Thursday, August 18, 2005

JUDGE GALLEGOS: A BLAST FROM THE PAST

Santa Fe Municipal Judge Fran Gallegos' latest problems with the Judicial Standards Commission made me recall a controversy I wrote about during her first year in office.

Basically her court issued summonses to hundreds of people who had already taken care of traffic tickets, forcing them to go to court a second time and pay additional court and Motor Vehicle Division fees.

Gallegos quietly dropped her pursuit of ancient traffic tickets shortly after my story about it. As you'll read, the city attorney was working on a legal opinion about the matter. I don't remember what that opinion was -- though I've got a pretty good idea what that might have been. I can't find any old story about that opinion.

Although this didn't cause the uproar that Gallegos' subsequent troubles have -- and indeed, it's not as serious as her current charges -- you could argue that it showed a basic lack of knowledge about legal concepts like "double jeopardy" "right to a speedy trial," etc. This early ticket fiasco might be viewed as a precursor to Gallegos' present situation.

Here's the story I wrote way back then:

As published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
Feb. 16, 1997


Because of court glitch, hundreds who thought their tickets were taken care of are receiving summonses

Connie remembers when her 16-year-old son got his first traffic tickets early last year and had to go to Municipal Judge Tom Fiorina's court.

Her son got one ticket for lacking proof of insurance and an other for not having a vehicle registration, violations for which Connie felt she was to blame.

She remembers waiting her turn in court, waiting for arraign ment of new jail inmates and for other cases that came ahead of her son's. Finally, when it was her boy's turn, Connie remembers Fiorina giving her son a mild lecture about taking responsibility to help his mom remember to keep the car's paperwork in order. Then she remembers Fiorina telling her son he would give him a break. As he did for countless others during his 13 years on the bench, Fiorina wrote "dismissed" on the tickets.

And that was that, or so Connie thought.

But in late September of last year, Connie's son received a letter from the state Motor Vehicle Division informing him that his driver's license had been suspended.

He was accused of failing to appear in municipal court. He had been driving on a suspended license for nearly a month with out knowing it.

Connie's son is not alone. He is one of hundreds of Santa Feans who thought they had taken care of their traffic tickets and other misdemeanor violations who are receiving summonses from Municipal Court and notices from the Motor Vehicle Division saying otherwise.

This situation began getting publicity after it happened to a city councilor, Amy Manning, who earlier this month received an order to show cause why she should not be held in contempt of court for allegedly skipping out on a hearing on a 1993 traffic ticket -- something she denies.

Municipal Judge Frances Gallegos, who defeated Fiorina at the polls about two months after Connie's son went to court, says her court computers indicate that some 340,000 citations going back as far as 1988 are "open" cases with no sign that they have ever been resolved.

Every Tuesday the court computer spits out a new pile of summonses to the next batch of people with open cases, Gallegos said. And virtually every day more people come in to endure a second day in court for the same offense they thought they took care of months or years ago.

Gallegos blames the situation on Fiorina, whose problems with record-keeping were well-documented in city audits. Gallegos said the state auditor recently began examining records from the Fiorina era to see whether there are major discrepancies.

However, some say that Gallegos is aware that most of the tickets in question involve people who went through the system in good faith, that she was told that the computer records are unreliable for the years before 1995.

And others, such as Manning, who have received such summonses say that Gallegos is causing needless problems for scores of people by pursuing the issue.

"What makes me mad is that even assuming Fiorina's record keeping wasn't up to snuff, if there was a problem, the court should have notified us that there was a problem, not just send it off to Motor Vehicles," said Connie, who asked that her last name not be used.

Her son like others caught in this trap had to pay a $17 court- cost fee as well as another fee of $25 at Motor Vehicles to get her son's license out of suspension.

Manning -- a political ally of Fiorina's, and Gallegos' harshest critic on the City Council long before Manning received her own summons -- used stronger words.

"I believe this judge is committing a fraud against the people of Santa Fe," Manning said.

But Gallegos insists she is only doing what is legally required of her.

"I can't just go in and close (the cases). I can't forgive all these charges," she said. "That would be amnesty. It's amnesty that got Fiorina in trouble, his `turkeys program.'

She was referring to Fiorina's practice of forgiving parking tickets before Thanksgiving each year in exchange for food donations to charities. In his last year of office he dropped the program after the state Judicial Standards Commission ruled that it was illegal.

City Manager Ron Curry told the City Council on Wednesday that he intends to ask the city attorney to issue a legal opinion on whether the show-cause orders issued by Gallegos are proper.

Earlier in the week City Attorney Mark Basham declined to comment on the situation except to say, "I think these cases would be difficult to prosecute if there's no information in the file."

Manning said she learned last week that her file did not even contain the original citation. "She's sending these summonses on the basis of a computer entry," Manning said. "I would urge anyone in this situation to demand to see their file and see whether their citations are still there."

Gallegos said the fact that an original citation is missing does not affect traffic cases. She also denied that most of the cases in question are missing the citations.

So where are the citations?

Dolores Baca, who worked as records clerk and head administrator during Fiorina's last two years, said all old files were routinely boxed and sent to the city archives.

Joseph Valdez of the city archives says his office keeps non-drunken-driving traffic records for three years, then as per state law has the boxes destroyed. Thus, the archives no longer has any of the files dated before 1994, Valdez said.

Michelle Ryals worked as a records clerk at the court for the last year of Fiorina's tenure and the first six months of Gallegos' administration. She said that when she started working there the court was severely understaffed and records were in a state of disarray.

Both Ryals and Baca said court staffers at that time rarely used the computer to enter dispositions of cases.

"It was a new computer system and there were a tremendous amount of glitches," Ryals said. "The staff was never properly trained on them." Most of the ticket dispositions were made by hand in the paper files, she said.

When Gallegos became judge in March 1996, Ryals said she told Gallegos about the situation. "I brought this up with her many times," Ryals said. "I left a note on the clerk's computer saying this and talked to everyone in the place about it."

Gallegos does not deny that Ryals told her about the reason for the lack of case dispositions showing up on the computer. But the judge insists it is her duty to pursue the opened cases.

Gallegos said about half the people who receive the summons admit that they indeed never showed up in court.

Because of Fiorina's record keeping, she says, she "takes people at their word if they say the charge was dismissed."

But, she still charges the $17 court-cost fee. "That fee is mandatory for all cases," she said.

Asked whether making people pay court fees if their case has already been disposed of constitutes double jeopardy, Gallegos said, "That fee should have been collected the first time they went in."

Is Gallegos justified in forcing people to come back to court for old tickets that likely were disposed of?

Fern Goodman, general counsel to the state Administrative Office of the Courts said, "She's trying to close these cases. It's good she's trying to close cases. She's inherited a big mess. But maybe there's a better way to go about it."

Goodman suggested that the court try to cross check court records with Motor Vehicle Division records.

However, an MVD records clerk last week said traffic cases that are dismissed must be sent to her agency by the courts; dismissed cases are not recorded and are routinely destroyed within days of being received.

At last week's City Council meeting, Councilor Art Sanchez tried to raise the question of whether any statute of limitations would prohibit the court from pursuing years-old traffic charges. Others have raised the question of the "six-month rule," which requires a court to drop charges if a defendant is not prosecuted within six months of the time in which he was charged.

Gallegos said in an interview last week that when failure to appear is the issue, the six-month rule does not apply.

Those who received summonses from Gallegos who were interviewed last week said they never received any previous notice from the court about failure to appear.

Asked about the six-month rule and failure to appear, District Attorney Henry Valdez whose office does not prosecute cases at the municipal level said, "Usually it's incumbent on the prosecutor to prove that the defendant was at fault for not appearing.

"With inadequate records it would be hard to prove a willful failure to appear."

Asked about whether a judge has the right to impose a fine on someone whose case was previously adjudicated, Valdez said, "I think we have something called `double jeopardy.' "

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION

O.K here's a bunch of photos from my trip to southern California last week. Most of them were taken by Helen. I'll probably post a few more when my batch of film is developed.


Dogs of the deep Posted by Picasa

"You can see all the stars as you walk down Hollywood Boulevard ..." Posted by Picasa

"One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small ..." Posted by Picasa

Where the food is sanctifiably delicious ...  Posted by Picasa

The mural is gloomy, but the food at Lucy's Mexican drive-in next door on Pico Boulevard was inspiring. Posted by Picasa

"To those who are successful/Stay always on your guard/For success walks hand-in-hand with failure/along Hollywood Boulevard ..." Posted by Picasa

Here's an o.k. Spade Cooley link.

The line for Splash Mountain is how long???!!??  Posted by Picasa

What do you mean "Move along," officer? Posted by Picasa

Defying the Empire's "No Cameras" rule. Posted by Picasa

I wonder if the dead fish discourages anyone from ordering the fish tacos at Lucy's ... Posted by Picasa

Sunday, August 14, 2005

SO HERE I AM IN LOS ANGELES ...

... and I wake up early this morning and grab the L.A. Times at my door. Mistakenly thinking I'd gotten away from New Mexico politics, I start reading the front page and there's an article about ... you guessed it ... Bill Richardson.

It's a pretty positive story -- and New Mexico Republicans will hate reading again that Richardson "slashed taxes."

There is mention of local grumbling about Richardson's "high-handed manner." And there's this:
More serious doubts about Richardson center on his style, including the carefree — some say careless — attitude he sometimes has in public. (In political circles, it is usually phrased as doubts that Richardson has the "discipline" to run for president; he was famous in Washington for his ribald sense of humor and penchant for late-night, cigar-smoking conviviality.)

"He's a likable guy, a personable guy" who has "obviously been in a lot of roles," said Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan campaign handicapper. The question, Rothenberg said, is: "Does he have the stature of a future president? Does he behave the way presidents ought to?"
What a weird concept. Cigars could stop Richardson from becoming president?

Two other things make this article remarkable. It's one of the few Richardson profiles I've seen lately that doesn't mention Wen Ho Lee. And it might be the only one that doesn't quote Joe Monahan.

XXXXXX

I'm writing this at an internet cafe near LAX. There's a pay internet machine at my hotel, but the other day, it ate one of my blog posts -- and never spat it out.

I was blogging about a strange character I met in Anaheim. No, not Goofy. It was this dude behind me in line at In-N-Out Burger. He asked to speak to the manager about a job. A few minutes later he was at a table near us, berating some poor wife or girlfriend. "I saved your fucking life FOUR TIMES, and you never said `Thanks.' Do you LOVE ME? DO YO LOVE ME?. The poor woman said she did.

Then he went into an angry white man rant. "They won't hire me here because I'm white and because I'm an American. That's discrimination. They hate me because I'm WHITE. They should go back to wherever they came from ..."

Something tells me this guy's ethnicity wasn't why he was passed over for this job. Ironically, two of the people on duty at the restaurant at the time were Anglo kids.

He started getting louder and crazier demanding his woman give him a root beer. She held her cup up in front of his face. "Where's my soda? WHERE'S MY FUCKING SODA ..."

I talked to one of then workers. "Oh he comes in all the time," he said. "He says he's going to run for governor."

I say watch the news for spree killings in Orange County.

Back to my vacation ...

Friday, August 12, 2005

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: WAR BLUES

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
August 12, 2005

The funny thing is, for years I suspected that contemporary bluesman Robert Cray might have Republican leanings. Not only was he raised in a military family, some of his lyrics betray some GOP sensibilities. Back in the ‘80s on “Nothin’ But a Woman” on his breakthrough album Strong Persuader, he cheerfully fantasized, “Tell me a boat full of lawyers just sank …” And on over a Howlin’ Wolf guitar riff on “!040 Blues” on 1993’s Shame + A Sin) he convincingly snarled, “I hate taxes.”

But on his new album Twenty, Cray has released one of the most moving anti-war songs of the Bush era.

The title song is the story of a young man who joins the military after Sept. 11. But fighting the insurgents in Iraq sours his initial idealism.

With a sob in his voice over a slow, slinky guitar that builds up to mad strumming, Cray sings:

“Standing out here in the desert/Trying to protect an oil line/I’d really like to do my job but/This ain’t the country that I had in mind/They call this a war on terror/I see a lot of civilians dying/Mothers, sons, fathers and daughters/Not to mention some friends of mine …”

Fighting what he calls a “rich man’s war,” the narrator is demoralized. “We were supposed to leave last week/Promises they don’t keep any more …” By the end of the song, there’s a stranger knocking at his mother’s door and the disembodied voice of the narrator pleads “Mother don’t you cry …”

Actually this is a continuation of anti-war sentiments Cray first started expressing on his previous album, 2003’s Time Will Tell. There he had a couple of protest songs including the opening track “Survivor,” (“you take a little schoolboy and teach him who to hate/ then you send him to the desert for the oil near Kuwait") and the hoppy, New Wavey “Distant Shore” (“war begat war/all on a distant shore …”)

With these songs Cray has bucked the apolitical stereotype of blues artists, earning his place alongside of ascended masters like J.B. Lenoir -- the Chicago bluesman who wrote “Korea Blues” and “Vietnam Blues” -- not to mention Junior Wells, who in the ‘60s wrote and sang an angry song called “Viet Cong Blues.”

B.B. King in 1971 recorded “The Power of the Blues” (“Now me and Lucille/We're gonna stop this war/I'm no politician/But I know the score.”)

And meanwhile, back at church, don’t forget Sister Rosetta Tharpe shouting “Ain’t gonna study war no more …” in “Down By the Riverside.”

Cray’s only contemporary challenger in the anti-war arena is Terry Evans, whose latest album Fire in the Feeling includes a sad Ry Cooder-penned song called “My Baby Joined the Army,” which is about a guy watching his daughter board a plane to Iraq.

But Cray’s no Steve Earle. Even though a striking photo of a soldier covering his head adorns the album cover, the new album deals mostly with the politics of the heart and the war of the sexes. Infidelity figures into more songs than government lies.

“Poor Johnny” is a slow burner with a beat suggesting reggae that deals with the consequences of cheating; “That Ain‘t Love“ is a minor-key rocker that recalls some of Cray’s tougher Strong Persuader material with drummer Kevin Hayes sounding like Mitch Mitchell.

“It Doesn’t Show” is a sweet, sad ballad of a broken romance (starting with a classic image “You threw out my clothes …“) with the most beautiful melody on the album. Cray has said “I’m Walkin’” (not the Fats Domino song) is influenced by the late Johnny “Guitar” Watson. Indeed, you can hear echoes of Watson’s mid ‘70s FM radio staple “Ain’t That a Bitch” here. And like much of Cray’s best recent work, it’s got some nice interplay -- sometimes almost a call-and-response -- between Cray’s guitar and Jim Pugh’s keyboards.

“Two Steps From the End,” with Jim Pugh playing a Jimmy Smith-style organ and Cray’s guitar sounding jazzy sounds a bit like Ray Charles’ “Night Time is the Right Time”; and Cray -- whose basic sound owes more to Memphis soul than Chicago blues -- nails William Bell’s under-appreciated Stax classic “I Forgot to Be Your Lover.”

“My Last Regret” at first sounds like psychotic love about to turn violent. (“I want to see you burn all the way down/I want to see your ashes all over the ground …” ) Actually, however it’s a song Pugh wrote about quitting smoking. Cray sings it in an understated falsetto, with Pugh, keeping those fingers busy, comes in with a snazzy little piano solo at the end of the track.

“Fadin’ Away” has an early ‘70s English blues-rock feel about it. The melody reminds me a little of Rod Stewart’s “Handbags and Gladrags.” At first the lyrics seem to suggest a keep-a-tiff-upper-lip advice kind of song: “remember the good times always follow the bad … ”

But by the last verse, after a transcendental guitar solo Cray’s snuck up on you with a verse of subtly political lyrics.

“When you’re feelin’ sad that you’ve been misled/ Hang on, they’ll soon fade away/Ain’t it a shame no one takes the blame/ Hang on …”

With Twenty, Cray has succeeeded in making the personal political.

Someone told me it’s all happening at the zoo

The Robert Cray Band is playing 7 p.m. tonight at the Rio Grande Zoo in Albuquerque as part of the summer Zoo Music series. Tickets are $22.

Monday, August 08, 2005

RICHARDSON IN SALON

Former New Mexico journalist Shea Andersen, who covered politics for The Albuquerque Tribune before moving to Idaho this year, apparently still is addicted to New Mexico politics. He wrote a profile of Gov. Bill Richardson for Salon.com. Check it out. (If you're not a subscriber you'll have to endure an ad to get a "day pass" to Salon, but it's worth it.)


Shea has a great opening paragraph:
"The camera does not love Bill Richardson. Close-ups, head shots, even profiles do nothing for the New Mexico governor's jowly, moon-faced countenance ..."
I'm catching a train to California tomorrow, and I'm on vacation, so I shouldn't be blogging about politics. But when I read Jason Auslander's story today about Richardson possibly investigating Municipal Judge Fran Gallegos, I couldn't help but think about former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Tony Scarborough's comments a couple of weeks ago in Roundhouse Round-up about the governor and the Judicial Standards Commission. (CLICK HERE and scroll down to the last item.)

My trip means no Roundhouse Round-up this week and Laurel Reynolds is subbing for both my radio shows this weekend, but check here Friday for Terrell's Tune-up.

TERRELL'S SOUNDWORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, August xx, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
Now Webcasting
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Yeagh! by James Lileks with Howard Dean
California Here I Come by Desi Arnaz
Dis***land by Timbuk 3
Mickey Mouse by The Black Lodge Singers
Disney Girls by The Beach Boys
Out in California by Dave Alvin
Celluloid Heroes by The Kinks
Los Angeles by X

In My Town by Ry Cooder
Eddie Are You Kidding? by Frank Zappa
California Stars by Billy Bragg & Wilco
Sunset Babies (All Got Rabies) by Alice Cooper
Busload of Faith by Lou Reed
Velvet Underground by Jonathan Richman
Crane Cafe by TAD

Twenty by Robert Cray
Korea Blues by J.B. Lenoir
Vietnam Blues by Cassandra Wilson
Vietcong Blues by Junior Wells
Little Soldier Boy by Doctor Ross
World War Blues by Eric Bibb

That Big Weird Thing by Drywall
Bold Marauder by Richard & Mimi Farina
Government Lied by Otis Taylor
Hikky Burr by Quincy Jones & Bill Cosby
Build Me Up by Al Green
Gypsy in My Soul by Van Morrison
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

Saturday, August 06, 2005

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, August 5, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Now Webcasting
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell


OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Love in Vain by Robert Johnson
Wabash Cabbonball by Roy Acuff
Rock Island Line by The Knitters
New Delhi Freight Train by Terry Allen
Glendale Train by The New Riders of the Purple Sage
Wreck of the Old 97 by Johnny Cash
Georgia on a Fast Train by Billy Joe Shaver
The Little Black Train by The Carter Family

Stop the Train by Mother Earth
Railroad Lady by Lefty Frizzell
Freight Train Boogie by The Whitstein Brothers
Boxcars by Joe Ely
Train of Life by Roger Miller
Mystery Train by The Band
Last Train From Poor Valley by Norman Blake
The L&N Don't Stop Here Anymore by June Carter Cash

I'm Going Home on the Morning Train by Clothesline Revival with E.M. Martin & Pearline Johns
Work on the Railroad by Trailer Bride
Train of Love by Paul Reddick
Lord of the Trains by Tom Russell
Ramblin' Man by Hank Williams
I Heard That Lonesome Whistle by Townes Van Zandt
Texas 1947 by Guy Clark
I Like Trains by Fred Eaglesmith

Waiting for a Train by Jimmie Rodgers
The Train Carrying Jimmie Rodgers Home by Iris DeMent
Casey Jones by Mississippi John Hurt
Lightning Express by The Everly Brothers
Train Song by The Holmes Brothers
Waiting For the 103 by Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks
Starlight on the Rails by U. Utah Phillips
Midnight Train by Jimmie Dale Gilmore
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

Friday, August 05, 2005

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: CASH-A-PALOOZA

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
August 5, 2005


Although I consider myself a true Johnny Cash devotee, I have to admit I wasn’t all that excited when I heard that Columbia Legacy was planning to release yet another Johnny Cash box set this year.

After all, more than a decade ago they released what could be considered a definite Cash box, the 3-disc The Essential Johnny Cash, 1955-1983. Perhaps a companion set (“1984-2003“?) might be in order. (Actually none of Cash‘s acclaimed American Recordings series from the final years of his life are here. But don’t worry, that period was compiled on another box set, Unearthed, released last year by American Recordings.)

But did the free world really need yet another collection featuring “I Walk the Line,” “Hey Porter,” “Ring of Fire,” etc. etc.?

Indeed, long before he died Cash was one of those artists doomed to an eternity of reissue after reissue. And there’s even two versions of the new one, called The Legend, the “standard” 4-disc model, and a deluxe limited “coffee-table” edition that includes a fifth CD -- an low-fi, all-too-short but thoroughly entertaining 1954 Memphis radio show featuring songs and local ads -- plus a DVD (more on that later.)

Despite the plethora of Cash standbys that any fan has to already have, there’s a truckload of lesser-known Cash tunes (such as “The Matador,”), obscurities (like his singing cowboy tribute “Who’s Gene Autry?”) and a smattering of previously unreleased songs to keep things interesting.

While nearly all of the first two discs have been on previous collections, the second two are more interesting.

Disc 3, called “The Great American Songbook” consists of country classics (“The Great Speckled Bird,” “In the Jailhouse Now,” “Time Changes Everything” and Cash versions of hoary Americana standards -- “Casey Jones,” “Sweet Betsy from Pike,” “The Streets of Laredo.” Cash sings these with authority and no cheap irony. He’s the only singer I know who could get away recording “I’ve Been working on the Railroad” with a straight face.

The final disc “Family and Friends” consists of collaborations. The most impressive tracks here are the spooky “Another Man Done Gone” featuring sister-in-law Anita Carter; a duet with Ray Charles on a sweet waltz called “Crazy Old Soldier”; an acoustic “One More Ride” with Marty Stuart and former son-in-law Rodney Crowell’s ode to J.C. “I Walk the Line (Revisited).”

Little Junie
As far as retrospectives go, I’m actually more impressed with Keep on The Sunny Side the new two-disc collection by Cash’s wife June Carter Cash.

It starts off with just a few seconds of June as a 10-year-old singing with The Carter Family on the radio in 1939, then, like a dream, a short segment of the tiny precocious June from the same year singing “O Susana” -- or as she pronounces it, “Oh Susie-anna.”

The collection skips ahead 10 years with June singing a sex-charged, faux-hillbilly tune, “Root Hog or Die” with Chet Atkins on guitar.

While I love June’s work with Johnny (yes, “Jackson” and “If I Were a Carpenter” are included in this collection as well as The Legend) and her late period solo work (which also is well represented here), the old recordings from the ’40s and ’50s are a revelation.

Back in those early days, Nashville apparently was trying to market June as a real hillbilly version of Dorothy Shay (“The Park Avenue Hillbilly”). Perhaps it was artistically limited — and clearly June was capable of all sorts of material — but she sure was good at the funny, sexy stuff.

There’s a couple of comical tunes with Homer & Jethro, some equally funny solo songs from the early ‘50s, (her trademark growl was well established on 1952’s “Jukebox Blues”), lots of songs with her mother Maybelle and her sisters and even a duet with her first husband Carl Smith, “Love Oh Crazy Love.”


J.C. on DVD
In addition to these music discs, there’s been a spate of Johnny Cash DVDs released lately. What’s lacking here is a compilation of Cash’s 1969-71 ABC television show, which not only showed Cash at his prime, but included musical guests like Bob Dylan, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Neil Young and Louis Armstrong -- not to mention the biggest country stars of the day.

* Included in the deluxe version of The Legend is a DVD featuring a 1980 CBS Johnny Cash special called The First 25 Years.
In some ways, this was a strange period for Cash. Basically this was around the start of his “missing years.” After years of being drug-free, Cash, around this period became addicted to pain pills. By this time, the dawn of the “Urban Cowboy” era, he’d virtually disappeared from country radio. Columbia would soon unceremoniously dump him. He’d be largely ignored by mass media for nearly 15 years until his comeback with American Recordings, in which he was marketed as an “alternative” rock star.

But despite all this, and despite being slightly marred by the corny Danny Davis-style Nashville horn section (sometime in the ’70s a lot of country stars added useless horns to “modernize” their sound). Johnny himself sounds loaded for bear. He sings all those old songs everyone’s heard a billion times before as if he’s just discovering them and wants to spread the excitement.

Guests here include Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings. The Statler Brothers sing a song called “I Got Paid by Cash,” about their long stint as Cash’s back-up vocalists. And there’s footage of Cash’s mother-in-law Maybelle Carter, who had died a couple of years before the show.

*Johnny Cash Live at Montreux 1994. Here’s Johnny at the outset of his final round of fame, performing at the famed Swiss jazz festival shortly after the release of American Recordings.

With a basic band (no horn section!) he does a set of greatest hits, an acoustic solo set of tunes from the recent album and some more greatest hits with the band, including a couple of classics with June.

Cash doesn’t quite have the fire here that he still had even in the 1980 show. But by this point, he’s acquired the countenance of a Biblical prophet. He’s still an entertainer, but he’s quickly evolving into an American oracle.

* Ridin’ The Rails: The Great American Train Story. This is a 1974 television special about the history of the railroad, hosted by JC, who interrupts his narrative with songs.

There’s a too-short version of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and dramatizations of “The Legend of John Henry’s Hammer” and “Casey Jones” (done as a medley with “The Wreck of the Old 97.”

Cash sings a couple of verses from protest songs about the railroads, written by wagoneers and canal workers who (rightfully) feared losing their jobs to the iron horse.

And there’s a wonderful obscure hobo song called “Crystal Chandeliers and Burgandy.”

There’s plenty of nostalgic corn here, with a big dose of unjustified optimism about Amtrak, which was created just a few years before this special. But after watching it, I decided that my teenage son had to take a train trip while he still had a chance. We’re taking a train to California later this summer.






(Here's a flashback to last summer when Johnny Cash fans took to the streets!)

Thursday, August 04, 2005

ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: A PRESIDENTIAL SNUB?

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
Aug. 4, 2004


When President Bush comes to Albuquerque Monday to sign the energy bill, he’ll be joined by our two U.S. senators, Republican Pete Domenici and Democrat Jeff Bingaman.

But it appears that another powerful New Mexico politician with an interest in energy policy won’t be at the ceremony at Sandia Labs.

A spokesman for Gov. Bill Richardson confirmed Wednesday that the governor had not received an invitation for the bill signing.

True, unlike Domenici — who is the chairman of the Senate Energy Committee — and Bingaman — who is the ranking Democrat on that committee — Richardson had nothing to do with the bill, which is considered a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s energy policy.

But he was the secretary of the Energy Department in the last administration, and, hey, he is the governor of the state.

Of course we haven’t seen Richardson’s public schedule for next week, so we don’t know whether he’ll even be in the state — or even the country — on Monday.

Richardson spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said Wednesday the governor doesn’t consider the lack of invitation a snub.

“The governor wishes the president a good visit to New Mexico,” Gallegos said.

Novak outs Richardson: When he’s not revealing the names of CIA operatives, conservative columnist Robert Novak sometimes dabbles in mundane electoral politics. In his July 24 column in The Chicago Sun Times, he mentioned our governor.

“Prominent New York City liberals who are concerned about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's electability are quietly talking up New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson as her alternative for the 2008 presidential nomination,” Novak wrote.

“Richardson especially intrigues Democratic strategists because he is a Hispanic American with a Mexican mother,” he wrote. “Richardson would be expected to pin down the burgeoning Latino vote.” (Yes, gentle blog readers, you first read about this HERE.)

Is there a doctor in the house? What does Santa Fe radiologist J.R. Damron have in common with U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and state Sen. Steve Komadina, R-Corrales?

Well, like those others, Damron might be joining an exclusive “club” of doctors in politics.

Damron said Wednesday that he is strongly considering making a run for the Republican nomination for governor in 2006.

“I’ll make a decision one way or another in the next 30 or 40 days,” he said.

So far no Republicans have announced for next year’s gubernatorial primary.

Incumbent Richardson frequently has said he’s seeking re-election. As of a couple of months ago the governor had raised $3 million for his re-election.

Damron, who is president of Santa Fe Radiology, said he’s concerned about the fact that New Mexico still ranks near the bottom of the list in education. “I’m concerned about health care, water and maintaining a strong border and I don’t feel these issues have been adequately dealt with,” he said.

Damron, who is treasurer of the Santa Fe County Republican Party, never has run for public office before.

So how can an unknown political novice expect to win against a well-known, well-funded incumbent?

I don’t know. Maybe I’ll ask Gary Johnson, who came out of nowhere in 1994 and defeated incumbent Gov. Bruce King.

I’m not the first to make that comparison. And the analogy is flawed. Richardson isn’t expected to face a bitter primary challenge from his lieutenant governor like King did. And the Green Party — which took more than 10 percent of the vote in 1994 with candidate Roberto Mondragon — might not even field a gubernatorial candidate next year, at least one Green honcho says.

But stranger things have happened in New Mexico politics.

Friends of Billy: One thing Richardson and Damron have in common is an interest in New Mexico’s most famous outlaw, Billy the Kid.

In November, 1999, museum officials enlisted Damron to X-ray a section of leg irons that they believe were attached to one of William Bonney 's ankles on April 28, 1881, when he shot and killed two deputies and escaped from the Lincoln County Courthouse.

The shackles belong to the Salazar family of Las Tablas, a town in Lincoln County. An ancestor of the family was one of Billy’s friends, said to have helped hide the Boy Bandit King after the infamous escape. The leg irons, which had been neatly cut, were kept by the Salazars for more than a century.

Damron’s X-rays, according to museum officials, didn’t reveal much, only showing a shadow of the leg irons.

Richardson in 2003 made headlines around the world when he announced a new investigation into the death of the Kid using DNA technology to determine whether it’s actually Bonney buried in Fort Sumner.

However, the investigation hit a brick wall when local officials of Fort Sumner and Silver City strongly objected to exhuming graves thought to belong to the Kid and his mother.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

THE YOGA OF YOGI

My main inspiration this morning was Frank DeFord's ode to Yogi Berra on NPR's Morning Edition.

As an Okie kid in the '60s it was basically mandatory that you idolize Mickey Mantle. (As well as astronaut Leroy Gordon Cooper, but that's another ball game.) And indeed, I loved Mickey. But there was something endearing about his funny-looking teammate with the funny name also.

I got to see the Yankees play in 1962. They were up against The Los Angeles Angels, who at the time played at Dodger Stadium. Mickey didn't have a great game that night, but I was thrilled when Yogi hit a home run.

Here's a page of quotes attributed to Yogi. But remember: he never said half the things he said.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

MORE NEW MEXICO BLOGGERS

I'm plugging a plug here, but if not for conservative blogger Mario Burgos I wouldn't have known about the new New Mexico Matters blog and would have missed perhaps the very first use of the adjective "Terrellian" in the history of the state's blogosphere.

I do have to take issue with this statement:
Terrell is the kind of guy that's just as interested in the goo goo dolls as he is in politics ...
In truth, my beautiful niece Lauren likes The Goo Goo Dolls (or at least she used to), but I've never really been been a fan. (I do like The Rev. Al Green though -- better than I like most politicians -- and Fan Man just announced he's coming to The Santa Fe Opera on Saturday, Sept. 17!)

Maybe I'm not navigating the blog very well, but I can't seem to find who is responsible for New Mexico Matters. In one early post the blogger describes himself (herself?) as "a non-blogger with a blog."

Well, whoever you are, here's a Terrellian welcome to the Bizarro World of bloggery.

Also, frequent commenter on The New Mexican web site -- and on this blog, Ed Campbell has started a blog of his own called Eidard. It's basically a liberal/progressive blog with a focus on national and international issues. Do check it out.

The New Mexican is offering free reader blogs. Check that out HERE

Monday, August 01, 2005

TERRELL'S SOUNDWORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, July 31, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
Now Webcasting
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
I Fought the Law by The Clash
The Police Are Just Doing Their Jobs by The Goblins
Skull Ring by Iggy Pop
I Wanna Know About You by The International Noise Conspiracy
Sittin' Pretty by The Datsuns
Green-Eyed Loco Man by The Fall
Midnight Blues by The Detroit Cobras
Mystery Girl by The Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Naked Pictures of Your Mother by The Electro Six
Right On Woman by The Fleshtones

Loose by Buick MacKane
Two Timing Touch and Broken Bones by The Hives
Cherry Bomb by Joan Jett & L7
Raunch City by Texas Terri Bomb
Joe's Head by The Kings of Leon
Poison Ivy by The Von Bondies
Give me Some Truth by John Lennon
Dirty Diamonds by Alice Cooper

Bold Mauader/Land of Spook by Drywall
Space Age Love Song by The Flaming Lips
Freeze the Saints by Stephen Malkmus
We're Desperate by X
There's a Black Horse by John Doe
Girl of My Dreams by Beck
Black Letter Day by Frank Black & The Catholics
Gilligan's Island by Manic Hispanic

Revolution Blues by Neil Young
Hijack by Paul Kanter & The Jefferson Starship
Your Children Sleep Good Tonight by Otis Taylor
Two Steps from The End by Robert Cray
Wedding Dress by Mark Lannegan
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

Saturday, July 30, 2005

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, July 29, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Now Webcasting
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell


OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Hey Sheriff by The Backsliders
There Ain't No Good Chain Gang by Johnny Cash & Waylon Jennings
Country Girl by June Carter with Homer and Jethro
Jemima Surrender by The Band
Eight Weeks in a Barroom by Marti Brom
The Heart of a Clown by Cornell Hurd
Queen of the Silver Dollar by Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show
I'm Lonesome For You Annabelle by Durwood Haddock

Back on the Corner by John Hiatt
Cold Roses by Ryan Adams
My Rosemarie by Stan Ridgway
The Combines Are Comin' by Joe West
Gone in Pawn (Shake Sugaree) by Po' Girl
Selling the Jelly by Noah Lewis' Jug Band

My Toot Toot by Doug Kershaw & Fats Domino
Jambalaya by Professor Longhair
Me and Dennis McGee by BeauSoleil
Tear-Stained Letter by Jo-El Sonier
Diggy Liggy Lo by John Fogerty
Give Him Corn Bread by Beau Jacques & The Zydeco Hi-Rollers
Half a Boy and Half a Man by Queen Ida
Zydeco Around the World by Rockin' Dopsie

Looks Like Rain by Bob Weir
Please Don't Stop Loving Me by Porter Wagoner & Dolly Parton
Who Made You King by Grey DeLisle
Private Thoughts by Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodriguez
When You Leave by Loudon Wainwright III
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

Friday, July 29, 2005

GRUBESIC


My story in today's New Mexican about state Sen. John Grubesic's latest confrontation with law enforcement can be found HERE.

The actual police report on the incident can be found HERE.

Henry Lopez's first-day story on the incident is HERE.

The Associated Press account of Grubesic's March dealings with police is HERE..

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: A TRIUMPH BY HIATT

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
July 29, 2005

They don’t make many songwriters smarter, tougher or more consistent than John Hiatt.

And Hiatt hasn’t made many albums smarter, tougher or more consistent than his latest one, Master of Disaster. Indeed, this ranks up there with Crossing Muddy Waters, his under-rated acoustic album from about five years ago.


As we’ve come to expect from Hiatt, this record is soulful, rootsy, full of tales to astonish and dripping with the singer’s wry humor and hard-earned wisdom.

And on this one, he’s got a great band to boot. Produced by Memphis music guru Jim Dickinson (who plays keyboards here credited as “East Memphis Slim“), Master features Dickinson’s sons Luther on guitar and Cody on drums (they’re the core of the North Mississippi All Stars) plus Muscle Shoals titan David Hood on bass. (Speaking of musical families, he’s the father of Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers.) Some tunes feature a funky horn section.

The title song deals with a guitar picker who lost at love and became a heroin addict.

The verses are in first person (“Eight ball pounding in my lungs …”) though Hiatt steps back to third person for the chorus.

“The Master of Disaster/Gets tangled in his Telecaster/He can't play it any faster/When he plays the blues/When he had the heart to ask her/And every note just shook the plaster/Now he's just a mean old bastard/When he plays the blues.”
There’s no great, disastrous Telecaster solo on this song, just a sweet greasy sax.

Sometimes Hiatt and band rock hard . The ominous “Love’s Not Where We Thought We Left It” almost screams for a Lindsey Buckingham guitar solo.

But they do a good job on the softer acoustic songs too, such as ‘Howlin’ Down the Cumberland” and the automobile ode “Thunderbird” (“From the old Volkswagon/Back to the Model T/A lot of men died so you could ride with me In my Thunderbird”)

“Wintertime Blues” is a cool near jug-band romp with some of the funniest lyrics on the album (“Three hours of daylight and all of them gray/The suicide prevention group has all run away“). Is it just me or does this melody consciously make reference to “In the Summer Time” by Mungo Jerry?

“Back on the Corner” has a similar feel. With Luther’s slide guitar and a subdued Dixieland horn section, this sounds like a long-lost tune by The Band. And the first bridge is hilarious:

“Used to take seven pills just to get up in the morning/From seven different doctors with seven different warnings/I’d call ‘em up to say that I’m coming apart/They’d say call us up later when the fireworks start”
There’s pure country in “Old School” (featuring “T-Bone” Tommy Burroughs on fiddle). And there’s raw soul. It’s not hard to imagine Al Green singing “Find You At Last.”

The emotional centerpiece of this album is the acoustic “Cold River,” a sad tale of a couple of drifters (he’s a pool shark, she’s a truck-stop hooker) who abandon their baby while making their way to Chicago.

Hiatt tells the story matter-of-factly, noting the couple’s justification. (“Tell me which one of us rounders/ would you trust this baby to?”) Though the narrator sings that, “some Texas woman found him,” a listener isn’t sure whether this is true or just wishful thinking. You don’t know what happened to the infant, though the couple makes it to their destination: “That night they slept like babies/in Chicago town.”

In some ways Hiatt reminds me of the masked luchadores pictured on the front and back covers and on the lyrics booklet. When he crawls back in the ring you know it’s going to be a thrill. It may be all show biz, but the bruises are real.

Also noted

*Here Come the Choppers
by Loudon Wainwright III. This album has the most impressive band Wainwright ever assembled for a record -- including Bill Frisel on guitar, Greg Leisz on a variety of strings, Jim Keltner on drums.

It sounds great. But I just wish the songs were as strong as the musicians here -- and as strong as Wainwright is capable of writing.

To be sure, there are some potential Wainwright classics here.

“Hank and Fred” is about the singer learning of the death of Mr. Rogers on the day he visits Hank Williams’ grave in Montgomery, Ala. I still don’t quite get the cosmic connection between the great country singer and the mild-mannered kid-show host, but when Wainwright sings that he cried, it’s real and it somehow makes sense.

There’s “No Sure Way,“ a sad song about riding the subway under the World Trade Center shortly after Sept. 11, 2001. “
The walls were tiled, I hadn’t noticed/ They seemed so antiseptic and clean/But we knew what we were under/The lights were on/that seemed obscene.”
Like any decent Loudon album, there are some good family album tunes. Here there are songs about his grandparents, “Nanny,” an up tempo tune about his beloved outspoken, gin-and-tonic-sipping granny who took him in after he got busted for drugs as a youth. “Half Fist” deals with his grandfather, Loudon Sr., who died before he was born.

And there’s “When You Leave,“ a heartbreaking, guilt-ridden song about divorce and leaving his kids.
“Who would have thought or could believe/Things go so badly when you leave/The skin you saved is growing slack/And those you left don’t want you back.”
But too many songs here are forgettable or downright dumb -- such as the near-7-minute title tune, which about enemy helicopters destroying Los Angeles.

So keep your sidemen’s phone numbers Loudon. And call them back when you’ve written a worthy set of songs.

Thursday, July 28, 2005

ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: TOUGH QUESTIONS

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
July 28, 2005

Back in late May when the appointment of Tommy Rodella as a magistrate judge in Rio Arriba already had kicked up a controversy, Gov. Bill Richardson said the public stink over the appointment had prompted him to start “tightening up the vetting process” for potential judges.


“We’re checking references, spending more time in interviews with applicants and asking tougher questions,” Richardson told me following a May 28 news conference.

Last Friday, just before he stalked out of another news conference when the questions about Rodella — who resigned last week after a meeting where Richardson expressed his unhappiness over the handling of a drunken-driving case — Richardson repeated his claim that he now spends more time with magistrate applicants and asks tougher questions of them.

However, at least three of the 21 applicants who were passed over last month for the new Santa Fe magistrate position said this week their interviews with Richardson were short and the questions weren’t that tough.

The applicant who go the job was Sandy Miera for the Santa Fe magistrate position. Miera worked as executive assistant for District Judge Daniel Sanchez. She’s also the daughter of Santa Fe County Democratic Chairwoman Minnie Gallegos.

One of the applicants, Andrew O’Connor said Richardson asked him only one question: “Is there anything in your past that would hurt me politically if I appoint you?” Richardson, O’Connor said, explained that what he meant by that was whether he’d ever been arrested or had any DWIs.

He said he tried to tell Richardson about his work as a public defender and the fact he had graduated from Vanderbilt University, O’Connor said, “but he cut me off.”

Another applicant was P.J. Liebson, a teacher and former librarian who holds a certificate in paralegal studies from the University of New Mexico. (She’s also a published author of murder mysteries under the pen name of P.J. Grady.)

Liebson, who said her interview lasted about five minutes, said Richardson asked her how she would handle DWI and domestic violence cases. But the next question was even deeper.“He asked me about electability,” she said. “I told him I was a registered independent. I think I might have lost the job right there.”

Another applicant said her interview with Richardson lasted only five or 10 minutes and that the governor seemed mainly interested in her view on DWI enforcement.

Tony’s view: A former chief justice of the state Supreme Court, Tony Scarborough sees some irony in the recent Rodella flap.

Scarborough, now in private practice in Espanola, recalled the controversy when Richardson in 2003 demanded the resignations of all six members of the 11-member commission who were appointed by his predecessor.

Those commissioners filed a legal challenge, asking the state Supreme Court to block Richardson, arguing the governor has no power to remove members whose terms had not expired. However, by a 3-2 decision, the high court ruled the governor could oust those members.

Opponents accused Richardson of trying to consolidate power and enlarge the influence of the governor’s office.

But in demanding Rodella’s resignation last week, Richardson usurped the power of the very Judicial Standards Commission he’d stacked, Scarborough said.

“It’s like he handpicked the jury, then took the case away from the jury and decided himself,” the former justice said.“Too bad the commission and our Supreme Court lack the guts to stand up to the governor and remind him of the separation of powers doctrine,” Scarborough said.

Richardson, who defended his appointment of Rodella for months, changed his tune after news broke of Rodella driving from the Espanola area to the county jail in Tierra Amarilla on July 4 to deliver release papers for an acquaintance who’d been arrested on DWI charges.

Rodella told me last week that Richardson didn’t ask him to quit. The governor insists that he did — though his spokesmen have acknowledged a governor doesn’t have the constitutional authority to force a judge to resign.

Scarborough — who stepped down from the high court in 1990 for an unsuccessful race for governor — expressed sympathy for Rodella.“I’m not close to Tommy, but I felt sorry for him,” Scarborough said. “What he did wasn’t all that bad. I think he’s just motivated to help people.”

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

PAYOLA!!

Looks like another payola scandal is rocking the nation. Here's one story. But I like this one from the New York Daily News better because its lead gets down to business:
Sick of lousy songs on the radio?
Blame it on a corrupt record business that skews the Top 40 by giving free trips and other goodies to radio programmers - and cold cash to radio stations to play their artists, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer charged yesterday.
I've said it before, but I'll say it again: I miss the good old days of payola, back when working DJs got their fair share of hookers and blow from the record hustlers. These days all the free trips and lavish gifts are for the bosses, not to mention the blatant cash payments made directly to corporate radio coffers. The working DJ is out of the loop.

Seriously, I miss the days when commercial radio DJs were considered worth bribing because they had the power to bring the music they wanted to the public. These days at most commercial stations DJs have become mere button pushers playing whatever the home office says to play.

UPDATE: Slate has an interesting article by Daniel Gross called "What's Wrong With Payola?" CLICK HERE

Monday, July 25, 2005

TERRELL'S SOUNDWORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, July 24, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
Now Webcasting
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Dancing Queen by The Yayhoos
The World's a Mess, It's In My Kiss by X
Woman of Mass Destruction by Alice Cooper
Crooked and Wide by Mudhoney
Bad Girl by The Detroit Cobras
The Denial Twist by The White Stripes
Wilderness by Sleater-Kinney
Private Detective by Gene Vincent

Feel Like Lightning by Otis Taylor
Night Watchman Blues by Memphis Minnie
Lonely and Blue by Van Morrison
Boogie Woogie Jockey by Jimmy Sweeney
Love Gravy by Rick James & Ike Turner
Sissy Man by Josh White
Twenty by Robert Cray

Valleri by The Monkees
99 by Barbara Feldon
Spy World by Wall of Voodoo
Secret Agent Man by The Ventures
Agent Double 0 Soul by Edwin Starr
Secret Agent Holiday by Alien Fashion Show
Thunderball by Tom Jones
The Silencers by Vicki Carr
We're All Spies by Busy McCarroll
Valarie by The Mothers of Invention

El U.F.O. Cayo by Ry Cooder
Hijack by Paul Kanter & The Jefferson Starship
Into My Arms by Nick Cave
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

Sunday, July 24, 2005

WHO LEAKED THIS TO NOVAK?

This from Robert Novak's column today's Chicago Sun-Times :

Richardson for president
Prominent New York City liberals who are concerned about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's electability are quietly talking up New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson as her alternative for the 2008 presidential nomination.

Richardson especially intrigues Democratic strategists because he is a Hispanic American with a Mexican mother. Richardson would be expected to pin down the burgeoning Latino vote.

The same New York liberals who are interested in Richardson fear George W. Bush could build Republican support among Latinos by appointing a Hispanic American to the next Supreme Court vacancy.

RANDOM THOUGHTS ON A LAZY SUNDAY

If you think you see Ashton Kutcher hanging around the Roundhouse or Quentin Tarantino in line at the Hunan Restaurant or Keanu Reeves browsing at the south-side Borders, it's probably just me. I just took the Analogia Star Estimator test to see which celebrities I most resemble (hey, it's a lazy Sunday!) and these are the results their crack computers came up with. (I think this link is only good for a couple of days, so hustle!)


UPDATE: What does my dog, Rocco have in common with Hugh Grant, Matthew Broderick and Jackie Chan? CLICK HERE. (Again, this link is only good for a couple of days ...)



xxx

Hey look, Rep. Greg Payne, R-Albuquerque, is blogging again after a two-month absence from the blogosphere.

xxx

I picked up some new and used CDs in Albuquerque, including some new releases (Ryan Adams' country-rock return Cold Roses, and a new X album called Live in Los Angeles (looks like I'm going to have to pick up the DVD too).

I also bought Mink, Rat or Rabbit by a retro/garage band called The Detroit Cobras; Chef Aid: The South Park Album (gotta have them "Chocolate Salty Balls" plus there's a song here by Rick James and Ike Turner!); Ace (the only Bob Weir solo album I ever liked); The Band's self-titled "Brown Album" (I have most the songs on various compilations, but I've never owned the CD version of this album -- one of the greatest records in history -- before now); a cheap but worthy Memphis Minnie collection; and a strange Gene Vincent album called The Beginning of the End, which is stuff the rockabilly royal recorded in the early '60s. There's some hideously cheesy tracks, such as two takes of a watered-down "Be-Bop-A- Lula" featuring a tacky flute and a new verse that informs us that "Be-Bop-A-Lula, she's a little twister." (Note to younger readers: This refers to a dance craze called "The Twist" that was popular about the time this was recorded. By the way, The Detroit Cobras do a version of the Hank Ballard song, better known by Chubby Checker, "The Twist," which The Cobras call "The Cha Cha Twist") However there's some great obscure Vincent tracks like "Private Detective" (the singer's trying to score with a sexy female gumshoe hired by his jealous wife) and a hard gutsy "Baby Blues." I'm not sure what to make of Vincent's out-there take on "Lavender Blue." All I can say is dilly dilly!

I'll play some Detroit Cobras, X and probably some other stuff from this batch on Terrell's Sound World tonight. Also some new songs from Otis Taylor, Robert Cray, Alice Cooper (!) and others. That's 10 p.m. Mountain Time on KSFR, 90.7 FM in Santa Fe and streaming on the web.

xxx

Last night I watched Beyond the Sea, Kevin Spacey's loving ode to Bobby Darin. Spacey not only acted in, directed and co-wrote the movie, he sang all of Darin's songs in it. It got mediocre-to-bad reviews, but I liked it, even the big song-and-dance sequences. My only complaint was he never did "If I Were a Carpenter" -- Darin's big folk-rock hit from the mid '60s.

Saturday, July 23, 2005

TOMMY RODELLA

Here are links to my most recent stories on this week's resignation of Rio Arriba Magistrate Judge Tommy Rodella:

* Rio Arriba magistrate resigns (published Friday)

* Richardson wants magistrate screening (published today)

And yes, gentle readers, I do know the difference between Tierra Amarilla and Tierra Contenta. The New Mex web staff was kind enough to correct that humilating blunder, though it was too late for Friday's print edition.

Feel free to join the fray in the comments section on the New Mexican site.

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, July 21, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Now Webcasting
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell


OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
The Ballad of Thunder Road by Robert Mitchum
Little White Lies by Jason & The Scorchers
Everybody's Doin' It by Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen
Who by Son Volt
Demonic Possession by Drive-By Truckers
Glendale Train by New Riders of the Purple Sage
If You Knew by Neko Case
Behind the Fear by Lum Hatcher

Oklahoma Bound by Joe West
Cold River by John Hiatt
When the People Find Out by Steve Earle
The Golden Inn Song by The Last Mile Ramblers
Western Union Wire by Kinky Friedman
Marie Laveau by Bobby Bare
I'm So Lonesome Without You by Hazeldine

Wanted Man by Michelle Shocked
Used Car Lot by Michelle Shocked
Baby Mine by Michelle Shocked
Little Hotel Room by Ray Charles with Merle Haggard
Proud Mary by George Jones with Johnny Paycheck
The Old Fashioned Preacher by Flatt & Scruggs
My Tennesee Mountain Home by Dolly Parton
To Ramona by The Flying Burrito Brothers
White Trash Wedding by The Dixie Chicks

Keep Your Hat on Jenny by Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodriguez
Beautiful Despair by Rodney Crowell
Nanny by Loudon Wainwright III
Sweet Little Bluebird by Grey DeLisle
Cold Trail Blues by Peter Case
No Good For Me by Waylon Jennings
Rio by Michael Nesmith
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

Friday, July 22, 2005

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: THREE FROM MICHELLE

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
July 22, 2005


Remember back in the early ‘90s when acts like Bruce Springsteen and Guns ‘N’ Roses created a stir by releasing two albums simultaneously? Bruce had Human Touch and Lucky Town, while Guns had Use Your Illusion (Volumes 1 and 2).

Michelle Shocked has topped them both. Last month, on her own Mighty Sound label, she released three albums: Don't Ask Don't Tell, (a scenes-from-a-crumbling-marriage collection); Mexican Standoff, (half Mexican-flavored tunes, half electric blues); and Got No Strings, (a set of songs from Disney movies done in a western-swing/hillbilly style)

The albums are available separately, or as a set, which is titled Threesome.

If nothing else, you have to admire Shocked (born Michelle Johnston) for her audacity and spunk -- not to mention her ability to believably pull off such a big variety of styles.

But it should be noted that Springsteen’s 1992 double dip resulted in two of his weakest albums and that the Use Your Illusion CDs could have — indeed should have — been boiled down into one strong album.

And the same could be argued for Shock’s recent releases.

Individually none of these three albums come close to Shocked’s previous album, the soul and gospel-soaked Deep Natural. (Hey, come to think of it, she released a “bonus album” with that one too, Dub Natural, which consisted of remixes.)

Still, all three new CDs work as individual albums. All three have their separate strengths and charms as well as drawbacks.

The promotional material compares Don't Ask Don't Tell with such divorce classics as Richard & Linda Thompson’s Shoot Out the Lights, Marvin Gaye’s Here My Dear, and Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks.

She wishes!

Don’t believe this hype. It doesn’t come anywhere near those milestone records.

But it does have its delights.

This is the most musically varied album of Threesome. There’s some New Orleans funk crossed with early Ricki Lee Jones beatnik cool (“Don’t Tell”) a little swamp rock (“Don’t Ask”), some hot and nasty blues (“Used Car Lot”), some cocktail sleaze (“Goodbye”) and even a raw blast of punk rock (“Hi Skool.”)

It starts off with “Early Morning Saturday,” a lilting melody that’s sweet and mellow -- except for some ominous banging percussion that provides a clue that all is not really sweet and mellow in Shockedville.

Lyrically the album gets down to business with the jazzy muted-trumpet tune “Hardly Gonna Miss Him” (“He’s gone, he’s gone/And here’s the reason why/ He don’t like to laugh/I don’t like to cry …)

“Evacuation Route,” a sad melody with a Mexican accordion is the heart-stopper in the whole Threesome collection. It’s about a woman and her children leaving her unhappy home in the middle of the night.

“Wake up, wake up/Your mother said/Go tell your brother/Get up, get out of bed/Get into the car/Just do as I say/She packed a few things/ And then you drove away/This was no vacation/This was an evacuation.”

Mexican Standoff is the least satisfying album of Threesome. Shocked says it’s an exploration of her Hispanic roots. There are Texas Tornado-like Mexican-style tunes with cantina accordion and mariachi horns -- and there’s some basic blues stompers.

In mixing these styles, my first thought was that Shocked was auditioning for Los Lobos. Then I learned that Lobo sax dude Steve Berlin produced the “Mexican” part of this standoff. (You can hear echoes of them Lobos’ Hispano-psychedelico Kiko in the slow, sultry “Match Burns Twice.”)

But the standout on Standoff is “Picoesque,” a high-charged gospel celebration of storefront churches in East L.A.

“Now, riding down Pico Boulevard and for the first time/You notice how many churches,“ Shocked says, “Foursquare Baptist, Catholic Cathedrals/Buddhist Temples, Synagogues, Mosques/Keith Dominion, COGIC, Pentacost/Iglesias de Cristos Iglesias de Dios and the Sweet (swear to God) Aroma of Jesus …”

Finally, Got No Strings is something of a guilty pleasure, but it’s a pleasure nonetheless.

I’m a sucker for those old Disney songs -- not the ones from the most recent movies like Lion King or Pocahontas, but the real oldies like “When You Wish Upon a Star.” I loved that various-artist album Stay Awake from the late ‘80s, and I loved Sun Ra’s Disney tribute Second Star to the Right.

Shocked is no stranger to Disney tunes. Back on her 1991 Arkansas Traveler album she did “Zip a Dee Doo Dah” (from the long censored movie Song of the South) as part of a medley with “Jump Jim Crow.”

But there, singing the tune in a weird falsetto, she seemed to be making an ironic statement. In contrast, on Got No Strings, her love for these songs shines through.

With fiddle, lap steel guitar (Greg Leisz, who also plays slide) and on some cuts a banjo (Tony Furtado), the arrangements are irresistible on songs like “Bare Necessities” (written by the late Terry Gilkyson, a former Santa Fe resident) and “Baby Mine.”

And yes, Shocked’s sweet, sexy version of “When You Wish Upon a Star” gives Jiminy Cricket a run for his money.

Word is that Shocked has plans to release even more themed albums featuring New Orleans brass-band music, techno, and a tribute to blues queen Memphis Minnie.

I can’t say I’m holding my breath for any of these, but I bet they all will contain some great tracks.

Also noted:

*Fantastic Greatest Hits by Charlie Tweddle

I always wondered whether anyone taped any of those helplessly-stoned 3 a.m. living-room guitar jams I, uhhh, heard about back in the '70s. If so, I bet they'd sound something like Charlie Tweddle.

Naw ... Charlie was even weirder. This album, recorded in '71, released in '74 (only 500 LPs pressed) originally under the name Eilrahc Elddewt, has been re-released by Companion Records, the same good folks who brought us The New Creation, that Canadian Partridge-Family-gone-Jesus-freak group whose odd style of gospel rock never has been duplicated.

Fantastic Greatest Hits is lo-fi hippybilly weirdness with primitive “futuristic” sound effects, cricket noise (one track is 25 minutes of this) and found-sound Mexican radio. Not an easy listen the first time out, but strangely addictive thereafter.

Tweddle was born in Kentucky but ended up in northern California where he took lots of acid and had powerful musical ambitions. (Does this story remind you of anyone else named Charlie from that era? Luckily, Charlie T. used his strange powers for good instead of evil.)

Tweddle's still alive but not making music. He's making expensive cowboy hats out of roadkill.

Thursday, July 21, 2005

OKIE BOYHOOD MUSINGS PART 2

The other night when I posted about pro wrestlers and TV personalities from my childhood in Oklahoma City, I should have included a couple of amusement parks that were a huge part of my childhood.

There was Wedgewood Village, which was owned and operated by Maurice Woods, who was the father of my friend Bobby Woods. (I heard from Bobby a couple of years ago. He's a lawyer in Los Angeles now.)

Take a look at this photo of the park's grand opening in 1958. I think I was there that day. (I would have been four or five.) Notice the robot looking over the crowd in the top right corner? That's Bazark, a character on the 3-D Danny show.

One of my earliest memories is going to Wedgewood with my mother and grandmother (and I assume my little brother) to see the 3-D Danny show live. The day before on the show the announcer said that if you're at Wedgewood and see 3-D and Foreman Scotty in danger, you should warn them.

At Wedgewood I saw my heroes and a huge robot was sneaking up on them. I ran onto the set screaming and crying, warning them about the robot behind them. I wish there was a videotape of that show. I remember 3-D and Scotty (the late Steve Powell, who later married my brother's kindergarten teacher) being very nice to me, trying to calm me down -- despite the fact I'd ruined their scene.

Then there was Springlake Amusement Park, an older, funkier park on the city's northeast side. Springlake originaly was built in the 1920s.

Both parks hosted concerts that make up some of my earliest musical memories.

At Wedgewood, I saw Herman's Hermits , Johnny Rivers and Gary Lewis & The Playboys. (The Web site says the Yardbirds and the Who also played there. I don't know how I could have missed those.)

At Springlake I saw The Beach Boys, The Righteous Brothers, Sam the Sham & The Pharoahs, and most importantly, The Everly Brothers. My grandfather went to that concert with us and loved the Everlys because they, like he, was from Kentucky. Shortly after my grandfather died in 1967, the Everly Brothers had a modest hit with "Bowling Green," which has the refrain, "A man from Kentucky sure is lucky ..."

Both Wedgewood and Springlake have been gone for years. Ironically, the only amusement park left from my youth is Frontier City, which used to be pretty crappy, though it's now a Six Flags operation.

At least the Oklahoma City Zoo is still up and running.

ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU

A version of this was published in The New Mexican
July 21, 2005

Good news for employees of the Children Youth and Families Department: Despite what your public information officer told you, most reporters you meet will not try to use “Jedi mind tricks” on you in an effort to penetrate the Death Star that is state government.

In case you missed that story, CYFD spokesman Matt Dillman — one of many former reporters lured to The Dark Side by Gov. Bill Richardson — sent an e-mail early this month to the department’s 2,000-plus employees warning them of evil tricks by “unscrupulous” reporters.

“Some reporters might use a ‘Jedi Mind Trick’ to confuse an issue as they try to convince you to say something on the record,” Dillman wrote. “They’ll try to pressure you, trick you, back you into a corner ... Your way out is to always refer them back to me— regardless.”

I for one thought it was pretty cool that he compared us to the heroic mystic warriors of the Star Wars series — though in the same e-mail he also compares us to “door-to-door vacuum salesmen who used to throw dirt into a house to gain entry.”

The July 6 memo was sent the day after The New Mexican published a story by reporter Ben Neary about the state Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives. Dillman had sat in on Neary’s interview with program director Anne Apodaca. She talked about traveling at state expense to conference in Virginia at the headquarters of an evangelical organization founded by Watergate felon Chuck Colson.

Nobody accused Neary of mind trickery.

The sad truth is that most reporters I know, while respecting the right to bear light sabers, never made it all the way through our Jedi training.

Some were kicked out of the Jedi Academy for boozing, some over questions of moral turpitude.

But most of us were thrown out for our dismal attitude toward authority.

However, if it was an unscrupulous reporter who subliminally clouded Dillman’s mind and caused him to send out such a message via e-mail — that was a pretty solid Jedi trick.

The way to Iowa: Within a few weeks of his visit to New Hampshire — which traditionally has the first presidential primary of the election season — our traveling governor this week paid a call on Iowa — which traditionally has the first presidential caucus of the election season.

Richardson was in Des Moines for the National Governors Association meeting. Several publications noted that several governors, including ours, who are potentially interested in the Iowa conference were in attendance.

In addition to the conference, Richardson spoke at a fundraiser sponsored by the Iowa Trial Lawyer Association, described by The Des Moines Register as “a Democratic-leaning group.”

My Jedi senses tell me that Richardson will be visiting New Hampshire more than he will Iowa. In fact a story in Tuesday’s Register by reporter Thomas Beaumont quoted Richardson saying that if he does run for president, he won’t campaign heavily in Iowa if Gov. Tom Vilsack runs — as many suspect Vilsack will.

“I haven’t decided to run, but I would be very respectful of the role he has here,” Richardson said of Vilsack. “I’m not going to appear to be poaching on his territory. I don’t want to be seen doing that.”

And respectful of the fact that favorite son Vilsack would stomp him and probably everyone else in the Iowa Caucus.

Richardson’s probably not alone in thinking that way. Beaumont’s story notes that in 1992 Iowa’s Sen. Tom Harkin competed for the Democratic nomination, which resulted in other Democratic candidates skipping the Iowa caucus.

Just Be Kos: The Daily Kos, a popular progressive blog, published the results of its unscientific monthly presidential straw poll on Tuesday — and it didn’t look good for Richardson.

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark leads the pack with 34 percent with “No Freakin’ Clue” in second with 17 percent. Richardson is down in single-digits territory behind Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. Russ Feingold, former Sen. John Edwards and Virginia Gov. Mark Warner.

To be fair, this isn’t really Richardson’s audience. He’s a centrist Democratic Leadership Council-type, while the Daily Kos crowd is closer to what Howard Dean used to call “The Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party.”

About 8,000 Kos readers took part in the poll.

“Remember, there’s nothing scientific about this, and doesn’t measure rank-and-file Dems,” the blog warns. “It measures us, the chosen few who think it’s fun to talk about this sort of thing 3 years out from the election.”

However, the blog adds, “As a guide of this community’s leanings, this poll is probably quite accurate.”

Monday, July 18, 2005

BOYHOOD MUSINGS

How I long for to muse on the days of my boyhood
Though four score and three years have fled by since then
Still it gives sweet reflections, as every young joy should
That merry-hearted boys make the best of old men
Guess I'm feeling like the Bard of Armagh this morning. Been taking a nostalgic trip through web sites related to some of the pop culture icons of my youth in Oklahoma City.

Here's a page full of some of the great 'rasslers I remember from those Friday nights at Stockyards Coliseum . There's even pictures of wrestlers like Danny Hodge, Sputnik Monroe and "Irish" Mike Clancy, pictured here. (That's one thing I love about wrestling. A guy has a name like "Mike Clancy" but someone feels it's necessary to explain he's Irish!)

Another story about some of the same characters can be found here . Be sure to scroll down to the article called "Mid-South Memories."

And don't forget the great 2001 NPR Morning Edition report on Sputnik -- the Heavenly Body from Outer Space, the Body That Men Fear and Women Love!

I've told the story many times of when I was about nine years old and went to get Sputnik's autograph in his corner before a match. I'd collected a pretty good number of wrestlers' autographs during the preceding weeks. Most kids were only interested in the heroes' signatures, but I wanted the villains'. While kids flocked around the hero, I was the only one at Sputnik's corner. Sputnik looked down from the ring, smiled and took my autograph book. I thought I'd scored. But then he held the book dramatically over his head. The crowd began to stir and a demonic look was in Sputnik's eye.

He ripped my autograph books to shreds as the crowd jeered. I nearly cried, but secretly I respected him for staying in character. That incident probably warped me beyond repair.

I also revisited the site of Danny Williams, a broadcast pioneer in Oklahoma. In the 1960s he not only was a great radio personality on WKY -- the station with which my life was saved by rock 'n' roll! -- he also ruled television. In the '50s he was 3-D Danny, while in the '60s he portrayed Xavier T. Willard on The Foreman Scotty show.

Danny also had an afternoon talk/variety show, Danny's Day. My band, The Ramhorn City Go-Go Squad & Uptight Washtub Band appeared on it in early 1968, though one of my main memories of that day was walking across the set of The Buck Owens Ranch.

It's getting too late for me to do serious searching for Foreman Scotty or Ho Ho the Clown or start waxing nostalgic about the triple-feature monster movies at the Mayflower Theater ... Bedtime for the Bard of Armagh ...

TERRELL'S SOUNDWORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, July 17, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
Now Webcasting
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell


OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Chupacabra Rock 'n' Roll by The Blood Drained Cows
Shake Some Action by The Flamin' Groovies
I'm Cryin' by The Animals
The Nurse by The White Stripes
Bombs Below by Living Things
Heaven's Dead by Audioslave
Man in the Box by Alice in Chains
Ring Dang Do by Sam the Sham & The Pharoahs

Moth in the Incubator by The Flaming Lips
Holy Ghost by Thinking Fellers Union Local 282
Mysterious Friends by The Grifters
The Fox by Sleater-Kinney
Desperanto by Marianne Faithful
Summertime Blues by The Who

The Lion This Time by Van Morrison
Dirty Old Town by David Byrne
The Coffee Song by Stan Ridgway
Cold in My Bed by Bernadette Seacrest
Long Dong Silver by Denise LaSalle
Next to Me by Clyde McPhatter
What Will I Tell the Children by Juke Boy Bonner

Marvel Group by Mother Earth
Superbird by Country Joe & The Fish
Evacuation Route by Michelle Shocked
Off He Goes by Pearl Jam
King of the New York Streets by Dion
The Cross by Prince
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

Saturday, July 16, 2005

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, July 15, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Now Webcasting
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell


OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Red Red Robin by Rosie Flores
Thunderbird by John Hiatt
Tumbling Tumbleweeds by Michael Nesmith
Brain Damage by The Austin Lounge Lizards
Each Night I Try by Robbie Fulks
Colorado Cool-Aid by Johnny Paycheck
A Six Pack to Go by Hank Thompson
My Wildest Dreams Grow Wilder Every Day by The Flatlanders
Yuppie Scum by Emily Kaitz

Must Be the Whiskey by Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodriguez
Things That Go Bump in the Day by Rodney Crowell
Out of Control by Dave Alvin
Don't Tell by Michelle Shocked
Truckdrivin' Son of a Gun by Dave Dudley
Don't You Want Me by Moonshine Willie

Jet Pilot by Son Volt
I Fought the Law by The Waco Brothers
Wild and Blue by The Mekons
Barnyard Beatnik by Big Sandy & The Fly-Rite Boys
Freakin' at the Freaker's Ball by Dr. Hook & His Medicine Show
Iron Flowers by Grey DeLisle
Always Late With Your Kisses by Merle Haggard
You Make Me Feel More Like a Man by Mel Street
Distant Drums by Jim Reeves
Hungry Hash House by Charlie Poole

Mansion on the Hill by Bruce Springsteen
I Just Can't Let You Say Goodbye by Willie Nelson with Emmylou Harris
Hank and Fred by Loudon Wainwright III
Single Women by Dolly Parton
I'll Think of Something by Hank Williams, Jr.
It's Four in the Morning by Faron Young
Lullaby by Trailer Bride
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

Friday, July 15, 2005

JUST MY OPINION

The Pasatiempo letters section today got me hot under the collar.

There were all these letters blasting Pasa's opera critic, Craig Smith. One even called Craig "the MOST jaded reporter on your team" for his July 3 review of Turandot.

Hey, what about me? I feel left out! Granted, I do get some angry letters about my political writing (right wingers calling me a loony liberal, left-wingers calling me a Republican), but only rarely do get a stray letter in Pasa disagreeing with one of my CD reviews.

(Oh, o.k, I did get Dave Grusin writing in once to denounce me for contributing to the "dumbing-down of America" or something like that. And there was that package I got in about 15 years ago from an angry Stevie Ray Vaughan fan who sent me a ready-to-use Fleet enema in response to one of my Tune-up columns. )

I get to pick and choose from hundreds of CDs or music DVDs to review and usually I prefer to tell the world about the ones I like instead of kicking some musical dog. On the other hand, Craig, in his role as opera critic, has to review whatever opera is playing here.

I know far more about the Opry than the opera -- and I haven't seen Turandot. So I won't attempt to defend Mr. Smith. I don't know whether his scathing remarks about the direction and the set and other problems were justified or not.

But I will attack some of the letters. There were some real bone-headed statements there.

Some guy from Kansas City complained:

... one may reasonably doubt that Craig Smith has ever been a director of opera or otherwise a an opera singer, a conductor of an orchestra, a performing musician in any orchestra, a choreographer, a lighting expert, a set designer, a composer, a practicing pyschoanalyst or even a stagehand.

Uh oh. I cover politics but have never held or even run for public office.

Then, after calling Craig arrogant and a bunch of other stuff, he turns on the UPPERCASE and notes that unqualified, arrogant Craig wrote all this

... WITH NO HUMBLE SUGGESTION AT ANY POINT THAT THIS IS JUST MY OPINION
Hey pal, I don't know how they do it K.C., but around here just being labeled a "review" is enough to warn most folks that it's the writer's opinion.

The lady who called Craig the most jaded reporter went on to say,
"That he should be allowed to be so-o-o negative on the front page of the paper is scandalous. We are supposed to be promoting Santa Fe, not bringing it down. We want visitors to come and enjoy our city and an awful lot of them come for the Opera."
Oh for the love of Christ!

Here's the deal, lady. We're not a Chamber of Commerce rag and Craig isn't a tourism flack. His duty is not to "promote Santa Fe" but to give his honest opinion about the performance he's reviewing.

A Santa Fe man claimed that Smith's review had ruined the career of stage director and scenic designer Douglas Fitch.
"Craig Smith, for all his knowledge, does not have the right, with a flick of his pen, to kill the professional future of a young person."
Goodness Gussie!

For one thing, yes, he does have that right. And if they do repeal the First Amendment, it probably won't be over opera reviews.

Secondly, if someone's "professional future" is so delicate that one bad review can snuff it out, maybe that person should consider another career.

Maybe opera fans could learn something from us rockers and meditate on the zen-like mystery of this adaptation of a common rock 'n' roll wisdom:

Your favorite opera sucks.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: SETTIN' THE WOODS ON FIRE

A version of this appeared in The Santa Fe New Mexican
July 15, 2005


Sleater-Kinney has done it again. With their new album The Woods, This roaring, all-girl, Pacific Northwest trio shows how screaming guitar rock can still have brains, soul and relevance.

In many ways it’s too bad that this group seems destined to never rise above "critics’ darling" status. They keep making wonderful records, critics, including me, and enlightened fans drool and heap praise on them -- and the general public ignores them in favor of vastly inferior dribble.

But, as Mr. Sinatra said, "That’s life."

Believe it or not, Sleater-Kinney has been around now for a whole decade. Their self-titled debut was released in 1995, at the tail-end of the Riot Grrrl scare.

S-K quickly transcended the bonds of the basic girl-punk sound. They kept the same basic arrangement -- the two guitar attack of Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, Tucker’s hopped-up Banshee wail (which I think is the band‘s greatest weapon). And no bass. (Drummer Janet Weiss -- who’s starting to remind me a lot of Mitch Mitchell of the original Jimi Hendrix Experience -- came to the band in the late ‘90s.) But they’ve been growing and evolving through the years without losing their original frantic energy.

The Woods is a logical progression for S-K. In their previous albums their songs rarely if ever hit the four-minute mark. Here, more than half the songs are that long. And one of them -- "Let’s Call it Love" -- is a savage 11-minute frenzy that brings back memories of Steppenwolf‘s "Magic Carpet Ride," The Count Five’s "Psychotic Reaction" and Patti Smith’s "Radio Ethiopia."

Amazingly, The Woods is produced by Dave Fridmann. He’s a member of Mercury Rev and he’s produced albums for that band as well as for The Flaming Lips. In recent years both those bands, thanks largely to Fridmann, have become known for a lush, soundtracky -- some would argue even symphonic -- ambiance. But there’s little if anything on this album to suggest Fridmann’s signature sonic sweetness.

The album starts out with a strange little psycho-sexual Aesop-like fable called "The Fox." The title character notices the birth of a baby duck and bellows (well, at least Tucker bellows) "Land Ho!" This description might sound like a sweet little animal tale (indeed the innocent little duck escapes the wiley fox), but with the blast of feedback that opens the song, the harsh chords and Weiss’ machine-gun drums, nobody will mistake this for a Raffi song.

Love relationships seems to be the main focus of this album.

"What‘s Mine is Yours" starts out bouncy and sexy, with Tucker inviting a lover to "rest your head on this heart of mine." The music builds up to an explosive climax as Tucker wails in a combination of dread and ecstasy. Then, right in the middle of the song there’s a guitar feedback freakout that melds into a grating electric bluesy stomp.

"Wilderness" is about a couple that "Said `I do in the month of May/ Said ’I don’t’ the very next day."

But by the end of the song, the relationship between "Kenny and Linda" seems to be a metaphor for a politically divided country: "A family fued/ The Red and the Blue now/ It’s Truth against Truth/ I’ll see you in hell, I don’t mind." This is a reversal of the song "Faraway" on their last album One Beat, which started out as a harrowing account of watching September 11 unfold on television, but then turns those events into a metaphor of the personal: "Why can’t I get along with you?"

Then on "Night Light," which closes the album, the lyrics -- and the foreboding roar of the music, speak of a nightmarish real world, in which your only source of strength is in your loved ones. "How do you do it /This bitter and bloody world/Keep it together and shine for your family …"

The song that stands out for its strangeness here is "Modern Girl." With relatively soft guitars and a sweet harmonica, the initial lyrics sung by Brownstein, remind me of some long-lost sitcom theme, somewhere between The Partridge Family and The Facts of Life: "My baby loves me/I’m so happy/Happiness makes me a modern girl … My whole life/was like a picture/ on a sunny day …"

Of course there’s a sinister undercurrent here. By the last verse, the drums come in and it’s "anger" that makes her a modern girl . Her money won’t buy nothing’ and she’s sick of the "Brave New World."

Besides these fine new songs, one thing I like about The Woods is that includes a DVD of the band performing live. Alas, it’s only four songs, but watching Sleater-Kinney in action makes you appreciate them even more.

Also Recommended:
*Before the Poison
by Marianne Faithful. It’s not hard to imagine Marianne Faithful as Sleater-Kinney’s mom. Faithful doesn’t really sound like S-K -- certainly her weathered heroin-and-cigarette-damaged voiced couldn’t handle a fraction of Tucker’s crazy wails, though I bet Sleater could do a powerful version of Faithfull’s insane tirade of sexual betrayal "Why d’ya Do It?"

On her latest album, released early this year, Faithful teams up with a couple of other rockers who could pass as her spiritual children -- P.J. Harvey and Nick Cave. Echoes of Faithful’s 1979 "comeback" album Broken English can certainly be heard in the works of Harvey and Cave.

Harvey wrote or co-wrote five of the 10 songs here, while Cave co-wrote three songs with Faithful, including the glorious screechy rocker "Desperanto."

While Faithful’s more morose songs — like "Crazy Love" and Harvey’s "In the Factory" — can be addictive, so to speak, I wish more of Before the Poison rocked like "Deperanto" and Harvey’s "My Friends Have."

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

  Sunday, July 13, 2025 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM, 101.1 FM  Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell E...