Friday, September, 2010
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
OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Running Out Of Money by The Stumbleweeds
Big Bad Wolf by Clinton O'Neal & The Country Drifters
Got a Date with Sally by Crazy Cavan & The Rhythm Rockers
The Old Man From The Mountain by The Gourds
Gator Man by Queen Ida
Streamlined Mama by Buddy Jones
Gettin' Drunk and Fallin' Down by Hank III
Vacant-Lot by Deano Waco & The Meat Purveyors
The Race is On by Sixtyniners
Uncle Fudd by Dorothy Shay
Brother, Drop Dead by Redd Stewart & His Kentucky Colonels
Dead Flowers by Jerry Lee Lewis with Mick Jagger
Loco by DM Bob & The Deficits
Junkie Eyes by Kell Robertson
Diddy Boppin' And Motor Mouthin' by Clara Dean
Sweet Jennie Lee by Willie Nelson & Asleep at the Wheel
Weakness In A Man by Waylon Jennings
The Talking Hotpants Blues by The Hickoids
Sweet Lovin' Ol' Soul by Maria Muldaur
Sippin' Whiskey by Electric Rag Band
Blues in the Bottle by The Texas Shieks
I Love Onions by Susan Christie
Maverick by Laurie Lewis & Kathy Kallick
Keep Your Hat on Jenny by Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodriguez
Bullet In My Mind by Zeno Tornado & The Boney Google Brothers
Creep Along Moses by Mavis Staple
One Sweet Hello by Merle Haggard
Poor Boy, Long Ways From Home by Mississippi John Hurt
Pamela Brown by Leo Kottke
Together Again by Steve Jordan
Haunted Man by Amanda Pearcy
Country Bumpkin by Cal Smith
Kiss At The End Of The Rainbow by Mitch & Mickey
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
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A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
September 24, 2010
The first album by Grinderman is an intense burst of bile, anxiety, rage, obscenity, and loud, sloppy rock ’n’ roll.
It’s my favorite Nick Cave album since 1995’s Murder Ballads. The new Grinderman album, Grinderman 2, while slightly less ragged than the original, is almost as good. And I wouldn’t argue all that hard with those who say it’s even better.
Like many, I assumed that this band — named for a Memphis Slim song and basically just a stripped-down version of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds — was a one-off side project for Cave. When I heard a new Grinderman album was in the works, I was afraid it would be a pale shadow of the first. Such fears were baseless.
Reviewing the first album in 2007, I wrote, “Rock ’n’ roll supposedly is a young man’s game — traditionally, some of the best of it is created by horny, sexually frustrated young guys. But with Grinderman ... Cave proves that horny, sexually frustrated middle-aged men can rock, too.”
And three years older, they still can.
Going on the premise that sometimes you can judge a book, or an album, by its cover, the artwork on both albums helps explain the difference between the two efforts. On the first album, the artwork shows a monkey clutching its private parts. The colors are distorted — the animal is green, yellow, and orange. It’s like an image buried inside some advertisement designed to subliminally get you scared and angry.
The cover of Grinderman 2 is disturbing in a different way. It’s a shot of a real wolf — his fangs clearly visible — inside what looks like an upscale home — white marble floors, off-white walls, white roses in a vase, and Roman sculptures. The wolf is in the house — maybe your house. You don’t know how it got there, but it’s there.
Indeed, the wolf stalks Cave’s lyrics on several songs here. In the opening song, “Mickey Mouse and the Goodbye Man,” Cave sings of himself and his unnamed brother: “I was Mickey Mouse. And he was the Big Bad Wolf!”
Later, in “Heathen Child,” Cave sings of a girl: “Sitting in the bathtub/Waiting for the Wolfman to come!” And maybe it’s my imagination, but in the instrumental break near the end of the next tune, “When My Baby Comes,” I almost think I hear a wolf howl. It’s the same with the start of the following song, “What I Know.”
The first three songs of Grinderman 2 present a classic example of saving your best for first. On “Mickey Mouse and the Goodbye Man,” Cave howls like Chester Burnett (aka Howlin’ Wolf) on “Smokestack Lightning.”
You can hear echoes of other songs here, too: Patti Smith’s “Gloria” and The Doors’ “When the Music’s Over,” and there’s an intentional nod to blues belter Lucille Bogan’s notorious “Shave ’Em Dry.”
“Mickey Mouse” starts out with a brief, slow guitar introduction and then explodes into full-force demon rock. A bass throbs, drums crash, and a guitar spits distorted sounds as Cave sings, “I woke up this morning/I thought what am I doing here.” His brother is raging and howling at him. There’s a “lupine girl” whose hair is on fire. And someone is “rattling the locks.” In other words, a typical weekend at Nick Cave’s house.
“Worm Tamer” rocks even harder, with a mutated Bo-Diddley-conquers-the-Martians beat. It’s full of fun innuendo and double-entendre. “Well, my baby calls me the Loch Ness Monster/Two great humps and then I’m gone.”
Then “Heathen Child” takes us right back to the nightmare world of “Mickey Mouse.” A girl is “sitting in the bathtub sucking her thumb,” though she’s fully armed as she waits for that Wolf Man.
In one verse Cave sings mockingly: “You think your great big husband will protect you. You are wrong!/You think your little wife will protect you. You are wrong. You think your children will protect you! You are wrong!/You think your government will protect you. You are wrong!”
The album slows down somewhat on the next couple of songs. But even though the music on “When My Baby Comes” is more sedate than before (at least the first half, before Cave and the boys go into a Black Angels-like psychedelic excursion, the lyrics are still full of dread and violence: “They had pistols, they had guns/They threw me on the ground as they entered into me (I was only 15!)” Cave sings, reminding old fans of his songs like “Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry.”
“What I Know” is more mellow — musically, at least. The surreal sonic backdrop sounds like a desperate radio broadcast from a distant dimension. But the rage returns on the next song, “Evil.” Over an almost metallic backdrop, Cave bellows, “O cling to me little baby in this broken dream/And let me protect you from this evil.”
“Kitchenette” is the song that most reminds me of the first Grinderman album in sound and in spirit. The wolf returns, but this time it is a Tex Avery-style cartoon wolf in the house. It’s a swaggering, damaged blues number with Cave in full Nick the Lech mode, coming on to a helpless housewife. “What’s this husband of yours ever given to you?/Oprah Winfrey on a plasma screen,” he sings. “And a brood of jug-eared buck-tooth imbeciles/The ugliest kids I’ve ever seen.”
Caution, would-be ladies’ men: the surest way to bed a married woman probably doesn’t involve insulting her children. But if she likes loud, unfettered, sleazy scary rock ’n’ roll, you might just have a chance if you play her some Grinderman.
Elvis Costello’s forthcoming album, “National Ransom,” mines a century’s worth of pop music history in both the characters, scenarios and themes in his songs, and in the atmospheric sound that producer T Bone Burnett has given the record.
So it makes perfect sense that Costello, a voracious fan of music of all styles, would want to add a vintage touch of some kind in conjunction with the album’s release come Nov. 2.
Vinyl LP version? Everyone’s doing that nowadays, so Costello is going one step beyond: He’s releasing four songs on a pair of 78 rpm discs.
Well if that ain't quaint. I think I'll just hitch up the horse and buggy and go see if they're selling it at the local dry goods store.
Sunday, September 19, 2010 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 Kedalaman Air by Arrington de Dionyso Happy Birthday Bitch by The Ruiners Gimme Culture by Red Bacteria Vacuum Invasion of the Surf Zombies by The Barbarellatones Mad Dog by DM Bob & The Deficits Heart of a Rat by Rocket From the Crypt The Striker by The Giant Robots Jump, Jive & Harmonize by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages The Man With The Weird Beard by Arthur Godfrey
Sunshine/Red Lips, Red Eyes, Red Stockings by The Red Elvises Come Back Lord by Rev. Beat-Man & The Unbelievers Do the Wurst by King Salami & The Cumberland 3 Leave Me Alone by Nathaniel Meyer Crazy Baby by The Blasters Jail Bait by Andre Williams & Green Hornet Hang It Up by King Coleman
Big Black Witchcraft Rock by The Cramps You Must Be a Witch by The Lollipop Shoppe Witchcraft by Elvis Presley I Put a Spell on You by Screamin' Jay Hawkins Witchcraft in the Air by Bette Lavette Devil Smile by Nekromantix Voodoo by The Combinations The Witch by The Sonics I Lost My Baby to a Satan Cult by Stephen W. Terrell
Non-Alignment pact by Pere Ubu Moving to Florida by Butthole Surfers Dream Girl by Nick Curran and the Lowlifes Bad Trip by Lee Fields White Cannibal by James Chance CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
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I had a hard time deciding whether to put my interview with Kinky Friedman on this blog -- after all, I first came to love him as a songwriter/performer -- or on my political blog.
But considering that most of out conversation was about politics -- and even when I asked him about his musical career, the talk veered back into politics -- I decided to put it over there.
Kinky's scheduled to be at Monte's of Santa Fe cigar store next Sunday. He said he hasn't decided whether he's going to sing any songs.
In the interest of full disclosure -- and full ego gratification -- I should mention that back in the early '90s I opened for Kinky twice when he played in Albuquerque at the El Rey Theatre. He said he remembered that when I talked to him last week, but he probably was just being nice.
