WACKY WEDNESDAY: Bye Bye Beware of the Blog

For more than 10 years, WFMU's Beware of the Blog has served as a wellspring of  the weird, the wild and the quirky. It didn't have to be Wednesday for Beware of the Blog to get wacky.

It's part of the New Jersey-based independent public radio station WFMU's web of craziness, and many of the station's DJs have contributed blog posts though through the years. But during its time the blog has taken a life of its own.

But here's the bad news: On July 30, station manager Ken Freedman officially posted that the party is over.

You No Longer Need to Beware of the Blog

After ten fun-filled years, we're packing up shop here at WFMU's Beware of the Blog. Many thanks to the dozens of volunteer authors who put in so much time and love into their posts and articles, and thanks to the commenters and trolls who almost feel like part of our dysfunctional family. 

Damn! Another good thing has done gone on. Freedman doesn't really say why the station is ending the blog, though he mentions the thing hasn't had an administrator in several years.

Also, a recent post on WFMU's Facebook page said, "Social micro posts have killed blogs, more or less, but there is great reading and strange truth to be found on the blog archives. Also lots and lots of links to great audio."

So, thanks Twitter! Perhaps WFMU should start a new feed called "Beware the Tweet."

To commemorate the passing of Beware, I'm just going to post a few links to some of my favorite music posts.

* One of coolest was a post about "Country Fuzz" -- the use of fuzz-tone guitars in the 1960s and '70s. Some of the best-known country stars of that era -- Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, (who sounds outright grungy on this one),  Wanda Jackson -- all went fuzzy for a while back then. Greg G, who posted this credits Nashville cat Grady Martin for inventing fuzztone -- with the help of a malfunctioning channel on the control board --  during a Marty Robbins recording session in 1960.

Here's one of the later examples of country fuzz featuring Webb Pierce:





* Speaking of country music, Greg G. also had a post about songs about them women's libbers burning their bras. I've played "Burn Your Bra, Baby" by Benny Johnson many times on the Santa Fe Opry. But there actually are TWO songs by that title, the other being the one by a ventriloquist named Alex Houston and his dummy, Elmer. It'll be worth your while to read the post, which unveils a woman's bizarre conspiracy claim that Alex Houston hypnotized her into becoming part of a government cocaine smuggling ring. It's not clear what role Elmer played in the conspiracy.

* Beware the Blog regular Bob Purse (a musician I wrote about in my very first Wacky Wednesday last year)  is fond of "vanity records" -- self-financed recordings by amateur singers. This is a recent one by a guy named Scotty Scott. Purse posted both the A-side,  "Chattanooga, Nashville, Battlecreek Trek" (my favorite) and the B-side  "Antique Hunter's Craze." The first song includes some real poetry: "One man gets a job, then his brother gets one, too / Then his Uncle Bob, with or without a shoe."

* Back in 2008 Beware had an entire series of posts about Fake Beatles bands. One of my favorites was the one about The Beagles, a short-lived Saturday morning cartoon about a group of rock 'n' roll canines.

Another post in the Fake Beatles series featured a bunch of advertising jingles for Hoagiefest -- a convenience store's big sale sale on hoagie sandwiches.

So the bad news is that there will be no new posts -- no fake Beatles or weird vanity records or anti-feminist rants -- on Beware of the Blog.

But the good news is that Freedman promised: We will keep every single post up here for all of eternity, and someday, WFMU may resume online publishing. 

And you can still find plenty of crazy sounds over at WFMU's Rock & Soul Ichiban (which has its own 24-hour online stream for rockabilly, soul, R&B, garage, surf and hillbilly music.)

Dave & Phil Alvin meet Mister Kicks

UPDATE: Video embeds fixed

There is no Terrell's Tune-Up this week. But as a consolation prize, please enjoy this new video (actually it's only audio) by Dave & Phil Alvin from their upcoming album, Lost Time, scheduled for a mid September release.

The song is "Mister Kicks," which is one of my favorite old Oscar Brown, Jr. tunes.



And here's Oscar Brown, Jr. doing another one of best songs.

TIED FOR FIRST PLACE!

Not the actual award

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.

All I can say is thanks.

 

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Happy Birthday Charlie Christian!

Charlie Christian at work

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.

WACKY WEDNESDAY: Cult Classics -- by REAL CULTS

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.