DON'T ABUSE THE MUSE

My cyber friend and poetry man Mike Schiavo is included in a new anthology called Don't Abuse the Muse: The Middlefinger Press Mixed Tape of Fiction & Reality.

One hundred percent of the profits go to Parkinson's Disease research.

So check it out.

SANTA FE OPRY PLAY LIST

Here's Friday's S.F. Opry list from Tom

The Santa Fe Opry
Friday, July 16, 2004
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Guest Host: Tom Knoblauch

One Hundred Years From Now by The Byrds
Truck Drivin’ Man by The International Submarine Band
Blue Canadian Rockies by The Byrds
Hickory Wind by The Byrds
You Don’t Miss Your Water by The Byrds
Sweetheart of the Rodeo
Tonight I’ll Be Stayin Here With You/I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight by Bob Dylan
Wild Horses by The Flying Burrito Brothers
I Am A Lonesome Hobo by Bob Dylan
John Wesley Harding
The Train Song/Sing Me Back Home by The Flying Burrito Brothers
She by Gram Parsons
Older Guys by The Flying Burrito Brothers
In My Hour of Darkness by Gram Parsons
On the Banks of the Rio Grande by Blind James
Rio Grande by Dave Alvin
Rusty Old Red River/What’s It Take by Toni Price
Better Off Without a Wife/Warm Beer & Cold Women/Nighthawks at the Diner by Tom Waits
Cowboy Peyton Place by Doug Sahm
Beat Me Daddy Eight to the Bar/Truck Drivin’ Man/Too Much Fun by Commander Cody
Mikey Gave Up the Booze by Joe West
Have Your Way With Me by Hundred Year Flood
Next Time by TheMuseMeant
Hey Beautiful/Let’s Fall in Love Again Tonight by Hundred Year Flood
Rowdy’s Tune by Dickie Lee Erwin
Diggy Liggy Lo by John Fogarty

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

SANTA FE MUSIC WARS

Lordy lordy, I leave town for a few days and a civil war breaks out amongst Santa Fe musicians.
 
As Anne Constable wrote about in The New Mexican a couple of days ago, (Read it HERE ) David Lescht, who heads the Summer Bandstand committee hated my brother Jack Clift's Plaza performance so bad he cancelled three other "improvisational" bands that were scheduled to perform. Not only that but he fired Jeff Sussman from the committee, apparently for hiring Jack and the other bands.
 
Since Jack is my brother (yes, different last name. But we're brothers. Ask him ...) I have an obvious bias here.
 
I've always liked David and have admired and written about his program Outside In, which brings music to prisons, hospitals, retirement homes, homeless shelters etc. But these recent actions make him seem like he's trying to be the Ayatollah of rock 'n' rolla.
 
And all to please the tourists?
 
Reminds me of the last verse of "The Bozo Buck Stops Here," a song I wrote in the late '70s partly about the frustrations of being an original musician trying to get gigs in a tourist town:

"I never could pull off any John Denver image,
I'm not as sensitive as Jackson Browne.
And as hard as I might try I'll never look like Linda Rondstadt,
So they won't let me play my tunes in this here town
I'm sick and tired of trying hard not to scare the tourists
When maybe all they need's a shot of fear
(BOO!)
Just keep 'em out of touch and it won't hurt 'em very much
When the Bozo Buck stops here."

KCUV AM in DENVER

Just got back from Denver and I noticed Curtis' reply to my previous Denver post, in which he plugged KCUV radio, an "Americana" station there.
 
Luckily I discovered it on my own a couple of days ago. (Actually there was an ad in Denver's print edition of The Onion. ) Curtis is right. It's a great little station. I hadn't heard AM radio sound so good since the legendary Jello Fellows practiced their after-hours subversion on KVSF here in Santa Fe 30-plus years ago.
 
KCUV's definition of "Americana" is pretty broad. You hear a fair amount of blues -- John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Albert King -- as well as soul (Al Green! Ray Charles!) and founding-fathers rock 'n' roll (Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis) . They'll even throw in some rootsy classic rock. This morning they played some early Steve Miller that didn't suck.
 
I was really sad when the station started to fade right before I got to Colorado Springs. They'd just played Los Lobos' "Matter of Time" (original version, thank you) and had just started Asleep at The Wheel's "The Letter That Johnny Walker Read."
 
 

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: UH HUH, P.J. !

As published Friday July 16, 2004 in The Santa Fe New Mexican
 
It’s been four years -- four years! -- since the last P.J. Harvey album. I hesitate to say that her new one Uh Huh Her was "worth the wait," because, to steal a line from the old Wolf Brand Chili ads, "well that’s too long!"


But worth the wait or not, this new album is a doozy.

From the first crunching guitar notes of the opening cut "The Life and Death of Mr. Badmouth," longtime fans of Polly Jean will realize that she’s harkening back to the raw, rocking joys of her earliest albums Dry and Rid of Me -- the very records that made us love her in the first place.

And the ragingly bitter lyrics to this song is a long way from the giddy "This is Love" from her last album, Stories From the City Stories From the Sea.

"Cos everything is poison," Harvey spits in "Mr. Badmouth." "You'll be the unhappy one/Your lips taste of poison/You're gonna be left alone … Your bad mouth has killed off everything we have."

The first half or so of the album is marked by loud grating guitar riffs, (played by Harvey herself,), complimenting her voice, which can go from a sexy, low, bluesy croon to high piercing cries.

While the guitar sounds like it might explode in "The Letter" (not to be confused with the old Box Tops hit), the lyrics are surprising sentimental, expressing a sensual longing for pre e-mail days.

"Who is left that/Writes these days?/You and me/We'll be different/Take the cap/Off your pen/Wet the envelope/Lick and lick it."

But the second half of Uh Huh, Her consist mostly of quieter tracks. The best of these -- including "The Slow Drug," "The Desperate Kingdom of Love," "The Darker Days of Me and Him." are brooding and ominous, like an eye in an emotional hurricane. You can tell by the titles that these aren’t going to be joy rides.

For instance, the sound is somewhat softer on "Pocket Knife" -- strummed guitar suggesting Mid-Eastern music. But the lyrics are no less harsh. Tackling a theme as old as the old folk tune "I Never Shall Marry," Harvey makes her matrimonial reluctance very clear.

"Please don't make my wedding dress/I'm too young to marry yet/Can you see my pocket knife?/You can't make me be a wife."

And in case the implied threat isn’t clear, by the last verse she sings, "White material will stain/My pocket knife's gotta shiny blade."

The photo array of the CD cover might remind old-timers of the old Rod Stewart line from the song "Every Picture Tells a Story": "Comb my hair in a thousand ways …" In other words, she looks as if she’s searching for an identity.

Fortunately her songs -- be they loud or soft, bitter or loving, sultry or hysterical -- maintain a consistent soulfulness. She knows who she is.

Also Recommended:

*A Ghost Is Born by Wilco. The thing I like most about this album is the same thing that first grabbed me about P.J. Harvey’s new one: the loud obnoxious guitars.

Listen to the first song, "At Least That’s What You Said." It starts off as a slow, dreary, piano-based tune with Jeff Tweedy singing, "When I sat down on bed next to you/ you started to cry …" (This is at least the second Wilco song with references to domestic violence, the other being "She’s Ajar" from Summerteeth.)

It goes on for a couple of verses. But just before you start thinking that Tweedy’s acquired some kind of Joni Mitchell complex, Tweedy comes in with a pounding guitar -- the ghost of John Lennon and echoes of Don’t Bring Me Down" are in there somewhere -- and the next thing you know the song has mutated into a screaming guitar stomp.

There’s even a crazy guitar solo (is it Tweedy or John Stirratt, Wilco’s longtime bassist who plays guitar on this cuty) in "Hell is Chrome," which sounds like a slow gospel tune filtered through The Velvet Underground’s "Sweet Nothings."

But my favorite guitar freakout is the 10-minute "Spiders (Kidsmoke)," which over a percolating techno pop beat, Tweedy goes psychedelic, recalling acid-drench guitar solos from the daze of The Jefferson Airplane, The Doors and Country Joe & The Fish.

But the one huge flaw is "Less Than You Think," in which a sad, slow piano ballad (yes, another one) is inexplicably followed by 12 minutes of grating electronic drone. I love noise and excess as much as anyone, but did we really need a mini-ode to Metal Machine Music?

But as we’ve come to expect on Wilco albums are sweet, simple melodies harkening back to Tweedy’s country-rock days, underlying all their sonic excursions. The hypnotic "Handshake Drugs" and the pop-saavy "The Late Greats" each have melodies that will stick to your brains. And "Muzzle of Bees" is so earthy and folky it’s something you might expect to find on a Pentangle album -- with the guitar rage waiting until the last minute or so to kick in.

In general, this album is less focused and less seamless than Wilco’s last outing, the masterful Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. But like that album, it holds secrets that will take listen after listen to crack.

*Stan  By Your Man: I’ve been wishing for Stan Ridgway to do a Santa Fe concert for years. It’s gonna happen Saturday, Aug. 14 at the Paramount. Watch Pasatiempo for more details.

*You’re not dreaming, KSFR is streaming!: In case you haven’t noticed, KSFR is on the internet. Just go the station’s web site, www.ksfr.org . Locals can still listen on your old fashioned radios, (90.7 FM), but be sure to tell your out-of-town friends that Santa Fe Public radio is just a few mouse clicks away.