As I've said here many times before, I'm a huge fan of an amazing if obscure series of albums calledTwisted Tales from the Vinyl Wastelands.I've been a devotee of these crazy CDs ever since my friend Sean at KSFR alerted me to their existence.
Through the years I've played dozens of songs from Twisted Tales and on my radio shows and even did a segment of them on an episode of The Big Enchilada podcast.
So what is Twisted Tales From The Vinyl Wastelands?
As described in its own promo, the "series takes the listener on a dark adventure, a wrong turn into a bizarre, alternate world of American country music performed by small town, unknown hicks ..."
And as I wrote, "... in Twisted Tales you’ll find story songs, answer songs to popular hits of the day, and novelty songs. There are topical songs ripped from the headlines of the time and politically incorrect songs — some probably racist, or at least shockingly unenlightened. The tracks are full of sex. But there are usually tragic consequences attached to lovemaking. It’s the same with liquor and drugs or being a hippie."
Well here's some long-awaited news. Vinyl Wastelands mastermind G Minus Mark (who has a bitchen podcast called Truckers, Shuckers, Freaks and Geeks) has reimagined, reconfigured, reshuffled and reconfluberated Twisted Tales into a new series with original artwork by Olaf Jens, which will be available on vinyl and digital as well as CD.
Volume One, called UFO on Farm Road 318, is available now. Volume Two, Beating on The Bars is set for release next month, You can order both HERE.
And you can listen to all the songs from Volume 1 below (and download them HERE)
The original Twisted Tales CDs, 15 volumes, I believe, can be found at Norton Records.
Sunday, November 8, 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
Spend the Night by The Sonics
Hey Darling by Sleater-Kinney
Poor Queen by Thee Oh Sees
No Confidence by Simon Stokes
Crankcase Blues by Mudhoney
The Sharpest Claws by The Dirtbombs
Bo Diddley is Crazy by Bo Diddley
Hanged Man by Churchwood
Rappin' Rodney by Rodney Dangerfield
Evil Hoodoo by The Seeds
Sheeba by Sky Saxon
Cooking for Television by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
One Kind Favor by Canned Heat
It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry by Bob Dylan
Mother-in-Law by Jello Biafra & The Raunch and Soul All-Stars
I Got Spies Watching You by Figures of Light
It's a Man Down There by Sir Douglas Quintet
After the Rain by Mission of Burma
Love Comes in Spurts by Richard Hell & The Voidoids
Jail Bait by Andre Williams
Dirty Spliff Blues by Left Lane Cruiser
I Wanna Job by Abner Jay
Livin' in My Skin by The Pretty Things
Nasaparé by Cankisou
I'm at His Command by The Violinaires
The AARP is After Me by Drywall
House of Pain by Johnny Dowd
Absolutely Free by The Mothers of Invention
Tomorrow Wendy by Concrete Blonde
It's Only Make Believe by Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Love Letters by De Romweber Duo with Cat Power
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Friday, November 6, 2015 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM Email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org Here's my playlist : OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens
Semi Truck by Commander Cody
The One That Got Away by Legendary Shack Shakers
Beaten and Broken by Robbie Fulks & The Mini-Mekons
Apartment 34 by Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs
Monkey on the Moon by Gene Hall
Pardon Me I've Got Someone to Kill by Andre Williams & The Sadies
Pappa's on the Rooftop by Dave & Phil Alvin
Scorched by The Satellites
Pick a Bale of Cotton by Flathead If There Wasn't Any Cows by Luke Reed
All Dressed Up for Trial by Peter Case
Big Fat Love by John Prine
Big Old Pussy Cat by John Riggs
Living With the Animals by Mother Earth
Big Fat Nuthiin' by Bottle Rockets
Tom Dooley by Bobby Bare
(All songs by Kell except where noted)
Cool and Dark Inside
Guns, Guitars and Women
Go On Home by Jason Eklund, Mike Good & Tom Irwin
Mary's Bar
Star Motel Blues Wine Spodee Odee
Down the Bar From Me
I Always Loved a Waltz
I'll Walk Around Heaven With You by Blonde Boy Grunt & The Groans
Emotional Needs by Uncle Monk
My Side by Electric Rag Band
The Long Way Home by Hot Club of Cowtown
Worried Mind by Eilen Jewell
Lonesome Suzie by The Band
The Ballad of Maverick by George Thorogood
Let the Mermaids Flirt With Me by Mississippi John Hurt CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets Like the Santa Fe Opry Facebook page Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list
Kell Robertson live at the Oasis, Santa Fe circa 2004
Four years ago this Saturday, Nov. 7, Kell Robertson, poet, songwriter, country singer, storyteller and self-described old drunk left this world at the age of 81.
You don't know Kell Robertson? Well educate yourself, dammit! Read the profile I did on him for No Depression in 2004. Read the obituary I did for him in The New Mexican four years ago. And please lose yourself in the wonderful website some of his friends put together for Kell.
I still think about the old troublesome desert rat all the time. I think about his stories, his b.s., his phone calls that always seemed to come when I needed a good laugh. And I especially think about those soulful songs he left behind.
Here are a couple of those tunes that have popped up on YouTube
We'll start with "I'll Probably Live."
This next one, "Cool and Dark Inside," has always been my personal favorite of all his songs. And this video is nice because it's got footage of Kell at Mary's Bar in Cerrillos.
And this is a song he sang on my radio show, The Santa Fe Opry back in 2008. "Wine Spodee Odee," of course is not a Kell original. But there's no denying he put his own unique stamp on it. I turned it into a video just a few days ago, using some snapshots I'd taken of the man.
And here's a radio feature the late Joe Day did about him right after he died. (We also lost Joe earlier this year. Damn I get tired of writing obits about my friends!)
I'll be commemorating Kell on tonight's Santa Fe Opry. It's on KSFR, 101.1 FM or www.ksfr.org at 10 p.m. Mountain Time. Come on in. It's cool and dark inside.
It was 49 years ago this week when the world lost a gentle Goliath of American music, Mississippi John Hurt.
Born in the 1890s to a sharecropping family in Carroll County, Miss., Hurt taught himself to play guitar. Though agriculture was the way he earned his living, he sometimes played at parties in and around his Avalon, Miss. home. Hurt recorded 12 songs for Okeh Records. They didn't sell well. Okeh went broke during the Depression Hurt went back to farming.
But in 1952, two of his songs -- "Frankie" and "Spike Driver Blues" -- appeared on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, exposing Hurt to a wider, whiter audience
And then came the wild rush of the early '60s folk boom, when roving armies of young record collectors combed the rural South searching for authentic old blues and hillbilly recording artists of yore. Hurt living near his hometown of Avalon, Miss. was found by musicologist Tom Hoskins.
Soon Mississippi John was the star of folk festivals and the big city coffee-house circuit, appearing on the same bills as "re-discovered' bluesmen like Son House and Skip James. His self-taught, syncopated finger-picking style was studied, copied and celebrated by a new generation of guitarists.
I didn't discover John Hurt until about three years after he died. In 1970, when I was a senior in high school, I decided I needed to start listening to some actual blues music.
For years I was familiar with names like John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters and B.B. King by way of blues-soaked rock bands like The animals, The Rolling Stones and, later Canned Heat and Cream. And several years before I'd seen Howlin' Wolf play on Shindig with the Stones at his feet. But I didn't have any actual blues records in my collection. So that Christmas I asked my mom to get me a blues album -- any blues album.
Mom was fairly hip for someone of her era. She gave me my first Bob Dylan album, Bringing it All Back Home, before I'd even heard of the guy. But she was not a blues scholar. So to make sure I got a decent blues record for Christmas, she went downtown to The Candyman (which she didn't realize was named for a Mississippi John Hurt song!) and asked a clerk for a suggestion.
Whoever it was sold her a Hurt album (that later was reissued on CD under the title of Legend) that had a bunch of his greatest tunes including "Pay Day," "Louis Collins," "Trouble I Had All My Days," "Stack-O-Lee Blue" and a wistful little song of despair called "Let The Mermaids Flirt With Me."
No, it wasn't exactly the blues. Mississippi John's music was influenced by blues, gospel, ragtime, white hillbilly records and all sorts of sounds that drifted into rural Mississippi. While it wasn't exactly what I asked for, the album and the man playing album became favorites for life.
Thanks again, Mom!
To commemorate his death (Nov. 2, 1967) and to celebrate his life, here are a couple of videos of Mississippi John Hurt singing on Pete Seeger's TV showRainbow Quest,which originally aired on a New York UHF station.
Here's "You Got to Walk that Lonesome Valley:
Here's Hurt covering Leadbelly
And here's the song that remains my favorite to this day.
This following song is a tribute to Hurt written by Tom Paxton and recently revived by Jack White. But my favorite is the version by Dave Van Ronk, which I first heard when I saw him in Santa Fe in 1980.
And just in case you never heard him sing that "Candyman" ...
