STEEEEEEE-RIKE!

The commentary on Gov. Bill Richardson's baseball career keeps coming.

Here's a hilarious op-ed piece titled "Field of Hallucinations" from Tom Ruprecht in The New York Times.

One of my favorite paragraphs:

Howard Dean, the Democratic Party chairman, concedes he may not have been a member of the Beatles. "I have distinct memories of singing 'Penny Lane' and 'Rocky Raccoon,' but whether I did that as a member of the Beatles or in my dorm room, I am unable to determine at this time," Mr. Dean says. Scientists studying Beatles albums find no evidence of Mr. Dean's voice, though they do note that there is one scream on "Helter Skelter" that could be his.

I like this one too:

With others in Washington rewriting their biographies, former House majority leader Tom DeLay asserts his claim that he is the pope. The recently indicted pontiff denounces his colleagues' dishonesty and proclaims himself "saddened" by the state of politics before jetting off with former lobbyist Jack Abramoff for missionary work in Cancún.

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: A WORTHY CONSPIRACY

So you thought The Hives were the only serious high-voltage guitar band to come out of Scandinavia? Think again.

The (International) Noise Conspiracy is one exciting band of Swedes whose albums almost, though not quite live up to their live performance.

On the new (I)NC CD, Armed Love, Dennis Lyxzen and the boys continue on their strange path of aggressive socialist lyrics and even more aggressive music.

While The Hives are armed with personality and humor in addition to their musical chops, these guys are all hopped up on rhetoric.

“The (International) Noise Conspiracy calls for a change,” proclaims the band’s Web site bio. “Now is the time for questioning, organizing and action. The political left needs to take the step back into the mainstream and the open air to let people know that there's an alternative to this barbaric state of the world today.”

(They’re not completely humorless. An earlier (I)NC song was titled "Capitalism Stole My Virginity.")

“To have rhythm and revolution/Seems like an easy solution/But right now we‘re gonna set it all on fire” Lyxzen sings on the title song, basically proclaiming the Conspiracy’s underlying philosophy.

“We got guns for everyone … We got love for everyone,” he proclaims on one song.

The Conspiracy comes across like a modern -- but not too modern -- version of the MC5. Or imagine if Rage Against the Machine had started out on Shindig?

Few other bands could get away with singing lines like “No more dreams about the power structure/Now we’re on the move,” (from “Landslide”) or “I don’t want to have to wait forever/I want freedom on this side of Heaven,” (from “This Side of Heaven.”) Few bands could even get away with having a song titled “Communist Moon” these days: “Let’s share all our dreams tonight under a communist moon,” Lyxzen bubbles.

All this would sound like so much left-wing flotsam and dribble except one thing.

These damned commies are good!

Armed Love is produced by Rick Rubin, who contrary to popular notion doesn’t just work on reviving the careers of senior citizens like the late Johnny Cash, Donovan and, most recently Neil Diamond. He’s captured the sweaty essence of the band.

One strange aspect of this album: Somewhere along the line the group lost its keyboard player, Sara which is an important part of their sound. (Reviewing their set last year at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin I compared them with Steppenwolf, a truly underrated band from the late ‘60s known for their keyboards as well as their guitars.)

Rubin compensates for this loss by supplying guest keyboardists, including the likes of Benmont Trench (of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers) and, even more impressive, Billy Preston. It works on this album, but I hope they find a permanent organist.

Also recommended

Beachhead by The Fleshtones. There’s a song on this album called “Late September Moon.” I don’t think it’s a communist moon. When they sing “I Want the Answers,” I don’t think they are addressing the song to The White House. Indeed you won’t find much in the way of politics on this or any other other Fleshtones album I’ve heard. (O.K., they had an early song called "Atom Spies," but that was a surfy instrumental that sounded a lot like the "Batman" theme.) Their only mission is to praise “Pretty Pretty Pretty” women, encourage good lovin’ in every state of the union and spread the gospel of what they call “Super Rock.”

But like the (International) Noise Conspiracy, this American band revels in old-fashioned fuzzed-up guitar/cheesy keyboard rock. In fact The Fleshtones are one of the only contemporary “garage” bands that enthusiastically embraces the term and the concept of “garage-band” rock.

Maybe it’s their age. The band has been around for almost 30 years now, starting out in the mid ‘70s in Queens, New York. Singer/organist Peter Zaremba, guitarist Keith Streng and drummer Bill Milhizer have been the band from the start.

They were contemporaries of The Cramps, a band with whom they often are compared. However, while The Cramps leaned more towards horror and other B-movie imagery, The Fleshtones tended to avoid obvious shtick.

Still, they sounded -- and still sound -- like they memorized every song of the entire Nuggets box set.

About half of Beachhead was recorded in Detroit and produced by Jim Diamond of The Dirtbombs, while the other half was recorded in North Carolina by Southern Culture on The Skids’ Rick Miller. Although the band touts this as some kind of “North vs. South” concept, Diamond and Miller have similar sensibilities, at least when it comes to The Fleshtones.

You won’t find much artsy stuff here, just the hard-driving Fleshtones Super Rock. A little retro -- “I Want the Answers,” for instance, has a melody similar to The Standells’ “Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White” and The Romantics’ “What I Like About You” -- but vital enough to rock without nostalgia.

ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: POLL DANCING

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
Dec. 1, 2005

That Richardson. His suits don’t fit, but his latest poll numbers ought to make him feel pretty comfortable.

In fact, a statewide tracking poll shows Gov. Bill Richardson with a 63 percent approval rating, a full 10 points higher than his approval number just four months ago.

The poll was conducted between Nov. 11 and 13 by a New Jersey firm called SurveyUSA and paid for by KOB TV in Albuquerque. It is based on automated phone calls to 600 New Mexican adults. The margin of error is 3.9 percent.

Participants were asked “Do you approve or disapprove of the job Bill Richardson is doing as Governor?” Only 34 percent said they disapproved.

The gap between his approval and disapproval numbers also is widening. “Richardson has gone from Plus 13 in June to Plus 29 in November, which is singularly impressive,” said Jay Levy, an editor with SurveyUSA.

According to the poll, which tracks numbers for governors in all 50 states, Richardson is now the 13th most popular governor in the nation. That’s up from July when he was merely the 20th most popular governor.

Suiting Up: So what’s happened since July to help Richardson’s approval numbers?

There was the trip to North Korea in October, allowing Richardson to wear his diplomat suit.

There was his quick and widely praised appointment of Doug Brown — a Republican — to fill out the term of indicted state Treasurer Robert Vigil, allowing Richardson to wear his bi-partisan suit.

Then there were the energy-rebate checks — sent to virtually every taxpayer in the state — allowing Richardson to wear his Santa Claus suit.

And there were television commercials airing all over the state in early November with actors posing as cowboys touting those energy-rebate checks (and poking some good-natured fun at the governor’s suits.)

New Mexico pollster Brian Sanderoff said the ads — which weren’t countered by any GOP commercials — could be a factor in the better poll numbers.

Greg Graves, who is managing the gubernatorial campaign of Republican J.R. Damron of Santa Fe, said Wednesday he believes the commercials are a major reason for Richardson’s improving numbers.

One problem with this theory though. According to SurveyUSA, Richardson’s numbers rose most between September and October, before the commercials were aired.

Automated calls: About a month ago Sanderoff conducted a poll for The Albuquerque Journal that included a question about Richardson. He found Richardson’s approval rating at 53 percent.

Sanderoff on Tuesday pointed to the fact that SurveyUSA’s poll uses an automated system.

He said that people who aren’t interested in state politics or who don’t have an opinion on Richardson — not to mention those among us who get angry when we get calls at home from automated androids — are more likely to hang up on such a call than they are when there’s a live human on the other end of the line.

Therefore, Sanderoff said, the percentage of “undecideds” is going to be much lower in automated polls, while the percentage for approval and disapproval tend to rise. In the new poll a measly three percent were undecided.

But even with this factor, Sanderoff noted that the overall trend in Richardson’s SurveyUSA polls is upward.

Graves said he’s not daunted by Richardson’s high numbers.

“He’s got a record he’s going to run on and he’s got a record we’re going to run on,” he said.

Richardson, Graves said, “is going to be under more scrutiny and more of his foibles are going to be reported. You’ll see how quickly 10 points can be made up.”

No Joy in Mudville: The poll was taken before the story broke about Richardson admitting that he indeed was not drafted by the Kansas City Athletics in the mid ‘60s as he’d previously claimed.

The national response to that story has not been pretty.

Bob Warner of Cincinnati Enquirer wrote.

“Richardson has had hopes of making it to the big show — as a Democratic presidential nominee. Maybe someday he will have to research how he didn't get that call either.”

But Richardson has at least one defender. Local gallery owner and activist Steve Fox took time out of his recent crusade against the sweetener aspartame to write a letter to the online edition of Editor and Publisher.

There Fox called the baseball story “a dismal and failed attempt at character assassination.”

“How about the other party's leaders' protracted and elaborate lies about Iraq's ‘weapons of mass destruction,’” Fox asked.

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, November 27, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
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
Thanksgiving in Reno by Too Much Joy
Family Functions by That Dog
Amazons and Coyotes by Simon Stokes
Don't Slander Me by Roky Erikson
Serious by The Fleshtones
Pink Stillettos by The Stillettos
Let's Make History by The (International) Noise Conspiracy
I'm Coming Over by X
Square Pegs by The Waitresses

Seven Silver Curses by The Fiery Furnaces
K-Stars by Stereolab
Out of the Window by Yo La Tengo
Treat Me by Boozoo Bajou
All Alone by They Might Be Giants
Crackhouse Mayhem Suicide by Stuurbaard Baakkebaard
Hell Rules by Thinking Fellers Union Local 282

Nobody's Cryin' by Bernadette Seacrest & Her Yes Men
Little Sparrow by Bettye LaVette
Tomorrow Night by Lavern Baker
I'll Weep No More by Betty Everett with Ike Turner
Fattening Frogs For Snakes by Sonny Boy Williamson & The Animals
Having a Party by Sam Cooke
Me and Mrs. Jones by Billy Paul

Hell Yeah by Neil Diamond
Wear Your Love Like Heaven by Donovan
A Solitary Life by Richard Thompson
Magic Time by Van Morrison
A Better Word For Love by NRBQ
How's it Gonna End by Tom Waits
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

BILLY, YOU'RE SO FAR AWAY FROM HOME

The New Mexican Web site today has a feature I did on Jay Miller s new book Billy the Kid Rides Again: Digging for the Truth. CLICK HERE.

It's a collection of Miller's columns about the strange effort by three New Mexico law enforcement officials -- aided and endorsed by Gov. Bill Richardson -- to "learn the truth" about the death of Billy the Kid -- a truth most serious historians thought they already knew.

I didn't work this story nearly as much as Miller, but I had a little fun with this investigation. Here's a column I did a couple of years ago:


A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
August 14, 2003

Billy the Kid's head in a jar at Highlands University? Is New Mexico's most famous cop killer buried beneath a Santa Fe hotel?

Ever since Gov. Bill Richardson earlier this summer announced his support for reopening the case of the death of Billy the Kid (and some of the desperate deeds that he did), theories and rumors about the fate of the boy bandit king have flown around like ghost riders in the sky.

It seems the story of Richardson pledging state resources to aid in the investigation -- including the possibility of exhuming the grave of the woman believed to be Billy's mother as well as a couple of Billy claimants -- still has legs after all these weeks.

As has the fear that investigators might try to dig up Billy himself from his grave in Fort Sumner.

The Discovery Channel's Unsolved History series is planning to go to Fort Sumner later this month to shoot an hour-long program about the death of the Kid. Gary Tarpinian, president of Morning Star Entertainment, said Wednesday the Kid program was in the works even before he knew of the official investigation. The program is expected to air next spring he said.

Paul Hutton, the University of New Mexico history professor assigned to the new investigation, said he has been contacted by The History Channel, which plans to produce a documentary about the Kid hosted by Bill Curtis.

And the story made it to the cover of this month's True West magazine. The cover story, titled "Digging Up Billy," by Jana Bommersbach, quotes filmmaker John Fusco saying despite the fact his movie Young Guns II helped revive the claim of "Brushy Bill" Roberts that he was Billy the Kid, he doesn't really believe the story.

She also quotes Fusco as saying, "Many years ago in New Mexico, old timers told me that the Kid's remains had been relocated with other graves years ago and most likely rests today somewhere beneath the Santa Fe Sheraton."

This is similar to an e-mail The New Mexican received a few weeks ago that quoted Marcelle Brothers, who runs a Billy Web site.

There was a huge flood of the Pecos River circa 1905 near the Fort Sumner cemetery where most people believe Billy was buried.

And shortly after that the graves of soldiers in the cemetery were exhumed to be relocated in the national cemetery in Santa Fe (not far from the former Sheraton, which was built about 70 years later, and is now the Radisson Hotel.)

Therefore, Brothers wrote, "I highly doubt Billy the Kid's remains are under that slab of cement (in Fort Sumner; his bones may be in the military cemetery in Santa Fe or in the Gulf of Mexico or sunken into the riverbed of the Pecos River miles away from the Fort -- who knows?"

Hutton said the flood and the relocation of the soldiers' remains do raise concerns about the actual whereabout of Billy's grave.

But this e-mail wasn't as interesting as another recent e-mail to the paper.

According to the writer -- Earl Chafin, a historical researcher from Riverside, Calif. -- Billy "is most likely buried in Las Vegas, N.M., according to the Las Vegas Optic newspaper of 1881. He is not buried in Fort Sumner. His body was claimed as a medical cadaver and his head placed in a jar of formaldehyde."

Contacted by telephone recently, Chafin said he came across this information on microfilm about 30 years ago while researching an unrelated matter.

Hutton said he'd never heard this theory. "It's a standard story," he said. "Pancho Villa's head is supposedly roaming around there somewhere."

But despite all the theories, Scott Smith, director of the Fort Sumner State Monument -- which is adjacent to the cemetery -- insists that Billy is where he's supposed to be. "The grave is accurately marked," he said in a telephone interview.

And people in Fort Sumner -- as well as tourists who visit -- are dead set against anyone literally digging up Billy, residents say. Sandy Paul, executive director of the Fort Sumner Chamber of Commerce, said she has told her family she'd chain herself to the cage around Billy's grave if anyone tries to exhume.

She sounded serious.

Richardson and the Lincoln County lawmen who initiated the latest investigation say the plan is to exhume Billy's mother in Silver City, Brushy Bill in Hico, Texas, and another man in Arizona to conduct DNA testing. "The intent is to debunk the impostors," Richardson spokesman Billy Sparks said Wednesday.

Sparks said exhuming the grave in Fort Sumner is "unlikely." But because it's a serious investigation, it can't be ruled out, he said. "It would be the last thing to happen," he said.

In general, Sparks said, the new investigation is "an opportunity to educate a new generation of New Mexicans and individuals from all over the world about Billy the Kid."

Educational it has been.

And by the way, Sparks said if anyone has that jar with the Kid's head, please send a photo -- but not the jar -- to the governor's office.