TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: LENNON'S "WORST ALBUM" RECONSIDERED

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
December 16, 2005

Imagine this scenario. It’s December, 1971 and President Richard Nixon is sweating like a maniac in some underground White House bunker. He’s just read a FBI report on a concert in Ann Arbor. Mich. -- 15,000 screaming hippies raising their unwashed fists and singing along with an ex-Beatle to demand that some pot-smoking anti-war crank be sprung from prison. The president shivers as he reads every word the FBI agent had written down: “…"gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta set him free."

It wouldn’t end there. Nixon knows that bastard John Lennon was intent on uniting with crazy radicals and marijuana addicts. Not just to disrupt the convention and lead the youth vote against him in next year’s election like some sinister foreign pied piper, but to force him to strip naked and dance with Mao Tse-tung.

He had to be stopped. The FBI was trying, but they weren’t doing enough. The INS were a bunch of impotent gimps. Liddy and the boys were busy with other projects.

There was only one he could turn to, someone who had warned him years ago about those nefarious Beatles, their drugs and their communistic ways. Someone who had offered to help and had already been commissioned as a special law enforcement officer.

Nixon calls in Ron Zeigler and beats him with a flyswatter until he draws blood. That feels better, Nixon sighs. He picks up the phone to make the call.

“Rosemary, get me Elvis Presley.”

XXXXXXXXXXX

Last week, on the 25th anniversary of John Lennon’s assassination, I awoke to a radio interview on Democracy Now with Jon Weiner, a history professor at the University of California who has written two books about Lennon’s political activism in the early ‘70s and the Nixon administration’s attempts to have Lennon deported.

“He wanted to be part of what was going on,” Weiner told Amy Goodman. “What was going on in New York was the anti-war movement, and he became friends with Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman and Bobby Seale and other activists … That's what got him in trouble with the Nixon administration.

And yes, according to Weiner an undercover FBI agent actually attended a “Free John Sinclair” concert starring Lennon and actually “wrote down every word John Lennon said, including all the words to the song (“John Sinclair”) , including `gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta set him free.’ ” (Sinclair was the manager of the MC5 and leader of a group called he White Panthers. He’d been sentenced to 10 years in prison for possessing two joints of marijuana.)

After hearing the interview, I knew that I gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta get myself a copy of Some Time in New York City, which was re-released last month on CD. So I did.

This work, in which Yoko Ono wrote and sang about half the songs, generally is reviled as Lennon’s worst album.

The basic rap on the record is that a mighty Beatle, the mad genius responsible for “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “I Am the Walrus” had been reduced to writing third-rate, radical chic political screeds.

It’s true, writing protest songs is tricky business. Recently I received a CD called Christmas in Fallujah by someone called Jefferson Pepper. I can’t figure out how someone could make a song about the ravages of war sound so smug and banal.

On the other hand, the Iraq war has produced several top-notch protest songs -- Terry Evans’ “My Baby Joined the Army” (written by Ry Cooder), “Can’t Make Here,” by James McMurtry” Robert Cray’s “20.” It’s also shown that a good protest song can be timeless. Pete Seeger’s “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War,“ Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” and Mose Allison’s surreal “Monsters of the ID” (revived recently by Stan Ridgway) with lyrics about “goblins and their hags … out there waving’ flags…” still resonate.

For the most part, Lennon and Ono’s lyrics to these songs fall well short of “Masters of War” or “Monsters of the ID.”

Only a few of them are outright embarrassing. The worst undoubtedly is “Angela” about jailed radical professor Angela Davis. With a goopy, string-sweetened arrangement, Lennon sings, “They gave you coffee/They gave you tea/They gave you everything but equality.”)

However, Some Time in New York City isn’t nearly as bad as detractors say. And some of the songs are good old-fashioned kick-ass rockers.

Lennon’s band here was a gritty and greasy New York group called Elephant’s Memory, led by sax maniac Stan Bronstein.

“John Sinclair” and “Attica State” are high-powered stompers featuring Lennon on a mean National guitar. “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” about the troubles in Northern Ireland, might also have its roots in Lennon’s rivalry with Paul McCartney. McCartney had recently released a tepid and polite tune called “Give Ireland Back to the Irish.” Lennon’s song, aided by Yoko’s weird warble and Bronstein’s sax, blew McCartney’s song to smithereens. And the autobiographical “New York City” is good, mindless fun.

The oft-vilified Ono even has a couple of good contributions here. “Sisters O Sisters” is the type retro girl-group charmer that would have fit in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. But her song “We’re All Water” with its great beat and crazy images -- “There may not be much difference between Chairman Mao and Richard Nixon/If you strip them naked” -- should have made everyone forgive her for breaking up The Beatles.

There’s some wonderful live bonus material here, including a powerful “Cold Turkey.” My only beef here is that in this release Capitol Records cut some of the Lennon jams with Frank Zappa, which appeared on previous versions of Some Time In New York City, replacing it with a bland Yoko song “Listen the Snow is Falling” and “Happy Xmas (War is Over).” This is a great holiday hit, but it’s already included on who knows how many Lennon compilations.

In the end, Tricky Dick didn’t really have much to worry about in regard to John Lennon. But what a time of wonder, when a rock ‘n’ roll star could make a president shake.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: AN AMERICAN IS A VERY LUCKY MAN

As published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
March 18, 2005

Listening to a batch of recent -- and fairly recent -- CDs in my never-ending pile of promos, I can’t help but be drawn back to a strange little song from my elementary school music class.

I’ve written about it before in this very column, but it continues to haunt me. It was a patriotic little ditty called "An American Is a Very Lucky Man."

For years, I didn’t know where the song came from. As far as I knew, it was written by some music teacher in Oklahoma City.

Through the magic of Google, I just learned that it was written by George Mysels and J. Maloy Roach, a songwriting team best known for the inspirational Perry Como hit "One Little Candle," and that at one point it was performed by Fred Waring -- I’m not sure with or without His Pennsylvanians.

Yes, like the Candle song, "Lucky Man" was dangerously corny, but it had a nice populist twist that made an impression: "The man who builds a house of wood and a man who welds a tank/ is just as proud and just as good as the man who owns the bank."

But it was the last verse, a celebration of cultural diversity, that I believe helped shape my wide tastes in music (as well as food.)

"An American is a very lucky guy/ He can eat chow mien or borscht or pizza pie ..."

By extension, that means you can enjoy polka, New Orleans jazz and strange strains of jazz fusion and ‘70s Blaxploitation soul -- as performed by Frenchmen.

I sure do. An American is a very lucky man.

*Let’s Kiss by Brave Combo. The Combo call this CD their “25th Anniversary Album.” It’s hard to believe the boys from Denton have been playing their high-energy mix of polka, rock and anything that crosses their collective mind for that long. But they sound as if they still love doing it.

This is a collection of newly recorded material. The liner notes say they’ll wait until their 50th anniversary to do a retrospective.

The Combo doesn’t break much new ground here. They still do a basic pumped-up polka beat driven home by the horn section of Jeffrey Barnes (clarinet and saxes) and Danny O’Brien (trumpet). Guitarist Carl Finch still has that goofy warble when he signs and bassist Bubba Hernandez specializes in those irresistible Mexican polkas.

And they still have a knack for crazy cover tunes. They do the old tune "Bumble Bee" (best known by The Searchers, but done best by Laverne Baker), complete with an instrumental section of "Flight of the Bumble Bee."

They make "Red River Valley" sound as if it were written for a polka band. Plus there’s two versions of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" and a minute-long version of The Simpsons theme.

*Putomayo Presents New Orleans. The pantheon of New Orleans musical vast is so great it would be ridiculous to even try to represent it on one disc. Therefore, I have to quibble with the title of this CD.

And I’m irritated because the 35 or so pages of liner notes give precious little recording date information on the songs here.

But listening to the good-time music included on New Orleans, it’s hard to stay grumpy very long.

The emphasis of this compilation is on Crescent City jazz. You won’t find any Professor Longhair, Fats Domino, Clarence “Frogman” Henry or Neville Brothers. The only famous contributor from the New Orleans rock world here is Dr. John, who does a soulful “Basin Street Blues.”

Some of my favorites here are Louie and Louie -- Armstrong and Prima.

Satch’s “Tin Roof Blues” is a slow blues recorded in 1966, late in his career. It’s not nearly as powerful as his early recordings, but he could still blow.

Prima does a snazzy version of “Basin Street Blues,” complete with his trademark scat singing. Even though at two minutes it’s less than half as long as Dr. John’s version, Prima's is more satisfying.

One of the strangest cuts here is Dr. Michael White’s “Give it Up (Gypsy Second Line).” With White’s wailing clarinet, this tune suggests a connection between New Orleans jazz and klezmer.

*Memento by Soel. Close your eyes when you’re listening to this album and try not to visualize Richard Roundtree or Melvin Van Peebles or Pam Greer duking it out with The Man. This music could be straight out of some long lost Blaxploitation flick.

True, you can hear little modern touches of hip-hop and electronica here and there. It’s pretty obvious on the trippy cut called “Earth Mother” with its percussive loops of tablas and dub-like bass and on “To This World” with its relentless hip-hop funky drum loop.

But the spirit of movies like Shaft and music like “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” prevails through all the tracks of Memento. There’s even some vocal samples of the militant proto-rap group The Last Poets on a couple of songs.

Surprisingly this album primarily is the work of French hipsters. Trumpet player Pascal Ohse is the mastermind here, while his longtime collaborator Ludovic Navarre, aka St. Germain, is producer and musical director.

While there are samplers and synthesizers at work here, real live musicians carry the major load. Edouard Labor’s flute on “We Have Died Already” is downright hypnotic.

Ohse and Navarre have done a magnificent job absorbing the music of the Superfly era and synthesizing it into something timeless.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: THE RAP (SHEET) OF KHAN

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
November 27, 2009

It’s a good thing that the King Khan & BBQ Show isn’t as famous as the Beatles and that President Obama probably doesn’t hate and fear Arish “King” Khan as much as President Nixon hated and feared John Lennon.

Improbable as this comparison is, I couldn’t help but recall Lennon’s tribulations when the Nixon administration tried to get him deported as an “undesirable alien” because of a drug bust. What prompted this memory was Khan’s arrest with his road manager, Kristin Klein, in Kentucky earlier this month on charges of possession of psychedelic mushrooms.

The arrest of Khan, a Canadian citizen, occurred on the road between the band’s gigs promoting its new album, Invisible Girl. 

Here’s the group’s official statement on Nov. 17, via Pitchfork:

“On November 16, 2009 Kristin Klein entered a guilty plea to 2nd degree possession of a controlled substance in Christian County, Kentucky. Ms. Klein was driving a rental vehicle that was randomly stopped at a safety checkpoint. Officers located a controlled substance in the cab of the vehicle. Ms. Klein was unaware of the contraband and the validity of her license was indeterminable at time of arrest. Under KY law a driver of a vehicle is responsible for its contents. Therefore, Ms. Klein entered a guilty plea and is scheduled to appear on April 2, 2010, to provide proof of her valid license.”

The Kentucky New Era newspaper reported that Khan and two others with the KK & BBQ entourage “were allowed to enter a pretrial diversionary agreement. The drug possession charge against each of them will be dropped if they stay out of trouble for a year, said [Khan’s local lawyer Rick] Boling. They were ordered to pay court costs.”

There were fears throughout Khan fandom that this bust would be a terrible chapter in the war on drugs — being arrested in Christian County, Kentucky, for Pete’s sake! As the River Front Times’ St. Louis Music blog put it, “Keep in mind, it’s not hard to imagine a scenario where cops in a tiny Kentucky town unfairly hassle a crazy looking Indian man wearing a huge shark-tooth necklace.”

But it looks like the judge was pretty lenient, almost more concerned about the driver’s license than he was the mushrooms. Of course, the catch is that Khan has to stay out of trouble for a year. That could be the real trial.

While Khan is also known for his soul revue The Shrines (and less so for The Tandoori Knights, another two-man band, and the garage/punk/lo-fi/gospel supergroup The Almighty Defenders, whose self-titled album I reviewed here a few weeks ago), some of his finest work is with Mark Sultan. Sultan, aka BBQ, is another Canadian, who was Khan’s bandmate in a Montreal band, the Spaceshits.

You might think of two-man guitar/drums groups in terms of stripped-down blues bashers like Flat Duo Jets and the early White Stripes. There’s certainly that element at work in KK & BBQ.

But what distinguishes this dynamic duo is its anchor in raw doo-wop. The basic sound, therefore, is punk-rock roar, embellished by some Ruben & The Jets/Sha Na Na/rama-lama-ding-dong silliness but based on some seriously pretty melodies and occasional sweet harmonies.

It’s all there in the opening cut, “Anala,” on which Khan handles the lead vocals. It wouldn’t be hard imagining The Penguins or The Moonglows singing this.

This is followed by the title cut, which features a folk-rock guitar that sounds inspired by The Beatles’ “Ticket to Ride” or The Searchers’ “When You Walk in the Room.”

But my favorites are the ones on which Sultan’s high voice soars, such as “I’ll Be Loving You” and “Tryin’.” Sometimes Sultan sounds like a more ragged Sam Cooke — or, cynics might say, a hipster version of Steve Perry of Journey. Whatever, the boy can sing.

The most interesting Sultan-led song on Invisible Girl is “Third Avenue.” It starts out and ends as a seriously greasy doo-wopper, but it’s got a strange psychedelic freak-out section featuring guitar and organ. Unfortunately the song that’s getting the most attention is “Tastebuds,” which is obscene, juvenile — and annoyingly catchy. Looks like maybe the two are trying to expand their fan base by becoming fratboy faves.

I just hope they weren’t blasting this on the car stereo when the cops stopped them in Kentucky.

Also recommended:

* My Shit is Perfect by Bob Log III. If a two-man band is just too crowded for you, check out one of the most fun one-man bands out there — and “out there” is a good description — Mr. Log’s music might be for you.

This is just good down-home stomping blues with Log’s trademark distorted vocals (he performs in a motorcycle helmet) and some scattered electronic embellishments. Log was once part of the Arizona-based blues/noise duo called Doo-Rag back in the mid-’90s.

Log’s basic sound on this album is a funky, clunky hoedown. But it’s obvious that Log actually knows how to pick, as he shows every so often — including with the speedy acoustic guitar workout on the instrumental “Bucktooth Potato.”

My favorite here is “Manipulate Your Figments.” It’s one of the best electronically mutated blues tunes I’ve heard in a while.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: New Ones from Dowd and Slackeye

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Feb. 13, 2015

Johnny Dowd writes his songs like a sniper aims his gun. Sometimes his songs are like a captured serial killer’s confession. They’re full of regret, shame, venom, horrifying humor, and uncomfortable truths.

Dowd’s new album, That’s Your Wife on the Back of My Horse, has a title based on one of the most cocky, swaggering lines in the history of the blues, from Johnny “Guitar” Watson’s “Gangster of Love”: “The Sheriff says, ‘Is you Guitar Watson?’ in a very deep voice/I say, ‘Yes sir, brother Sheriff, and that’s your wife on the back of my horse.’ ”

This time out, Dowd played virtually all the instruments himself — exceptions are vocal contributions from Anna Coogan, who sounds so much like Dowd’s old bandmate Kim Sherwood-Caso it’s spooky; a guitar solo on “Words Are Birds” from Mike Cook; and a brief appearance by Dowd’s regular band on the end of “Teardrops.”

Dowd himself has compared the record to his first one, Wrong Side of Memphis. That late-1990s album is also mostly just Dowd on a variety of instruments. But it is more acoustic and rootsy, based in country and blues. On this new one, the music behind the lyrics is crazier than ever: low-tech electronica; rasty, distorted guitar licks; insane beats from an ancient drum machine over Dowd’s growling drawl and Coogan’s angelic melodies. It’s “New Year’s Eve in the nuthouse,” as Archie Bunker would say.

The album kicks off with the title song, Dowd reciting the lyrics that serve as a taunting invocation:
“That’s your wife on the back of my horse/That’s my hand in your pocket/Around my neck is your mother’s locket/Your sisters will dance at my wake/Your brother will blow out the candles on my birthday cake/That’s your wife on the back of my horse.”

This is followed by a funky, boastful rap, “White Dolemite,” a salute to the heroic persona of “party” record artist and blaxploitation star Rudy Ray Moore. “I live the life men dream about/Stand up, people, give me a shout,” Dowd declares, as Coogan responds, “Hot pants! He needs a spanking.”

J. Dowd
Photo by Kat Dalton

On “The Devil Don’t Bother Me,” Dowd sounds like a death-row inmate contemplating theology while awaiting injection. “An angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other/Jesus, He’s my savior, but the devil is my brother.”

And that's just one of Dowd’s characters who seem like a coiled snake about to strike. On “Nasty Mouth,” Dowd’s narrator spews harsh judgment about a woman, who, I would guess, rejected him. “I’m just trying to forget the words that came out of your nasty mouth,” he spits over ambient blips and bleeps and a dangerous fuzz guitar.

Another favorite here include “Female Jesus,” which has a bluesy, swampy groove and is about a rural Okie prostitute who, Dowd says, “satisfied my body/She purified my brain/Then she called the undertaker and put my casket on a train.” Easily the album’s most melodic track, The song “Why?” sounds like a ’60s soul ballad left in the forest to be eaten by wolves, while the upbeat “Sunglasses” could have been a summertime pop hit … on the planet Neptune. (“Boys who wear sunglasses get laid,” Coogan informs us.)

At the end of the last song, “Teardrops,” a slow, dreamy (well, nightmarish) dirge about the fall of a powerful man (“In a world of little men, I walked like a giant/If I’d have been a lawyer, God would’ve been my client”), Dowd thanks his audience and an announcer says, “The ultrascary troubadour has left the building. With your wife. On the back of his horse.”

Left the building? Well, maybe. But I bet he actually just went to the dark alley behind the building.

Where he’s waiting ...

Also recommended

* Giving My Bones to the Western Lands by Slackeye Slim. Joe Frankland is another singer-songwriter who likes to explore the shadows, though his music is rooted in the country, folk, and spaghetti-western realms. Under the name Slackeye Slim, Frankland’s songs frequently are cast in an Old West setting, though his themes of sin, redemption, loneliness, desperation, and freedom are universal.

It’s been four years since his previous album, El Santo Grial: La Pistola Piadosa, which I compared to Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger. Since then, he’s moved from Montana to a ranch near Mesa, Colorado. He says he recorded this album in “dilapidated buildings” as well as on his front porch, “as hundreds of cattle grazed quietly just a few yards away.”

The body count on Giving My Bones isn’t nearly as high as it was on El Santo Grial, even though the second song, “Don Houston,” is about a guy who, for no apparent reason, shoots a stranger in the face. “Every time he pulled the trigger, it was the most beautiful thing you ever saw,” the narrator explains. “It was an art. His brush was a bullet, his paint was blood, his canvas was the earth, the rocks, the trees, and the dirt.”

Don Houston and El Santo Grial’s antihero, Drake Savage, would have a lot to talk about. Assuming they didn’t kill each other first.

But not every song on the new Slackeye album deals with crazy violence. One recurring theme here is psychological healing.

Take the sadly beautiful “I’m Going Home.” (I’ll be extremely surprised if anyone comes up with a prettier song than this one this year — or in the next decade.) Accompanied only by a banjo, a harmonica, and his stomping foot, Slackeye’s foghorn voice is perfectly suited to this tale of a lonesome journey to the nadir of his life. Riffing on lines from the old song “Hesitation Blues,” he sings, “Whiskey was the river and me, I was the duck/I lived down at the bottom and I could not get up/At first I thought I’d found it, a place where I belonged/But I had no home.”

Then, on “Cowboy Song” — a herky-jerky waltz that, with a few Balkan embellishments, could almost be a Beirut song — riding the range is the prescription that rebuilds a broken soul: “A man alone in the wilderness/That’s where his soul is born/As long as he’s singing his cowboy song.”

Keep singing, Slackeye.

You can listen to and/or name your own buying price for Giving My Bones to the Western Lands at www.slackeyeslim.bandcamp.com. But even though you can snag it for free, pay him something. Don’t be a jerk!

It's Video time!

Here's the title song from Johnny Dowd's new album



And here's a song called "Cadillac Hearse" from that album



And here are a couple of my favorite new Slackeye Slim songs





And here's a latter-day version of "Gangster of Love" by Johnny "Guitar" Watson

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: Happy Birthday, Old Man Zimmerman!

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
May 20, 2011


Bob Dylan turns 70 years old on Tuesday, May 24.

Seventy years old.

I’m not going to gush here about what Old Man Zimmerman’s music has meant to me — how hearing the riddle-ridden, six-minute “Like a Rolling Stone” and The Byrds’ version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” on AM radio in Oklahoma in 1965 was like hearing the call of oracles; how hearing him sing “Girl From the North Country” with Johnny Cash in 1969 filled me with optimism for a divided nation; how the bartender used to always play “Baby Let Me Follow You Down” by Bob Dylan and The Band every Sunday at the end of my set when I used to play in a local bar called Faces in the late ’70s; how spooky it felt the time I walked into the old Lincoln County courthouse and someone was playing an instrumental song from Dylan’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid soundtrack; how I laughed when Dylan had to cut short a show in Albuquerque because dozens of teenagers, including my daughter, spontaneously joined him onstage to help him with the chorus, “Everybody must get stoned.”

Naw, I’m not going to get into all that.

I’m just going to say happy birthday, Bob, and share my list of a dozen of my favorite Dylan covers by a whole mess of artists who surely have their own Dylan stories to tell.

The Dylan dozen: my favorite Bob covers

1. “Blind Willie McTell” by The Band. This is one of Dylan’s greatest tunes. A wise critic once wrote that it’s “one of those weird Dylan tunes that, a listener might suspect, contains the entire mystery of America secretly encoded in its lyrics.” Originally recorded for his 1983 Infidels album (and left off, perhaps because it didn’t fit the level of mediocrity Dylan was shooting for with that record), it wasn’t released until his first Bootleg Series box set in 1991. Three years later it appeared on The Band’s first album without Robbie Robertson, Jericho. New Orleans blues great “Champion” Jack Dupree sat in on piano while Levon Helm and Rick Danko shared lead vocals.

2. “Every Grain of Sand” by Giant Sand. Dylan released a higher percentage of crap in the ’80s than he did in any other decade. But there were some jewels among the garbage, and this song, from his 1981 album Shot of Love, is one of them. Howe Gelb and his Arizona cohorts are known for getting goofy, but here, backed by the band Poi Dog Pondering, Howe played it straight with this near-8-minute gospel-tinged opus, and it’s nothing short of soulful.

3. “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” by The Byrds. Dylan covers made up a huge chunk of the early Byrds’ repertoire. Their first hit was an abbreviated version of “Mr. Tambourine Man.” And their version of “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” is the definitive version. But their greatest Dylan song was “Baby Blue.” They did a jangly folk-rock version in the early days, but they got it right with the slow, mournful take on their unjustly overlooked Clarence White-era 1969 album The Ballad of Easy Rider. (Runners-up on this song: 13th Floor Elevators, Them.)

4. “Stepchild” by Solomon Burke. “Anything you ask, I’m willin’, I just can’t beat Bob Dylan,” Burke ad-libs in this song on the late soul giant’s 2002 masterpiece Don’t Give Up On Me. I bet Dylan disagrees. This Dylan blues rarity never appeared on any of his own releases.


5. “Billy 1” by Los Lobos. This song, originally on Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, becomes a drunken cantina stomp in the hands of David Hidalgo and the boys. You can find it on another soundtrack album, the I’m Not There soundtrack, which is full of fine Dylan covers. This track is a good companion for “Señor (Tales of Yankee Power),” another Mexican-marinated song on that soundtrack, performed by Willie Nelson and Calexico.

6. “Absolutely Sweet Marie” by Jason and The Scorchers. This is country rock with an emphasis on the rock. A close runner-up is C.J. Chenier’s zydeco-flavored take on this song on Blues on Blonde on Blonde.

7. “I Pity the Poor Immigrant” by Richie Havens. Backed by a sweet steel guitar, Havens pours his guts into this song. Nobody, including Dylan, ever did it better. It’s on the long-out-of-print album Richard P. Havens, 1983 (which was actually released in 1969.)

8. “Saved” by The Mighty Clouds of Joy. I didn’t appreciate Dylan’s much-reviled late ’70s-early ’80s “born again” era until I heard the excellent 2003 compilation Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan. The Clouds’ contribution is probably the most energetic track on the album.

9. “Like a Rolling Stone” by Johnny Thunders and Wayne Kramer. Ex-New York Dolls Thunders teamed up with former MC5 member Kramer (who was fresh out of prison on a drug rap) to form a punk-rock supergroup. They made this Dylan classic bleed. Runner-up: the version by Drive-By Truckers.

10. “Lily, Rosemary and The Jack of Hearts” by Mary Lee’s Corvette. Back in 2002, this New York roots-rock band performed all the songs from Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks from start to finish and released it as a CD. This 10-minute romp captures the spirit of the original. On the first verse singer Mary Lee Kortes let a drunken audience member do a bad Dylan impersonation. She wisely took back the mike.

11. “My Back Pages” by The Magokoro Brothers. Yes, Dylan is big in Japan. This tune, sung in Japanese, is from the Masked and Anonymous soundtrack.

12. “Wallflower” by Doug Sahm. This country waltz is a highlight from the 1973 country-rock classic Doug Sahm and Band. Sir Doug is joined by Dr. John on organ, David Bromberg on dobro, and Dylan himself on harmony vocals and lead guitar.

Oh, did I mention that this is a baker’s dozen?

13. “All Along the Watchtower” by Jimi Hendrix. This one’s so obvious I almost didn’t list it. Dylan liked Hendrix’s version better than his own. I do too.

* My own Dylan birthday tribute: Hear some of the music mentioned above and more. A whole lotta Bob! 10 p.m. Sunday night on Terrell’s Sound World, Santa Fe public radio, KSFR-FM 101.1 and streaming live at www.ksfr.org

UPDATE: My former colleague Jason, who's even more learned in Giant Sandlore than I am, pointed out that it's the group Poi Dog Pondering backing Howe Gelb on "Every Grain of sand." So I added that above.

BLOG BONUS!


Here's some Dylan covers that didn't make my list and which you won't hear on my radio show (unless I get in a twisted mood.)





And the undisputed King of the Golden Throats ...

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: BLUES FROM THE BOOMERS

I knew I was forgetting something. I should have posted this on Friday. What the heck, I'm on vacation!

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
July 3, 2009

On his new album Pentatonic Wars and Love Songs, Otis Taylor, the blues bard of Boulder, does what he does best — blues-based musical meditations that often tell grim stories. But at the same time, he's taking his music to strange new levels.

Like most of his recent work, the new album is almost all acoustic, though guitarist Gary Moore goes electric on a few tunes. Cornet player Ron Miles is back, and there are African drums on some songs, giving several numbers a spooky jazz feel.

Taylor uses the phrase "trance blues," but I don't really like that label. True, Taylor's music sometimes gets spacey and repetitive. But trance blues doesn't even begin to describe some of Taylor's bolder sonic experiments here.

Take the song "Talking About It Blues." There are some moments toward the end of the song that have distinct echoes of Miles Davis' On the Corner. And that's even more true with the eight-minute epic "Walk on Water." To his credit, Taylor lets his sidemen stretch out.

As he's done on previous albums, Otis steps back on several songs and lets his daughter Cassie Taylor sing lead. Cassie, who also plays bass on some tracks, is really starting to come into her own. That's apparent on the sad, yearning "Sunday Morning."

There's a new version here of "Mama's Got a Friend" — the story of a kid coping with the fact that his mom has taken a lesbian lover — which first appeared on his Below the Fold album. (Mama's always up to something in the Otis Taylor universe. On another album, Double V, there was the song "Mama's Selling Heroin.") Called "Mama's Best Friend" on the new CD, the song is sung by Cassie.

At first it seems that Cassie's voice and the arrangement are so ethereal that the song loses a little bit of its original punch. But this track has its own weird charms. With Jason Moran's piano, Miles' cornet and percussion by Nasheet Waits on trap set and Fara Tolno on djembe drums, the song evolves into a jazzy voodoo workout.

And it's a great lead-in for the next song, "Maybe Yeah," also sung by Cassie. Here, Waits drums like he's in a marching band.

Taylor's previous album, Recapturing the Banjo, centered around that instrument. There's less of it on Pentatonic Wars, but the song "Country Girl Boy" is a banjo-driven stomper.

The bloooooziest song here is "Young Girl Down the Street." Over a slow funky blues-thud beat, some nasty organ licks by Brian Juan, and stinging electric guitar by Jonn Richardson, Taylor taunts a former lover by bragging about his latest conquest.

As on previous Taylor outings, the singer deals with issues of race. In the past, he has sung about slave ships and lynchings. But here, in the song "I'm Not Mysterious," the racism is far more subtle. It's about an 8-year-old black kid deeply in love with a white girl his age. His mom tells him that he's too young to be in love, but he suspects that might not be the real reason she's trying to discourage the relationship. It's heartbreaking when he sings, "I've got a little red wagon. You can use it anytime."

Pentatonic Wars and Love Songs is Taylor's 10th album in about 12 years. "I'm 60. I don't have a long time," Taylor said in a recent interview with his hometown paper, the Colorado Daily. Referring to his first career, as a rock 'n' roller in the '60s and '70s, he explained, "I stopped music for a lot of years, so I have to do a lot of records in a short period of time."

The sound of his catching up has been rewarding.

Also recommended:

Sweetheart Like You by Guy Davis. Davis is another baby-boomer bluesman. The frog-voiced guitar picker's latest album has covers of songs by Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Son House, Big Joe Williams, and Bob Dylan, plus a couple of tunes based on Leadbelly songs.

He does justice to most of these. I especially like his slow-grooving take on Williams' "Baby, Please Don't Go" (well, slow compared to the rocked-out versions I love by Them and by The Amboy Dukes) and his banjo-and-bass version of Muddy's "Can't Be Satisfied."

But far better than the covers' original songs. There's the wistful "Sweet Hannah," which is about an affair with a married woman, while "Steamboat Captain" sounds like a long-lost song from some movie about the deep South.

"Bring Back Storyville" is a funny little romp about a guy nostalgic for New Orleans' fabled whorehouse district. "I had me a woman used to hold my jug/Kept it in a trap door under the rug/I'd come there, lay back and drink my fill/Bring back, bring back Storyville."

Davis claims he wrote "Going Back to Silver Spring" — which has a Blind Willie McTell feel to it —about a girl who promised to send him naked photos of herself if he wrote her a song. "Hey! Where are those pictures at?" he writes in the liner notes.

Speaking of funny liner notes, Davis credits the idea of "Slow Motion Daddy" to a story about a celebrated hobo named Slow Motion Shorty as told by Utah Phillips and a naughty story involving Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip, and Sammy Davis Jr.

Most of the album is basic acoustic blues. But Davis subtly incorporates a little technology in "Words to My Mama's Song," which features "vocal percussion" (you've heard this on recent Tom Waits works) and a mid-song rap by his son Martial, who is in his late teens or early 20s.

The one misstep on this album is Dylan's "Sweetheart Like You." Not that's it's a bad version, and I'm not saying it doesn't belong on the album. It's just that it's so slow that it's a questionable way to kick off the album. "Storyville" or "Slow Motion Daddy" would have worked better in the lead spot.

LIVE BLOGGING THE AFL-CIO DEBATE

3:23 pm MDT: Yup, I'll be trying this live blog thing again in about an hour and a half. The Democratic candidates are in Chicago for the AFL-CIO (or as Archie Bunker used to call it, the UFO-CIA) forum, which starts at 5 p.m. Mountain Time. But no need to watch the TV when you can follow all the fun right here.

I said that the Dem candidates are all there. That's not quite true. Turns out Mike Gravel wasn't invited. He has some opinions on that, which you can find HERE.

One good thing about most the debates so far this cycle is that the various sponsors have done away with those tedious opening statements by candidates. Most of them always sounded canned. But if you miss them, MSNBC has canned some for you . The pre-recorded opening statements by the participating candidates are HERE.

5:02 pm MDT: It's starting. Richardson was first to be introduced. I wonder if it'll be another 20 minutes before he gets a question.

5:05 pm MDT: AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says "Think of this as a big job interview." Could that be a good omen for our gov?

5:09 pm MDT: This debate is OUTSIDE -- Soldier Field in Chicago. Both Hillary and Obama have pandered to Bears fans.

5:11 pm MDT: No question for Bill yet. I wonder if he'll say he's a fan of both the Chicago Bears and Detroit Lions.

5:14 pm MDT: Edwards just gave an indirect slap at Hillary over accepting lobbyist money. Looks like Richardson will once again be the last to get a question.

5:17 pm MDT: Kucinich gets big applause when he says to get out of NAFTA and WTO.

5:18 pm MDT: Richardson asked about selling toll roads to private companies. "No, privatization is not the answer here." He gets a big hand when he says he'll be proud to take union financial support. Calls for investing in power grids and highways. Talks about bringing "new infrastructure."

5:23 pm MDT: Scrap NAFTA? Richardson says from now on no agreements with countries that have child labor and don't allow collective bargaining. He also says on his first day he'll fire all the union-busting lawyers in the government. I thought that was the day he's ending the war in Iraq. Busy day.

5:29 pm MDT: Hillary says she's noticed other candidates are "using my name." She's not here to attack Democrats, she said. She gets big reaction when she says she's stood up for 15 years to the right-wing attack machine and come out stronger.

5:31 MDT: Richardson says China is a 'strategic competitor" and says we should pressure China to get better on human rights and to do something about Darfur.

5:33 pm MDT: The Dems seem to hate China nearly as much as the GOP hates the Mexicans.

5:34 pm MDT: MSNBC is doing commercials?

5:37 pm MDT: Richardson is asked what if Al Qaeda takes over Iraq after we withdraw. He insists the real peacekeeping can begin after the withdrawal.

5:41 pm MDT: Biden slaps Obama saying those of us who want to invade Pakistan will end up sending our troops back to Iraq.

5:49 pm MDT: Obama says it's "amusing" that some of those who voted for the war are now criticizing him for wanting to be on the "right battlefield" in the war on terror.

5:50 pm MDT: Hillary reminds everyone that Pakistan has nukes.

5:53 pm MDT: Good emotional 3-way debate between Obama, Hillary and Dodd on Pakistan/Iraq issues. Interrupted for another commercial. Did Lincoln Douglas debates have commercials?

5:55 pm MDT: The widow of a West Virginia miner killed last year gets to ask the first question. Of course it's about mining safety. Biden gives a short answer but goes back to a Pakistan question. Gets booed.

6:01 pm MDT: Richardson gets question from Iraq vet who came home to find his factory closed and job gone. He says he was just in Newton, Iowa, the guy's hometown. Richardson promises he'll protect the pensions and then promises OSHA protection????? Also health benefits for vets. He plugs his "Hero's Health Card." Never answers the question about closing factories.

6:02 pm MDT: An emotional question from a guy who can't afford healthcare for his wife. The crowd, including the questioner applaud Edwards for saying workers deserve the same benefits as the bosses and that he'd establish universal health care.

6:11 pm MDT: Edwards argues with Biden about how many picket lines he's walked. Edwards says lots.

6:13 pm MDT: Edwards gets applause when he bashes scabs. How about goons and ginks and company finks?

6:16 pm MDT: I'm liking this debate better than others. Keith O is letting the candidates actually scrap with each other. And the union members have are asking good hard-edged questions, many based on hard living. Beats the hell out of snowmen and bad folksingers.

6:17 pm MDT: And the union audience is nice and rowdy. Another commercial.

6:20 pm MDT: The Lightning Round!: Richardson: Big applause: "My vice president would not be Dick Cheney." Any of the other candidates would make a good VP, he says.

6:24 pm MDT: The difference between trial lawyers and lobbyists: According to Edwards, lobbyists are paid to rig the rules against us. If trial lawyers gave money to jury, it would be called bribery, but when lobbyist give to politicians ...

6:27 pm MDT: Would Obama honor Barry Bonds at the White House? Sports should be something kids should look up to. Praises Hank Aaron. Dodges the question.

6:32 pm MDT: Richardson want to bring country together in a bi-partisan way. Heal the divisions of the Iraq war. The question was "Does it bother you the 2012 race will start right after you take office." For the record, Richardson said yes, it would bother him before he went into his "let's get together" rap.

6:33 pm MDT: Hillary says she's going to tell people to "bring your brooms" to Washington to "clean it up." Bring your brooms. Insert cheap witch joke.

6:35 pm MDT: Kucinich says he the Seabiscuit of this race. He told me the same thing in 2003.

6:36 pm MDT: That's it. Gotta write some stuff for the paper. I might come back later to fix some typos.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: SONGS FOR THE SEASON

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
December 17, 2010

Ten years ago this week, I wrote in this column a list of my Top 10 favorite Christmas songs, which may have been based on a previous version that was published about a decade before that.

Everyone’s tastes change a little through the years, but looking over that list, I’ll stand by those selections. I still play those songs at home and on my radio shows every year.

But there is lots of great Christmas music out there. So here’s a new list of my favorite Christmas songs that I cherish almost as much as the ones on the old list.

1. “Santa Doesn’t Cop Out on Dope” by Sonic Youth. The band made up of Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo, and Steve Shelley has never been known for its humor. So it’s not going out on much of a limb to declare that this is hands down the funniest song they ever recorded. It’s a Martin Mull tune, originally recorded by the singer-comic in the mid-’70s as a parody of smug moralists trying to use “hep lingo” to rap to the youth about drugs and such. Sonic Youth adds a few layers of absurdism, not to mention crazy noise.

2. “All For Gloria” by Elastica. This is a rock ’n’ roll reimagining of “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” by a predominantly female band that burned out way too quickly in the ’90s. The recording is from a John Peel BBC Christmas show, which ended up on an album called Elastica: The Radio One Sessions. But I bet most American fans first heard it on Just Say Noël (on which it was called “Gloria”) — the same 1996 Geffen Christmas collection that featured the Sonic Youth song mentioned above. On Radio One, Elastica also does a pretty cool version of “We Three Kings” called “I Wanna Be a King of Orient Aah.”

3. “Must Be Santa” by Brave Combo. Bob Dylan took Combo’s crazy pumped-up polka arrangement of this old kiddie song for his Christmas album last year (and made a hilarious video that was an internet sensation). I like the original better.

4. “White Christmas” by Otis Redding. Nobody should have even attempted to sing this Christmas chestnut after Redding worked it over. Like he did with practically everything he ever recorded, the man just sang his guts out.

5. “Eggnog” by The Rockin’ Guys. The Guys are a punk band from Conway, Arkansas, which I never would have discovered except for the goodwill of a former colleague who’s an Arkie expat. The song is a tender reminiscence of the singer’s “poor old peg-leg pappy” and how the family would get together at Christmas and “decorate his stump.”

6. “Blue Christmas Lights” by Chris Hillman & Herb Pedersen. Buck Owens co-wrote and recorded this sad Yuletide honky-tonker. But Hillman & Pedersen, who covered it in the ’90s, make it haunting with their harmonies.

7. “Christmas in the Trenches” by John McCutcheon. This is a touching ballad about the famous 1914 Christmas truce during World War I. British and German troops spontaneously laid down their arms to sings carols and celebrate the holiday before getting back to the serious work of killing one another the next day.

8. “Can Man Christmas” by Joe West with Mike “The Can Man” Burney. Burney — who collects aluminum cans around the Lone Butte area for recycling — narrates a couple of anecdotes involving his Santa Claus suit as West and his band play a slow, sad melody.

9. “Star of Wonder” by The Roches. Unaccompanied, sisters Maggie, Suzzy, and Terre sing otherwordly harmonies on this tune written by Terre.

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10. “Christmas Boogie” by Canned Heat with Alvin & The Chipmunks. Yes, a melding of two great bands. Guitarist Henry “The Sunflower” Vestine is amazing, even in a weird novelty like this. And Bobby “The Bear” Hite learns not to call chipmunks “mice.”


In the spirit of Christmas recycling, here’s my December 2000 Christmas Top 10.

1. “Little Drummer Boy” by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. Jett wasn’t the first rocker to do this song. Remember David Bowie’s duet with Bing Crosby? I don’t think Der Bingle would have attempted this version.

2. “Merry Christmas From the Family” by Robert Earl Keen. A lovable if somewhat dysfunctional family — with all its addictions, prejudices, and stepchildren — sits down for a hilarious Yuletide feast.

3. “Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues with Kirsty MacColl. A saga of a love gone wrong: a boozy Irish immigrant lands in the drunk tank, haunted by the curses of his fed-up wife (“Merry Christmas, my ass. I pray God its our last!”) and the carols of a police choir.

4. “We Three Kings of Orient Are” by The Beach Boys. The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album, recorded in the early 1960s, contains some raw dreck, but the boys’ trademark harmonies on this tune are near-mystical.

5. “Old Toy Trains” by Roger Miller. This song, written for his son Dean, who was a toddler at the time, is a rare public glimpse of Miller’s sweet side.

6. “2,000 Miles” by The Pretenders. The grand finale to Learning to Crawl, the group’s last great album, “2,000 Miles” is a sad but beautiful winter song.

7. “Father Christmas” by The Kinks. Santa, bring me some class warfare!

8. “Santa Can’t Stay” by Dwight Yoakam. On one level this tune is hilarious: a drunken father dons a Santa suit and barges in on Mama and her new beau as the mystified children look on. But any divorced guy who can remember his first Christmas after the split-up can’t help but feel pangs of horror listening to this.

9. “Merry Christmas Baby” by Elvis Presley. “Blue Christmas” is much better known, but this is Elvis at his bluesy best.

10. “The Chipmunk Song” by David Seville and The Chipmunks. Dang, I can actually remember when this first came out one Christmas season in the late 1950s. It was the very first single by Alvin and his brothers, and it has a certain youthful innocence lacking in the group’s later work. After all, this was when The Chipmunks were young and hungry — before they sold out.

* The Steve Terrell Christmas Special: Hear a bunch of these songs and so much more at 10 p.m. to midnight Sunday, Dec. 19, on KSFR-FM, 101.1 FM.

* Enchiladas roasting on an open fire: More music to ruin any Christmas party! Hear my podcast Xmas special HERE

Blog Bonus: Here's three short reviews of recent Christmas music I reviewed for Pasatiempo which have been published, or will be published this month.

Angry Johnny & The Killbillies
Bang Bang Baby Bang Bang Merry Christmas (Pete’s Pig Parts)

From the darkest backwoods of Massachusetts comes Angry Johnny with a sleighfull of songs about all those things that make Christmas the most wonderful time of the year — Santa Claus, drinking, snow, depression, shopping, gunplay, jingle bells and homicide.

In other words, all the elements of a good Angry Johnny album — plus all the Christmas wrappings.
Killbilly cultists have known for a long time that the Angry one had a soft spot for the holidays. Several years ago he released a free MP3 on his Web site of a song called “Six Bullets For Christmas.” That classic is included on this album.

The basic theme of “Six Bullets” — killing a loved on Christmas Day as payment for infidelity — is revisited here on the title song. But this time there’s a twist, a happy ending of sorts, at least for most of the characters involved.

Of course, Christmas is for the children. Therefore it’s appropriate that the opening tune, “Shootin’ Snowmen” is about innocent, if dangerous youthful Yuletide tradition. “Christmas carol from both barrels and the snowman is history ...”

With songs like “Slaughter in a Winter Wonderland” and “Santa Gets His,” this album is not for the squeamish. But for those who get tired of holiday fluff, this is more fun than swatting a sugarplum fairy.

The Polkaholics
Jingle Bells, Schmingle Bells (Self released)

It’s Christmas time in Crazytown and who better to provide the soundtrack than that polka-powerpunk trio,The Polkaholics. No, this isn’t your grandfathers polka band. No accordions, no tubas. Dandy Don Hedeker, Jolly James Wallace and Stylin’ Steve Glover play frenzied guitar rock with a hopped-up oom-pah-pah beat.

With this 7-song EP, the boys infuse some holiday classics with polka culture, adding references to beer, kishka, Old Spice, sauerkraut, kielbasa and more beer. Thus we have “Yakov the Polka Reindeer” (guess why his nose is so shiny), “White Christmas” redone as “Polka Christmas” and, instead of “Jingle Bells,” The Polkaholics sing “Sausage Balls.”

And if the genre-blending isn’t enough with the polka, punk and Christmas music, “The Polkaholics Are Comin’ to Town” starts off as a surf rocker. There are other musical non sequiturs, such as the guitar riff from “Day Tripper” opening the song “Drinkin’ With Santa.” And “In Excelsis Polka” is a wild polkafied mash-up of Bach, Van Morrison, Patti Smith and — for reasons I’m still trying to understand, “Sympathy for The Devil.”

The entire EP is only 20 minutes long. But dancing to it provides quite an aerobic work-off — the better to work off all that beer and sausage.

Good news! You can download all seven songs for free until Dec. 31 RIGHT HERE!.

Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks

Crazy For Christmas (Surfdog)

Old smoothie Dan Hicks has been Christmas music for decades. He’s part of the San Francisco-based Christmas Jug, whose song “Somebody Stole My Santa Suit” appeared on Rhino Records’ wonderful Bummed Out Christmas compilation CD back in 1989. He re-recorded that one, a reimagining of “Somebody Stole My Gal” for this album, though jug fans probably will prefer the original.

Longtime Hicks fans will have a flash of familiarity when they hear the first song, “Christmas Mornin’” on this album. It doesn’t become obvious until he starts singing, but it’s a funny re-write of an already funny Hicks standard, “Where’s the Money?”

There’s plenty of Christmasizing old songs here. Louis Jordan’s hit “Choo Choo Ch’ Boogie” becomes “Santa Got a Choo Choo,” while the jugband chestnut “Beedle Um Bum” — a song Hicks performs in concert — magically transforms into “Santa Workshop,” a story of an elf named McGerkin.

And there’s some covers of Christmas classics here — “Here Comes Santa Claus,” “I Saw Mommy Kissin’ Santa Claus,” Chuck Berry’s “Run Run Rudolf” — done in the acoustic swinging Hot Licks style. My favorites of these are is “Carol of the Bells” sung scat style by Hicks and his Lickettes (The kazoos sound pretty snazzy here too) and “Cool Yule,” a song written by Steve Allen and made famous by Louis Armstrong.

Hicks make Yule sound cooler than ever. 

Here's a Hicks video featuring singing squirrels and aliens

Terrell's Tuneup: Death Takes an Encore

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
January 28, 2011


With its new album, Spiritual Mental Physical, the Detroit proto-punk trio known in the mid-’70s as Death has a sequel to its unlikely debut CD, ... For the Whole World to See — which was postponed for about 35 years.

One of the saddest commentaries on the music of the ’70s is that about the only racially integrated bands that anyone remembers are Frank Zappa’s The Mothers of Invention and the Village People.

For all the great sounds that came out of the Me Decade, the ugly truth was that this was a period of segregation. For the most part, white people played “rock” — and awful singer-songwriter dreck — while black people played soul and funk — disco and rap coming later in the decade.

That’s why, in the early ’80s, a band like The BusBoys was refreshing — though it was telling that many considered the group a novelty. As The BusBoys sang in “Did You See Me”: “Bet you never heard music like this by spades.”

But, of course, there were exceptions. One was a band from Detroit called Death. No, you wouldn’t have heard the group on the radio, at least not back then. “We didn’t fit in at all,” bass player and singer Bobby Hackney said in an interview with NPR last year:

 “The rock bands that we identified with ... we didn’t hang out with those guys. We were in the inner city, on the east side, in the black community. Most of the bands were doing stuff like Al Green; Earth, Wind & Fire; The Isley Brothers. Being in the black community and having a rock band, people just looked at us like we was weird. After we got done with a song, instead of cheering and clapping, people would just be looking at us.” 

Death identified with Michigan groups and performers like The Stooges, The MC5, Alice Cooper (before he went on Hollywood Squares), and Bob Seeger’s groups (before he became “classic rock”).

Death, in its original incarnation, consisted of three Hackney brothers — Bobby, drummer Dannis, and the late David, who played guitar — and was called Rock Fire Funk Express (I have to admit, I like that name better). As Bobby tells it, there was a record company that was interested, but “the man with the big cigar” was put off by the morbid name the group went by at the time. The band refused to sell out and change its name again, so the record deal was off. The group broke up in 1977, and the Hackney brothers moved to Vermont.

But just a year ago, Bobby Hackney Jr. discovered dad’s old demo tapes and got the seven known Death demos released as an album called ... For the Whole World to See, on the Chicago independent label Drag City.

It didn’t become a big hit, but it got a great “underground” buzz. NPR did a feature, and Death was reborn with a new guitarist, Bobbie Duncan. The group played at South by Southwest in Austin last year. I was fortunate enough to see Death in New York last summer at a free show called The Detroit Breakdown. With a poster of David Hackney on the stage, the band was loud, proud, and rocking. (For videos of the show, check this out: CLICK HERE.)

My advice to those who haven’t been touched by Death: Before you get this album, definitely pick up the first. Like ... For the Whole World to See, Spiritual Mental Physical consists of demos. But they’re not as listener-ready as the ones on the first album. These sound more like home practice tapes — muddier, tinnier. Also, there are just more than 28 minutes of music here.

There are a few fun tunes. The album starts off strong with “Views,” a crazy rocker with falsetto vocals. Some songs are clearly derivative. “The Masks” plays upon the hook from The Beatles’ “Got to Get You Into My Life,” while “People Look Away” sounds suspiciously close to the teenage wasteland of The Who’s “Baba O’Reilly.”

There are noodling instrumentals such as “The Change,” as well as three solo spots — “David’s Dream,” “Bobby Bassing It,” and “Dannis on the Motor City Drums.” (Yes, it’s a drum solo. This is from the ’70s, remember.) The group redeems itself with “Can You Give Me a Thrill?” It’s the most Stoogey cut on the album. True, it goes on for nearly six minutes, but what the heck?

I’m pretty sure Drag City has scraped the bottom of the Death vaults by now. So I’m hoping that, for the next album — and I’m hoping there is a next album — the guys do some fresh recordings.

Also recommended:

* Like a Knife Through an Egg by Kilimanjaro Yak Attack. I normally don’t review CDs by kids of my friends or friends of my kids, but I’ve always gotten a real kick out of these young yaks. Even if Oscar Oswald (who sings, plays bass, and writes songs) weren’t the son of my brother in journalism Mark Oswald, I’d still like Yak Attack.


The band’s music is full of noisy punk spirit. But there’s also a clever, quirky undertone. Listening to the rubbery “Knabonga” from the new CD while driving down Cerrillos Road the other night, I almost thought I’d stumbled upon a long-lost song from the early days of The Talking Heads — back before David Byrne started taking himself too seriously.

These guys started out in Santa  Fe, but one of their members now lives in Portland, Oregon, and Oscar’s going to school in Nevada, so they’re scattered throughout the West. I hope they’ll play some gigs here this summer.

Among my favorites here are “Mummy,” which is basically a psychedelic freakout, and “Pocket Calculator,” which has a little Captain Beefheart in it, as well as a little Television.

Then the boys get a little folk-rocky with “Munkar & Nakir.”

I also like the fact that on their MySpace page they described their music as “healing & easy listening.” Yup, this is real “lifestyle” stuff.

(There are songs by Death as well as Kilimanjaro Yak Attack on the latest episode of The Big Enchilada.

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: CLASH CITY DVDs

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
July 4, 2008

Joe Strummer was so bored with the USA. He identified more with the Sandinistas than he did with Ronald Reagan. Yet he loved America. He loved the craziness of the cities and the weirdness of the countryside. He loved cowboy stuff, big cars, big pizzas, big drinks, and, of course, the music — Woody Guthrie, Elvis, the Bobby Fuller Four, Bukka White, Eddie Cochran, and the MC5. He probably would have agreed with Leonard Cohen that America is “the cradle of the best and the worst.”

“He knew the culture of America,” says Joe Ely in The Future Is Unwritten, a documentary about Strummer. Ely, a country rocker from Texas, toured with Strummer and The Clash about 30 or so years ago. “He knew the culture. He knew the music of it backward and forward. And so we hit it off immediately. Here was this unlikely meeting of two guys who grew up thousands of miles apart. But the same things moved us.”

Maybe he was a Brit — technically. But The Future Is Unwritten reminds us that Strummer can also be seen as a great American, one worth celebrating this Fourth of July. Had he been around in 1773 he’d have helped us dump tea in the harbor. And after the revolution, he’d have provided the soundtracks to Shays’ Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion.

The Future Is Unwritten, directed by Julien Temple, tells Strummer’s story: from his boyhood, through his years as the leader of a hippie/squatter band, through the glory years of The Clash, through the lean years when his music was scarce and obscure, and though his musical rebirth leading a band called The Mescaleros — a comeback cut short by his unexpected death in 2002. The movie is scheduled for release on DVD on Tuesday, July 8.

Temple — who created two Sex Pistols movies, The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle and The Filth & The Fury — tells Strummer’s story through family movies and photos as well as through footage that Temple shot during the pioneer days of punk rock. There are clips from a BBC film of George Orwell’s 1984 and an animated Animal Farm. There are Strummer doodles brought to life through animation. And there are interviews with the musician’s friends, family, and celebrity admirers — almost all of which are set around campfires in both rural and urban locales.

Some of the interviews are gushing. Steve Buscemi, who was in the Jim Jarmusch movie Mystery Train with Strummer, confesses that he was just as nervous to be working with the rocker as he would be working with Brando or De Niro. Bono does a typical Bono rap about how important The Clash was.

But some are not so worshipful. Mick Jones still seems to feel pain about being kicked out of The Clash. One old friend calls Strummer a coward.

Strummer was born John Graham Mellor in 1952 in Turkey, where his father (who was born in India) was a British diplomat. Strummer spent part of his childhood in Egypt and Mexico and was sent off to boarding school in Surrey, England, along with his brother, David. The film tells of David’s suicide and how that tormented Strummer.

Hooked on American folk music, Strummer took the name Woody, probably in honor of the Dust Bowl balladeer. He attended art college in Wales, busked on the London underground, and then became leader of the 101ers, a band of fellow squatters. (The group performed the New Orleans classic “Junko Partner” years before The Clash did.)

By the mid ’70s, Strummer shed his new name and snapped at anyone who called him Woody. He was becoming Joe Strummer. “I can only play all strings or none,” he explains in the documentary. “And not all the fiddley bits. That’s why I called myself Joe Strummer.”

During The Clash years segment, the movie takes on a bit of a VH1 Behind the Music veneer. There’s some great footage of the band, but soon the creativity, energy, and idealism are crushed beneath the weight of egos, drugs, management problems, “creative differences,” and most of the other crap that kills great bands — except airplane crashes and Yoko Ono.

“We have fallen into every pitfall that you can possibly fall into ... and invented some new ones along the way,” Strummer says in the film.

There are many memorable moments in the documentary. Jarmusch talks about seeing Strummer weep when he saw a television news report of American troops listening to The Clash’s “Rock the Casbah” as they were bombing Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. There’s the interview in which Strummer rants about anti-smoking laws, saying that nobody who doesn’t smoke should be allowed to buy works created by artists who do smoke.

And there’s the moment when the 1990s Strummer is raving about raves. Even though earlier in the film he snarls, “Hippies can shove off,” by the ’90s, Strummer says, “Quite frankly I am a hippie. I want to be a hippie. Punks and hippies are now fighting together here in England. ... In fact, you can’t tell them apart. And they’re coming together in some new strange style.”

Yes, basically, Strummer was just a big bundle of contradictions. Light some fireworks for him on the Fourth.

My review of the soundtrack CD for The Future is Unwritten, which was released about a year ago, can be found HERE.

Also Recommended

* The Clash Live: Revolution Rock. Except for the music here — 22 Clash songs recorded at various concerts and television appearances between 1977 and 1983 — the best thing about this DVD (released earlier this year) is that it gives you the option of “just play music” and skipping the cheesy narration, which tells the story of the rise and fall of the band.

The music, indeed, is great. But if you already own The Essential Clash DVD or the movie Rude Boy you already have several of these performances. Weren’t there other versions of these songs that could have been used?

One twisted little treat is a bonus feature — The Clash’s 1981 interview with the ultimate befuddled American squarejohn Tom Snyder, who is, as usual, unintentionally funny here.

But Snyder’s weird sincerity sometimes get sincere responses from band members. Even so, Strummer, at one point, gets away with quoting “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!”

eMUSIC MARCH

I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've ever downloaded by monthly allotment from e-Music for a month before the month actually began. (My account actually refreshes in the middle of the month. Now I'm going to have to wait until March 17 to start downloading again and already there's a bunch of stuff I've got my eyes on.)

*Get in the Groove by Various Artists. Here's the deal: This might just be the coolest album I've ever downloaded from eMusic.

It was recorded live at the 50th birthday party of Billy Miller, head honcho of Norton Records, where the musical guests included Bettye LaVette, Andre Williams, Nathaniel Mayer, Barrence Whitfield, Lonnie Youngblood, the Mighty Hannibal, King Coleman and The Great Gaylord, with Rudy Ray Moore -- yes, Dolomite himself! -- as the emcee.

Some of these guys are real codgers. Mayer sounds like Howlin' Wolf with a sore throat. But everyone involved just oozes with the crazy spirit of old-time R&B. And it never lets up. The high point has to be the raucous version of Ray Charles' "Night Time is the Right Time," performed here by Lavette, Williams and Mayer. These three might be senior citizens but they're having more fun than a bunch of horny teenagers.

One word of caution: eMusic has some of the credits screwed up. It's Whitfield who sings "Mama Get The Hammer" (and Hannibal who sings "Good Time.")

* The Funky 16 Corners by Various Artists, This is a powerful collection of obscure funksters from the '60s and '70s. It's not to be confused with one of my favorite music blogs of the same name, but it's the same kind of great music. Both the album and the blog are named after a crazed song by The Highlighters, an Indianapolis band, which is included here. Chances are you haven't heard of the artists here --Ebony Rhythm Band, The Soul Vibrations, Spider Harrison, etc. But if you love hardcore late '60s/early '70s funk and Blaxploitation soundtrack music, check it out.

One of my favorite cuts here is "The Kick" a funky War-on Drugs fight song/dance craze that never got off the ground. Then there's the proto-rap "What About You (In the World Today)" by Co-Real Artists. Not as militant or as intense as The Last Poets, but good fun.

* Take a Good Look by The Fleshtones: Yes, they’re “retro.” Yes, they’ve been plowing a lot of the same ground since they first took the stage at CBGBs in New York’s Bowery more than 30 years ago. But The Fleshtones attack their music with such strength, confidence, energy, and rock ’n’ roll joy that such reservations seem uptight and prissy.

What I'm trying to say is this a dang fine album. You might have already read my full review, but if not CLICK HERE.

I'm also very happy I stumbled across Allo Brooklyn, Ici Montmartre a five-song EP from 2006 by Tony Truant & The Fleshtones. Mr. Truant is a Frenchman, formerly with a band called The Dogs, who had a track on last year's Fleshtones tribute album, Vindicated! (which I need to find.) He fits right in with Peter and Keith and the boys. There's a cover of The Fleshtones' "The Girl From Baltimore" and a French version of Dylan's “If You Gotta Go, Go Now." I don't understand the words, but I understand this music.

* Two Headed Cow by The Flat Duo Jets A decade before the world heard of The White Stripes or The Black Keys, there was a loud, rowdy, blues-screamin’ duo from North Carolina called the Flat Duo Jets. With Dexter Romweber on guitar and vocals and Chris “Crow” Smith on drums, FDJ stripped rock ’n’ roll down to its basics. This CD is a companion to a recent documentary of the same name. It’s a live show from 1986, but it sounds like it could have been made in 1956 or last week. (And yes, if you have the feeling you've read this before, I reviewed this in the same recent Terrell's Tune-up where I reviewed The Fleshtones. CLICK HERE.)

* RIP by Rocket From the Crypt. Remember the "San Diego Sound"? I don't either. But for about 14 minutes back in the mid '90s, when "The Next Seattle" became the late 20th Century version of "The New Dylan," some civic boosters were pushing Tijuana's neighbor to the north for that dubious honor. Their best argument was Rocket From the Crypt.

Alas, RFTC is no more. They broke up on Halloween 2005 immediately following one last gig in their hometown. Fortunately they recorded the show and finally (in fact just last week) they released it in the form of this album.

The music is timeless and unrelenting rock 'n' roll and, as far as I'm concerned, sounds better than any of the studio stuff I've heard from RFTC.

PLUS

* Smithsonian Folkways Sampler: A Sound Legacy--60 Years of Folkways Records and 20 Years of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings . This is a far-flung collection of blues singers. calypso bands, Woody & Leadbelly, world field recordings, Watergate criminals and, yes, tree frogs. And it was FREE!

Remembering Sinead O'Connor:

 

Sinead on stage at Lollapalooza, July 1995, Denver
Photo by Steve Terrell

I'm still pretty shook about the death of Sinead O'Connor.

As I wrote on social media yesterday, I got to see her in person twice -- once at Lollapalooza 1995 in Denver and ten a few years later when she opened for The Chieftains at Red Rocks. Both shows fantastic. 

I'd like to share a couple of things I've written about the lady back in the 1990s.

Let's start with an excerpt from an old music column published not long after her infamous final appearance on Saturday Night Live and subsequent experience being booed off the stage at a star-studded Bob Dylan  30th Anniversary Concert Celebration in October 1992.

From Terrell’s Tune-up, Santa Fe New Mexican, 10-30-92

O'Connor recently tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live , causing one of the biggest public backlashes against a rock singer since John Lennon declared The Beatles bigger than Jesus.

... Public reaction was swift and predictable. Even Madonna got in on the act, saying O'Comnnor's action was tasteless ...

… But the supreme irony was when O’Connor was booed at the recent Bob Dylan tribute concert. 

Those self-righteous Dylan fans apparently don’t remember their hero getting booed at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival by prissy folkies who didn’t like the fact that Dylan had taken up the electric guitar.

Kris Kristofferson showed what he was made of when he comforted O’Connor on stage.

My question is why didn’t Dylan himself say anything to the crowd?

Did the great one not want to offend his pay-per-view television audience?

[concerning her Saturday Night Live controversy}] a…one thing you’ve got to admit, is that O’Connor illustrated the long dormant potential for excitement in live television.

She illustrated that point better than anyone since Jack Ruby. …

And yes, after reading about Kristofferson coming out on stage to comfort Sinead, my regard for Kris, which already was tremendous, tripled.

Just a few years later I saw Sinead in person at Lollapalooza 1995 in Denver. I was there mostlyb for Sonic Youth and Beck, but Sinead's performance was the biggest surprise for me:

From "No Love Lost for Courtney," Santa Fe New Mexican, 7-30-95

One of the most intriguing aspects of this Lollapalooza traveling rock festival line-up was that it featured two women who each have been considered The Wicked Witch of Rock ‘n’ Roll: Courtney Love and Sinead O’Connor. …

You know the attributes of Wicked Witch. Her evil spells cause the morals of the nation’s youth to decline. Sometimes they lead male rockers to stray. They cause crops to fail and cattle to die.

The position of Wicked Witch was first assumed by Yoko Ono in the late 1960s, though I suppose some could argue that the concept had its origins with Marianne Faith (the naked girl at The Rolling Stones’ drug bust!)

At the beginning of this decade, the witch’s proverbial broom had been passed to O’Connor.

When her record company wanted to market her sexuality, she angrily shaved her head – just like one of them Manson girls! She refused to have “The Star Spangled Banner” played before one of her shows. She tore up a picture of the pope right there on national TV.

After that, Sinead seemed to play fade away, while a new witch – who was even more wicked arose – Courtney Love …

[I go on to bash Courtney’s predictable shtick at Lollapalooza before getting back to Sinead]

… In her long white dress and her newly grown hair, the diminutive singer looked more like a Celtic goddess than an angry, unsmiling being she once had been. And she sang as beautifully as she looked.

No, O’Connor hasn’t become Little Mary Sunshine. Some of her rage remains, as apparent in her rap song that compares her native Ireland with an abused child. [“Famine” from her then-latest album Universal Mother] 

And she’s still got guts. It took courage to do a pretty a capella song for a crowd more attune with The Jesus Lizard and Sonic Youth. But she pulled it off. [I can’t swear to this, but that song might have been "Tiny Grief Song," which is on Universal Mother.] 

In short, a listener felt uplifted after O’Connor’s performance. One can only hope Courtney caught a couple of O’Connor’s sets [on the tour]. She could learn a lot

Here is my favorite song that Sinead performed on Lollapalooza that day. This is a more recent version: 

Thank YOU, Sinead!

This is a photo of a mural in Dublin I saw a few years ago.