REMEMBERING MAGOCSI

Theresa "Tink" Gomez e-mailed some photos of Alex Magosci today. She said I could post them here, so here's a few:

Alex with Tink











Alex with The Rev. Horton Heat











Alex with Carlos Ortiz and a Cowgirl waiter











And I found a couple of mine that are a little better than the ones I posted last night. Both are from the infamous trip to South by Southwest in 1995 :



An Austin horseback cop tells Alex and Sandy he won't have any Junk on his streets.














Junk finally plays SXSW. Their opening act was Irma Thomas.

ALEX MAGOCSI 1964-2006

(Alex is the one in the center of this photo, taken at the first Thirsty Ear Festival, 1999)

I just found out over the weekend that Alex Magocsi -- a former co-worker, a fellow music freak and a friend -- died last week.

I had to write his obit today. I'll post that below.

Before that, though, let me share a few personal memories.

I got to know Alex through The New Mexican. We had similar tastes in music. I was a fan of his band Junk, which featured Alex on drums and his girlfriend Sandy on guitar and vocals. I used to catch them playing at weird "underground" venues like "Waggy World" off Baca Street and "The Junkyard," which was the converted mechanic shop off Siler Road, which also served as Alex's residence in those years. Once he hired me to be the bouncer for a Junk show at the Junkyard. I earned a 6-pack of beer and didn't have to crack any skulls the whole night.

In March 1995 I went to South by Southwest with Alex and Sandy. Or at least part of the way. Their old school bus, which I dubbed "The Junk Heap," broke down in Clovis. I ditched them, catching a ride to Lubbock, where I got on a plane. But they showed up a couple of days later and I documented their frustrating efforts to play on the streets for festival- goers.

They finally secured a spot right off Sixth Street, a block or so from where Irma Thomas was doing a free concert. The second Irma stopped, Alex and Sandy started up. The show was a triumph, at least until the Austin cops shut them down. But for the four or five songs they played, they made $200 in tips and cassette-tape sales.

The trip back to Santa Fe was hellish though. The Junk Heap broke down again near some little Texas Podunk, where we stayed for hours until it got fixed.

The next year Alex moved back to Texas for awhile. During that time he started an online magazine called Re:Verb. This was the first place where I was ever published on the Web. Re:Verb ran Terrell's Tune-up in a slightly altered form. (The logo above is my old Re:Verb logo.)

All Alex's friends know that the last five years or so were terrible ones for him. He called me one morning three years ago to tell me that his friend Howie Epstein had ODed. It was then that I realized Alex was in bad shape.

I saw him about a year after that. He came into the Capitol news room babbling that Johnny Cash had died as the result of some conspiracy. Alex said and that he'd gotten "too close to the truth" and was scared for his own safety.

I was scared for him too. But not because of any Nashville conspiracy.

Today when writing his obit, I recall telling him, "Dammit Alex straighten up, because I don't want to have to write your damned obit." Actually I'm not sure whether I really told him that or if I just thought of telling him that.

It doesn't matter.

God damn it, Alex.

(Here's a post about Alex in The Dallas Observer blog)

As published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
April 4, 2006


Alex Magocsi, local music writer, Web publisher and one-time leader of what he called "Santa Fe's most dysfunctional band" has died.

Magocsi's body was found March 27, which according to a database was his 42nd birthday, in his car in Tesuque on property where he had planned to move this month.

The cause of death has not been determined, Sheriff Greg Solano said Monday.

“The (Office of the Medical Investigator) felt he died of a medical condition brought on by years of drug abuse,” Solano said. The OMI is waiting for toxicology reports before making a final determination, the sheriff said.

There was no evidence Magocsi had abused drugs immediately before he died, Solano said, and no evidence of foul play. He apparently died a few days before his body was found, Solano said.

Tanya Kern, who had agreed to rent a mobile home to Magocsi — and who discovered his body in his 1986 Cadillac on her land — said Monday she was “traumatized” by Magocsi’s death.

“He was trying so hard to start over and get back on his feet,” she said. “He’d been so happy and was so excited about moving here.”

Kern had given Magocsi permission to sleep in his car on her property. Previously, he’d been living in a motel, she said.

Magocsi, a Texas native, was music editor for the weekly Dallas Observer before moving to Santa Fe in the early 1990s. He worked for The New Mexican, first as a dispatcher, later as an assistant editor and columnist for the newspaper’s weekly magazine, Pasatiempo. He was responsible for a column called “Dr. Dis” and a later column called “30-Second Notes.”

But his real love was music. He was a drummer who, along with a girlfriend, started a group called Junk.

Magocsi proudly touted Junk as “Santa Fe’s most dysfunctional band.” Junk’s problems keeping a bass player were so comical, Magocsi once created a handbill advertising for a new bassist and listing all the past ones and the reason they left.

He returned to Texas in the mid-1990s. There he created an Internet music-and-pop-culture magazine called Re:Verb. After a short stint in Dallas, he returned to Santa Fe, where he again worked for The New Mexican (until about five years ago) and started a new band, a short-lived country/punk band called Lucy Falcon.

Magocsi moved to New York in 2001 to take care of his ailing father, a friend, Brian Combs, recalled Monday. His father died shortly after his son’s arrival. “He never really got over his father’s death,” Combs said. It was the start of a dark period in Magocsi’s life, one marked by increasing alcohol and drug abuse, friends say.

After returning to Santa Fe, Magocsi befriended Howie Epstein, the former bass player for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, who died of a drug overdose in 2003.

Magocsi said he and Epstein had started a local band tentatively called The Bottomfeeders. Epstein died before the band ever played in public.

Combs said in recent months, Magocsi had begun reaching out to old friends he hadn’t seen in years.

Kern said her mother, Mansi Kern, had rented a Tesuque house to Magocsi several years ago. “He was excited to be moving back here,” Tanya Kern said.

Kern’s property is on a road called Avenida de la Melodia. “I guess that was appropriate,” Tanya Kern said.

“Like my mother said, ‘Alex died in his favorite place.’"

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, April 2, 2006
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
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
Remember by John Lennon
Everything/Anything by The Yayhoos
Dogfood by Iggy Pop
Big Damn Roach by The Immoral Lee County Killers
Eagleeye by P.W. Long & Reelfoot
Ding Dong by Johnny Dowd
Fake Blood by Mission of Burma
Bonnie Brae by The Twilight Singers

Poland Hasn't Died Yet by Kazik
From the Archive of Polish Jazz by Kult
What a Wonderful World by Nick Cave & Shane MacGowan
Another Glass of Wine to Give Succor to My Ailing Existence by Frank London's Klezmer Brass Allstars
Lookin' Good Polka by The Polkaholics
From Black to Purple by Mbconn
New Orleans Fuzz by David Thomas & Two Pale Boys

Waila Set
Song From Way Back by The American Indians
Little Wild Pony by El Conjunto Murrietta
Ten in One by Crow Hang
Cholla Polka by Mike Enis & Company
A Minor Cumbia by Santa Rosa Band
Lizard Dance Polka by Los Papagos Molinas
Waila by Jam Band D
El Gallo by Elvin Kelly & Los Reyes

Lowdown by My Morning Jacket
Sex, Fashion and Money by The Grabs
I Slapped My Wife in the Face by Big Jack Johnson
When She Was My Girl by The Persuassions
Streets of Fire by The New Pornographers
Patriot's Heart by American Music Club
Green Eyes by Mark Eitzel
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

TIME OF THE SEASON

The sheriff spills the beans (or spills something) about President Bush coming to Santa Fe next week.


Read all about it HERE

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, March 31, 2006
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Soba Song by 3 Mustaphas 3
Middle Man by The Bottle Rockets
Easy On Yourself by Drive-By Truckers
Who Were You Thinking Of by The Sir Douglas Quintet
Matadora by Cordero
Silver City Waltz by Bayou Seco
Blue Angel by Hundred Year Flood
Nashville Radio by John Langford

Oh Carolina by Raising Cane
Star Witness by Neko Case
Back Street Affair by Van Morrison
Large Marge by Bob Cheevers
Liquored Up by Southern Culture on The Skids
Just Squeeze Me by Janis Martin
Kung Fu Cowboy by Alan Vega
Brain Damage by The Austin Lounge Lizards


Buck Owens Tribute Set
All songs by Buck unless otherwise noted
Excuse Me (I Think I Have a Heartache)
Only You (Can Break My Heart)
Big Game Hunter by Cornell Hurd
Together Again
Play Together Again Again by Buck & Emmylou Harris
Before You Go by Doyle Holly
Beer Can Hill by Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam, Bob Teague & Buck
Big in Vegas
Don't Let Her Know by Ray Charles
You Ain't Gonna Have Ol' Buck to Kick Around No More

Tiger Whitehead by Johnny Cash
Mercenary Song by Steve Earle
Girl Who Never Smiled by Eric Hisaw
Gather the Family 'Round by Ed Pettersen
That Loving You Feeling Again by Roy Orbison & Emmylou Harris
The Show Goes On by Kris Kristofferson
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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

MIDGETS & MUDBOGS

Looks like Gov. Richardson's efforts to bring major sporting events to New Mexico are starting to pay off.

Tomorrow, Socorro, N.M. will host a mudbog with actual midget wrestling during the intermission.

This is not an April Fool's joke.

This from The Albuquerque Journal, (New Mexico's #1 source for midget wrestling news!):

Puppet the Psycho Dwarf opens the show with a comedy routine, then there will be a 45-minute no-holds-barred midget wrestling match. Puppet insists the wrestlers on the tour are to be called midgets - including himself. Nobody, he said, wants to see "Little people wrestling." ... The show, which is probably the most UN-PC two hours of anything, will be the half-time act during the annual New Mexico Tech Off Road Club 2006 Mudbog, at 2 p.m. Tickets are $5 each, or $10 per car ...

If you can't get to Socorro tomorrow, at least check out the trailer for Half Pint Brawlers Volume 1.

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: WAILA UBER ALLES

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
March 31, 2006

Are you ready for Native American polka?

Some of the craziest, most infectious high-energy dance music of the Southwest is waila, sometimes called “chicken scratch,” created and perfected by the Tohono O’odham tribe (formerly called Papago) of southern Arizona.

There’s even a Waila Festival that takes place every May at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Canyon Records, that venerated purveyor of American Indian music both traditional and contemporary, recently re-released four of its classic 1970s waila albums on two CDs.

Waila! consists of the groundbreaking Chicken Scratch! (featuring two bands, El Conjunto Murietta and Mike Enis & Company) and its sequel, Chicken Scratch with Elvin Kelly y Los Reyes & Los Papagos Molinas. Both were originally released in 1972.

Then there’s The American Indians Play Waila, which consists of the first two albums by the Tohono O’odham band called The American Indians.

Waila — a word that comes from the Spanish baile (dance) — is predominantly instrumental music in which the lead instruments typically are the saxophone and accordion. At least since the rock ’n’ roll era, waila bands usually also include electric guitar, electric bass, and drums.

The history of waila is one of those tales of cultural cross-pollination that make America great. When German immigrants moved to Texas and introduced the accordion to the Mexicans already living there, the resulting proto-Tex-Mex sound swept the American Southwest (and northern Mexico, for that matter).

Tohono O’odham musicians, who had been introduced to European instruments by Catholic missionaries, took up the new sound, though the accordion wouldn’t become a staple in Tohono O’odham dance bands until the last half of the 20th century.

According to the Waila! liner notes, until the late ’40s, the typical band consisted of a fiddle, an acoustic guitar, bass drum, and snare drum. Sax and accordion came later — as did the wah-wah pedal, which American Indian John Manuel hooked up to his accordion in 1976 to produce some otherworldly sounds.

The nearby Pima tribe also embraced waila. Most of Los Reyes’ members, for example, are Pimas.

The songs come from old tribal melodies, Mexican songs, and European sources. Waila bands play a number of styles — polka, mazurka (originally a Polish folk-dance style), chote (a form of the German schottisches), and Mexican cumbia.

On some recordings, the guitars seem just slightly out of tune and the drums just a little clunky. I’m not sure if this is done intentionally, but the effect gives the music a strong DIY edge, an aura of roughness that distinguishes it from some of the squeaky-clean, overly precious polka records out there.

Also recommended

* Polka Uber Alles by The Polkaholics. Did I say something about “squeaky-clean, overly precious polka”? I sure wasn’t talking about The Polkaholics, a Chicago band that once declared itself “Polka Enemy Number One.”

This is basically a guitar-based (No accordion! No sax! No tuba!) power trio led by "Dandy" Don Hedecker.

Basically, The Polkaholics are to polka what The Pogues and The Dropkick Murphys are to traditional Irish music.

They’re loud, drunk, rowdy, and irreverent. But Hedecker knows his stuff about polka. For instance, he’s a fan, friend, and champion of Li’l Wally Jagiello, the old Chicago polka king whom Hedecker has referred to as the Elvis Presley or Muddy Waters of polka.

These polka punks play extremely hopped-up, hyperdrive polka melodies that celebrate the trappings of the polka lifestyle — crazy dancing, greasy sausages, polyester clothes, and, of course, beer, beer, and more beer. Song titles include “Let’s Kill Two Beers With One Stein,” “Beer, Broads and Brats,” and “Beer, Breakfast of Champions” (which has a melody similar to “Did You Ever See a Lassie” and a chorus of “So drink chugga lugga, drink chugga lugga.” )

My personal favorite on this album is “Too Smart Polka,” which contains the immortal line, “She’s sophisticated; I’m intoxicated.”

Sure, they’re a novelty group in their bowties, frilly vests, and Revenge-of-the-Nerds glasses. But there’s no denying that The Polkaholics are fun. As the song says, “Polka Your Troubles Away.”


*Carnival Conspiracy: In the Marketplace All Is Subterfuge by Frank London’s Klezmer Brass All Stars. Why should I review this album? London says it all in his liner notes:

“Esteemed reader, you have purchased the greatest recording of all time, a CD so powerful that it will cure you of all ailments from impotence to flatulence. Let my bowels be ripped out and roasted if I am exaggerating. Simply carrying this disc on your person will lead to untold fortunes! Wrap this compact disc in warm, moist linen and apply it directly to any afflicted area of your body. It has the strength to cure Toothache, Ulcer and STDs. Is this nothing?”

No, it’s something. While I don’t know about its medicinal value, this might just be the coolest klezmer album I've ever heard.

With the help of “40 artists from eight countries,” trumpeter London, a founding member of The Klezmatics, has infused Jewish jazz with Brazilian carnival music, marching-band music, and even a little Mexican conjunto. At its best, it sounds like mad circus music from another dimension.

London, besides his talents as musician and arranger, has a wonderful sense of the surreal, as evidenced in his song titles: “Oh Agony, You Are So Sweet Like Sugar I Must to Eat You Up,” “Another Glass of Wine to Give Succor to My Ailing Existence,” and “In Your Garden Twenty Fecund Fruit Trees.”