The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. The sinking of the Titanic,
The
Black Sunday
dust storm of 1935.
What do these great American disasters and tragedies have in common?
They all occurred on April 14.
Gillian Welch dubbed it "Ruination Day."
It's also the day that
Don Ho died
in 2007. But I won't go there.
There is no national holiday next Tuesday, but we can remember the victims and
the the historical consequences of all three events through songs like these:
And here are the two songs called "April 14 Part 1" and "Ruination Day Part 2"
on Gillian Welch's 2001 album Time (The Revelator). In both
there are images of Lincoln, the Titanic and Okies fleeing the Dust Bowl. She
makes direct reference to "God Moves on the Water," from the refrain of Bessie
Jones' song about the Titanic.
Tom Lehrer, satirist, math professor and high-ranking "sicknik" (at least
according to Time magazine) turns 87 tomorrow.
Known for his tinkling piano and a poisoned mind, Lehrer hasn't been active in
the music world for decades, but during his brief heyday he was one of the
musical heroes of the grim, gray '50s.
Behind his piano in a jacket, tie and horn-rimmed glasses, he looked like
the ultimate square. And yet he was singing subversive themes about nuclear
bombs, lynching, pollution, the military .. and poisoning pigeons in the park.
And unlike some of the people he lampooned in his song "Folk Song Army," he
pulled it off without sounding self-righteous.
I've enjoyed Lehrer's music for years, but I like him even more since reading
what Time magazine had written about him -- as related in an
excellent profile published last year in
BuzzFeed by editor-in-chief Ben Smith.
In July 1959, Time
featured Lehrer alongside Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl as the avatars of a new
“sick” comedy, which it played as the symptom of a sick society. “What the
sickniks dispense is partly social criticism liberally laced with cyanide,
partly a Charles Addams kind of jolly ghoulishness, and partly a personal
and highly disturbing hostility toward all the world,” the magazine
wrote.
That's great company to be in, Lenny, Mort and Charles Addams too. Damn, I want
to be a sicknik!
So go read
Smith's article
and enjoy this sampler of Leher tunes below. Happy birthday, Tom!
It's probably a good thing that PETA wasn't around when Leher recorded this
one
And here's one about Los Alamos -- where Lehrer once worked for "the old AEC.".
This next one was written decades before 50 Shades of Grey,
As for the next one:
WHAT KIND OF MESSAGE DOES THIS SEND TO THE CHILDREN?
Not many singers have covered Tom Lehrer songs. But one who did was Barbara
Manning in the late 1990s. Backed by members of Calexico, she played with
Leher's melody, bringing out all the latent creepiness and wisely omitted the
first and last verse's of Leher's song, the ones that basically wink and tell
listeners the whole thing is a joke. With her wide-eyed delivery, Manning
creates something that is no longer a clever goof, but something that could be
ripped from today's headlines..
Friday, April 3, 2015 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Just 78 years ago this month, Life magazine did a three-page spread on Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly. who was well on his way to becoming one of the titans of 20th Century music.
There was a full-color picture, of the barefoot singer in overalls, sitting on grain sacks and playing guitar, his mouth wide open in song.
O.K., so the rustic image was pretty hokey. But what was really shocking about the Life article was the headline:
Lead Belly - Bad Nigger Makes Good Minstrel.
And just so we're clear, this was Life magazine. the epitome of mainstream American publications, not some KKK hate pamphlet.
And part of the photo spread was a black and white close-up of Lead Belly's hands playing a guitar. The caption: "These hands once killed a man."
Again, this wasn't the Police Gazette, it was Life magazine!
To say the least, Lead Belly deserved better.
I'm not going to go into his whole life story here. If you're not familiar with the man and his music, Check out the documentary Legend of Lead Belly, which will be airing on the Smithsonian channel later this month. (Or watch it right now, free, HERE)
It's sad that Lead Belly never lived to see it -- he died in 1949 at the age of 61 -- but through the years he really has gained a tremendous degree of respectability.
Like so many true avatars of American music, Lead Belly never sold many records himself. His biggest "hits' -- like "Goodnight Irene," "Midnight Special," "Rock Island Line," "Gallis Pole" (redone by Led Zeppelin as "Gallows Pole" and "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" (made famous by Nirvana) were all done by other singers. Musicians from Judy Garland to Nirvana have recorded Leadbelly songs.
With his 12-string guitar (and sometimes piano or even accordion) He sang sweet love songs; work songs; dirty blues; raw versions of pop songs; outlaw ballads; story songs retelling the news of the day; protest songs like "Bourgeois Blues"; cowboy famtasies and more.
Perhaps the cruelest irony was that "Goodnight Irene" became hugely popular -- the year after he died. The folk group called The Weavers was the best-known cover, but Frank Sinatra, Ernest Tubb and countless others covered it too.
Last month, Smithsonian Folkways released a five disc collection called Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection featuring five hours of music including 16 unreleased tracks. It's got most of his better-known tunes plus a bunch of obscurities. There's even a recording of a radio show in which Lead Belly starts singing along with a Bessie Smith song.
Leadbelly's most famous tunes are so much a part of our collective musical wiring, it's the less-famous ones I've been enjoying the most since the Smithsonian collection. So I'm going to embed a few of the great obscurities here.
Bob Dylan, as a horny teen, wrote a song for Brigitte Bardot. Lead Belly wrote this one for a movie sex symbol of his day.
Here's a more serious song, the story of nine Black teenagers accused of raping a white woman in Alabama. They were found guilty by (you guessed it) an all-white juries, The story of the Scottsboro Boys is widely considered an astonishing miscarriage of justice. Lead Belly thought so too. ("Stay woke," Lead Belly warned in the interview following the song)
I think this song was on the first Lead Belly record I ever heard. My high school friend Paul Songer had it on some album and it made me an instant Lead Belly fan.
Here's a Wacky Wednesday April Fool's Day tribute to one of the craziest rock 'n' roll pranks of all time.
It involves a punk band called The Dwarves and their guitarist known as HeWhoCannotBeNamed.
In April of 1993 (I can't swear that the date was April 1, but the holiday was bound to have had something to do with this) The Dwarves announced that HeWho had been stabbed to death in a barroom fight in Philadelphia.
The horror! Dying in Philly!
But it turned out to be a little joke.
Their label at the time SubPop, was not amused.
Click to enlarge
The label issued a press release on June 23, 1993, saying that Dwarves vocalist Blag Dahlia had provided the label "with detailed, repeated and convincing evidence that Hewho had been killed in what appeared to be an anonymous `bar fight' in Philadelphia last April, a few months following their winter European tour.
I'm still not sure what an "anonymous" bar fight is, but let's continue:
"The information was even detailed enough to have included an address to send flowers and condolences, for which we received a thank-you card from Hewho's `family' in Wisconsin. ...
"When we discovered it was a hoax, we accepted Blag's defense that it was a 'punk rock thing to do, in keeping with the spirit of the band, a simple experiment in media exploitation, and at very least a long-overdue spark of something remotely interesting in a supposedly `alternative' music scene that , as recently evidenced by Lollapalooza, has become as staid, corporate and boring as the institutions it originally sought to shatter.
"While all of the aforementioned may be true, it is also true that the whole ordeal unforgivably overstepped the bounds of media manipulation and self-promotion. ...[it's] an inexcusable exploitation and trivialization of death itself."
The release went on to mention two musicians who actually had recently died "whose deaths were most readily associated with the purported death of HeWhoCannotBeNamed. ... the obvious fact remains that everyone has been affected by death, and crass exploitation of these emotions in what essentially amounts to commercialism is inhuman."
But this public upbraiding wasn't the only consequence of the hoax. In the same press release, SubPop announced that the upcoming Dwaves album Sugarfix would be the last one on the label. And it was.
At that point it was too late to change the artwork in the CD booklet, which had a black-and-white photo of the masked guitarist with the inscription "He Who Cannot Be Named 1972-1993."
If that birthdate is more trustworthy than the death date. he would have been 20 or 21 when all this came down.
And the album ended with a song that would have looked prophetic had the beans not been spilled on the hoax. It was called "Wish That I Was Dead." The liner notes said that was for Del Shannon, whose suicide in 1990 was not a hoax.
Asked about the death prank in Eric Davidson's (New Bomb Turks) 2010 book We Never Learn: The Gunk Punk Undergut, 1988-2001Blag said, "Well, HeWho transcended life and death, he is a great figure and he fucking dies for your sins. I told them that at SubPop. How was I supposed to know he would rematerialize? Meanwhile, they had no sense of humor about it ..."
So you decide: was this good rock 'n' roll fun or a sick example of bad taste? But, as Charlie the Tuna might say, do you want rock 'n' roll with good taste or rock 'n' roll that tastes good?
Whatever, everyone survived The Dwarves' little prank. Subpop's still around, The Dwarves are still around ...
Hewho's still in the band, though he's done some solo stuff as well ...
And you can still find this magic song:
(Thanks to FLICKR member warrenjabali for preserving the SubPop press release)
Yabba Dabba Do, fellow homo erecti!! This month the Big Enchilada is going to get down to the bedrock of rock 'n' roll with some modern Stone Age sounds.
UPDATED with Mixcloud Player of the Mose McCormack segment.
Friday, March 27, 2015 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist below:
OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Red Red Robin by Rosie Flores
I Like to Sleep Late in the Morning by Jerry Jeff Walker
Do as You Are Told by Texas Martha & The House of Twang
Flyin' Saucer by Yuichi & The Hilltone Boys
That Nightmare is Me by Mose McCormack
Mose McCormack live in KSFR Studio
Santa Fe Trail
Perfect Sea
Naco Jail
Dusty Devil
Joni
Out on the Highway
Lost and Never Found
Hillbilly Town
Under the Jail
The World's a Mess It's in My Kiss by X
Poor Little Critter in the Road by The Knitters
The Union Dues Blues by Chipper Thompson
Wanted Man by Johnny Cash
Year of Jubilo by The Holy Modal Rounders
A Fool for Love by Marty Stuart
Where the Comet Falls by Al Duvall
Jean Harlow by Lead Belly
Someday We'll Look Back by Merle Haggard
Whiskey and Cocaine Stevie Tombstone
Wildcat Run by Red Sovine
Shortnin' Bread by J.E.Mainer & Red Smiley
The Fox by The Waco Brothers
My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You by The Rizdales
That's How I Got to Memphis by Kelly Willis
I Made a Friend of a Flower Today by Fayssoux Starling McLean & Tom T. Hall
I'll Think of Something by Hank Williams, Jr. CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
Here the first hour with Mose McCormack on the player below. Mose's live segment starts about 17 minutes into the show
Mose McCormack will put you under the jail tonight on The Santa Fe Opry!
McCormack, who has been picking and singing and occasionally releasing albums in New Mexico music since the 1970s, will be playing on my show, starting a little bit after 10 pm Friday (Mountain Time) on KSFR, 101. FM in Northern New Mexico and streaming live HERE.
Here's a profile of Mose I wrote for No Depression back in the '90s. And below is Mose performing one of his tunes:
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican March 27, 2015
Mojo JuJu & The Snake Oil Merchants. Ms. JuJu is sitting with resonator guitar
Close your eyes and imagine you’re lost on a foggy night on some uncharted back street off the Reeperbahn in Hamburg or near the port of Amsterdam, where the sailors all meet. From some dangerous little dive you hear music: after-hours blues, off-kilter torch songs, Gypsy jazz, hot Weimar Republic cabaret, “punk noir,” strange tangos, and dark, soulful ballads. But before you can go in, you wake up.
Don’t worry. You can find that kind of alluring music on a new collection called Anthology by Mojo JuJu& The Snake Oil Merchants.
In case you’re not familiar with Mr. and Mrs. JuJu’s baby girl, she’s an Australian from Melbourne who has been a solo act for a few years. But Off Label Records, my favorite crazy German punk/alt-blues/garage/slop country/jug-band record company in recent years, compiled this collection of her work with her old band and released it last month to expose this music to a wider audience — and, I suppose, to show us what we’ve missed.
The music here falls somewhere between that of Cab Calloway and Gogol Bordello. I’m also reminded of the Eastern European-influenced Firewater. “Fisherman’s Daughter” starts off with a horn section that sounds like it might have come from a ’90s ska-punk group. And if anyone claims that Tom Waits isn’t a major influence, they’re either lying or deaf. Try to listen to Mojo’s banjo-led, horn-accented “Sacred Heart of Mary” without being tempted to sing along in your best phlegm-heavy Waits voice.
And elsewhere, like on “Transient Being,” you might be reminded of the late Amy Winehouse. That is, if Winehouse had been prone to using accordion and trombone in her songs. In one interview, Mojo said she gets her inspiration from “scary antique stores.”
Sounds reasonable.
Some of the best tunes here are the ones that sound like they could have been theatrical pieces. “Scat Song” would have fit in on the soundtrack of Boardwalk Empire (maybe in a scene set in Chalky White’s nightclub). “God and the Devil” is a little morality drama in which a woman hears a pitch from the Prince of Darkness and asks, “Well, I looked that devil right square in the eye and said, ‘Do I look stupid to you?’ ”
One of the darkest, most striking songs on Anthology is the near-seven-minute “But I Do.” It’s slow and menacing. Mojo sings of pain in her heart, the piano plays sinister little one-finger trills that sound like Morse code, and the drummer seems to be pounding to drive away demons.
The song that sounds most autobiographical here is “My Home,” an intense tango in which Mojo sings:
And the color of my skin and the color of my eyes has meant that even in my homeland I have been mistaken for a stranger in a foreign country But it’s my home. This is my home.
She sounds angry and proud. It’s powerful.
Mojo Juju, without her Snake Oil Merchants, is about to release her latest solo album, Seeing Red/Feeling Blue, next month. That should be worth checking out.
Also recommended:
* Worthy by Bettye LaVette. I normally don’t quote James Taylor much (if at all), but listening to this album made me flash on an old line by sweet baby James: “A churning urn of burning funk.”
To be sure, it’s slow-burning funk, and one of my few problems with the album is that there should have been a few more faster numbers. But like LaVette’s best work since the turn of the century, the soul runs deep. Every song on this album is a raw emotional statement — though that’s also true of just about all the songs on just about all of her albums.
Quick biographical note: LaVette has been in the music biz since the 1960s. But as a result of bad breaks, bad business decisions, and the fickle nature of the entertainment industry, she never quite made it beyond the status of cult favorite.
That changed around 10 years ago, when she met up with producer Joe Henry, who helped LaVette make I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise, an album that not only was worthy (yes, I used that word) of her talents, but also had some commercial appeal, at least for hip adults.
She’s made some fine albums since then — one of my favorites is The Scene of the Crime, which Patterson Hood, of the Drive-By Truckers, produced in 2007 and which had a nice rock ’n’ roll edge.
When it comes down to it, Henry is a perfect fit for LaVette. And Worthy is a sweet reunion.
The album contains a song from each of the cosmic trinity of 1960s rock: “Unbelievable,” an obscurity from Bob Dylan (from the critically disdained 1990 album Under the Red Sky); a Beatles throwaway, “Wait” (from Rubber Soul); and the Rolling Stones’ “Complicated,” which was on their underrated album Between the Buttons.
But LaVette isn’t aiming for some empty-headed ’60s nostalgia here. Remarkably, she makes you all but forget the original versions by these exalted masters. I didn’t even recognize “Complicated” until about halfway through. “Unbelievable,” which kicks off the album, is the toughest and, yes, funkiest thing on the record. And LaVette brings out more emotional depth in “Wait” than the Fab Moptops ever did.
Other gems on Worthy are the slow, bluesy “Just Between You and Me and the Wall You’re a Fool” (written by James Brown, but not that James Brown); the stunning “Undamned,” which begins, “Sometimes the things we believe turn out to be nothing but a scam/I’m just trying to get my world undamned”; and “Stop,” a minor-key Joe Henry tune in which LaVette gets defiant. “Don’t tell me to stop,” she sings.
But I don’t know anyone who wants Bettye LaVette to stop.
Here is a classic American tune that perhaps you first heard in an old cartoon.
Like this one:
Or maybe you remember it from Ken Burn's Civil War series.
Or maybe ever so often it just bounces around in your subconscious, just part of your American musical DNA.
It's called "Kingdom Coming" or sometimes "Year of Jubilo." And it was written in 1862, during the Civil War, by a popular songwriter of the day named Henry C, Work (1832-1884).
Warning: The song was written for a minstrel show. And we all know about minstrel shows. Indeed, this song does contain a racist epithet: "darkies" and it's meant to be sung in minstrel show dialect.
But before we condemn Henry C. Work, consider his life. Born a Connecticut yankee, he was a devout abolitionist and supporter of the Union in the war, It ran in the family. His parents’ house was used as a stop in the Underground Railroad for escaped slaves fleeing to Canada.
Despite the minstrel show conventions found here, the lyrics mostly ridicule the "massa," who has been frightened away from his own plantation by Union gunships.
It's a song of liberation in which the slaves celebrate, locking the cruel overseer in the smokehouse and helping themselves to the massa's liquor cabinet.
“The whip is lost, the handcuffs broken, but the master will have his pay ..."
I couldn't find any Youtubes of the song from the 1860s, but here's an old version by National Barn Dance radio star Chubby Parker:
Will Rogers sang it the 1932 film Too Busy to Work in which Rogers, playing a drifter named "Jubilo," who is reunited with his long-lost daughter,
Singer Pokey LaFarge did a wonderful version of "Kingdom Coming" in the 2013 compilation Divided & United: The Songs of the Civil War. He cleaned it up a little, changing "darkies" to "brothers."
But my favorite version still is that of The Holy Modal Rounders, who recorded two versions of it through the years, both titled "Year of Jubilo." They joyously screw with the lyrics. In the Rounders' versions you don’t see Lincoln’s gunships, you see Lincoln himself with “a piece of paper in his hand,” presumably the Emancipation Proclamation. “Abe Lincoln come, ha ha/Jeff Davis go, ho ho,” they sing.)
They wanna hear some American music, American music They wanna hear that sound right from the U.S.A. ... The whole world digs that sound from the U.S.A.
The Blasters sang it.
I believe it.
That settles it.
And so I'm going to indulge in a little American exceptionalism, musically speaking, and present a little showcase how different styles of the American music we love deeply in out hearts have been reinterpreted by pickers and singers from all over the globe.
Some of the music below might make you laugh at first. That's OK. After all, it's Wacky Wednesday. But after a chuckle or two, listen to these songs. There are some fine musicians here and their art is a testament to the glory of American music (not to mention the kinship of musicians throughout the globe and the strands of human culture that unite creative people everywhere.).
Obviously, American music has been influenced by all sorts of sounds that originated in Europe, Africa, Mexico, pre-statehood Hawaii etc. But hard-working American musicians turned it all into something new. And around the world, those who heard the call soaked it in and added their own sounds and made it new again.
In fact, the artists I like best out of these are the ones who take our roots music and add elements of their own culture. One of the best examples of this is a Romanian blues band called Nightlosers. Years ago I reviewed their albumPlum Brandy Blues. And I still love it.
And how about a little late-'60s/early-'70s psychedelic garage soul from Ghana: I give you The Psychedelic Aliens!
And now, some hardcore, Casbah-rockin' punk sounds from war-torn Syria. This band from Damascus is called Mazhott. And they rock! Their sound is quite addictive.
We sing about stuff that matters to young people, in general, and social [issues]. [For example], the high school diploma, here, is unbelievably difficult, so, we wrote about that. We wrote about fathers forcing their young daughters to marry older men, about our generation that is frustrated and lost and don’t know wot to do with their lives, about less separating of boys and girls, and about how we need more attention and freedom.
Below, from the group's Bandcamp page is their 2013 EP M is for Mazhott. (And if you like these amazing songs, fork over a couple of bucks and buy it! I did.)
And of course, there is Japanese bluegrass. The Ozaki Brothers, Yasushi and Hisashi, are bluegrass pioneers in the Land of the Rising Son, who as pre-teens in World War II, had to secretly listen to the American folk music they love because the government had banned it, according to WAMU's Bluegrass Countrywebsite,
Here's a 2009 video of the brothers singing "Are You Washed in the Blood of the Lamb."
And let's close out with some Argentine rockabilly by a band called Coyotes!
God bless America!
(Hat tip to Tripp Jennings, who inadvertently inspired this with an unrelated Tweet last week,)
Tomorrow, Friday March 20, is the first day of Spring.
About damn time!
So in celebration of the changing of the season, here are three of my favorite songs about spring.
First, Gene Autry, performing the title song -- or close to it-- of one of his classic singing cowboy movies, Springtime in the Rockies, which was released in 1937.
Five years later, Betty Grable made a movie with the same title.
But Autry didn't write this song. A Mormon history blog called Keepapitchinin tells the tale:
The ballad became a hit single for Gene Autry, and later for country singer Hank Snow. The nostalgic words set to their simple melody suggest that this is an old folk song, its words polished by countless anonymous singers. But it is a 20th century creation, its lyrics written by a Mormon girl, Mary Hale Woolsey, born in Springville, Utah, in 1899. Mary attended Provo High School, then Brigham Young University where she served as a class officer and wrote for student publications. With a keen ear for the spoken word, Mary wrote several operettas performed by local theater and church groups and found a ready market for her radio plays. She successfully collaborated with professional musicians. “Springtime in the Rockies” was published in 1929 with music written by Robert Sauer and was followed by other songs in the sentimental western genre – “When the Wild, Wild Roses Bloom,” “Colorado Skies,” and “On the Trails of Timpanogas” were all popular for a time.
So there is our history lesson for the day. Here are two other spring favorites:
Here is Bobby Troup, the guy who wrote "(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66."
But I first heard "Their Hearts Were Full of Spring" by The Beach Boys, who based their version on that of The Four Freshmen. Here is a downright haunting live rendition from sometime in the '80s:
Finally, here's Elvis and some pals with "Spring Fever" from his motion picture classic from 50 years ago, Girl Happy.
No, it's not Saturday morning, it's Wacky Wednesday. But this week I'm going to share some of my favorite cartoon theme songs.
Sometimes at night when I go to bed and close my eyes, these songs play in my head. Taunting me.
Some of the lyrics were inspirational to me. For instance I always aspired to live up to the Yogi Bear credo: "He will sleep to noon but before it's dark, he'll have every picnic basket that's in Jellystone Park."
Somehow I fell short of that. Oh well, on with the show, cartoon pals.
There were a couple of Rocky & Bullwinkle themes, (This one had the best sound quality of what was available on YouTube
Listen to the next one and try NOT to think of Andy Kaufman
Thank you for your service, Beetle Bailey!
This next one actually was aired at night. Big time!
And here's my spiritual guide, El Oso Yogi.
And don't forget my Popeye Serenade in a Wacky Wednesday earlier this year. CLICK HERE
Take a little time to enjoy some good Celt rock via the YouTube.
Let's start with a Marvel team-up of the band that basically started Celt rock and a venerated traditional Irish folk group: The Pogues and The Dubliners
Here's some Dropkick Murphys
I say this next one is Black 47's greatest song,
Flogging Molly
Below is my favorite Hungarian Celt-rock band.
The Mahones
And if you've made it this far, slow down a minute and take in this beautiful weeper:
Friday, March 13, 2015 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist below: OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens
Back in the Saddle by Gene Autry
Lost in the Ozone by Commander Cody & The Lost Planet Airmen
Rainy Day Woman by Waylon Jennings
Georgia on a Fast Train by Billy Joe Shaver
Heartaches by the Number by Ray Price, Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard
Hogs on the Highway by Bad Livers
Take You Down by Texas Martha & The House of Twang
Long Road by Alice Wallace
Trucker Country by Erich McMann
White Dress by Anthony Leon & The Chain
The Ballad of the Alamo by Marty Robbins
Don't Remember Me by The Misery Jackals
Cheap Motels by Southern Culture on the Skids
Stuck in the Mud by Deano Waco & The Meat Purveyors
Too Hot to Handle by Bryan Deere
Banshee by Ed Sanders
For Every Glass That's Empty by Pine Hill Haints
Hot Dog Baby by Hasil Adkins
I Love to Yodel by Carolina Cotton
Small Ya'll by George Jones
Poor Joe by Audrey Auld
Be a Little Quieter by Porter Wagoner
Naked Light of Day by Butch Hancock
Truck Stop by the Liquor Store by the Highway by Kevin Deal
Santa Fe by Augie Meyers
Ruby Don't Take Your Love to Town by Jason & The Scorchers
The Day Bartender by Al Duval
My Old Man Boogie by Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band
Not a Song by Jim White vs The Packway Handle Band
The Western Lands by Slackeye Slim
Knoxville Girl by The Louvin Brothers
Highway Cafe by Tom Waits
A Preacher and a Girl of the Night by Jimmy Patton
Back in 2011, when Spotify was new to these United States, I embarked upon a little "exercise in self-indulgence" and created a Spotify playlist of songs "that were parodied, stolen, alluded to, mentioned in passing in or somehow have a spiritual connection" with tunes on my 1981 smash hit album Picnic Time For Potatoheads.
Posting about that Spotify list on this very blog, I quipped, "If the album actually ever had been successful, here are some of the lawsuits I would have faced."
I thought about that list and the blog post tonight while reading a rant by my friend John Egenes posted on Facebook concerning a lawsuit over music copyrights.
I recalled my blog post, so I looked it up and re-read the thing. (And I fixed a four-year-old typo I hadn't noticed before.)
The entry about "My True Story" by The Jive Five said:
This song itself didn't directly inspire "The Green Weenie," but it's part of the great Doo-Wop Collective Consciousness that did. (I was disappointed that the Frank Zappa catalogue is not on Spotify. My first choice would have been a Ruben & The Jets tune in honor of the late Jimmy Carl Black, who played on "The Green Weenie.")
It occurred to me that in more recent times, I had seen Zappa on Spotify.
So what the hell, I updated it with my favorite Ruben song "Later That Night."
It's the last one on the playlist
I'm keeping the Jive Five tune on there just because it's such a great song.
And here is the song Ruben & The Jets inspired (drums by the late, great Jimmy Carl Black!)
Faith and begorrah and Erin go braugh, it's only five days until St. Patrick's Day!
So here is a look at one of my favorite Irish outlaw songs, the tale of a "brave young highwayman" named Willie Brennan.
Here is one version of the lyrics:
'Tis of a brave young highwayman this story we will tell, His name was Willie Brennan and in Ireland he did dwell. 'Twas on the Kilworth Mountains he commenced his wild career, And many a wealthy nobleman before him shook with fear. Refrain: And it's Brennan on the moor, Brennan on the moor, Bold, brave and undaunted was young Brennan on the moor. One day upon the highway, as Willie he went down, He met the mayor of Cashel, a mile outside of town. The mayor, he knew his features, and he said, "Young man," said he, "Your name is Willie Brennan, you must come along with me." (Refrain)
Now Brennan's wife had gone to town provisions for to buy, And when she saw her Willie she commenced to weep and cry. Said, "Hand to me that ten-penny," as soon as Willie spoke, She handed him a blunderbuss from underneath her cloak (Refrain)
Now with his loaded blunderbuss—the truth I will unfold— He made the mayor to tremble, and he robbed him of his gold. One hundred pounds was offered for his apprehension there, So he, with horse and saddle, to the mountains did repair, Did young Brennan on the moor, Brennan on the moor, Bold, brave and undaunted was young Brennan on the moor. (Refrain) Now Brennan being an outlaw upon the mountains high, With cavalry and infantry to take him they did try. He laughed at them with scorn until at last 'twas said By a false-hearted woman he was cruelly betrayed, (Refrain)
Although others, notably Burl Ives, had recorded it before, it's Tommy Makem & The Clancy Brothers' version from the early 1960s that introduced me to the song.
"This song was widely sung in the Victorian era ... William Brennan really did exist, and was one of the most famous Irish criminals of the period. It is not easy to get authoritative information about him , mainly because legend quickly obscured fact, and even his date of death is not known for sure; 1804 is most cited, but there are other references to 1809, and even 1812, and while most sources claim that he was taken by authorities and formally executed, there is also a tradition that he was killed by one of his potential victims in a highway robbery which went wrong."
The Penguin book notes that like most outlaw ballads, this song turns Willie Brennan into a Robin Hood-like character, "And many a wealthy nobleman before him shook with fear ..."
Basically it was the gangsta rap of its day.
In his cool website ... Just Another Song, folklorist Jürgen Kloss, in writing about "Brennan on the Moor" notes that 18th Century lawyer John Edward Walsh in 1747 claimed that the children's "integrity and sense of right and wrong was confounded, by proposing the actions of lawless felons as the objects of interest and imitation."
So, for the love of God, keep this vile song away from the children!
It should be noted that in some versions, Willie's own mother denounces him for his outlaw ways: "Oh, would to God that Willie had within his cradle died.'" (In some, it's his father who makes this declaration.)
And in some versions, "modern" ones Kloss says, the ghost of Willie still rides: "They see him with his blunderbuss, all in the midnight chill."
A young Bob Dylan dug The Clancys' take on "Brennan on the Moor.
In the liner notes of Dylan;s first Bootleg Series, John Bauldie wrote: "Dylan heard them sing the song in New York and loved it immediately. He told film director Derek Bailey in 1984: `I'd never heard those kind of songs before...all the legendary people they used to sing about - Brennan on the Moor or Roddy Macaulay...I would think of Brennan on the Moor the same way as I would think of Jesse James or something. You know, I wrote some of my own songs to some of the melodies that I heard them do...' "
And a website called Bob Dylan's Musical Roots quotes Liam Clancy: "I met the young Dylan on 4th St. in the Village one morning as I was rushing to rehearsal. 'Hey Liam, hey man. I wrote a song to the tune of `Brennan on the Moor' last night. Wanta hear it man?, only 15 verses man, wanna hear it'."
I'm very thankful that nobody was recording me that fateful night about 15 years ago when I basically cleared out an after-hours party at a downtown Albuquerque bar with my karaoke rendition of "You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma."
So I have some sympathy for the poor folks who basically are the butts of the joke in all these videos.
That being said, I think these are hilarious.
Enjoy
When I first heard this song sung by Dolly Parton on a car radio in the 70s, I was so awestruck, I almost drove my car off the road. When I heard this, I wanted to drive my car at a high speed toward the singer.
I wouldn't want to hear much more of Amy, but she's got personality
This guy isn't as cute or funny as Amy, but that's o.k. He sings even worse.
I have to admit, I don't think I'd sing very well either if I was suspended over a tank full of frogs and water snakes. This apparently is some kind of weird game show in Thailand.
Sunday, March 8, 2015 KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M. 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell Webcasting! 101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's the playlist below
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican March 6, 2015 In some alternative universe, some parallel world somewhere over some rainbow, the return of Sleater-Kinney in 2015 with an album as riveting as No Cities to Love is considered to be as big as the return of the Beatles was in 1975. (This is a separate reality, remember.)
Of course, it’s not quite like that here in the material world.
Truth is, most folks don’t value rock ’n’ roll as much as many of us used to. Perhaps Sleater really was the greatest band alive when it went on “hiatus” nearly a decade ago.
But outside of alt-rock or punk rock circles, it wasn’t and, sadly, still isn’t universally known. I’ve got a feeling that Carrie Brownstein is more famous for her co-starring role on the comedy series Portlandia than she is for her role with Sleater-Kinney.
So, for those not familiar with this important band, here’s the lowdown: This Pacific Northwest group is a trio with Brownstein and Corin Tucker on vocals and guitar and Janet Weiss on drums. Sleater-Kinney’s self-titled debut album was released in 1995, at the tail end of the Riot Grrrl scene, but S-K quickly transcended the generic girl-punk sound.
Vox recently described the group as a “left-leaning, feminism-preaching” band. Maybe that’s true, but the beauty of Sleater-Kinney is that it rarely, if ever, sounded like it was preaching. Any politics in the band’s songs were subtle and personal — no sloganeering or polemics. The group grew and actually intensified through the years, never losing its original frantic energy. It split up after its 2005 album, The Woods.
We rock ’n’ roll die-hards tend to view comebacks with jaundiced, jaded eyes, despite some good ones returning in recent years — Mission of Burma, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and the Afghan Whigs, for example, came back with strong records. No Cities to Love is also one of the good ones: It’s an unmitigated joy.
I consider Wild Flag, the 2011 album by the group with the same name, which includes two-thirds of Sleater — Brownstein and Weiss — (as well as singer/guitarist Mary Timony, who fronted the ’90s indie band Helium) to be a precursor of No Cities to Love. Shortly before then, Tucker made a solo record she described as “middle-aged-mom” music. (As I said back then, despite my senior citizenship, I’m still not ready for “middle-aged-mom” stuff.) But in 2012, she came back with a harder edge with Kill My Blues. With that and Wild Flag, I should have known that reviving Sleater-Kinney wasn’t an impossible dream.
No Cities opens with “Price Tag” — with what first appears as a lazy, almost bluesy groove. But seconds later, the drums kick in, the beat speeds up, and Tucker starts singing urgently: “The bell goes off/The buzzer coughs/The traffic starts to buzz,” and all of a sudden we’re in the middle of the rat race, punching a timecard at a crappy job, stocking shelves and worrying. Tucker sings as if she’s being crushed by the pressure — and the music is even more anxious than the lyrics.
Similarly, the stark, muscular “Gimme Love” is about someone who was born “too small, too weak, too weird” and who is “numb from the wicked this life imparts,” while “Surface Envy” employs images of drowning, though it’s a hopeful song. In the last verse, Tucker sings, “I’m breaking the surface, tasting the air/Reaching for things I never could before.”
But all is not so heavy on this album. In fact, “A New Wave,” sung by Brownstein, who also plays a distorted, rubber-toned guitar, reminds me of The B52s. (The official video for this tune features a cartoon version of the band playing for characters from Bob’s Burgers.)
In the final chorus of “Bury Our Friends,” Tucker and Brownstein sing, “We speak in circles, we dance in code/Untame and hungry, on fire in the cold/ Exhume our idols, bury our friends/We’re wild and weary but we won’t give in.”
Here’s hoping Sleater-Kinney stays wild and never gives in.
Also recommended: * Ballsierby The Grannies. America needs this music. The country needs musicians like these, who aren’t afraid to dress up like nightmarish parodies of old ladies and play crazy, aggressive, funny, profane, politically incorrect, and ridiculous music.
The Grannies don’t care if they make it on network TV or get invited to the White House — or anywhere else where there is polite company. They don’t care that they’ll never play the Super Bowl — though anyone who has survived one of their shows knows the Super Bowl would be much cooler if they did.
This album is punk rock — punk rock as the good Lord intended it to sound. It’s 11 snot-slingin’, beer-spittin’, breakneck, gut-bustin’ punk rock songs with titles like “Wade in Bloody Water,” “Outta My Skull,” and “Hillbilly With Knife Skills,” And there’s a crunching cover of the Beastie Boys’ “Fight for Your Right.”
Grannies in action, San Marcos, Texas. 2014
Then there are a couple of remixes of Grannies songs, my favorite being a total re-imagining of one of my Grannies faves, “The Corner of Fuck and You” A producer named Ben Addison used flutes, soft horns and an ultra-cheesy beat to turn the song into something that sounds like it's from some bad British swingin’ ‘60s romantic comedy
The album is produced by Seattle titan Jack Endino, who’s been behind the knobs on some of your finer grunge and punk records.
Blog Bonuses
First off, here's a live show broadcast on NPR a couple of weeks agoCLICK HERE
Here's that Bob;s Burgers video
Here are a couple of songs by The Grannies. First, an old one
Pat Hare, born Auburn Hare in Cherry Valley, Arkansas, played guitar with some of the great classic bluesmen -- James Cotton, Little Junior Parker, Bobby "Blue" Bland, the late great Johnny Ace, Rosco Gordon, Ike Turner and Muddy Waters. (He played on Muddy's Live at Newport, 1960 album.)
And his playing was unforgettable.
Nick Tosches, in his book Where Dead Voices Gather, described Hare's style as "black-magic electric-guitar conjurings through overamplified distortion [that] foreshadowed those of Hendrix ..." Cub Koda, in the Allmusic Guide, called Hare's playing as "highly distorted guitar played with a ton of aggression and just barely suppressed violence ..."
Though he never got famous, Hare undoubtedly would be a darling of the blues scholars and rabid early rock 'n' roll zealots because of his musicianship.
Unfortunately, he's better known for something that had nothing to do with his guitar playing.
On Dec. 15, 1963, after a day of drinking, Hare at the time was living in Minneapolis with a married woman named Aggie Winje, who, Hare told a friend, was thinking of moving back with her husband. After spending sometime fighting with Aggie, Hare told a neighbor "That woman is going to make me kill her." Another neighbor called police after hearing shots fired. Two officers responded. And one of them was shot to death by Hare. Aggie had been shot also.
The other officer pumped some lead into Hare, but he survived. Aggie hung on for nearly a month, but died Jan. 22, 1964.
According to music journalist James "The Hound" Marshall in his detailed account on an excellent site called The Houndblog: "When questioned, Hare remembered only that he was drunk and claimed to have no recollection of shooting anyone."
But to add the ultimate twist to this squalid little tale, nearly a decade before, at Sun Studios in Memphis, Hare recorded a jolly little ditty called "I'm Gonna Murder My Baby."
In May of '54, Sam Phillips decided to record Pat Hare under his own name. James Cotton was scheduled to play harmonica on the session but the two got into a fist fight that day, and Cotton disappeared. Instead, Hare is backed up by Israel Franklin on bass and Billy Love on piano on the two tunes. The first is a monstrous reading of Dr. Clayton's "Cheatin' & Lyin' Blues," re-titled on the tape box "I'm Gonna Murder My Baby," it was and still is, one of the most foreboding and ominous recordings in the entire blues canon ... Phillips chose not to release Hare's disc which would not be heard until it slipped out on a bootleg on the Redita label in 1976, and later appeared on Charley Records' Sun Blues Box in the eighties.
Hare was convicted of murdering his baby and the cop who came to help. He died of lung cancer in prison in 1980.
He's still a resident of Rock 'n' Roll Hell, where he's currently in a band with these guys ...
