SUNDAY, BLOODY SUNDAY

Thanks to Susan Holmes for turning me on to this.

THE GEO CONNECTION

My story in today's New Mexican on The GEO Group and its campaign contributions to Gov. Bill Richardson and other New Mexico politicians can be found HERE.


A good place to look up political contributions is The Institute of Money on State Politics' site FollowtheMoney.org. Here is a recent study about contributions from the corrections industry to politicians in several states. Unfortunately, New Mexico isn't one of the states they look at closely, even though the report shows we're in the Top 10 states for prison industry contributions.

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, July 9, 2006
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
Two Headed Dog (Red Temple Prayer) by Roky Erikson
Papa Satan Sang Louie by The Cramps
This Day is Mine by Heavy Trash
I Don't Care by Rev. Beat-Man & His Church of Herpes
Drive You Faster by John Schooley
Boogie Till You Puke by Root Boy Slim & His Sex Change Band
Fly Trap Lair by P.W. Long
Beat on the Brat by The Ramones
Buttons & Bows by Ronnie Ong

The Nocturnal House by Pretty Girls Make Graves
Amazons & Coyotes by Simon Stokes
Sometimes the Devil Sneaks Inside My Head by The Immortal Lee County Killers
Boob Scotch by Bob Log III
Kung Foo Cowboy by Alan Vega
Pray For Pills by The Dirtbombs
Tobacco Road by The Blues Magoos
I Wanna Be Sedated by The Ramones




JOHNNY DOWD SET
House of Pain
Worried Mind
Thanksgiving Day
Poverty House
Monkey Run
Sky Above, Mud Below
Garden of Delight
Drunk

In My Little Thatched Hut by The Fiery Furnaces
Moonlight in Glory by David Byrne & Brian Eno
There's Been an Accident by The Twilight Singers
The Mute Speaks by Mission of Burma
Hookie Wookie by Lou Reed
Moonlight by Jerry J. Nixon
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, July 7, 2006
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Jason Fleming by The Sadies with Neko Case
Not My Friend by The Ginn Sisters
Ain't No God in Mexico by Waylon Jennings
Heartaches and Grease by Ray Wylie Hubbard
This Old Town by Chip Taylor
We'll Burn Together by Robbie Fulks
New Boots by Bill & Bonnie Hearne
Desert Rose by Chris Hillman
The Highwayman by Zeno Tornado
The Storry of Woody and Bush by The Dead Brothers

Joy by Harry Nilsson
Cowboy Peyton Place by Doug Sahm
Weather Woman by The Gourds
Peach Blossom by Hundred Year Flood
Road Hawg by Joe Ely
Man About Town by Tony Gilkyson
A Girl I Used to Know by George Jones
Bonapart's Retreat by Glenn Campbell

Jackie's Dive by Jono Manson
Dog Sleep by Frank Black
If Daddy Don't Sing Danny Boy by The Hacienda Brothers
Out of Blue by James Luther Dickinson
I Shook His Hand by Gary Heffern
Cowboys and Rodeos by The Buckerettes
My Oklahoma by Tommy Hancock & The Supernatural Family Band
What Makes Bob Holler by Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys
Big River by Rosie Flores

Dale Evans by Lynn Anderson
Gringo Honeymoon by Robert Earl Keen
Sonora's Death Row by Dave Alvin
KC Violin by Tom Russell
Tornado Time in Texas by Guy Clark
Somewhere Else to Be by The Handsome Family
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: JOHNNY DOWD & VOODOO RHYTHM

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
July 7, 2006

Johnny Dowd is an acquired taste to be sure, but once you’ve acquired it, it’s impossible to get rid of.

What can you say about an album that starts off with Dowd’s laconic Okie drawl rapping — an unsettling tale of a guy who purposely shoots himself in the genitals — over a sparse bluesy rock backdrop? “Give the drummer some!” Dowd shouts before the instrumental.

Damaged people, doomed love. Crushing struggles, down-home apocalyptic obsessions, and insanity as a defense mechanism. Grim imagery of mechanical cockroaches chasing albino rats.

All this fills Cruel Words, Dowd’s sixth album (not counting obscure live records and outtake collections). After you digest that first song, “House of Pain,” the rest of the album goes down relatively easy.

This album is an improvement over his last one, Cemetery Shoes, just by virtue of the fact that Dowd’s favorite backup singer, Kim Sherwood-Caso, is back, at least for several cuts. In the song “Unwed Mother,” she actually sings the “cruel words” to which the title refers: “You’re not the father of the child that I carry/You’re not the man who I want to marry.”

Welcome back, Kim. It just wasn’t the same without you!

Dowd, of course, can be cruel himself.

“Love can be so beautiful like Jesus on a cross/You don’t know what you’ve got till you see what you have lost,” he snarls on “Poverty House.” The narrator’s memories grow darker. “I recall your body, I recall your kiss/I recall your bitterness/That’s something I don’t miss/I met you in a churchyard in 1968/We walked down the thin line between love and hate.”

There’s also guest appearances by Mekons’ Jon Langford and Sally Timms on “Drunk,” a song about a reformed alcoholic fighting hard not to unreform. Timms and Langford join Sherwood-Caso on the refrain (“Oh what I’d give for a drink”) and mutter some inscrutable dialogue during the instrumental portion.

But the wrenching part of the song is where Dowd sings “I stare at the window repeating my name, Johnny Dowd, Johnny Dowd, Johnny Dowd, Johnny Dowd.” A listener has to laugh, but it’s inevitably a nervous laugh.

I can’t say enough good things about Dowd’s sidemen, drummer Brian Wilson (no, not that Brian Wilson) and keyboardist Michael Stark, who can sound like Jimmy Smith on some tunes, Greg Allman on others.

The band gets faux-metallic on “Poverty House” and Who-like and prog-rocky on “Corner Laundromat.”

Dowd gives the band an instrumental track here — “Wilder Than the Wind ’66” — which sounds like some mutated, forgotten theme by Davey Allen and The Arrows.

On past albums, Dowd has done his deconstructed/reconstructed cover songs — “Jambalaya” and “Jingle Bells,” for instance. Here he does a barely recognizable “Johnny B. Goode,” which he combines with the famous riff from Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.”

This isn’t Dowd’s best effort. Newcomers probably should start with Pictures from Life’s Other Side (my own favorite). But it’s a good one, and it’s good to know that Dowd’s still out there shouting his name in the darkness.

Also recommended:

There’s no obvious musical connection between Johnny Dowd and the following two albums, which are both from Switzerland’s Voodoo Rhythm label. (Except maybe the fact that Dowd is probably better appreciated in Europe. Cruel Words, like his past several CDs, was released on a European label, the Netherlands’ Munich Records, months before it was released here.)

Yet, I somehow feel there’s a spiritual connection. Fans of Dowd should check out Voodoo Rhythm Records, and vice versa.

* Your Favorite Position Is on Your Knees by Rev. Beat-Man & The Church of Herpes. Beat-Man is the founder, brains, and inspirational icon of Voodoo Rhythm. Here he teams up with a Swiss industrial group; Voodoo Rhythm describes the result as “Kraut-influenced gospel from Hell mixed up with analog electro-trash.”

That about sums it up.

Truly this is hellish music. You can imagine it as the soundtrack of some slasher movie yet to be made, a portrait of a rockabilly werewolf l killer. Beat-Man has the voice of an evil robot disguised as a freak-show barker.

My favorite tracks here are “Bad Treatment” (Beat-Man as a wounded lover — you can almost feel the revenge fantasies playing out in his head); “Prophecy” (the melody is almost like a sea chantey); and “Faith, Hope, Love” (what cult is the woman’s voice sampled from?).

Don’t listen to this if you’re feeling halfway paranoid. But if you’re in the mood for some wicked, Dark Side chuckles, it’s hard to beat.

* Wunderkammer by The Dead Brothers. This is a sonic treat by a Geneva band with a Gypsy heart.

You hear the influence of Tom Waits on songs like the opening “Trust in Me,” a slow-motion tango featuring a lap steel, a trumpet, and clunky percussion — and on “Old Pine Box,” a blues tune with a sinister banjo.

Elsewhere there are echoes of 3 Mustaphas 3 (on the Mideastern-colored “Mustapha”) and the Squirrel Nut Zippers (on the Djangoed-out “Greek Swing”).

And they can do Woody Guthrie. “The Story of Woody and Bush” is a musical conversation between the Dust Bowl balladeer and the leader of the free world. “Woody” sings of a lonesome day and tells his kids, “Come children dry your father’s eyes.” He’s answered by “Bush,” who sings, “I don’t really care about people in despair.” When Woody sings, “My children need new shoes for their feet,” you can hear Bush in the background saying, “Yeah, sure.”

Dowd-o-rama: Johnny Dowd is underplayed and underheard in this country. But not in Santa Fe on Sunday night. I'll play a half-hour Dowd set starting about the 11th hour (Mountain Time) on Terrell's Sound World, 90.7 FM on KSFR (for you out-of-towner, you can hear it stream HERE at that time. Earlier on Sunday I'll play Rev. Beat Man, Dead Brothers and some other Voodoo Rhythm artists that you won't hear on any of those polite stations.