Sunday, August 23, 2020 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Fireballs by Oh! Gunquit
When I Was Young by The Ramones
Wet Bar by Ross Johnson
Pocket Calculator by Kiliminjaro Yak Attack
Invisible Friend by The Crypts
Bald Head, Hairy Guitar by Hipbone Slim & The Knee-Tremblers
Be Bop a Lula by Die Zorros
These Boots are Made for Walkin’ by Lee Hazelwood
Gumby Heart Song by Frank Sinatra, Jr
(Background Music: Rawhide by Cornell Hurd)
Wrecked by Sleeve Cannon
Cold Lightning by REQ’D
Open My Eyes by The Nazz
Baby Don’t Do It by The Wailers
Blow My Mind by Hollywood Sinners
Macumba for You by O Lendário Chucrobillyman
Black Light by Dan Melchior’s Broke Review
Cesspool by The Electric Mess
(Background Music: The Lewinski Stomp by Harmonica Lewinski)
Due to some technical screw-ups beyond my control, the first hour of Sound World ran an hour ahead of schedule, messing up the last hour of Music y Palabras (sorry Chris Abeyta!) and the second hour played when my first hour should have. The last half of an older show played during what should have been the final hour.
Confused? Me too! But don't worry about it. I've posted the entire show on Mixcloud in two exciting segments. You can play it below from this post, right under the list. Play it in whatever order you chose.
Sunday, August 16, 2020 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show!
terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Coconut by Ty Segall
Your Love by Reigning Sound
I’m on the Dish But I Ain’t No Rag by The Toy Trucks
Fifteen by Big Daddy Meatstraw
Rattlesnake Highway by John Fogerty
We’ve Got It Going’ On by Jason & The Scorchers
Pinon Lurker by The Glue Brothers
Garbage Man by Bobby Rush
Garbage Man by William Shatner
Wet Nightmare by The Cramps
Can O’ Worms by Churchwood
I Will Be There by Dum Dum Girls
Lost in a Whirlpool by Frank Zappa & Captain Beefheart
Earlier this week, (Monday Aug. 17), American poet, publisher, true-crime author (The Family: The Story of Charles Manson's Dune Buggy Attack Battalion) and founding Fug Ed Sanders turned 80 years old.
Happy birthday, Ed!
For this Wacky Wednesday celebration I'm going to look (mostly) at Sanders' brief but hilarious solo music career from his post-Fugs years/
Let's start with the tragic story of a hippybilly boy, which might have been the first solo
Sanders song I ever heard. It's from his first album, Sanders' Truckstop, and features musical hotshots David Bromberg, Bill Keith (from Jim Kweskin's Jug Band) and guitarist Patrick Sky as members of Sanders' backup band.
What's not to love about a yodeling robot who loves Dolly Parton?
Many fans of Alvin, Simon and Theodore never realized that the Chipmunks had a
spiritual side. Sanders knew!
But I believe that Sanders' greatest musical character was a guy who was
kickin' hippies' asses and raising Hell long before Jerry Jeff Walker's
"Redneck Mother," and was reekin' atcha even before Frank Zappa's "Lonesome
Cowboy Burt." I speak, of course of the legendary Johnny Pissoff, that rootin'
tootin', gun totin', homophobic, racist, sexist Johnny Pissoff!
We first encounter Johnny when Sanders still was with The Fugs in a song
called "Johnny Pissoff Meets the Red Angel" from their 1968 album, It Crawled into My Hand, Honest.
And just a year later, on Sanders' Truckstop, Pissoff rode again, in a song called -- for reasons I'm not sure of -- "The Iliad." It might make you hungry for lemon PIE.
So whatever became of Johnny? I heard a rumor that he's currently a deputy undersecretary of Donald Trump's Agriculture Departent.
Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2020 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays Mountain Time Substitute Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
Ham & Eggs by Skip Manning
Look a There by Mojo Watson
I Don't Want No Bald Headed Woman Telling Me What To Do by Nathaniel Mayer
Rattlesnake, Baby, Rattlesnake by Joe Johnson
Novade Nada by Chuck E. Weiss
Smokey Places by Diplomats of Solid Sound
Down in Mississippi by Bobby Rush
All She Wants to Do Is Rock by Wynonie Harris
The Monkey by Emanual Laskey
Done Done the Slop by Ervin Rucker
Where is the Love by Eldridge Holmes
Memories by Swamp Dogg with John Prine
Howl by JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound
Mama Was Right by Howard Tate
Come Go My Bail, Louise by The Five Keys
Six-Fingered Man by Elvis Costello & Allen Toussaint
The Pygmy Grind Part 1 by Sonny Dublin
Sweet Hunk O’ Trash by Dr. John with Shemekia Copeland
Pocket Change by St. Paul & The Broken Bones
Midnight Rider by Charlie Whitehead
I Need a Woman (‘cause I’m a Man) by The Mighty Hannibal
Skip a Rope by Joe Tex
Love Bones by Johnnie Taylor
Cougar on the Prowl by Jesi Taylor
Jon E. Edwards is in Love by Jon E. Edward
Sweet Soul Music by Jerry Lawson
Crazy About You Baby by Rufus Thomas
Swing Swing Swing by Keely Smith
Do You Call That a Buddy by Martin, Bogan & The Armstrongs
One of the strangest old folk songs I've ever heard deals with a bird that wobbles (or maybe warbles) as it flies but rarely makes a noise until Independence Day. The song also warns gamblers of an evil card in the deck, the sinister Jack of Diamonds. And the narrator is building a cabin on a mountain, "So I can see Willie as he goes on by."
Who the heck is Willie?
I'm talking of course of "The Cuckoo," an old folk song that goes back at least to the late 1700s or early 1800s, when it first started appearing in British broadsides.
British folk song collector -- and singer -- A.L. Loyd explained some of the folklore surrounding "The Cuckoo":
Spring cannot start till the cuckoo sings. Perhaps that is why the cuckoo is a magical a bird. Turn your money when you hear him first and you'll have money in your pocket until he comes again. Whatever you're doing when you hear him, you'll do most often throughout the year. Especially if you're in bed. No bird is more oracular. It can prophesy how long a man will live and a girl remain a maid. There is no better omen for love than the song of the cuckoo, the beloved bird of folklore. On the other hand, he is the sly creature who gave us the word ‘cuckold’. The flattering invocation to the cuckoo in this widespread song is perhaps in the nature of a magical safeguard for the worried lover.
But most versions of "The Cuckoo" I'm familiar with, even the older ones, seem thoroughly Americanized. In older British versions, the narrator sang of building a castle. In American versions, the castle becomes a log cabin. And in the American versions, why does the bird hardly ever cuckoo until the fourth day of July?
In writing about the song in his book Invisible Empire, Greil Marcus quoted Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who in 1872 said, "We Americans are all cuckoos. We make our homes in the nests of other birds.”
In the book, Marcus goes on to say that
The cuckoo -- the true parasitic cuckoo, which despite Holmes' choice of it for national bird is not found in the United States -- lays its eggs in the nests of other birds. It is a kind of scavenger in reverse: violating the natural order of things, it is by its own nature an outsider, a creature who cannot belong. Depositing its orphans, leaving its progeny to be raised by others, to grow up as imposters in another’s house, as America filled itself up with slaves, indentured servants, convicts, hustlers, adventurers, the ambitious and the greedy, the fleeing and the hated, who took or were given new, imposters’ names -- the cuckoo becomes the other and sees all other creatures as other. ... As a creature alienated from its own nature, the cuckoo serves as the specter of the alienation of each from all.
Here are just a handful of my favorite takes on "The Cuckoo" by folk, country, blues and rock 'n' roll artists.
The first known recording of the song was by a singer named Kelly Harrell, who gave us "The Cuckoo, She's a Fine Bird" in 1926.
Three years later, Clarence Ashley recorded it as "The Cuckoo Bird." Harry Smith included it in his 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music in 1952, which introduced ithe kooky cuckoo to a new generation of American musicians. The below video is Ashley in his older years.
Texas songster Townes Van Zandt sang of a dark and spooky cuckoo. In other words, he makes it sound like a Townes Van Zandt song.
Taj Mahal added a little funk to the cuckoo's nest.
The Tarbox Ramblers did a cool folk-rock version at the turn of this century
Otis Taylor, also in 2000, released a version of "Cuckoo" on his album When Negroes Walked the Earth. Some labeled Taylor's music as "trance blues." Call it what you want, I just call it intense.
Johnny Dowd always sticks to the strictest traditional renditions when he covers a folk song. Oh, did I say "always"? I meant "never."
But for me, the ultimate "Cuckoo" was done by Big Brother & The Holding Company, who had this chick singer named Janis Joplin. Janis and band titled it "Coo Coo." It appeared on their first album in a version that was less than two minutes. I like when they stretch out though. Here's a live video from 1968.
Hat tip to my pal and fellow KSFR jock Tom Adler, who recently sent me a link to the above Clarence Ashley video, reminding me what a wonderful song "The Cuckoo" is.
