together last year for a reunion tour with The Oblivions. And The Gories still sound fresh, crazy, and aggressively primitive. Beginning with their unofficial theme song, “Hey Hey, We’re the Gories,” they bashed their way through a high-energy set that included Gories favorites like “Thunderbird E.S.Q.” and “Nitroglycerine,” as well as covers of John Lee Hooker’s “Boogie Chillun” and Eddie Holland’s “Leaving Here.” They even went No Wave for a minute and did a cover of a Suicide song.

* Death: Talk about a band that was ahead of its time. Death was a trio of black kids from Detroit, back in the early 1970s, combined the soul and R & B they’d grown up with the Detroit rock of the day.

The son of singer/bassist Bobby Hackney, discovering one of his dad’s demo tapes in the attic, convinced his dad to reform the group. Death’s only studio recordings were released by the indie label Drag City as a CD called ... For the Whole World to See.

Death still roars. The band even did a song it wrote inspired by Richard Nixon, “Politicians in My Eyes.”

* Gogol Bordello: This international band of maniacs lived up to its reputation of playing intense and crazy live shows. It’s led by Ukraine-born Eugene Hutz, who immigrated to New York City in the early 1990s and recently moved to Brazil.

Gogol, whose members are from all over the world, play a high-charged rocking fusion of traditional Gypsy music — violin and accordion are important elements — other traditional European sounds, reggae, and more recently samba, creating a sound they modestly call “Gypsy punk.”

At their show on the Brooklyn waterfront, the musicians did some old favorites — “Not a Crime,” “Wonderlust King,” and “Start Wearing Purple” — plus a lot of their latest album, Trans-Continental Hustle.

* Primus: Following Gogol would be a heavy task for anyone. So, sadly, Primus was pretty much a major letdown. I’m a Primus fan and was excited about seeing the group. But after the group’s opening act, Les Claypool and the boys seemed plodding and spaced out.

* Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds: Kid Congo Powers is a hero in the garage-punk sub genre, which doesn’t place the highest value on instrumental virtuosity. Nevertheless, he’s an amazing guitarist who doesn’t need 15-minute solos to prove it. One of his encore tunes was an instrumental I didn’t recognize that sounded like a wild cross between Duane Eddy and “Psychotic Reaction.”

Opening his hourlong set with “I Found a Peanut,” a Thee Midnighters cover and the funniest song from his latest album, Dracula Boots, the Kid let rip with tunes spanning his career, including The Gun Club’s “Sex Beat” and two Cramps tunes, “I’m Cramped” and an extra-sinister “Goo Goo Muck.”

BLOG BONUS!

My snapshots of most these shows (and other things) can be found HERE.

Even better, here's some YouTube videos I found from some of the shows I saw. (The first two are from my GaragePunk Hidout pal allison levin's friend Corwin Wickersham.)

DEATH

THE GORIES

? & THE MYSTERIANS with RONNIE SPECTOR

MITCH RYDER & THE DETROIT WHEELS



GOGOL BORDELLO



KID CONGO POWERS & THE PINK MONKEYBIRDS