eMUSIC SEPTEMBER

* Undercover by West Hell 5. On my recent trip to Amsterdam, I planned to go to a party put on by The Amsterdam Beat Club at a Club called Paradisio. (I was alerted to this by fellow GaragePunk podcaster Suzanne of Rock 'n' Roll Rampage.)

One of the bands playing was West Hell 5, an instrumental group featuring sax, guitar and organ. They call their sound "Mod & Crime," which is inspired by "old spy-fi & crime-soundtracks, 60's groove jazz, Vegas Grind and early rhythm 'n blues." It's a cool, greasy sound.

And I like their album cover.

Most the tracks are original though they do cover The Man from U.N.C.L.E. theme and "Secret Agent Man" (though I still like Junior Brown's cover of that one the best.)

Long story short, I missed the show at Paradisio. For some reason I thought it was on Friday. It was on Thursday. At least I have this album.

* Live in the Red by Pussy Galore. Before he detonated the Blues Explosion, Jon Spencer was the frontman for this rocking little unit from Washington, D.C.

They reveled in crazy noise, but they were far more fartsy than artsy. Listen close enough and you can hear strains of rockabilly and Rolling Stones but all on distorted overdrive. (Don't listen too close or you'll blow an eardrum.) Every song they ever tackled was a party out of control.

This was Pussy's last concert, recorded at CBGB's in 1989. If there was any petty onstage bickering that night, they left it off this album. But Spencer and the boys don't sound like a group at the end of its rope here. They play their songs, more than half of which are from their greatest album Dial "M" for Motherfuckerwith pride and spirit.

* Memphis Heat by Memphis Slim & Canned Heat. One of Canned Heats most remembered records was the double album they did with John Lee Hooker, 1971's Hooker 'n' Heat. Far less known is this team-up with piano man Memphis Slim.

"I want everybody to know just who I am," Slim sings in the title song. "Me and the Canned Heat are gonna have a little jam." And indeed they did.

This collaboration includes two sets of sessions in Paris, (where Slim was living at the time) in 1970 -- Heat at its prime -- and 1973, which includes contributions from The Memphis Horns.

While the horns add an extra dimension, they represent a departure from the guitar-centric boogie usually associated with Canned Heat. Still, the interplay between Slim's piano and Henry Vestine's guitar makes this a treat for any blues fan.

Slim handled all the vocal responsibilities except on "Five Long Years." (I'm not sure who sang it. It doesn't sound like Slim or Bobby "The Bear" Hite, the band's lead singer during those years.)

The best tracks here are One of Slim's best-known songs, "Mother Earth" -- much more upbeat than other versions I've heard him do -- and "Paris" an snazzy little ode to his adopted home. (He moved there in 1962 and would die there in 1988.)

Now I've got to get my hands on Gates On the Heat, Canned Heat's album they did with Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown.

* Between the Ditches by The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band. You might think that a trio consisting of a crazy slide guitarist, his wife on the washboard and his cousin playing a bass drum and junkyard percussion might be little more than a fun little novelty act.

But those who have enjoyed the recordings and/or the live shows of The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, know that this group from rural Indiana goes way beyond the novelty spectrum.

Sound familiar? Yes, I just reviewed this album in Terrell's Tuneup not long ago. Read the whole thing HERE

Plus:

3 Nancy Sinatra covers (I played these in my Nancy tribute in a recent Terrell's Sound World):

* "Lightning's Girl" by Lydia Lunch & 8-Eyed Spy
* "Some Velvet Morning" by Firewater
* "How Does That Grab You Darlin' " by Empress of Fur

All three are fine tributes in their own peculiar ways. But I still prefer Nancy's originals.

eMusic August

Note: This week's Terrell's Tuneup got held because of so much stuff from Santa Fe Indian Market. (Please don't cancel your subscription!) So instead I'll run my monthly eMusic reviews, which I was going to post this weekend anyway, now.

* 100 Cash Poor Blues by Various Artists. Collections like this is why I love eMusic. 100 tracks, nearly five hours of music, for $5.84.

There's a lot of famous names -- Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Memphis Slim, Albert King , Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown  -- and even more impressive lesser-knowns like Bumblebee Slim, Sampson Pittman, Mercy Dee Walton. There's blues of various styles   --  Memphis Minnie, Bessie Smith, Charley Patton, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGee, blues singer and sax man Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson -- spanning the decades.

But the overriding themes of all -- well most -- of the  100 songs is money -- or the lack thereof. That's been one of the major themes of the blues since Day One. "I'm broke and I ain't got a dime," Blind Willie McTell sings in "Last Dime Blues." He sounds like he knows what he's talking about..

Both Gus Cannon and Barbecue Bob sing versions of "Poor Boy, Long Ways From Home" Different arrangements, some different lyrics, but they both come from the same place of the spirit. Same with "Broke and Hungry Blues."  One version here was recorded in 1929 by Peg Leg Howell (and an unknown fiddler), while another is a 1947 take by blues pianist Big Maceo Merriweather (with his pal Tampa Red on guitar.)

Not all is desperation here though. Even the above songs have and underlying humor. And Big Bill Broonzy even makes joblessness sound kind of fun in his late '30s "Unemployment Stomp." (featuring an irresistible trumpet by aa guy named Punch Miller) And I'm not even sure what the risque "Sales Lady" by Casey Bill Weldon is even doing on this collection, but it sure is fun.

Some highlights here include  The Harlem Hamfats' "Weed Smoker's Dream," a 1936 song that eventually evolved  into "Why Don't You Do Right?"; Slim Harpo's "I Need Money ("Keep Your Alibis"); "Price of Cotton Blues" by The Allen Brothers (one of, if not the only white act here. There's a snazzy kazoo on this tune that makes it sound like a jug band song); "Lightning Struck the Poorhouse," a jazzy tune by someone called Cousin Joe; and "Working Man Blues," where Lonnie Johnson complains about hard working Joes like himself wearing themselves out "while the pimps have all the fun."

* Fly Right With Big Sandy & The Fly-Rite Trio  I was so impressed when I saw Big Sandy & His Fly Rite Boys in Santa Fe recently that I came home and downloaded this album.

This is Sandy's first album, originally released back in 1990. But the singer born Robert Williams has stayed true to this basic western-swing influenced rockabilly sound -- with R&B and Latin overtones.

And in fact, Sandy and the Fly Rite Boys still perform  some of these songs. They did "Hot Water" at Santa Fe Sol, and maybe even some of the others.

As is the case with his current band, Sandy's trio here performed flawlessly on this album. But, agasin just like now, the main draw is Sandy's high, smooth vocals. Sure he'll let out some screams in rockers like "Baby You Done Gone, but the man knows how to croon.

* Always Say Please and Thank You by Slim Cessna's Auto Club. Why are they called "Slim Cessna's Auto Club?" Because another group already had the name "Bad Religion."

Indeed, strange religious obsessions and spiritual yearnings, not all of them healthy, dominate Cessna's material on this, the group's second album, just like their most recent album, last year's Unentitled.

In Cessna World, almost everything is seen through lenses of sin and salvation. The very first words on the album, after about 20 seconds of  circus-waltz pumping on an accordion and a little doo-wop vocal action , are "Wash all my sins away / I'm down on my knees to pray ..." But before the end of the first verse you realize that the song "In My Arms Once Again" actually is about a woman.

Cessna finds spiritual wisdom in unlikely place from unlikely sources.  In "Viceroy Filter Kings, a good honky tonk stomper with a rightfully obnoxious steel guitar, Cessna sings of an old man he meets in a bar, talking and crying about his wicked past. But the old drunk codger relays some reassuring advice: "I ain't a Catholic, I ain't a Protestant, I ain't a Jew. You know sweet Jesus He died, He died for my sins and He'll die for yours too."

There's another barroom encounter in "Last Song About Satan." Guess who Slim meets here ... "Lucifer you piece of shit, I should kick your ass right where you sit,"

The album climaxes with "Hold My Head"  a lengthy saga that starts out as some kind of parable, and ends with six minutes of a jubilant repetition of the band singing "Hold, hold my head ..."

Jesus loves this band.

* Night Beats  This is a band I discovered when fooling around on eMusic one night checking out some of the stuff the site had recommended for me. About 75 percent of the stuff eMusic "personally recommends" for me is mediocre and about 24 percent is raw crap. But this album is part of that glorious one percent that makes me happy.

This trio specializes in a garagey, quasi psychedelic guitar/bass/drums sound. They're from Seattle. (What could possibly go wrong?) but their hearts are in the Texas/Haight Ashbury sounds of The 13th Floor Elevators. The Night Beats song "Useless Game," for example owes much to The Elevators' "Earthquake." And speaking of Texas, they've recently toured with The Black Angels.

Most of their songs are in the two to three minute range, though they stretch out on couple of tunes, such as "The Other Side" which slows down a couple of times for, smokey Spanish-flavored  instrumental sections But my favorites are the first two tracks, the loud, brash and snotty "Puppet on a String," (no not the Elvis song from the Girl Happy soundtrack), which is followed by "Ain't Dumbo," which has echoes of  The Count Five's "Psychotic Reaction."

Bonus! Here's a WFMU radio appearance by Night Beats from earlier this year. (Courtesy Free Music Archive.) 

Update May, 2023 

The Free Music Archive no longer supports embedding, but you and listen to and/or download this Night Beats appearance HERE.

eMusic July

* The Essential Early Years: 1949-1954 by June Carter. Most people think of this lady as Mrs. Johnny Cash. It's a shame that her early solo largely has been overlooked. This collection, (a bargain -- $5.99 for 27 songs) shows Little Junie was a funny, sexy singer and a hundred-proof hillbilly.

A handful of these tunes were on the June Carter Cash retrospective, Keep on the Sunny Side, that Sony Legacy put out a few years ago.

As I've said before, back in the period covered in this collection, Nashville apparently was trying to market June as a real hillbilly version of Dorothy Shay (“The Park Avenue Hillbilly”). This involved a lot of novelty material. But June was really good at it.

A few songs that were on Keep on the Sunny Side are here -- "Root Hog or Die," "No Swallerin' Place" for instance. "Knock Kneed Suzy" is low-tone hillbilly humor, (and thus I love it). And speaking of funny business, Homer & Jethro are all over the place here on songs like "Hucklebuck" and "I Said My Nightshirt and Put On My Prayers."

Meanwhile, she sings about the heartbreak of erectile dysfunction in the song "You Flopped When You Got Me Alone."

But not everything here is a novelty song. Songs like "Honey Look What You've Done," "Crocodile Tears" and  "He Don't Love Me Anymore" are shoulda-been classic country weepers. A young Chet Atkins plays guitar on most tracks

* Lex Hives by The Hives.  Many critics have been less than kind about this album. Granted, a lot of the tunes here have a certain classic-rock sheen. “Go Right Ahead” sounds like Electric Light Orchestra filtered through T Rex. “I Want More” might be an AC/DC sendup. And on the very first track, The Hives seem to put the whole album in the context of arena-rock knuckleheadedness with their minute-long tongue-in-cheek invocation “Come On!” Here, with overdubbed crowd cheers in the background, Almqvist chants, “Come on! Come on! Come on! ... Everybody, come on!”


Sound familiar? I wrote about this album in a recent Terrell's Tuneup. Read the whole thing HERE


But before you do, have a little consumer advice: There are two versions of this album on eMusic: The regular (linked above) and a deluxe edition. The deluxe costs $2 more and has two additional tracks. The catch is, those are only available when you download the entire deluxe edition. Also, you can't get them separately on Amazon or iTunes either. So if you want the songs "High School Shuffle" and "Insane," (and they are pretty good -- I've heard them on Spotify.) be sure to go deluxe.

* Metal Circus by Husker Du . This seven-song EP from 1983 is one of the few Husker Du works I'd never bought.

This is known as a transitional record, where Bob Mould, Grant Hart and Greg Norton began to move away from being just another Midwest hardcore band and started paying more attention to songwriting, melody, lyrics, all those good things -- without losing the fire and fury that propelled them in the first place.

Although I tend to gravitate to the Mould songs on most Husker albums, and the opening song, "Real World" is a fine Mould effort, as is the exhilarating "First of the Last Calls."

But the greatest song on Metal Circus is a Hart tune. "Diane" is a chilling first-person account based on the 1980 abduction and murder of a West Minneapolis waitress by serial killer Joseph Donald Ture. The song is written from the perspective of the killer (eight years before Nirvana would take the same approach with "Polly."

"Hey little girl, do you need a ride?/Well, I've got room in my wagon why don't you hop inside?" (In reality, witnesses heard Edwards scream and saw the abductor force her into his car.) "... We could lay in the weeds for a little while / I'll put your clothes in a nice, neat little pile "

I was a latecomer to Husker Du. They had broken up shortly before I bought that used CD of Flip Your Wig that made me a fan. Now I almost wish I'd have heard this nightmarish contemporary murder ballad before I heard all the great Husker albums that followed

* Gus Cannon Vol. 1 (1927-28).   While writing my recent review of  The South Memphis String Band's Old Times There ...   I wanted to hear Cannon's original recording of  "Can You Blame the Colored Man," which Cannon recorded under the name of "Banjo Joe." Lo and behold, it was right here on eMusic on this fine Document Records collection.

Not only that, but there were five other Banjo Joe songs, which Cannon recorded before forming his quintessential jug band, Cannon's Jug Stompers. On these, which were Cannon's first recordings, he's accompanied by Blind Blake on guitar.

So I nabbed all those, plus a couple of Jug Stompers tracks I didn't already have ("Springdale Blues" and "Riley's Wagon")

Some of the Banjo Joe songs -- "Jonestown Blues" (no, not that Jonestown!), "Madison Street Rag" and "My Money Never Runs Out") were later recorded by the Jug Stompers. The later versions sound fuller with prominent harmonica and, of course, jug.)

eMusic June

* Last Round by Holy Modal Rounders. If your image of American folk music is some wimpy, self-righteous dude with a guitar spouting tired political platitudes then you need a little Holy Modality in your life. Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber and all their friends and loved ones who drifted in and out of the Rounders, showed how truly subversive folk music can be.

 Like the title implies, this 1978 work was supposed to be the swan song for the Rounders. And in reality, it was their last album until a Stampfel/Weber reunion in 1999. (My theory on the real reason they got back together for the album Too Much Fun was to show the "alternative country" fans of that time how alternative country should really sound like.)

 Last Round includes some remakes of early Rounder "hits" like "If You Want to Be a Bird" (the original got almost famous for being on the soundtrack of Easy Rider. Here it's coupled with "Wild Blue Yonder."); "August 1967 (Hippies Call it STP)" (an ode to a motor oil treatment, I suppose); and "Euphoria," one of the Rounders' earliest songs. This tune was covered by just about every jugband revival groups of the '60s.

There's also some fresh madness, such as Stampfel's bluegrass/klezmer romp "Poison Sugar," the luaty faux Dixieland "Pink Underwear," an earnest Civil War-era "Year of Jubilo" (you should recognize the melody even if you don't recognize the title) and the fine sleaze rock of "Snappin' Pussy."

* The Capitol Years by Johnny Otis. L.A.-based Otis mostly is remembered for two things: 1) "Willie and the Hand Jive" and  2) his role as R&B bandleader, producer and talent scout who is responsible for discovering singers like "Little" Esther Phillips, Big Mama Thornton, Jackie Wilson, Hank Ballard, and Etta James -- who died only days after Otis last January.

That history itself justifies Otis' place in the rock 'n' roll pantheon. But many seem to forget that at one point Otis himself was being groomed as a star. He recorded for Capitol Records in the late '50s. Even though his only major hit from this period was the Bo Diddley influenced "Willie and the Hand Jive," this collection shows that he recorded several tunes that probably should have been much bigger than they were.

"Good Golly" (with its not so subtle allusion to Little Richard) is a fine mindless R&B workout, as is the case with "Hum Ding a Ling" and "Ring-a Ling." Another favorite is "Telephone Baby." (I'm not sure of the identity of the woman singing harmonies  and making sexy noises in the background. Perhaps Marci Lee?) But the craziest is "Three Girls Named Molly Doin' the Hully Gully."

Johnny works Screamin' Jay Hawkins' side of the street with "Castin' my Spell" (helped by singer  Marci Lee) and "Voodoo Woman," a slow blues. And there's a couple of "Hand Jive" sequels. "Willie Did the Cha Cha" puts a pseudo Latin beat on Otis' big hit. Meanwhile, "Crazy Country Hop" is an irresistible swampy "Willie" clone.

Some of these songs feature other vocalists. There's Mel Williams, who takes the lead on "Well, Well, Well," (with a beat that sounds like it's got some New Orleans in it) and a slow, greasy ballad "Little Angel." And then there's  Marie Adams & Three Tons of Joy doing a live R&B take of the old Tin Pan Alley chestnut "Ma He's Making Eyes at Me." I'm not sure if it's live or "fake live" but the screaming teenagers are an essential part of this recording.

*Maverick by George Thorogood & The Destroyers. I believe that Thorogood is one of the most underrated rockers of the '70s and '80s.

This album, which I used to have on cassette tape, is one of his best. Maybe his very best, since, after all, this is where his classic "I Drink Alone" came from. (True confession, I can't hear this song without my mind drifting back to this San Diego strip joint my cousin took me to and to the blonde miracle-in-silicone who danced to it. She truly made the song her very own.)

Thorogood always was a good John Lee Hooker interpreter. Earlier in his career he did a fine "Boogie Chillun" and a respectable "One Bourbon, One Scotch and One Beer." Here he tackles "Crawlin' King Snake." While it's nowhere near Hooker's original, Thorogood does a snarling, stripped down take on it.

And Thorogood is responsible for the second "Willie and the Hand Jive" I downloaded this month.

Other Thorogood  diamonds on this include "Gear Jammer" with its crazed slide guitar lead that now seems like a precursor to a thousand blues-band bashers; "Go Go Go," a lesser-known Chuck Berry song; and the title song, which yes, is the theme song for the old t.v.western starring James Gardner. Hank  Carter's rooty-toot sax makes this song.

* Cockadoodledon't by Legendary Shack Shakers. I downloaded this one not long before I saw the Shakers with their auxiliary group, the Dirt Daubers at Santa Fe Sol earlier this month.

This is one of their earliest albums, released back in 2002 when Joe Buck was still with them (before he devolved into Joe Buck Yourself)

Besides some crazed, hopped up J.D. Wilkes originals like "Pinetree Boogie," "Blood on the Bluegrass," "Help Me From My Brain" and "Shakerag Holler," there's some crazed, hopped-up covers like Slim Harpo's "Shake Your Hips," the classic "Bullfrog Blues" (the best version of this I've heard since Canned Heat's first album) and Benny Joy's "Wild Wild Lover."

This one's almost as fun as one of their concerts. But not quite.

Enjoy this video I shot at their Santa Fe show:

eMusic May

* Ghost to a Ghost/Gutter Town by Hank 3. This two-album, two-hour-plus set is part of the avalanche of music Hank unleashed last year following his emancipation from the evil Curb empire. (There also was Attention Deficit Domination, which showed his love for metal) and the bizarre Cattle Callin', a hillbilly answer to Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music.)

So Ghost to Ghost is Hank 3's country set. There's fiddles and banjos. Drinkin', druggin', fuckin', shootin' guns -- good dirty outlaw fun. But make no mistake, it's country on his own terms. Lyricswise, he's ploughed much of this ground before. But more than ever, he's taking the music to strange corners.

The album starts off with fairly straightforward country sounds. But by the third track, "Ridin' the Wave" things take a turn for the little crazy. The drums are raw thunder, there's some kind of pump organ that sounds like a call from a past century and the fiddle and electric guitar create a wilds backwoods cacophony.

But don't think the boy can't do purdy. "The Devil's Movin' In" is just that. And so is "Time To Die,"   though the drums sound like they might have been lifted from a voodoo ceremony. There's some sweet gypsy tango featuring fiddle and accordion in the title song.

One of my favorite tracks here is "Ray Lawrence, Jr." It's actually two songs written and sung by an Arizona pal by that name, both recorded on Hank's bus. The first one, “When You Lose All You Have,” is a sweet country moaner that Lawrence wrote while living in a homeless shelter. The second, "Back in the Day," is more upbeat, with a chunka chunka Johnny Cash vibe. (Lawrence was interviewed last year by Saving Country Music. Read it HERE.)

Lawrence isn't the only guest vocalist here "Trooper's Holler" features Hank's dog. This might just be the most bitchen dog song I've heard since Grandpa Jones' "Old Rattler." And hell, I'd rather listen to Trooper than some worthless guest star like Kid Rock or Sting. But some pretty cool human guests lie ahead on the second album.

Son of a gun, Hank has some fun on the bayou on the second album in this set, Guttertown. This features Hank experimenting with Cajun music as well as atmospheric, ambient swamp soundscapes -- birds, bugs, beasts, wind, water and railroad tracks.

Then there's some spooky, exotic instrumental dirges like "Chaos Queen" and "Thunderpain" that sound like soundtracks for Buggery Night at the Temple of Doom.

All in all, the results of the Guttertown experiment are mixed -- and that might be too generous of a verdict.

But but there are some gems on Guttertown too. The spirited "Gutter Stomp" for instance borrows the melody of "Bosco Stomp" (which already had been borrowed for "Cajun Stripper).

And even better is the duet with Tom Waits (now there's a guest star!) on the song "Fadin' Moon." Whenever I here this song I get this image of Waits and Hank sharing a bottle somewhere deep in a swamp where neither belong but both feel right at home.

Likewise, the Les Claypool contribution is a goofy highlight. It's a fractured, almost Beefheartian faux sea chantey, which Hank and the Primus leader sing accompanied only by a bass drum for most of the seven-minute song. "We're going down with the ship/ deep down in the sea/ We're going down with the ship/ the pirate's life we lead," they sing.

 After being under Curb's corporate thumb for so many years, Hank 3 undoubtedly reveled in his freedom to create whatever weirdness tickled his mind. But with so many sound-effect and atmosphere tracks here -- some of them rather lengthy -- I sincerely believe that a wise, sympathetic producer not afraid to say, "Let's save this for the deluxe edition 20 years from now," could have benefited this work. It easily could have been whittled down to one decent album -- though that's the case with way too many double albums.

* Controversial Negro in Tucson by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Good thing  Spencer and crew recorded this in 1996. I'm pretty sure the Arizona state Legislature has in recent years passed a bill prohibiting controversial Negroes in the state.

But seriously, folks, this is The Blues Explosion doing what they did best romping, stomping, screaming and howling through their stripped down, blues-touched gutter rock.

Hey Spencer, I like Heavy Trash and all, but listening to this glorious mess, I'm convinced that the Blues Explosion should rise again.

* Locked Down by Dr. John. Here's the best album the good doctor has done in decades. The music recalls his early voodoo-drenched Night Tripper days, but it's got a sharp contemporary edge — for which we can thank producer Dan Auerbach, frontman of The Black Keys. But unlike some older artists produced by hip young bucks, Dr. John doesn't feel like a fish out of water here. The music is fresh, not forced.

Auerbach reportedly wanted to get Dr. John back into the thick, atmospheric, heady hoodoo excursions of his early albums — Remedies, Babylon, The Sun, Moon & Herbs, and especially his classic Gris-Gris. What’s so refreshing about this record is that it has most of those elements that made Dr. John so irresistible. Yett it doesn’t sound like a paint-by-number re-creation of the old sound.

Sound familiar? Yes, this was the subject of Terrell's Tune-up not long ago.

Plus
* "Weedeye" and "Rickshaw Rattletrap" by Churchwood. These are the two songs I didn't have from Churchwood's Just the Two of Us "single." (The other two, "A Message from Firmin Desloge" and "Metanoia" are on the latest Saustex sampler Sample This.)

* "Forbidden Fruit" by The Band. This is a cool tune from The Band's 1975 Northern Lights/Southern Cross album. I already had most of the songs I like from that record from various compilations, but somehow "Forbidden Fruit," sung by the late great Levon Helm, never made it into any best-of retrospectives. I had to have it for my recent Santa Fe Opry tribute to Helm, who died of cancer last month.

eMusic April

Here's my latest batch of downloads from eMusic:

* Crazy Glue and Fishbone by Fishbone. The recent DVD release of Everyday Sunshine, an excellent documentary about this innovative Los Angeles rock 'n' soul band, inspired me to download the group's latest release (Crazy Glue) and their first EP from 1985.  I already had almost everything in between.

I was a casual Fishbone fan in the early 1990s, but I took a turn to the fanatical in the summer of 1993 when I saw them play Lollapalooza in Denver. This was during the height of the Grunge Scare and while I enjoyed the music of Primus, Dinosaur Jr. and Alice in Chains, I remember thinking even then how all of the long-haired flannel boys could learn some serious lessons from Fishbone. The group didn't just sound great. They had something that was seriously lacking in most of the "alternative" rock of the day -- showmanship! I forget exactly how many people were in the band at that time, but there seemed to be about a dozen onstage in Denver that day, most of them running around chaotically, trading off vocals, changing time signatures unexpectedly, one song seamlessly flowing into the next one, frontman Angelo Moore going out into the audience. Truly a breath of fresh air compared with so many self-absorbed acts of the day.

 The Fishbone EP was full of the wild spirit that propelled the band from its early days. Among the seven songs was "Party at Ground Zero," their first "hit" -- or at least the first song that got them national notoriety. It's also got a tune that won them some recent notoriety. Remember a few months ago when The Roots caused an outrage in conservative circles by its choice of song to bring out Michele Bachmann as a guest on the Jimmy Fallon show? That was none other than "Lyin' Ass Bitch" from this Fishbone record. (Of course, probably nobody but the most rabid Fishbone devotees would have realized it -- certainly not Bachmann or Matt Drudge -- had Roots drummer Questlove not tweeted about it beforehand.)

Crazy Glue, also a 7-song EP certainly isn't the greatest Fishbone effort. None of the songs are anywhere as memorable as "Party at Ground Zero" or "Everyday Sunshine" or "Bonin' at the Boneyard" or even "Lyin' Ass Bitch." But a quarter-century after their debut, it's still full of the crazy Sly Stone/Funkadelic/crazed ska/metal madness energy. And after all these years, nobody is quite like Fishbone.

* Exile on Main Street Blues by various artists. First of all, this compilation has absolutely nothing to do with the classic Rolling Stones album -- except perhaps for the fact that Exile on Main Street has a deep spiritual debt to the kind of old blues songs found here and that I bet the Stones as individuals would personally dig most, perhaps all, the songs here.

I know I do.

This 51-track collection features mostly songs about economic hard times and poverty. The lyrics are populated by chain gangs, hobos and people, like singer Bob Campbell who are tired of working on the "Starvation Farm."

Exile includes blues artists spanning several decades. There's old country blues by the likes of  Sleepy John Estes, Barbecue Bob, Hambone Willie Newbern and Yank Rachell as well as more urban and more contemporary blues greats like Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson,  Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown and Big Mama Thorton.

Among the highlights are "Miss Meal Cramp Blues" by Alec Johnson, which sounds like an old timey string band. ("I'm so broke and hungry, I could eat a kangaroo," he sings); Memphis Minnie's "Sylvester  and His Mule Blues"; Peetie Wheatstraw's "Jungle Man Blues" (he's singing about a hobo jungle, not a tropical rain forest); and "Strike Blues," a lesser-known John Lee Hooker recording.

* Wake Up Sinners by The Dirt Daubers. What we have here basically is an acoustic alter ego of the Legendary Shack Shakers.

Featuring Shack Shaker singer J.D. Wilkes, his wife Jessica -- who share vocal duties and play several, mostly stringed instruments -- and Shack Shaker Mark Robertson on upright bass, the DDs play a wild banjo-driven blend of bluegrass, jug band and old-time hot jazz.

There are Wilkes originals as well as several fresh takes on traditional tunes like "Wayfaring Stranger and "Single Girl."

Comparisons with The Asylum Street Spankers and even The Squirrel Nut Zippers (especially the title song and "The Devil Gets His Due") -- not to mention them Shack Shakers -- are unavoidable. But the Daubers would hold their own against any of 'em. This is just fine American music distilled in Kentucky.

Not long after I downloaded this I learned that the Dirt Daubers as well as the Legendary Shack Shakers are playing in Santa Fe June 7 as a Thirsty Ear Festival kick-off party. Details here.

* Carrion Crawler/The Dream by Thee Oh Sees . If you caught my rantings about this year's South by Southwest, you know that one of my favorite "discoveries" was this San Franciso band, who I saw on the same bill as The Gories, Kid Congo Powers & The Pink Monkeybirds and The Spits.


The group is the brainchild of John Dwyer, a singer and guitarist who is a veteran of several bands. Thee Oh Sees includes another guitarist, a female vocalist and keyboard player (the lovely Brigid Dawson) and two drummers and a bassist. They're a prolific crew. This was their second album released in 2011.

Dwyer reportedly started this group as a vehicle to "to release his instrumental, experimental home recordings." (That's in Wikipedia, so it must be true.) Although there's still a lot of lo-fi experimental noise here and sprawling instrumental jams, Carrion Crawler/The Dream is the work of a full-fledged band.

I think my favorite here is the hard-charging half-title song "The Dream." At nearly seven minutes, it's the longest track here. But it never gets boring. Also impressive is "Contraption/Soul Dessert" is another winner. To risk the scorn of the politically correct, it's got echoes of Ted Nugent's "Stranglehold" though it's pumped up with cackling cosmic energy.

Check out this live performance of Thee Oh Sees (thanks to The Free Music Archive).

eMusic March

Here's my latest batch of downloads from eMusic:

  * Bluegrass Classics by Various Artists. This is one of those eMusic bargains that keeps me paying my $19.99 every month. What we have here is 48 tracks of bluegrass -- and some proto-bluegrass -- artists, mainly from the '40s and '50s, but some even earlier

I've been on a bluegrass kick lately. But -- call me a cranky old purist if you want -- I don't like much of the modern bluegrass music. So much of it seems cold and intellectual -- virtuoso musicians who seem more highfalutin than high and lonesome, lacking in that true hillbilly spirit that fueled the original masters.

This collection features very few artists whose names might be recognized by casual fans -- do Sonny Osbourne and J.E. Mainer ring a bell? But mostly there are singers and pickers who never got as famous as Bill Monroe, The Stanley Brothers or Flatt & Scruggs.

But it's full of great songs. There's "I'll Roll in My Sweet Baby's Arms" by Buster Carter & Preston Young (and fiddler Posey Rorer), cronies of Charlie Poole. This version is at least a decade older than Flatt & Scruggs' more famous version.

There's "Wild Bill Jones" by Wade Mainer & The Sons of the Mountaineers. This is the song that contains the line, " “I pulled my revolver from my side / And I destroyed that poor boy's soul," which inspired the name of  Trevor Jones' one-man band.. Wade, by the way is J.E. Mainer's brother.

But my favorite has to be "Missing in Action" by Jim Eanes &His Shenandoah Valley Boys. It's the story of a soldier who was wounded in battle, left for dead and taken prisoner by the enemy. But the narrator escapes and makes it home. Nobody was home, but when he goes in he finds a wedding photo  -- his wife had married another guy. He then finds a letter to the Mrs. from the Army saying that her first husband was missing in action and presumed dead. The sad soldier doesn't want to spoil his wife's happiness, so he decides just to move along without letting his wife know he's still alive.

Wow! What a good sport.



* Singin' in the Rain: The Best of Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards. He was the voice of Jiminy Cricket, the sweet-voiced guy who crooned "When You Wish Upon a Star" and "Give a Little Whistle"in Walt Disney's Pinocchio.

Like Mark Twain, Edwards was from Hannibal, Mo. Starting out in vaudeville and later moving to Broadway, he played the uke to accompany his singing. Some say he learned to play the instrument when he was a newsboy to draw attention to himself while hawking papers on the street.

Edwards' golden years were in the '20s and 30s. He reportedly sold some 74 million records. He specialized in the pop hits of the day, doing versions of the pop standards of the day -- "Hard Hearted Hannah," "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," "Dinah" "It's Only a Paper Moon," "I'll See You in My Dreams," and of course "Singin' In the Rain."

He also was known for his novelty songs like "My Dog Loves Your Dog," "Paddlin' Madelyn Home," and the risque "Who Takes Care of the Caretaker's Daughter?" Often Edwards would scat, then break into a bizarre falsetto "human trumpet" sound.

But though most of his songs had a carefree and happy aura, Edwards' life was a mess. Alcoholism, morphine addiction and financial troubles plagued his life. He tried his hand at acting, but never got any significant roles.

But he did manage in 1940 to score a gig that would win him -- or at least his voice -- immortality: providing the voice of Pinnochio's conscience in the classic cartoon feature. "When You Wish Upon a Star" won an Academy Award. And Edwards' recording of it was his last hit record.

It might be cruel irony that Edwards' musical legacy is largely forgotten while the cartoon cricket to which he gave voice is a household name 70 years later. But the truth is that Ukulele Ike's music is a delight. This collection of 25 songs, including all the ones I mentioned here is a great testament to the singer.

* Help Me Devil  Here's how I stumbled across this album on eMusic:

A few weeks ago when writing my review of Andre Williams' new album Hoods and Shades, I was trying to find an early version of the song "Mojo Hannah" by an R&B  singer I'd never heard of named Tami Lynn. Searching eMusic for Tami I came across Help Me Devil, which features her on a couple of tracks.

I liked what I heard.

 The group behind this self-titled effort is a Spanish trio heavily influenced by rockabilly.

The group is led by Juan Carlos Parlange, who has led Spanish punk bands in the '90s.

It's just cool, basic rock with titles including "Girls Today Don't Like to Sleep Alone," ,“We Sold Army Secrets For Dope," and "Rattlesnakes Don't Commit Suicide." (which you can hear on the latest Big Enchilada podcast. ) They even cover a Hasil Adkins tune, "Chicken Walk."

 Matt Verta-Ray of Heavy Trash produced the album and played on some cuts. But an even more impressive guest here is Miss Tami who kills on the old fashioned boogie "It's Great to Be Here, It's Great to Be Anywhere."

Plus


* 3 Songs from Ricochet by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Ricochet was The Dirt Band's second album back when they still were toying with the idea that they could be the West Coast version of The Jim Kweslin Jug Band. Most the songs on the album, however, were fairly uninteresting folk-rockish pop. But I still love the crazy words-crazy tunes of their jug-band stuff.

The ones I downloaded were "Coney Island Washboard," "Happy Fat Annie" and "Teddy Bear's Picnic," a demonic stomp that I shamelessly ripped off for the arrangement of my own "Potatoheads' Picnic." There's three or for other kazoo, banjo and washboard-heavy tracks here I'll probably nab in the future.

* "Old Original Kokomo Blues" by Kokomo Arnold and "Kokomo Blues" by Scapper Blackwell. When I was writing my Terrell's Tuneup column about President Obama singing "Sweet Home Chicago" at a White House blues concert a couple of weeks ago, my original idea was to write about the history of the song. (Hint, these tunes, especially Kokomo Arnold's, were huge influences, to use a kind word.)

The column took a different turn, but I'm still glad I downloaded these country blues classics.

eMusic February

Here's my latest batch of downloads from eMusic:

 


* The Johnny Otis Show Live at Monterey. The death of Etta James on Jan. 20 provoked an outpouring of tributes to the seminal R&B singer -- and rightfully so.

But the passing of Johnny Otis just three days before went comparatively unnoticed. Maybe if President Obama had played "Willie and the Hand Jive" instead of "At Last" at his inaugural ball ...

Many Etta fans might not even realize that Otis was instrumental in launching her career. He "discovered" her when she was just 14, producing her first hit "The Wallflower (Roll With Me Henry),"  an "answer" song to Hank Ballard's "Work with Me, Annie." Ballard also was part of Otis' stable for awhile.

Besides "Hand Jive," Otis didn't have many major hit records under his own name. He was a producer and  an A&R man for King Records. He worked with Wynonie Harris and Charles Brown, Little Willie John and Jackie Wilson. He played vibes on Johnny Ace's haunting "Pledging My Love" and played drums on Big Mama Thornton's original recording of "Hound Dog."

And Otis was a bandleader who toured with an incredible R&B revue The Johnny Otis Show (originally the California Rhythm and Blues Caravan), which at various points included the likes of Etta, Big Mama and Little Esther, who grew up to be Esther Phillips.

This album is a live recording of the Otis' revue at the 1970 Monterrey Jazz Festival. Some of the giants of west-coast R&B are here -- Big Joe Turner, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Pee Wee Crayton, Roy Milton,  Roy Brown, Ivory Joe Hunter, Otis' then teenage son Shuggie Otis and, best of all, Esther Phillips.

Some of these codgers' careers dated back to the 1940s. But at this show they still were full of that crazy R&B energy that popped the eyes and twisted the heads of an entire generation all those years before.

Highlights here include Vinson's "Cleanhead Blues," on which he sings and plays the sax that made him famous. (Here's some Cleanhead trivia: In the early '50s, his band included a young sax player named John Coltrane.And Eddie became "Cleanhead" after he lost his hair as a young man after using a lye-based hair straightener.)

Big Joe Turner proves he was still Boss of he Blues with Otis at Monterrey. He has two songs here, "Plastic Man" and "I Got a Gal."

But the real show-stopper is Little Esther. "Cry Me a River Blues" bears little resemblance to the torch blues standard "Cry Me a River." Phillips' song is an uptempo romp in which lyrics you'll recognize from who knows how many blues and R&B standards flow from her mouth. Maybe she was improvising. Maybe she was possessed. But you don't want it to end. Her other song, "Little Esther's Blues" slows down. It's a soulful simmer with Otis out front on the vibes.

If there's an R&B revue in Heaven, they just picked up a hell of a band leader.

* Scraps by NRBQ It was another recent rock 'n' roll death that inspired me to download this album. Longtime NRBQ drummer Tom Ardolino died on Jan. 6, ending all hopes of a reunion of the classic NRBQ lineup of Terry Adams, Joey Spampinato, Big Al Anderson and Ardolino.

This album, the second in NRBQ's long, long career, was recorded in 1972, a few years before Ardolino joined. (Tom Staley was still there.) In fact, Big Al had just recently hopped on at that point, replacing guitarist Steve Ferguson. In 1972, the "Q" stood for "Quintet," as the group had a vocalist named Frank Gadler.

Scraps had most if not all the ingredients that served the group so well for the next three decades. (The one thing missing is that Big Al had not yet emerged as a vocalist and songwriter for the band.) There was plenty of goofball humor ("Just Close Your Eyes and Be Mine, Ruby" is just one example) Adams' subtle Sun Ra influence popping up in strange corners, an inspired cover (an irresistible version of Johnny Mercer's "Accentuate the Positive") and straight-ahead roots rock.

Highlights here include the road-warrior anthem "Howard Johnson's Got His Ho-Jo Working," a kazoo-enhanced "Who Put the Garlic in the Glue," an instrumental called "Tragic Magic" (which reminds me a little of a subdued Frank Zappa) and the ultra-catchy "Magnet."


* Barfly by Rocket from the Tombs. Riddle me this, Batman -- how can a band that broke up in the mid 1970s record and release their first  album of new material just last year?

I guess the answer would be "Because they can."


This is the story of Rocket from the Tombs, that influential Cleveland band that included David Thomas of Pere Ubu and Cheetah Chrome of The Dead Boys and punk-rock forefather, the late Peter Laughner (also an early member of Pere Ubu.)

RFTT basically was a word-of-mouth band. There were scattered bootlegs, but they never recorded a proper album during their brief existence in the '70s. A couple of tunes, "Amphetamine" and  7-minute recording of their song "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" surfaced in a 1990s Ubu box set Datapanik in Year Zero. In 2002 came a compilation of lo-fi live recordings and demos called The Day The Earth Met The Rocket From the Tombs. 


Original members Thomas, Chrome and bassist Craig Bell got together with Television guitarist Richard Lloyd filling in for Laughner and and drummer Steve Mehlman for a Rocket reunion tour in 2004, resulting in an album called Rocket Redux consisting of RFTT  classics recorded in the studio.


And finally, last year they 21st Century version of Rocket from the Tombs brought the world a bunch of new songs.

I'll be writing more about Barfly in an upcoming Terrell's Tune-up. Watch this blog!

* Whenever I Want It by Mark Sultan . This is the second of two solo albums Sultan released last year. I downloaded the first one, Whatever I Want in last months's eMusic batch. And I reviewed them both in a recent Tuneup. 

Some of my favorites on Whenever include the rockabilly-fueled “Satisfied and Lazy," “Party Crasher,” which gets psychedelic with a droning organ, some “Paint It Black” guitar riffs, and distorted background vocals that may make you think of Dion & The Belmonts interpreting the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

I'm also fond of "Pancakes," which makes me think of  Sha Na Na making the greatest IHOP commercial in the history of the world.

Then there's The epic eight-minute jazz odyssey “For Those Who Don’t Exist,” whic starts out with Sultan strumming a guitar with the tremolo way up and whistling a weird little melody that could almost be a slower version of the Pixies’ “La La Love You.”

eMusic January

Here's my latest batch of downloads from eMusic:

* Jack Mack & The Heart Attack: Club Lingerie 1982. It was almost 30 years ago that I took a trip to California with my pals Alec and Rich. The stated purpose of the trip was to promote my then-new album Picnic Time for Potatoheads. But it was also a time to get out of the insular world of New Mexico and check out some music.

The most memorable music we saw on that trip included The Waitresses (popular at the time for their New Wave hit "I Know What Boys Like") and an obscure soul-revival group that nobody back home had ever heard of -- Jack Mack & The Heart Attack. We saw them at what I guess was their favorite haunt, Club Lingerie on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

These were the days when the sounds of Stax, Motown, Al Green and whatnot were way out of fashion. In fact, by the next year, the Motown-heavy soundtrack of The Big Chill would come to symbolize yuppie nostalgia and a sort-of rebuke to anything that came after. ("There is no other music, not in my house," Kevin Kline's character  declared indignantly in the movie.)

But Jack Mack and the boys weren't mere nostalgia merchants. Though it was obvious they loved the era they emulated, they were not a covers band. If they did any covers at all that night, they were so obscure I didn't recognize them.

And most importantly they played with an energy that set them miles apart from your usual bar band playing covers of "Soul Man" or "I Heard it Through the Grape Vine." I don't actually hear any overt punk or New Wave influences, but the Club Lingerie crowd, which was made up largely of early '80s Hollywood punks, loved it. It would be cool if there was a time machine and you could send Black Joe Lewis or JC Brooks or King Khan back in time to sit in with The Heart Attack.

I guess I was feeling a little neo-Big Chill nostalgia one recent night when I stumbled on this album while Googling Jack Mack & The Heart Attack. I was overjoyed when I saw it on eMusic. Though as the songs were downloading I feared the music would not match my memory. But I was far from disappointed. In fact, listening to "Wonderful Girl" took me right back there.

Weird Footnote: There's still a band called Jack Mack & The Heart Attack working today.  I'm not sure if any of the original players are in in, but there's a new "Jack Mack." The singer back in 1982 was a guy named Max Carl Gronenthal. After leaving The Heart Attack, he went on to sing with .38 Special and currently is singing with the current version of Grand Funk Railroad.

* Corn Demon by The Hickoids. "Cowpunk" is a term that gets thrown around quite a bit, but way back in the '80s, this Texas group helped get the concept off the ground. No, it's not just redneck parody -- though, as the Hickoids show on "Driftwood 40-23," a tender country lust song about a romance born in a truckstop restroom (you can hear it on my latest Big Enchilada episode) had a good knack for that sort of thing when they want.

But this collection, which features The Hickoids' first album We're In it for the Corn plus an early EP, basically is downhome ferocious rock 'n' roll played with hillbilly abandon. this is one dangerous rodeo.

One of my favorites is "The Longest Mile," which changes tempo at least a couple of times but maintains a fiery intensity even during the slow part. "Corntaminated" is an insane hoedown that starts out with a chicken-scratch guitar. I'm not sure what "Animal Husbandry" is about, but I assume it's something unwholesome. But you gotta love the stomping, twang-infused guitar slop.

Corn Demon mostly focuses on original tunes, ) but there's some wild covers too. Carl Douglas' "Kung Fu Fighting" becomes "Korn Fu Fighting" while Elvis' "Burning Love" becomes a hunka hunka crazy ride. One of my favorites here is the instrumental "Willamanza," which is a high-voltage melding of "The William Tell Overture" and, you guessed it, the theme from Bonanza. And perhaps the most radical cut here is the irreverent, screaming version of The Eagles' (!!!) "Take it Easy."  No, The Hickoids don't take it easy, but they take it.

* Crying and Sighing by McKinney's Cotton Pickers. This is what big band jazz sounded like back in the 1920s and '30s. Lots of horns of course, but also a prominent banjo and frequent vocals.

The Cotton PIckers were a black group that started out in in 1926, led by drummer William McKinney but led by Don Redman, a former member of the Fletcher Hendeson Orchestra. At various points in its history, members of the Cotton Pickers included Fats Waller on piano, Coleman Hawkins on clarinet and tenor sax, Doc Cheatham on trumpet  and Benny Carter on clarinet and alto sax.

I actually downloaded this album because it contains a jazzy version of
 "Beedle Um Bum," a song usually associated with jug bands and Tampa Red. It's credited to gospel songwriter Thomas Dorsey, in his earlier incarnation as "Georgia Tom" was Red's piano player. "Down in Memphis, Tennessee, lives a girl named Cindy/ With a meat shop on her block, she's always got the gimme ..."  But's not the only Tampa Red/Georgia Tom tune in this collection. Also there's great versions of "It's Tight Like That" (one of Red's signature songs) and "Selling That Stuff."

* Whatever I Want by Mark Sultan. " I can see how a one-man band set-up can leave a bad taste in someone’s mouth. ... I hate one-man bands. Seriously. There are only a couple I like, and those few I do like I like because I 'don’t consider them one-man bands, but rather musicians who manipulate minimal gear and sounds and transform it and themselves into something special and transcend what they present. "

That's what Sultan --  who has made a name for himself partly by his work as a "one-man" band"  -- said a few months ago on his website. Thus, it's fitting that Sultan's latest work doesn't have a typical one-man band feel.

He uses guest musicians including pals from The Black Lips (with whom Sultan plays in the garage/gospel supergroup The Almighty Defenders) and Dan Kroha of The Gories.

Basically, Sultan does what he does best -- melodic (mostly) tunes colored by doo-wop, rockabilly and primitive rock 'n' roll. My favorite so far is "Blood on Your Hands," which sounds like a weird team-up of Danny & The Juniors and some mid '60s garage band.

Also notable is "Just Like Before," on which Sultan goes right for the doo-wop jugular.

Whatever is one of two Sultan albums released last fall. (I'll talk about the other, Whenever I Want It, next month. There's also a CD called Whatever/Whenever that consists of music from both albums.)

Plus
A bunch of Christmas songs for The Big Enchilada podcast or Terrell's Sound World, or both.

* "Black Santa" and "Sock it to Me Santa" by King Salami & The Cumberland 3
* "A Christmas Duel" by The Hives and Cyndi Lauper 
* "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" by Los Straitjackets

eMusic December

Here's my latest batch of downloads from eMusic:

* Poultry in Motion by Hasil Adkins. This concept album by the Wild Man of West Virginia has been on my eMusic "Saved" list for a couple of years now. I was inspired to finally download it after hearing The Chicken Album by O Lendário Chucrobillyman, a Brazilian one-man band who has to be influenced by Hasil..

Chucrobillyman's crazy record has several songs about chickens, but all 15 tracks from this Norton Records compilation are about the birds.

You have "Chicken Hop," "Chicken Flop," "Chicken Shake," "Chicken Walk" "Chicken Run" ... and of course, the "Chicken Hunch."

Many of the songs go back to the Haze's early days in the '50s and early '60s. Some are from earlier Norton albums Adkins recorded in the '80s and '90s and some were recorded especially for this album -- or at  least first emerged on this album.

What can you say? The man loved his chicken.

* Ersatz GB by The Fall I never thought that first (and only) time I saw The Fall in concert, back in the early ’80s, that 30 years later I would a) be reviewing a brand new Fall album and b) find that fact reassuring.

But here we are in 2011, and Smith is still leading a band called The Fall. The group’s new album, Ersatz GB, is a rocking joy — even though I can’t pretend to really understand it any more than I did that show at the old El Paseo Theater back in the summer of 1981. Like that El Paseo show, this album is somewhat confusing and, yes, a little threatening.

But that just makes me like it more.

For more of my deep thoughts on this album, check out my recent review in my Terrell's Tune-up column.


* Gorilla Rose by Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds. Brian Tristan, aka Kid Congo Powers. plays some of the most interesting sounds being produced today. It's a wild mix of  mutated '60s Chicano rock, surf, garage and spooky noirish  R&B.

This album (which is named for an L.A. performance-art character Powers met as a lonesome teenage punk) is a worthy followup to his previous work, Dracula Boots, which followed similar paths into bizarre dimensions.

It's full of instrumentals and weird tales that Powers recites. Did he work in a Hollywood record store and see Rick James lose his temper and start breaking copies of Gloryhallastoopid? Who cares, it's a great story.

Hey, I'm going to write more on this album in an upcoming Terrell's Tune-up. Stay tuned,

Plus ...


* The three bonus tracks from Bad as Me by Tom Waits. I actually talked about these in the column a few weeks ago.

* "Desperadoes Waiting for theTrain" by Jerry Jeff Walker. My favorite version of my favorite Guy Clark song. I actually downloaded this to play on my Santa Fe Opry tribute set for the late Kell Robertson a few weeks ago. Between guest host Mike Good and I, there was way more material than we could use that night, so the song didn't make it on that night. But I still think of that old desperado  Kell when I hear the tune.

* "The Way it Goes" by Gillian Welch.  This is the best song from Gillian's latest album. I heard Tom Adler play it when he substituted for The Santa Fe Opry recently and I knew I had to play  it myself. I'll probably get around to downloading the rest of The Harrow & The Harvest one of these days.

eMusic November

Here's my latest batch of downloads from eMusic:

* Wolf Call! by Various Artists. Another fine Norton collection of greasy, sleazy rock 'n' roll and R&B from the late '50s and early '60s.

This isn't quite as diverse as other Norton compilations like Mad Mike's Monsters or the I Hate CDs series. But he'll, plaster a picture of a stripper on the cover and you probably could pass this off  as a new Las Vegas Grind volume.

Wolf Call! features music from the Golden Crest label, a Long Island-based company, though the best known band on the album, The Wailers, was from Tacoma. hjat band has two songs here, their classic "Tall Cool One" and "Snake Pit." Both are rollicking instrumentals

"Cleopatra" by The Precisions reminds me a lot of The Coasters, except the weird little Del Shannon organ seller in the middle. "I'm Buggin' Out Little Baby," is some good obscure rockabilly byDonny Lee Moore. "Let Your Love Light Shine" by The Kack-ties is raw, unfetterfed doo-wop.  "Roaches" is early '60s soul, sounding like the Isley Brothers would have sounded had they been exterminators. The singer notes that the Civil Rights Bill has passed, but there's nothing in the bill that guarantees you a home free of roaches.

"Bandito" by The Banditos has  south- of-the-border rhythms and a corny, probably offensive to some, monologue between the "bandito" and a bartender. But the strangerst here is "The Beatle Song" by The Japanese Beatles. It puts the ethnic stereotypes in "Bandito" to shame. In fact, shame's a pretty good word here.

* Raw Power Live: In the Hands of the Fans by Iggy & The Stooges. I couldn't resist. This is one of those concerts where a band plays a classic album in its entirety decades later. Lou Reed got away with it on his recent live version of Berlin, so why not Iggy?

The original Raw Power has been remixed, repackaged and regurgitated so many time it's hard to keep track. The 2010 version included a live disc from a 1973 concert in Atlanta featuring half of the Raw Power songs.

But this new show, recorded last year at the All Tomorrow's Parties Festival in New York, featuring original Raw Power ax man James Williamson on guitar duties, is a welcome addition.  Iggy and the other surviving original Stooges are in their mid 60s now (Bassist Mike Watt, who's been a Stooge on recent outings, is the baby of the group. He's only in his 50s.). Even so, they rock like young bucks half their age.

Here's a video:



* South of Nashville by Honky Tonk Hustlas. When I first saw this band's name I feared it might be some crappy alt country/hip-hop fusion. But then I heard a song of theirs on Outlaw Radio Chicago and realized these guys sound a lot more like Wayne "The Train" than Cowboy Troy.

The Hustlas come from Montgomery, Alabama. The core of the band is , T. Junior on lead vocals and rhythm guitar and Stemp on stand-up bass. The sound is acoustic-based traditional country with lots of fiddle, mandolin and dobro.

Even if country radio still played good country music they'd never play the HTH -- not only because of the occasional use of profanity, but because the lyrics to some of the songs are so dark. "My Worst Enemy," "Pray I Won't Wake Up" and even the upbeat "Never Gonna Quit" deal frankly with self-destructive urges. And the chilling  "Death's Cold Sting" reminds me a lot of Hank Williams' "Alone and Forsaken" -- which wasn't exactly a big radio hit for Hank.

So they're just going to have to make do with being played on shows like Outlaw Radio Chicago and, of course, The Santa Fe Opry. I hope to hear more from this band.

* Miami by The Gun Club. I confessed a couple of months ago when I downloaded their wonderful debut album Fire of Love  that I'm just a newcomer to the glory that was The Gun Club. 

This is the second album. Some consider Miami to be a sophomore slump for Jeffrey Lee Pearce and the Club. But while it's true that it doesn't quite match Fire of Love, there's plenty to love here.

Actually there's a song called "Fire of Love" here (it wasn't on the album of the same name.)  It borrows liberally from Jody Reynolds' "Endless Sleep."

Almost as powerful is "Like Calling Up Thunder" It's like a hoedown for maniacs (and Ward Dotson plays a guitar lick lifted from "Dixie" as Pearce sings, "Look away, look away ..."

Also there's a couple of great covers here. "John Hardy" is a wild cowpunk update of the the old outlaw ballad. But even better is the ferocious version of Creedence Clearwater Revivals' "Run Through the Jungle." This might even be more nightmarish than the original tune.

PLUS

* Three songs from Halloween Classics: Songs That Scared The Bloomers Off Your Great Grandma:  "The Skeleton In The Closet" by Putney Dandridge," "Minnie The Moocher At The Morgue" by Smiley Burnette and "Hush, Hush, Hush (Here Comes The Boogie Man" by Henry Hall. This is the second year in a row I hit up this fun collection for some Halloween material for my radio -- and this year my podcast -- Spooktaculars.

I doubt if any of these novelty tunes from the 30s would scare the bloomers off anyone, even your great granny. But they're still lotsa fun.

* "Ghoulman Confidential" by The Fleshtones. I used this one on the 2011 Big Enchilada Spooktacular also. This is the second "Ghoulman" song by The Fleshtones I'm aware of, the first being "Dance With the Ghoulman." Are there more?