TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, May 15, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
Now Webcasting
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Haunt by Roky Erikson
Murder in the Graveyard by Screaming Lord Sutch
I Ain't Nothin' But a Gorehound by The Cramps
The Ballad of Dwight Frye by Alice Cooper
TV Eye by Iggy Pop
Do You Swing? by The Fleshtones
The Hump by Heavy Trash
Needles and Pins by The Ramones

The Mariner's Revenge Song by The Decemberists
The Black Freighter by Steeleye Span
The Deserter by Fairport Convention
Room 229 by Ian Moore
Killer Inside Me by MC 900-Foot Jesus

BLUES FOR UZBEKISTAN
Recordings by Jack Clift in Uzbekistan, 2004
(19-minute improvisation) by Jadoo
The Hankerchief is Gone by Baxhi Sashok
You Are My Ray of Light Sevarra

Gim Git (Silence) by MC Mario with Jadoo featuring Greg Leisz
Laka Baluk by Jadoo
Uzbeksky Capitan by Baxhi Sashok
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

BLUES FOR UZBEKISTAN

This isn't much time to publicize it, but the situation in Uzbekistan prompted me to devote the last hour of tonight's Terrell's Sound World to the music of that troubled land.

My brother Jack has been to that former Soviet republic two or three times in recent years and has recorded loads of jams with Uzebeki musicians. Jack will be on the show with me tonight on the second hour of my show to play some of his recordings.

Those of you in Santa Fe can hear the show 10 p.m. to midnight on KSFR, 90.7 FM. Everyone else can hear it streaming from KSFR's Web site. The Uzbek portion will start at 11 p.m. Mountain time.

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, May 13, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Now Webcasting
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
The Glory of True Love by John Prine
Got No Strings by Michelle Shocked
Countrier Than Thou by Robbie Fulks
Home on the Range by Terry Allen
Coal Miner's Daughter by Loretta Lynn
Honky Tonk Merry-Go-Round by Karen Hudson
Dry Lightning by Michael Martin Murphey
Lonesome Cowboy Burt by Frank Zappa featuring Jimmy Carl Black

Then I'll Be Movin' On by Mother Earth
Marijuana Fields by Big Ugly Guys
Chili Fields by Lenny Roybal
Whatcha Gonna Do Now? by Tommy Collins
Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart Tonight by Whiskeytown with Alejandro Escovedro
Dying Breed by Allison Moorer
Between Lust and Watching TV by Cal Smith

The Genitalia of a Fool by Cornell Hurd with Justin Trevino
What Made Milwauke Famous by Johhny Bush
Squaws Along the Yukon by Hank Thompson
Payday Blues by Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks
Out of the Past by The Strangelys
Billy's First Ex Wife by Ronny Elliott
Borrowed Angel by Mel Street
Don't Make Me Break Your Heart by Rex Hobart & His Misery Boys

Oklahoma City Bombing by Acie Cargill
Billy Joe by Audrey Auld Mezera
Hearts-a-Bustinn' by Jimmy Dale Gilmore
Dancing With the Tiger by Hank & Nancy Webster
Atmosphere by Shine Cherries
Legend in My Time by Leon Russell with T. Graham Brown
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: DECEMBERISTS!

As published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
May 6, 2005



How best to describe the sound of The Decemberists?

Maybe something like “From all atop the parapets blow a multitude of coronets/Melodies rhapsodical and fair.”

I’m plagiarizing here (not me actually. My press secretary will take the fall.) It’s a line from the first song on The Decemberists’ new album Picaresque.

No there’s not really a lot of coronets on this album, but the sound of this Portland, Ore. band sounds like Robyn Hitchcock fronting Steeleye Span. In fact the album that Picaresque msot reminds me of is Steeley’s underrated 1977 album Storm Force 10, undoubtedly the British folk-rock band’s grittiest work in which songs by Bertold Brecht joined the traditional material Steeleye did so well.

This literate record is full of regal bombast, pomp and inspired pretentiousness.

Yes, I said “pretentiousness.” I realize that this has become a dirty word in rock ’n’ roll, where “keeping it real” is among the highest virtues.

But don’t knock pretentiousness. Sometimes a high dose of fantasy is good for the soul. And for you purists out there, I have some harsh news: Tom Waits isn’t really a bowery bum who plays piano in waterfront dives, most of the Beach Boys never surfed and the members of The Band weren’t really Civil War veterans.

When an album starts off proclaiming, “Here she comes on her palanquin/On the back of an elephant/On a bed made of linen and sequins and silk …” you know you’re in for a fantastic voyage through some unusual terrain.

That first song -- the one with the elephants and coronets and … palanquins (Look it up, I had to ) -- is “The Infanta.” It’s about the baby daughter of a Spanish king. Introduced with a screaming horn and drums that suggest an elephant stampede, the setting of the song is a grand parade.

There’s a king and his concubine, dukes and virgins. The narrator seems to be full of wonder at the spectacle, but there is tension just beneath it all. A baroness ponders her “barren-ness.” Who are the “luscious young girls of the Duke and Dutchess? And what’s this lake from which the Infanta’s cradle was pulled?

Picaresque is bursting with wild, sleazy sex. The heroes of “On the Bus Mall“ are gay prostitutes.

With a Morrissey-like melody, Meloy sings, “But here in the alleys, your spirits were rallied/As you learned quick to make a fast buck/in bathrooms and ballrooms, on dumpsters and heirlooms …”

“We Both Go Down Together” deals with a rock ‘ roll theme older than “Rag Doll,” “Down in the Boondocks.” “Patches” or “Hang On Sloopy“ -- romance between social un-equals.

But unlike the typical rich-boy/poor-girl sagas, in which all would be peachy except for uptight parents or “society,” Meloy‘s song deals with the inherent power issues in such relations. In fact, by the end of the song the affair sounds more like rape than romance.

“I found you, a tattoo’d tramp/A dirty daughter from the labor camp/I laid you down in the grass of a clearing/You wept, but your soul was willing.”

My favorite songs on Picaresque are long theatrical pieces. “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” is a tall tale of a young man seeking revenge against a gambling sailor who’d wrong his mother years ago. Mom’s final request to the lad was “Find him, bind him, tie him to a pole/and break his fingers to splinters …” The climax of the story takes place inside the belly of a whale.

With its minor-key accordion and one-two beat and weird waltz interlude, this nearly nine-minute piece would have fit in perfectly on Storm Force 10.

But best of all is “The Bagman’s Gambit,” which sounds as if it were ripped from the pages of a Tom Clancy novel. Starting off with slowly strummed, stark guitar chords, a plain-clothes cop is shot on the steps of the Capitol, and we‘re plunged into the plot.

“Bagman” deals with a lowly government worker who sells unspecified secrets to an enemy spy -- in exchange for sex.

“And I recall that fall/I was working for the government/And in a bathroom stall off the national mall/How we kissed so sweetly!/How could I refuse a favor or two/And for a tryst in the greenery/I gave you documents and microfilm too.”

With its sad melody, and Phillip Glass-like string interlude (featuring guest Decemberist Petra Hayden), by the end of a song, a listener feels he’s a co-conspirator.

{NOTE: The rest of today's column was devoted to Acie Cargill, whose latest CDs I published prematurely here a couple of weeks ago.}

IMPECCABLE TIMING

So yesterday I receive Disc One of Season One for Carnivale,, the bizarre HBO dramatic series.

I watched both episodes on the disc and was immediately hooked.

It's the story of the never-ending battle of good and evil, set in a traveling carnaval in the Dust Bowl era. It's like Tom Joad in Twin Peaks. It's got almost everything I enjoy in a t.v. series -- circus freaks, psychic weirdness, Adrienne Barbeau, a hallucinating preacher, cootch dancers ...

So today I learn that only hours before I slipped the disc in my DVD player, HBO went and cancelled the series!

This made me sad.

There's an effort to save it. Check out this blog There's even a post there from Carnivale creator Dan Knauf.

Damn!