THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, November 25, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Kansas City Star by Roger Miller
Sink Hole by Drive-By Truckers
Chaos Streams by Son Volt
San Quentin by Johnny Cash
There Ought to Be a Law Against Sunny California by Terry Allen
Rehab Girl by Joe West
I Know You Are There by The Handsome Family
Pick a Bale of Cotton by Leadbelly

I Just Want to Meet the Man by Robbie Fulks
Tonight i Think I'm Gonna Go Downtown by Mudhoney
Gotta Travel On by Jimmie Dale Gilmore
Silver Wings by Merle Haggard
Lost Highway by Nancy Apple & Rob McNurlin
I'll Be Glad When You're Dead You Rascal You by Hank Thompson
History of Lovers by Iron and Wine with Calexico
The Obscenity Prayer by Rodney Crowell

THANKSGIVING LEFTOVERS
I am a Pilgrim by The Byrds
Turkey Chase by Bob Dylan
Turkey in the Straw by Jon Rauhouse and Norm Pratt
Thanksgiving by Loudon Wainwright III
Wayfaring Pilgrim by Darrell Scott, Danny Thompson & Kenny Malone
Pilgrim by Steve Earle

Wild Country by Chris Whitley
It's All in the Game by Bobby Bare
Just One Love by Bobby Earl Smith
Where Was That God of Love by Oneil Howes
I Still Miss Someone by Dolly Parton
I'm Troubled About My Soul by Clothesline Revival with Lillie Knox
Alibis by Blaze Foley
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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

PUT ME IN COACH, I'M READY TO PLAY

The Bill Richardson baseball revelations begin to reverberate.

First I get this email from a friend:

I did some heavy internet research on the gov's putative baseball career. I found that it wasn't the KC Athletics that drafted him in 1966, it was the Bad News Bears! (Matthau nixed the deal when O'Neal agreed to pitch.)

Then I get this startling confession from state Sen. Rod Adair, R-Roswell in the form of a press release:

State Senator Rod Adair today admitted he had no proof he had actually been drafted by the Chicago White Sox in 1973.

"I thought a friend of mine told me I might have been, so I put two and two together and assumed the best," said Adair, "I mean, what would you have done, what would anyone in my position have done?" Adair was 0-1 for the Gary Moseley Furniture Cubs of the Roswell Connie Mack League in 1972, having made two appearances, one in relief and one as a starter. He had an Earned Run Average of 8.31 in 4 1/3 innings of work.

Previous press releases have mentioned that Adair had been "drafted by the Chicago White Sox in 1973." Adair said, "Today is the first I've heard that it never happened. I'm as shocked as the next guy. I do think we should probably have legislation that states that Major League Baseball must announce draft choices, go on record about it, put it in the papers and stuff like that. I mean what happened to me should never happen to anyone, going around being misled all this time. We really should clean this up for all future ballplayers."

Adair's media relations spokesperson, Teresa Davis-McKee, made it clear Adair would seek no damages, and take no action against MLB, Inc. or the Chicago White Sox Baseball Club, Inc. "He's really a very forgiving kind of guy, and he understands how these things happen. He's ready to move on with his life and he has no hard feelings toward the Sox," McKee said.

I dunno. This one could go into extra innings. It's starting to pick up some steam nationally. Here's some pretty scathing commentary: CLICK HERE

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: GO, GRANNY, GO!

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
November 25, 2005

“Listen to this tune that sounds like a condolence card bought at the last minute for someone you can’t stand, someone you never liked … Listen to this tune I’m playing now, kids. Does it seem sad? Does it remind you of when?”

These are the words of Olga Sarantos, the 83-year grandmother of Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger, siblings known collectively as The Fiery Furnaces.

Granny Olga along with the Furnaces are responsible for one of the strangest albums in recent memory, Rehearsing My Choir .
It’s a wild journey led by Olga -- who really did direct a choir in a Greek Orthodox church -- through darkened corridors of the past, filled with memories, fantasies, triumphs and regrets, part sung and part spoken word by Olga and Eleanor (who portrays the younger Olga through most of the album. )

It’s all told in the secret language that family members share, part verbal scrapbook, part travelogue of 20th Century Chicago, part radio drama, Eleanor’s clear youthful vocals playing off the deep, knowing voice of Olga, colored by meandering melodies, synthy squiggles, bleeps and blurps, church music, carnival tunes, insane soundtracky backdrops, kiddy songs played on what sounds like dingy- dongy toy xylophones -- and even a few moments of raunchy rock ‘n‘ roll.

In the old days they’d call this “art rock.“ A listener might hear strains similar to Brian Wilson’s Smile, to Laurie Anderson, Pere Ubu, The Residents, They Might Be Giants, maybe even Phillip Glass or Terry Riley, definitely a heap of prog-rock excess, maybe even a little early Electric Light Orchestra.

And to answer her questions, posed at the end of the album’s first song “The Garfield El,” and again near the end of the last song, yes, it seems sad, though often the tunes are funny, sentimental, mysterious and just plain crazy, And yes, it does remind me of “when” -- my own “when,” the strange tales and traditions of my own family.

It makes me wish I’d recorded my own grandmother before she died.

One niggling detail: Although the stories here have the sound and feel of an oral history project, it’s actually Matthew Friedberger who wrote the words.

In an interview in Tunetribe.com, Matthew said, “A couple of (songs) are stories that I knew -- one is a story she always told about her father-in-law coming back from Greece after the war, and she got drunk at a kontiki bar. I asked her for details on other stories, like in 'Guns Under The Counter', with the bowling team and the mafia. She was a big help."

The stories in Choir go gracefully from the mundane to the surreal. For instance, in “Guns Under the Counter” you meet a doctor who treats bullet wounds with blackberry jelly after a gangland hit on a Cicero donut factory.

When you listen to Rehearsing My Choir for the first time it helps to know that the stories are not in chronological order.

Matthew posted a little guide on Amazon.com: “Tracks 3 and 4 take place in the 40's; tracks 5 and 6 in the 20's and 30's; track 7 in the later 50's; track 8 starts in the very early 40's; track 9 goes back and forth; track 10 takes place in the early 60's; the final track takes place in the early 90's. Track 2 takes place a few years ago; track 1 took place when it was recorded.”

And by the way, “The Wayward Granddaughter” (Track 2) isn’t literally about Olga and Eleanor, and “Slavin’ Away” (Track 9), is supposed to be Olga fantasizing about the plight of working women.

The last song, “Does it Remind You of When?” Olga finds herself playing for the funeral of a friend, maybe even an old boyfriend (“and his wife is there in some chapel she picked/and there’s not even an organ/I have to play on some broken upright piano …”)

The noise from the traffic and some nearby construction project is so loud, “you can’t even hear the ceremony,” Olga moans as the guitars, keyboards and drums grow burst into an oppressively loud fury.

At the cemetery, covered in slush Olga passes by the graves of her parents, her sister, her husband. “I can hear the cars/just 100 feet behind,” Eleanor sings, “and I can smell the rock salt in the air/And I know in my bones, it isn’t fair …”

“Listen to this tune I’m playing now, kids,” Olga says once again. “Does it seem sad? Does it remind you of when?”


Also recommended:

*They Got Lost by They Might Be Giants. This is a compilation of “rarities” from Johns Linnel and Flansburgh. McSweeney’s. There’s even a commercial for a New Jersey graphics company and ditties used on t.v. and radio shows.

Among the highlights: “Reprehensible,” a loungy song about a man tormented by voices that tell him of his past incarnations (“the secret history of my immortality … the records of my unspeakable crimes in previous lives in previous time indelibly stains the pages of history …”)

* A live song called “Disappointing Show,” which sounds like they’re making up as they go along. The vocals are off key and the band, with a roller rink organ out front, sounds like they’re playing for cocktail hour at a rest home. In other words, it’s wickedly hilarious.

* “All Alone” a faux science tune about a germ on the moon, originally appearing on t.v. in an ABC documentary series, anchored by Ted Koppel called Brave New World.

* “The Army’s Tired Now,” which has nonsense lyrics (surprise, surprise) but is a minute and 11 seconds of Pet Sounds-inspired bliss.

ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: A GARGANTUAN EGO

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
November 24, 2005

According to national political commentator Chuck Todd, Governor Bill Richardson has a “gargantuan ego,” an “incredible ambition that borders on overdrive,” lacks a “soft side” that appeals to female voters, “carpetbagged” a Congressional seat and “bullied his way to the top of New Mexico politics.”


And, according to Todd, Richardson might be doomed in the 2008 presidential race because of a “whisper campaign” by those who say he’s not presidential material.

Still, Chuck Todd, who recently interviewed Richardson on CSPAN2, sounds like a Richardson fan.

Todd, a columnist for the Washington, D.C.-based National Journal and editor of that magazine’s political blog The Hotline, recently complained in his blog that Richardson wasn’t included in Time magazine’s recent Top Five Governors list. (Time also erred by omitting Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Todd wrote.)

And in a column last week, Todd wrote of the governor of New Mexico, “Apart from his gargantuan ego, we came away more impressed with his credentials as a major presidential candidate even while having doubts about whether 2008 will be his year.”

Todd went on to say, “If a Democratic consultant were trying to create the ideal presidential candidate, Richardson would be the model.”

He goes on to state the usual litany we’ve read a million times in national Richardson coverage: western governor blah blah blah, experience in foreign affairs blah blah blah “Latino in appearance with a gringo last name who speaks fluent Spanish” etc. etc.

Todd writes admiringly of Richardson’s ambitions: “just look at how he carpetbagged his way into New Mexico’s congressional delegation in a mere four years of taking up residency.”

But he added, “The only thing the lab would add that Richardson’s missing is a stable full of kids, military experience (he got out of Vietnam thanks to a deviated septum) and, shall we say, a svelter physique.”

Whispers and skeletons: But, Todd noted, for some reason, Richardson isn’t viewed “in the national Democratic salons that we believe still matter (particularly for fundraising),” as a top-tier Democratic candidate for 2008.

“We attribute Richardson’s struggles in the national Democratic circuit to a whisper campaign that contends he’s a bit reckless and ‘unpresidential’ (whatever that means),” Todd wrote. “This is a reputation that’s likely been earned by the fact that he’s got a coarse, or blunt, way of speaking to folks in private or semi-private situations. If you didn’t know him, you could even come away offended.”

Richardson, Todd says, "wants the presidency as badly as any candidate we've seen in a long time.”

“Candidate Richardson has some flaws, but barring some skeleton he’s failed to reveal, they are flaws he can overcome,” Todd concludes. “Dismiss his chances in 2008 at your own peril.”

This last paragraph inspired Albuquerque political blogger Joe Monahan to quip, “Thanks Chuck. Should we start the ‘Skeleton Watch?’ ”

TRUE CONFESSIONS

Julia Goldberg sent me this meme.

I think the idea is to list 12 true confessions.

1) I confess that I'm not going to get too personal and revealing on this damned thing.

2) I confess that I was going to watch Ted Koppel's last night on Nightline instead of doing this, but it looked too depressing, so here I am.

3) I confess that 42 years today I was disappointed that the regular Friday night wrestling at Stockyards Coliseum in Oklahoma City -- where I spent most Friday nights during the mid '60s -- was cancelled because of the Kennedy assassination.

4) I confess that I watched the resignation of President Nixon on a black-and-white tv in the projection booth of the Master Adult Theater, where I worked during part of the summer of '74. I also confess that I was hurt and confused when the audience at the Master Adult Theater booed me when I stopped the movie to tell them about this historic event.

5) I confess that one time in college I participated in a "Pig Night" contest at the Bird of Paradise Lounge. Fortunately I lost.

6) I confess that I don't know what "Diddy Wah Diddy" means.

7) I confess that I drank well over my share of the world's liquor supply up until my late '40s. I stopped because of diabetes.

8) I confess that while I generally distain paranoia about technology, deep in my heart, I do believe that those automatic scanner machines at supermarkets are the work of Satan. One day those damned things are going to completely take the jobs of working humans -- plus they always screw up on me causing much frustration.

9) I confess that robots are stealing my luggage. (OK, I borrowed that from Steve Martin.)

10) I confess that I don't really care that much for sports -- except politics and roller derby.

11) I confess that my anger at Greg Pleshaw faded years ago, despite his bizarre phone call to my brother ... though I still wouldn't want to take a long trip with the twisted little fucker.

12) I confess that I was the one who accidently tripped on an electrical cord backstage at a Santa Fe High School talent show in the spring of '71, causing an abrupt halt to the band (I forgot their name!) that was playing a pretty rocking version of "All Along the Watchtower."

I'm sending this on to Jeff, Walt, Marlee, Ed and Paige.