Reminds me of the good old days when you'd wake up, drop some LSD, listen to some Strawberry Alarm Clock records then go out and protest for higher taxes. (Hey, I still like The Strawberry Alarm Clock!)
'No Drilling!' 'No Nukes!' 'No Copyright Laws!'
Actually when I first saw the Pearce ad, I was reminded of a TV commercial for another album advertised on TV a few years ago. Maybe Pearce can find these guys if he decides to make a television version of the print ad.
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican August 8, 2008
They were a mysterious explosion of comedy, kitsch, experimental theater, neo-Beat poetry, and pop culture run amok — backed by a supertight band navigating a turbulent sea of funk, hip-hop, metal, blues, tango, and whatever else floated by. They were funny and outrageous. They were insightful, often-poignant storytellers, celebrating hustlers, street people, burnouts, and even the occasional dental hygienist with love on her mind. Not only that, they were snazzy dressers — in a riot-at-the-Goodwill-store kind of way. Hands down, The Gluey Brothers were the most original band to ever call Santa Fe their home. The two frontmen, King Hummus (Logan Richards) and MC Tahini (Jim Goulden) disappeared around the turn of the century, ending up in California, where they continued the path of The Gluey.
But they’re back. (Actually Tahini has been living in Santa Fe for the last year or so, though Hummus remains in Los Angeles.) They’ve got a cool new DVD, Rio Vista: Visuals, Volume One, which features Gluey music videos, footage from live performances from 1994 to 2005, a documentary, an interview, and assorted weirdness.
The DVD captures a big chunk of the old Gluey magic. There’s the Brothers’ 1998 national-television debut on Penn & Teller’s Sin City Spectacular (a short-lived FX network series and that’s no BS.) They do a seven-minute version of their signature tune and classic show opener, “Gluey Brothers Creep.”
One of my favorite Gluey Santa Fe songs is here — a 2000 live performance of “Piñon Lurker,” a high-charged guitar boogie about a guy you shouldn’t make eye contact with if you see him walking down Agua Fría. The DVD wouldn’t be complete without “Coffee Shop Tribute,” which features some of the Brothers’ funniest, if most obscure, trivia references: “I saw Reuben Kincaid with a shoddy perm” is one of my favorite lines in contemporary music. Unfortunately, the song is abbreviated, coupled with a snatch of “Freedom Rap.”
Mark Sommerville created a surreal Flash cartoon for “Stabbing Trilogy (in Five Parts).” My favorite part is the talking-catfish segment. Lots of Gluey tunes would make great cartoons, so I hope to see more of these.
In putting this together, Sean “Momma Bates” Browning reached way back in the Gluey archives. There are versions of “Donut Quota” and “Hash House Line” from the boys’ second performance (in Van Nuys, California, 1992), when it was just Hummus and Tahini with a drum machine.
The initial version of Rio Vista: Visuals, Volume One is a limited-edition run. Each copy is numbered and hand-signed.
If you missed out on these guys in the 1990s, it’s not too late. Let The Gluey Brothers creep into your life. They play at 8 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 8, at Santa Fe Brewing Company, 27 Fire Place. Admission is $8. It’s their first show here since they played at the Paramount, right before it closed.
Also recommended:
* Can You Deal With It by Andre Williams & The New Orleans Hellhounds. This R&B codger — who wrote the ’60s soul classic “Shake a Tail Feather” — is apparently indestructible. He’s in his early 70s and has survived drug problems, homelessness, poverty, and obscurity. But he keeps cranking out hot and nasty albums. In the past decade, he has teamed up with bands like The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, The Dirtbombs, The Sadies, The Diplomats of Solid Sound, and now with a funky punky unit called The New Orleans Hellhounds to make some of the grittiest raunch-rock known to man. He might look like a nice, harmless old guy, but once he starts singing, you realize you’re flirting with danger.
Williams romps through a number of new songs about his favorite subjects: sex, girls, and sex. He gives dirty old men a good name. He saves his best for the first with the title song, in which he sings about “the rhythm of your booty” and “them great thunder thighs” as a metallic guitar plays tag with a diabolically slinky organ.
“Pray for Your Daughter” could almost be a Gary U.S. Bonds party-in-the-studio song — that is, if Bonds were partial to honking harmonicas and tunes celebrating crack whores. Meanwhile, “If It Wasn’t for You” is a soul ballad that sounds like something Van Morrison would love to sing. The saxes remind me of the band on Bob Dylan’s Street Legal.
On “Never Had a Problem,” The Hellhounds sound like a crazy mash-up of The Clash, The Who, and Ruben and the Jets, as Williams growls, “I ain’t never had a woman who did not kick me out. ... I ain’t never had a habit I could not live without.”
As always, Andre sounds like he means business.
* The Diplomats of Solid Sound featuring The Diplomettes. You can find soul music in some of the strangest places. Here’s a band from Iowa — yes, that Iowa — full of punchy funk. The Diplomats of Solid Sound started out as an instrumental group, sounding a lot like Booker T & The MG’s with a horn section. On this album, they’re joinea trio of female singers. Sharon Jones won’t lose any sleep over The Diplomettes, but these Iowa gals get the job done.
“Come on in My Kitchen” (not the Robert Johnson song) is a cool, grooving workout, while “Hurt Me So” is thick and smoky. There are actually two versions of that song. A faster-paced dub remix closes the album. But my favorite is the rocking “Budget Fro,” which gives organ man Nate “Count” Basinger and the horn guys a chance to shine.
So yes, Virginia, there is soul in Iowa. I guess you could call this sound “ethanol funk.”
I had a brief interview with U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel this afternoon. He was at Gabriel's restaurant north of Santa Fe at a fund-raiser for 3rd Congressional District candidate Ben Ray Lujan.
"He was in a one-man Klezmer band called Rahmbunctious Eman."
How could I not ask him about it?
He looked at me like I was crazy. "No," he said.
According to the footnote in Wikipedia, the klezmer claim supposedly was in a 2005 Rolling Stone profile. However, looking over the article, there's nothing about Rahmbunctious Eman in it.
After embarassing myself, Emanuel said, "When you asked me about music, I thought you were going to ask me about Wilco. I have a Wilco radio ad. Or Ryan Adams ... you ever heard of him?"
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican August 7, 2008
Rio Arriba County residents who recently received a mailer attacking state Rep. Debbie Rodella, D-Española, got a surprise if they followed the instruction to call Rodella and “remind her she works for you, not her big money contributors.” CLICK HERE for the Robinson mailer (Thanks, Heath.)
Keegan King, director of New Mexico Youth Organized — the Albuquerque-based group responsible for both mailings — said Wednesday that the Rodella mailing used the same template as the Robinson mailing.
Both mailings skewer the lawmakers for siding with special interests and campaign contributors. Both list percentages of campaign contributions from various industries.
For example, based on campaign finance reports going back to 2004, 29 percent of Rodella’s campaign funds have come from health care, insurance and pharmaceutical companies, 15 percent from the banking and payday loan firms, and 13 percent from liquor and tobacco interests.
Robinson’s mailing came up in the recent lawsuit filed by Robinson, Sen. James Taylor and Rep. Dan Silva (also Albuquerque Democrats) asking a judge to overturn the results of the June primary. The three defeated lawmakers claim their opponents acted with nonprofit groups and others to evade state campaign finance laws. NMYO’s Legislative Accountability Project is named in the lawsuit.
The group is associated with the Center for Civic Policy, which the lawsuit claims received $1.5 million from billionaire George Soros, a charge the center has denied.
Besides Rodella and Robinson, King said three other lawmakers — Silva, Sen. Lidio Rainaldi, D-Gallup, and Sen. Leonard Lee Rawson, R-La Cruces — were the targets of the Legislative Accountability Project.
King said the project wasn’t aimed at the primary election. Rainaldi isn’t seeking re-election, while Rodella had no primary opponent and has no general-election challenger.
Why these five legislators? “They’ve taken a lot of money from special interests,” King said. “They’ve voted against ethics reform. People should know their record and who their contributors are.”
“This is about the special session.” King said. Indeed, the mailing with the wrong phone number says, “When the Legislature addresses the health care crisis facing our families, will Debbie Rodella represent you or her big money backers?”
After the phone number screw-up was brought to the attention of NMYO, the group created another mailer with the correct number for Rodella.
Again referring to the special session, the mailer says, “Will health care reform pass? Special interests will try to stand in the way. They’ve already been handing out big campaign contributions.” Then in big letters: “The Legislature is not an auction.”
Citizen of the month: Being mayor of Santa Fe involves handing out a lot of proclamations. But on Wednesday he issued a proclamation full of barbs.
In a ceremony on the Plaza, Mayor David Coss named Ed Tinsley the “Santa Fe Resident of the Month” award.
Tinsley — the Republican candidate for Southern New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District — has a house in Las Campanas and operates his business out of Santa Fe. Tinsley also has a ranch in Lincoln County, which is in the southern congressional district. Some opponents in June’s Republican primary blasted Tinsley for his Santa Fe ties. Lately, his Democratic opponent, Harry Teague, also has picked up on the line of attack.
But the man being “honored” here on Wednesday wasn’t invited to the event. Coss said he didn’t think Tinsley would attend.
According to a 2006 news release from the National Restaurant Association — an organization Tinsley once chaired, “Tinsley is the president and (chief executive officer) of Tinsley Hospitality Group, LLC, a Santa Fe, N.M.-based restaurant intellectual property company and master franchisor of K-BOB’s Steakhouses, which franchises operations of 22 stores located in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado.”
Coss pointed out Tinsley doesn’t have any restaurants in Santa Fe, saying the Republican doesn’t want to pay his employees the city’s minimum wage. Tinsley has criticized the “Living Wage” law. In 2003, he said the higher wage is the main reason he decided against opening a K-BOB here. In a 2003 article in the online Market Watch, Tinsley called the “Living Wage” a “virus that is crippling businesses and stagnating local economies across the country.” Coss admitted the award was a “political statement” and in fact is the first and only “Resident of the Month.”
“We usually do ‘Mucho Gracias’ awards,” Coss said. Wednesday’s certificate, which looked like it came out of a photocopy machine, was far less ornate than most certificates that come out of the mayor’s office. For instance, the “Honorary Santa Fean” award that Mayor Louis Montaño, who died last week, presented to the late rock pioneer Bo Diddley in 1985 was a lot fancier.
It’s also questionable whether Tinsley would qualify as “resident of the month” in Santa Fe because his part-time home is outside the city limits. “He’s a resident of the Santa Fe community,” the mayor said.
The saga of Jerome Block, Jr. continues. In addition to not telling The New Mexican and other newspapers the complete truth about his past arrests, he also apparently gave misleading information in pre-primary interviews about his educational background.
Also, the U.S. Senate race is heating up a little.
Republican Steve Pearce is going nuclear. No, not personally. He's still an easy-going guy. But his ad is a plug for nuclear energy. Read about it HERE. You can watch the video below.
Sunday, August 3, 2008 KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M. Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM email me during the show! terrell@ksfr.org
OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres I Wish That I Was Dead by The Dwarves Taxi Driver by The Rodeo Carburettor Night of Broken Glass by Jay Reatard Wedgie Wipeout by The Wipeouters Day Time Girl by Sky Saxon I'm in With the Out Crowd by Sam the Sham & The Pharoahs Thanks a Lot by Dengue Fever Don't Bring Me Down by The Animals Dog Food by Iggy Pop
Penny & The Young Buck by The Gluey Brothers Can't Take 'em Off by Andre Williams & The New Orleans Hellhounds Sweet Tooth by King Khan & The Shrines Puddin' Truck by NRBQ Snake Charmer by The Puddle Jumpers Hot Tamale Baby by Buckwheat Zydeco Can't Judge a Book by Bo Diddley Louie Louie by The Kingsmen
Pappa Did the Chicken by Little Sammy Boss Lady by The Detroit Cobras The Ballad of Hollis Brown by Thee Headcoats Davey Crocket by Thee Headcoatees Buzz the Jerk by The Pretty Things Hey Little Girl by Thunderbirds Don't You Want a Man Like Me by Little Brother Baila Bailme by Al Hurricane Rub Every Muscle by Half Japanese
Tremblin' White by Hundred Year Flood Freckle Song by Chuck Prophet Listen by Screamin' Jay Hawkins Take a Bath by Charles Sims La Sombra by Cordero Don't Change on Me by Ray Charles I Believe in Tomorrow by Tiny Tim & Bravc Combo CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Friday, August 1, 2008 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@ksfr.org
OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos Guitar Man by Junior Brown It Comes to Me Naturally by NRBQ Such a Hammer by Marlee MacLeod Just Like Geronimo by The Dashboard Saviors Stupid Boy by The Gear Daddies Heart of Saturday Night by Jonathan Richman Garbage Head by Eric Ambel She Took a Lot of Pills and Died by Robbie Fulks The Story of Susie by Billy Ray
Cool Water by Hank Williams Juice Boogie by The Gluey Brothers Those Kind of Things Don't Happen Everyday by Jim Lauderdale Naked Man by Randy Newman Desperate Life by Gary Gorence TTT Gas by The Gourds Narcocorrido Nuevo Laredo by R.G. Stark
Baboon Boogie by Jimmy Murphy I Swear I Was Lying by Kim Lenz & Her Jaguars Miss Lonely by Jerry J. Nixon Flying Saucer Rock 'n' Roll by Billy Lee Riley No Dice by Ronnie Dawson Marie Marie by The Blasters The Ballad of Thunder Road by Robert Mitchum Midnight Train by Johnny Burnette & The Rock 'n' Roll Trio Death of an Angel by Big Sandy The Crossing by Ray Campi She Wants to Sell My Monkey by Tav Falco
Infinite Night by Carrie Rodriguez Black and Blue America by Chip Taylor I Just Saw the Rock of Ages by The Holmes Brothers with Levon Helm Chain Gang by Fred Eaglesmith My Rose Marie by Stan Ridgway Gravity by Freakwater CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
Hats off to Joe Monahan and whatever alligator discovered that the "hippies" in the recent Steve Pearce newspaper ad originally appeared on the cover of some cheesy As-Seen-On-TV album.
