THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, October 2, 2009
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell@ksfr.org

CALL AND PLEDGE FOR THE KSFR FUND DRIVE !!!!
505-428-1393 Toll-free 1-800-907-5737

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Get Up and Go by David Bromberg
Penny Instead by Charlie Pickett
Feel Good Again by Charlie Feathers
Don's Bop by Artie Hill & The Long Gone Daddies
Girl Called Trouble by The Watzloves
The Taker by Waylon Jennings
Fools Fall in Love by Katy Moffatt
Swing Troubador by Christine Albert

Took My Gal Out Walkin' by Loudon Wainwright III with Martha Wainwright
Ramblin' Blues by Charlie Poole
Chatanooga Sugar Babe by Norman Blake
That Nasty Swing by Cliff Carlisle
Three Times Seven by Doc & Merle Watson
See That Coon in a Hickory Tree by The Delmore Borthers
I'm a Rattlesnakin' Daddy by Blind Boy Fuller
The Sad Milkman by The Handsome Family

See Willie Fly By by The Waco Brothers
Power of the 45 by Big Sandy & The Fly-Rite Boys
Got Me a Woman by Andy Anderson
Fruit of the Vine by Nancy Apple
Honky Tonk Heroes by Billy Joe Shaver
Man in Black by Johnny Cash
Dolores by T. Tex Edwards & Out on Parole
Drinkin' and Smokin' Cigarettes by Rev. Horton Heat
I Got Your Bath Water On by Butterbeans & Susie

The Gypsy by Cornell Hurd
Wild Bill Jones by Jim Dickinson
Everybody's Clown by Skeeter Davis & NRBQ
Opportunity to Cry by Wilie Nelson
The Highwayman by Zeno Tornado
Tumblin' Tumbleweeds by Sally Timms
Surface of the Sun by Exene Cervenka
Potter's Field by Dave Alvin & The Guilt Women featuring Christy McWilson
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: PERE UBU LIVES UP TO ITS NAME

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
October 2, 2009


I’ve loved Pere Ubu — the avant-weirdo band originally from Cleveland — for years, but I was ready to be put off by the group’s latest album, Long Live Père Ubu!, because of some of the statements in the project’s press material.

The album is a musical adaptation of Ubu Roi, an 1896 play by Alfred Jarry, whose work influenced the Surrealist and Dada movements and later the Theater of the Absurd. The band took its name from the play’s protagonist.

Long Live Père Ubu! is not background music. It’s not ‘fun’ music,” the press release says. “It’s an intellectual and conceptual challenge and as viciously satirical as Jarry’s original.”

Then it quotes David Thomas, the band’s frontman: “If you’re not going to listen to this with the same effort you’d devote to a literary novel, you’re wasting your time. ... It’s long past time for rock music to grow up and move past the simpering platitudes or Tom Joad cant that passes for serious thought. All hail the survival of the Unfit!”

Thomas also claims that Long Live Père Ubu! is “the only punk record that’s been made in the last 30 years.”

First of all, as an Okie, I resent that disparaging remark about the hero of The Grapes of Wrath. But even more troubling is all the highfalutin art talk. What is this, Emerson, Lake & Palmer? It sounds like the condescending gibberish spouted by ivory-tower culture critics who bestow artistic legitimacy upon Sgt. Pepper and haughtily dismiss Beatles ’65.

But then again, Thomas probably delights in provoking the primitivists. In fact, I’m pretty sure he’s mocking the high-art culture vultures.

Flashback to 1896: When Ubu Roi had its premiere in Paris, riots broke out from the very first word of the play — merdre, a variation on the French word for "shit." (Didn’t the French also riot at the opening of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring? What is it with them?)

Set in Poland, Ubu Roi is the tale of the hideous Père Ubu and his shrewish wife who urges him to seize power by murdering the king. After the crime is committed, Ubu becomes a cruel tyrant and is eventually overthrown himself. On one level, the play is a parody of Macbeth, but it also satirizes the politics of the nation-states of Europe that culminated in World War I.

Ubu is not just a terrible dictator. He is repulsive beyond belief — cruel, loutish, petty, venal, gluttonous, coarse, and pompous; Jabba the Hutt and Idi Amin have nothing on him. He was also the protagonist of two sequels, Ubu Cocu (Ubu Cuckolded) and Ubu Enchaîné (Ubu Enchained), neither of which was performed during the playwright’s lifetime.

Ubu does Ubu: While Thomas took Pere Ubu as the name of his band in the 1970s, he had never attempted to perform Jarry’s work until last year’s adaptation in London of Ubu Roi, called Bring Me the Head of Ubu Roi. Thomas starred as the title character, with singer Sarah Jane Morris, from a band called The Communards, as his wife. The bickering couple portrayed by Thomas and Morris were two parts Mr. and Mrs. Macbeth and one part Jiggs and Maggie. The first half of a radio adaptation of this is available as a series of free podcasts.

The album starts off with the word that sparked the 1896 riot, growled by Thomas. When I first heard it, I thought he was saying “murderer.” Considering that the King of Poland doesn’t have long to live, “murderer” isn’t an inappropriate word to set the mood.

With the additions of Morris and electronic whiz Gagarin, the ever-changing Ubu band here is the same group that played on the previous Ubu album, 2006’s excellent and underrated Why I Hate Women.

Like any Pere Ubu album, this record is filled with electronic bells, whistles, squeaks, and squawks that hark back to Plan 9 From Outer Space and Thomas’ yelps, warbles, and tasty guitar licks (the one on “Watching the Pigeons” is right out of the Jesus Christ Superstar overture).

There is also some belching. The song “Less Said the Better” is almost as funny as a it is disgusting. It’s the best use of burping in a rock song since Alfred E. Neuman’s “It’s a Gas.”

Because it is a dramatic presentation, there is a lot of spoken-word dialogue (as well as some that’s sung), most of which is fascinating. My favorite is the conversation between Mère and Père Ubu on “The Story So Far.” He’s in a hallucinatory daze while she tries to convince him that she’s a supernatural natural spirit — an angel, to be exact. But even in his delirious stupor, Père Ubu knows she’s no angel.

“Long Live Père Ubu!” is a compelling and dark album, if not an all-out rocker. The press material is right — it’s not background music. It certainly isn’t easy listening. But if you’re twisted enough, it’s a lot of fun, no matter what the press release says.

Blog bonus: Check this animated Brothers Quay video of “Song of the Grocery Police” below



And there's another one HERE, but embedding has been disabled. Probably for some highfalutin artistic reason.

R.I.P. AMY FARRIS

I just learned that Austin fiddler Amy Farris died over the weekend.

I just saw her in August playing with Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women at the Santa Fe Brewing Company, where I snapped this photo. She was a wonderful musician.

A brief in the Austin Statesman blog is HERE.

UPDATE:

Still no word on cause of death. The Yep-Roc site says she'd suffered a long illness.

In lieu of flowers, the family encourages you to send a donation in her honor to Hungry For Music, Inc, a nonprofit effort to provide musical instruments to underprivileged children with a hunger to play.

http://hungryformusic.com
http://hungryformusic.org

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, September 27, 2009
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell
Webcasting!
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell@ksfr.org

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
It's Money That I Love by Randy Newman
Where's the Money by Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks
Long Green by Barrence Whitfield
Money (That's What I Want) by Jerry Lee Lewis
Money Honey by Elvis Presley
No Money, No Honey by Beck
Give Me Wine or Money by The Mekons
Material Girl by Petty Booka
Brother Can You Spare a Dime by Dr. John & Odetta

Didn't It Rain by The Tormenters
I Ain't Got You by The Yardbirds
Blues That Defy My Soul by Dex Romweber
Baby Doll by The Del Moroccos
Bow Down and Die by The Almighty Defenders
Holy Hack Jack by Demented Are Go
Wasting My Time by The White Stripes
Gimme Some Water by The Guilty Hearts
Green Fuzz by The Cramps
Little Annie Fanny by The Kingsmen

Look for the Question Mark by The Fuzztones
Outrun the Law by The Things
Satanic Rite by Los Peyotes
Into the Drink by Mudhoney
Do You Swing by The Fleshtones
Shake It Wild by King Salami & The Cumberland 3
Hey Joe by The Leaves
Get on the Right Track, Baby by The Monsters
Sea and Sand by The Polkaholics

Somebody Stop Me by The Dynamites with Charles Walker
Bad Trip by Lee Fields
Ode to Billy Joe/Hip Hug Her by Wiley & The Checkmates
King Cobra by The Budos Band
Cold Bologna by The Isley Brothers
Choices by Bettye LaVette
This Land Is Your Land by Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

SUPPORT THE KSFR FUNDRAISER

OK you ham-and-eggers, KSFR, Santa Fe Public Radio, is in the middle of our fall fund drive and it's about time you forked it over.

I know these are difficult financial times for a lot of us, but we have to keep KSFR afloat.

In case you didn't know, I produce two shows on KSFR, The Santa Fe Opry on Friday nights (starts 10 pm Mountain Time) and Terrell's Sound World same time on Sunday night. (My podcast, The Big Enchilada, isn't directly affiliated with KSFR, but the music on the podcasts is the same type of stuff I play on my shows.)

KSFR is a public station is a public station which means we aren't supported by advertising. We're supported by our listeners and our underwriters. (If your business would like to consider underwriting CHECK THIS PAGE.)

Being a public station also means its locally controlled. Our music shows don't follow playlists created by out of state marketers. Local people like we play the music we want. Check out the great shows KSFR officers on our program guide.

But like I said at the beginning of this post, it's time to fork it over! You can pledge online or during daytime hours you can call 428-1393. If you're out of the Santa Fe area, there's a toll-free pledge number, 1-800-907-5737. I'll be on the air tonight at 10 pm, so I'll be happy to personally take your pledge at 505-428-1382.