Sunday, February 24, 2019 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist:
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
He Looks Like a Psycho by The Electric Mess
Last Date by David Bromberg
The Loner by Ty Segal
Zig Zag Wanderer by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
Lawrence of California by The Mekons
What Makes You Think You're the One by Twilight Singers
Turn it On by Lindsey Buckingham
Tusk by Camper Van Beethoven
I'm All In by Alien Space Kitchen
About Alice by The Legendary Tigerman
Lies I Told by Ghost Wolves
I Suffer I Get Tougher by The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band
Perfect by by The Reverend Horton Heat
Mocorina by by Reverend Beat-Man & Izobel Garcia
OSCARS SET
Celluloid Heroes by The Kinks
New Age by The Velvet Underground
Beloved Movie Star by Stan Ridgway
It'll Chew You Up and Spit You Out by Concrete Blonde
In Hollywood (Everybody Is a Star) by The Village People
There's No Business Like Show Business by Ethel Merman
Stormy Weather by The Reigning Sound
Love Revolution (Kete Drum Mix) by King Shark
Trash by REQD
Did You Love Me by Shannon & The Clams
Maxine by Martha Fields
Mr. Blue by The Fleetwoods CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Back on a bygone Wacky Wednesday -- Oct. 4, 2017 -- I posted a tribute to a lady who's been at the center of many wonderful songs.
I wrote back then;
She's more than just a server of food. In American song, the waitress is a friend and frequently a fantasy lover of truckdrivers, starry-eyed poets, lonesome drifters and other lost souls on the Lost Highway.
Here are a few more songs for the waitress:
Let's start with Louis Prima and his affections for a waitress named Angelina
Not just a waitress song, this is "The Waitress Song" by Freakwater
Tom T. Hall's favorite waitress was Ravishing Ruby.
In Frank Zappa's 200 Motels, Lonesome Cowboy Burt, portrayed by the late, great Jimmy Carl Black, only wanted to find his waitress ...
I posted Tom Waits' version of "Highway Cafe" back in my last waitress tribute, But the song was written by Kinky Friedman ...
Sunday, February 18, 2019 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Eat It by Shonen Knife
Messiah's Lament by Mudhoney
Listen to the Showman Twang by The Dustaphonics
Black Sea by The Vagoos
Bold Marauder by Drywall
My Delight by Detroit Cobras
Dirty Robber by The Wailers
A Place I Want to Know by Weird Omen
Lawrence of California by The Mekons
In the Red by Mekons 77
Me and The Devil by Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band
Fool by REQ'D
SOB by Full Speed Veronica
The Night is Still Young by Jonathan Richman
Timothy by The Buoys
Let's Get The Baby High by The Dead Milkmen
Acquainted WIth The Night by Unknown Instructors
TJ by Hickoids
Sunrise Through the Power Lines by The Reverend Horton Heath
Miss Muerte by The Flesh Eaters
WPLJ by The Mothers of Invention
The Dumb Song by Dale Watson
Catfight by Celine Lee
Out of Control by Alien Space Kitchen
Bar Fight by Hamell on Trial
Let Him Dangle by Elvis Costello
In Heaven (Everything Is Fine) by Laurel Near
Never Argue With a German If You're Tired or European Song by Jefferson Airplane
That Lucky Old Sun by Leon Russell
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life by Monty Python CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican Feb. 15, 2018
Nothing like some loud and local apocalyptic garage-punk space-pop to get your blood circulating on such a winter’s day. Who’s serving that purpose for me lately? It’s The Golden Age of Climate Change by an Albuquerque band called Alien Space Kitchen.
This seven-song, 26-minute EP is a refreshing blast of raunchy riffs, rump-shaking beats, simple but addictive melodies, and irreverent lyrics about planetary suicide.
Alien Space Kitchen has been around for nearly a decade. They started out as a duo featuring singer Dru Vaughter and drummer/vocalist Noelle Graney. (Originally they called themselves “Dr. Rox” and “Chiffon,” respectively, but those monikers didn’t last.) Their first album, Just ASK, was released in 2012. Sometime before 2016’s Some of This Is True, they picked up a permanent bass player, Terry “Mess” Messal, who helped solidify the Space Kitchen’s sound.
At the moment, my favorite track on this record is “In the Mud,” in which Vaughter sings matter-of-factly, “Back in swamp, deep in the water/Weather’s getting warmer, world is getting hotter.” Though other tunes here have similar messages — how to cope when the world is headed for a boiling point — Vaughter never seems preachy. It’s like he’s conjuring troubling images with a smile on his face, while his guitar screams in rage.
Another worthy one is “Who Controls the Weather,” which unabashedly veers down the conspiracy rabbit hole. Of course, they’re being tongue-in-cheek here … I think … (Remember, this is the same band that did a song called “How to Fake a Lunar Landing” on Some of This Is True.) The song ends with Vaughter and Graney singing, repeatedly, “The world is run on gasoline/I’m gonna destroy your weather machine ...”
Also impressive is “Down in Flames,” a crunching — and rather paranoid — rocker with the grim refrain, “It’s all going down in flames/It’s never going to be the same/God damn, ain’t that a shame?” Though the lyrics are dire, there’s a strong glimmer of hope just in the way Vaughter and Graney sing it. Maybe I’m nuts, but I think I detect a knowing wink in the delivery.
Like most good EPs, The Golden Age of Climate Change leaves a listener wanting just a little more. The good news is that more might be just around the corner. This record has a subtitle: The ASK EP Project – Volume 1. “This series of themed EPs will cover a broad range of topics and styles,” the website says. “ASK’s current mission is to release a new volume with a new theme and new songs approximately every 3 months.”
Here’s hoping the Space Kitchen crew follow through on that.
Some other recent New Mexico records:
* June 31 by Full Speed Veronica. It’s another rocking little trio that hails from this Enchanted Land. Guitarist Malcolm June and drummer Matt Worley started the band as a quartet with bassist Nathan Hey and someone named Brandon back in 2008. Hey left the group in 2016 and was replaced by Sarah Meadows. Like June, she’s an alumna of early 21st-century New Mexico rockers The Hollis Wake (and a former arts editor of the Santa Fe Reporter).
Though definitely guitar-centric, Full Speed Veronica is less punky than, say, Alien Space Kitchen. Their melodic sound actually is closer to folk-rock, though they don’t sound much like The Byrds. Fortunately, they also don’t sound much like Three Dog Night or Billy Joel, both of whom are included in Veronica’s lengthy list of influences on their Facebook page. (But I would kind of like to hear them do a version of “Mama Told Me Not to Come.”)
Among the standouts on June 31 are the opening song, “Barnburner,” which has hints of Byrdsy jangle and Dinosaur Jr. roar; the slow, minor-key “A Month of Sundays,” which starts out with June on acoustic guitar; and the soulful “The Great Escape,” which features Meadows on vocals.
Check out Full Speed Veronica's Bandcamp page. You’ll find June 31 there as well as their previous two albums — Always Play the Part and Been Known to Lie, which are available for “name your own price.”
* Walk in the Light and Dub to the Ite’s by King Shark. Alphanso Henclewood, the man behind the Shark, has lived in these parts for most of the last couple of decades, but he was born in Jamaica, the Greenwich Farm district of Kingston, to be exact. And it’s there where Henclewood returns every so often to record himself and his friends playing old-school reggae.
According to a story in the Jamaica Observer last March, King Shark was there for “his most ambitious recording sessions to date” for which he “assembled a crack team of musicians to cut tracks for an album he hopes to release this year.”
The story mentioned two songs — “Walk in the Light” and “Love Revolution,” which he recorded at the famous Tuff Gong studio. That “crack team” included guitarist Earl “Chinna” Smith, who has played with too many major reggae musicians to list here, and who is a boyhood friend of Shark’s.
Walk in the Light consists of several versions and mixes of the two songs mentioned in the Observer. So a listener gets to know both songs inside out. My favorite tracks are the “Straight Mix” of the title song and the stripped-down Kete Drums mix of “Love Revolution.”
The other new album under the King Shark banner, Dub to the Ite’s, features ten instrumentals with Smith and other stalwarts of the Shark’s impressive stable.
But wait, there’s more.
Shark also has a new various-artist compilation, Kingston 13, which he produced, including singers like Pretty Rebel, U Mike, Peter Rankin, and Candyman. My favorite tunes here, though — “Got Feelings 4u” and “I Like to Know” — are love songs performed by a sweet-voiced female duo, Amanda & Queen Lydia Garcia.
Sorry, I couldn't find the version "Lucky Old Sun" by this Japanese surf band.
When I was just a kid, while listening to the radio one night, way past my bedtime, I heard a song that shook me because it was just so sad -- the saddest song I'd ever heard up to then.
It was Ray Charles' 1960s version of a song that had been covered by many major singers for more than a decade before. "That Lucky Old Sun." It was from his 1963 album Ingredients in a Recipe for Soul.
Remember, I was just a kid, and wasn't familiar with previous versions by several major artists. Brother Ray made a huge impression that's lasted nearly 60 years. I could feel depths of sorrow and frustration as Charles sang, "I fuss with my woman, toil with my kids/Sweat 'til I'm wrinkled and gray/I know that lucky old sun has nothin' to do/But roll around heaven all day."
Note: In other versions I've heard, the lyrics are "... fuss with my woman toil for my kids ..." But by singing "toil with my kids" made it sound like the singer was so depressed that even playing with his kids was a burden. That's just one of the things that hit me when I first heard Ray sing it.
But man other artists have recorded the song, which was written by Beasley Smith (who with Owen Bradley co-wrote the Roy Acuff hit "Night Train to Memphis") with lyrics by Haven Gillespie -- who co-wrote "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town."
"That Lucky Old Sun" first hit the world in 1949 with versions by by Frankie Lane, Frank Sinatra, Vaughn Monroe and Louis Armstrong. Since then it's also been recorded by the likes of Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Sam & Dave, Dean Martin, Sarah Vaughan and countless others.
Here are some other covers.
The Killer downright killed it
Here's Big Mama Thornton
The Velvets did a pop doo-wop version
The Lucky Old Sons of the Pioneers took it to the campfire
Brian Wilson in 2008 created a song cycle around the song.
Leon Russell recorded this on the last album he released during his life, 2014's Life Journey.
Still, none of these match the power and glory of the Ray Charles version that first shook me as a child.
