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.”

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

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

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."