I want to thank the good folks who voted in the Santa Fe Reporter Best of Santa Fe Poll for choosing this humble blog as one of the best "Arts, Music or Food" blogs in the city. The Stephen W. Terrell [Music] Web Log was tied with Victor Romero's The Santa Fe V.I.P. for first place.
Arts, music or food. I'm guessing it was those tasty Rice-a-Roni recipes I posted here a few months ago that did the trick.
The Reporter said:
We all probably know the Terrell win is no surprise—he’s a downright local institution and the kind of writer we all aspire to be and is prolific, to say the least. Kudos as well to Victor Romero and his site that basically makes it easier to go out at night. Y’all are both VIPs in the eyes of this town.
Yesterday, July 29, would have been jazz guitar pioneer Charlie Christian's 99th birthday.
That's a good excuse to re-run an old column I did about Christian, a fellow native Oklahoman.
Read on ...
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican October 26, 2002
This isn’t a record review. It’s a tirade, so get ready.
While listening to the wonderful music in Charlie Christian: The Genius of the Electric Guitar, a four-disc box set and reading the booklet, I got seriously angry.
Charlie Christian was the first great electric guitarist. Ever. He played with Benny Goodman circa 1939 to 1942, the year Christian died of tuberculosis. Virtually all the tracks in the box are by Goodman’s band, which, at least in Christian’s early days, included Lionel Hampton on vibes and Lester Young on sax.
In reading the booklet, I learned Charlie Christian was from Oklahoma City, my hometown. An essay by Les Paul even tells how Charlie sat in with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys in OKC.
What angers me is the fact that I didn’t know that until now. I hadn’t even heard of Christian until my early 20s, probably the first time I read an interview with B.B. King, who worshiped him.
It is inexcusable that no teacher in all those years I went to school in Oklahoma (up to the ninth grade) ever mentioned that one of the true innovators of jazz was from Douglas High School, just across town. No teacher ever mentioned that it was possible for even a poor black kid from OKC to go to the top of his profession, as Charlie Christian did.
Maybe it’s because my worthless history teacher was too busy preaching the virtues of George Wallace and bemoaning the fact that Vietnam War protesters weren’t being tried for treason.
Maybe it’s because Charlie Christian was black. Segregation was dying hard in Oklahoma in the 1960s.
Or maybe it was nothing sinister. It’s probably just that the teachers were too unhip, too thick and culturally crippled even to know that a local kid had grown up to play in Benny Goodman’s band. Still ...
We were never taught about Woody Guthrie in Oklahoma either, which also is a stupid shame, but given the twisted anti-commie paranoia of the day, I can understand that omission far more than I can understand ignoring Charlie Christian.
So Charlie Christian: The Genius of the Electric Guitar isn’t just great music. To me, it’s small reparation for something I was cheated out of as a youngster.
No question about it, religion has given the world some beautiful music, from
Gregorian chants to the Hallelujah Choral to Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
It's also given us stuff like you'll hear in the videos below.
These are musical expressions by members of various "alternative" faiths some
call "cults."
Warning: If you listen to them all, you might have to be deprogrammed.
Let's have a listen, starting with Jeremy Spencer, who was an original member of
Fleetwood Mac (back in the pre-Buckingham/Nicks days when they were a British
blues band.)
One day in February 1971 while Fleetwood Mac was in Los Angeles for a gig at the
Whiskey a Go Go, Spencer slipped away. He met up with members of a group called
The Children of God and rather suddenly decided he wanted to join the group. So
he did. He never went back to Fleetwood Mac.
The Children of God seemed to be everywhere in the early '70s. I was frequently
accosted by them in my early years at the University of New Mexico. The group
was known for a controversial recruiting technique called "Flirty Fishing,"
which basically involved young female members using sex to entice new male
members into joining. That never happened to me. All I got were hairy, stinky
guys who wanted to rant about their crazy apocalyptic visions of the nuclear
bombs stored deep in the Manzano Mountains.
Anyway, here's Jeremy Spencer singing one of his religious songs. I'm not sure
how old it is. These days Spencer has white hair and less of it.
One day in the late 70s or early '80s when I was working at Stag Tobacoonists,
this hairy, barefoot guy wearing a white robe came in the store and bought a
bunch of
Royal Jamaica
cigars. Jesus, he told us, likes Royal Jamaicas. All us Stag employees were big
fans of RJs, so we just agreed with him.
Lightning Amen
He told us he was a member of a church called The Christ Family.
During the next few years I would see several members of the Christ Family --
you could recognize them by their white robes and bare feet -- on the streets of
Santa Fe. When I started writing a weekly features column for the
Santa Fe Reporter in the early '80s, I decided to interview members of the group.
I found a half dozen or so members in a bus near the Santa Fe River off
Guadalupe Street. They welcomed me aboard, but as the interview wore on, it was
obvious they weren't welcoming my questions.
They told me that they lived celibate, vegetarian lives because Christ Family
was against "killing, sex and materialism." They told me their messiah was
someone named Lightning Amen (who I later learned was fond of good cigars. I
assume those included Royal Jamaicas.)
At one point the man who was doing nearly all the talking became so angry with
my questions, he was turning read in the face. I asked him why he was so upset.
His answer:
"BECAUSE YOU ARE KILLING, SEX AND MATERIALISM!"
He didn't laugh when I joked, "That's what she said last night."
Lightning Amen -- real name Charles McHugh -- died about five years ago. In 1987
he was
sentenced to five years in prison
for drug charges, including the transportation and possession for sale of
methamphetamines.
But at least some of the Christ Family is still together in Helmut, Calif. Here
is one of their songs.
[UPDATE: 11-14-15 Some time after I posted this, this and all the
other Christ Family videos disappeared off of YouTube. I don't know why.]
Next is Scientology's answer to "We Are the World." You might have heard this on
the HBO documentary,
Going Clear.
And then there are the Hare Krishnas. They definitely had a presence in Santa Fe
and Albuquerque in the late 60s and early '70s. They had a storefront temple on
Water Street when I was at Mid High school here (in the same building that used
to house the Adobe Laundromat.) A couple of times I stopped in to yack with them
at the temple. Unlike the Christ Family, they never yelled at me when I asked
questions. No heavy proselytizing either, though they always invited me to their
Sunday feasts. (I never went.)
This song comes from the album
The Radha Krsna Temple,
which was produced by none other than George Harrison. And unlike the other
songs posted here, it doesn't suck that much ...
This next Krishna chant goes on for nearly seven hours. Give it a listen if you
have the time.
[UPDATE 4-6-23: The 7-hour Hare Krishna video has disappeared from Youtube!
But fret not. I just found an EIGHT AND A HALF (!) hour video to take its
place.]
Know any more "cult classics" from other "alternative" religions? Post
links in the comments section.
Sunday, July 26, 2015 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(at)ksfr.org Here's the playlist OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Lupine Ossuary by Thee Oh Sees
Lemonade Man by The Electric Mess
Little Girl by Hollywood Sinners
Bad Girl by Detroit Cobras
Summer Boyfriend by The Manxx
Brain Dead by Sons of Hercules
It's Great by Wau y Los Arrrggghs!!!
Police on My Back by The Clash
Hot Rod Worm by The Slow Poisoner
Leaving Here by The Sonics
Willow by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
Shake Me by Motobunny
Soul Shoes by Graham Parker & The Rumour
Playing with Jack by The Plimsouls
The Crawler by Ty Segall
The Trip of Kambo by O Lendario Chucrobillman
Elephant Stomp by Left Lane Cruiser
Garbage Dump by G.G. Allin
BOLLYWOOD SET
Dum Maro Dum by Asha Bhonsle
Naane Maharaja (I Am the Emperor) by Vijaya Anand
Fists of Curry by Anandji V. Shah & Kalyan V. Shah
Nothing is Impossible by Lata Mangeshkar, Mohd. Rafi, Sushma Shreshtha
Do You Swing by The Fleshtones
Mysterious Mystery by Persian Claws
Hot Sour Salty Sweet by The Dirtbombs
Don't Stop to Dance by Rev. Beat-Man
Let's Make the Water Turn Black by The Mothers of Invention
What a Wonderful World by Joey Ramone
Federales by Joe "King" Carrasco
Nightclub by Andre Williams & The Goldstars
Junkyard in the Sun by Butch Hancock
Ring of Fire by Social Distortion
Lucky Day by Tom Waits CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Welcome to the latest summertime episode of the Big Enchilada Podcast. We're going to have a rocking time with selections from Barrence Whitfield, The Sonics, Thee Oh Sees, T-Model Ford, G.G. Allin, The Angry Samoans, The Grannies, Frontier Circus, Crankshaft & The Geargrinders, The Routes, Butch Hancock (with the song that inspired the name of this episode) and many more. As Butch says, "For every graveyard in the moonlight, there's a junkyard in the sun!"
