SINGING DIRGES IN THE DARK

A few weeks ago I was arguing on Facebook with my old pal Gary Heffern (a wonderful songwriter and singer by the way) about which year it was that we saw Tom Waits during South by Southwest. I said 1999. He thought it was a few years before that. That prompted me to look up the article I did about SXSW that year.

Re-reading the article I realized this time, right before the turn of the century was a strange time for the music industry. The old world seemed ready to crumble. Big changes seemed to be in the air.

A lot has changed in the past 14 years. But much has remained the same in the music world. Worthless crap still dominates the mainstream. Weasels still run the show. And there's still plenty of great stuff for those bothering to look for it,

Here's that article from the mists of time. And, dammit, I was right about the year we saw Waits.


A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
April 11, 1999
 
AUSTIN -- His name was up on the theater marquee:

Yes, I spent $30 for  a crappy bootleg of that show

Tom Waits.

Hundreds of people snaked around the block in a long, unruly line waiting for the doors of the stately old Paramount Theater to open.

Waiting for Waits. The Big Time!

An old rock critic cliche‚ goes something like, ``In a just world, (Tom Waits, Richard Thompson, Lucinda Williams, or whatever brilliant but under-recognized performer is being reviewed) would be a major star.''

Well, here was that ``just world'' where Waits' show one of just a handful of public concerts he has performed in the past decade was being treated as the second coming of Frank Sinatra.

Waits' wonderful Saturday night/early Sunday morning performance was clearly the highlight of this year's South by Southwest Music Festival, and certainly the most talked-about show of the 800 or so ``official'' festival shows between March 17 and 21.

And gravel-voice Tom wasn't the only non-mainstream performer whose show drew a capacity crowd. The avant-garde band Mercury Rev as well as rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson, who hasn't had a hit in 40 years, packed 'em in as well.

But there was something ironic about this ``just world.'' Here was Waits being honored by a convention full of music industry heavies at a time when he is about to release an album on an independent punk rock label (Epitaph, owned by Brett Gurrewitz of Bad Religion) after 20-plus years on major labels.

Indeed, while the music, merriment and Mexican food, the bands, beer and barbecue were as great as ever during South by Southwest, there was a distinct undercurrent of doom at the convention. Much of this was brought on by the current flurry of corporate mergers, which has resulted in consolidation of labels and massive lay-offs in the industry.

There's the ever-worsening problem of commercial radio becoming more staid and irrelevant as radio stations continue to tighten play lists. This trend coincides with that of more stations being bought up by fewer owners.

And then there's that looming 500-pound gorilla known as the Internet. MP3 technology, which allows computer owners to download near-CD-quality music directly from Web sites, is seen as a ray of hope for independent musicians and music lovers and as a threat by the major record companies.

(Last month, according to a report on Sonic Net, an Internet music news site, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries filed a legal complaint in Oslo against FAST Search and Transfer, the Norwegian technology company that powers Lycos' ``FAST MP3 Search'' site. The Recording Industry Association of America, which is affiliated with the international organization, announced last week that it is considering a lawsuit against Lycos.)

One way or another radical changes are in the air.

Oh, My Baby!

Lucinda

``I don't think major labels are working anymore,'' singer Lucinda Williams told hundreds of music-bizzers gathered for the convention's keynote address. About half the audience sat silent while others applauded wildly. ``I think it was a good idea at one time, but it has just crumbled.''

At a press conference after her speech, Williams said she is considering starting her own company, as her friends Steve Earle and John Prine have done. She noted how Prine, who started Oh Boy! Records years ago, has made a comfortable living without the pressures and creative restrictions that go along with working under contract for a large corporation.

But the state of the music industry is just a reflection of the country itself, Williams said. Then she added sadly that she believes America is ``dying a slow death.''

But she also said, ``I'm one of those people who still believe that music can change the world.''

Williams whose Car Wheels on a Gravel Road recently won a Grammy (``Best Contemporary Folk Album'') and was voted top album of the year by hundreds of music critics from across the country in the annual Village Voice poll also spoke about the importance of standing up to would-be censors in the media.

She told how on a recent appearance on the Today Show, she was asked to change the lyrics of her song "Right in Time." The line, ``I lie on my bed and moan at the ceiling/Oh, my baby'' was, well, a little suggestive, some producer told her.

But on the same show, Williams noted, a guest was there to ``discuss the stain on Monica Lewinsky's dress.'' Said the singer, ``I went ahead and sang the song as I had written it. Nobody got hurt.''

She told about her appearance on the Crook and Chase show, in which she was asked not to do "Pineola," a song about suicide, because it was ``too dark.'' (She said she did the song anyway.)

While there was no shortage of good-time tunes played during the festival, often heard were ``dark'' songs that highlighted these tensions.

Cowboys in Flames

On Friday night, Santa Fe resident Terry Allen performed a song from his new album Salivation, a Mideastern-influenced dirge called "The Doll," a cry against the rampant materialism that seemingly drives the country today.

``So we kneel down at the altar/ Of the Church of the Bought and Sold/pray the dollar does not falter/makes us rich before we get old ... and the money changers come howlin'/Through the temples of our needs/ while the doll is out there prowlin'/holding notes on all our dreams ...''

Earlier that night, the raucous Waco Brothers romped through a fire-breathing set in the tent-covered back yard of the Yard Dog folk art gallery for the annual party for Bloodshot Records, a small but influential independent ``insurgent-country'' label from Chicago. But beneath their drunk, cowpunk exterior are doom-laden lyrics that ensure they will never be asked on The Today Show.

``That good old rock where we once stood has got too old to do much good/And the good old ways are sick and lame/Third World on horseback/Cowboy in Flames!'' singer Jon Langford (also from the band The Mekons) snarls.

Kramer

Then Langford sings about "The Death of Country Music: ``So we spill some blood on the ashes/ of the bones of the Joneses and the Cashes/ Skulls in false eyelashes, ghost riders in the sky.'' A listener realizes that indeed the stale music product coming out of Nashville today indeed is lifeless. But there is so much life in the Wacos' death dance, it's obvious that the old spirit is springing up in new forms.

That spirit can be heard in the hard rock of Wayne Kramer, an old member of the MC5, a Detroit band of the late '60s known as much for its radical politics as its music. Kramer, who has released several solo albums on Epitaph Records in recent years, has lost his hair and ditched his old drug habit, but not his political attitudes.

In his song "Revolution in Apt. 29," he chided armchair revolutionaries: ``We'll write a manifesto after chips and pesto ... the beer is imported/We refuse to be thwarted.''

But that Friday night at Emo's, Kramer got his biggest crowd reaction with his version of the old MC5 classic battle cry, "Kick Out the Jams." Despite all the ridicule and derision of the past three decades, it seemed that a spark of that old '60s revolutionary zeal was still alive.

The Heart of Saturday Night

Wanderingly blissfully out of the Paramount Theater, the melody of Tom Waits' "Innocent When You Dream "lingering in his head, the happy critic wandered over to Sixth Street, hoping maybe to catch the last song or two of the Waco Brothers' ``official'' showcase at the Jazz Bon Temps club. Alas, he was too late. The Wacos audience was already streaming down the stairs of second-story room. By the smiles and the sweat on their faces, it was obvious they had just experienced a great show.

Going back to his rental car, the critic comes upon a street busker playing guitar for a small crowd of Sixth Street revelers that had gathered. They were all singing Don McLean's old hit about the day the music died:

``Bye bye, Miss American Pie/drove my Chevy to the levy but the levy was dry ...''

It seemed like a Tom Waits kind of thing to do, so the critic joined in the drunken street choir: ``Them good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye/singing this'll be the day that I die ...''

Even though some believe the music industry is in its death throes, it was obvious on that Austin street corner that the music will never die.

xxx

I couldn't find any videos of that Waits show in Austin. But here's Waits on Letterman that same year.

Fun Time: Me and Heff SXSW1999

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: Some NM Musical History from Norton Records

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Dec. 20 , 2013

UPDATED 12-23-13 (Check below the videos)

Two recent compilations from Norton Records hit close to home. Well, two or three hundred miles or so from home. El Vampiro, which is all instrumental surf rock from 1963 and 1964, and Sand Surfin’, which includes surf music as well as garage-band snot-rock from the mid-1960s, are the latest entries in Norton’s El Paso Rock series (Volumes 8 and 9, respectively).

The name of this series isn’t quite accurate. These “El Paso” albums include several New Mexico bands as well as labels and recording studios from our enchanted land. Indeed, these impressive collections provide a great introduction to the rock ’n’ roll side of three influential southern New Mexico record labels operated by giants of New Mexico’s musical history.

Let’s start off with Goldust Records of Las Cruces, which was owned and operated by Emmit Brooks, who still runs the Goldust recording studio, releasing more than 100 singles in its day. A 2011 profile in the Las Cruces Sun News noted that Brooks is a country musician himself, playing bass and singing with a touring band called The Aggie Ramblers from 1957 to 1975. Before he opened the studio, Brooks recorded an original country song called “Peach Blossoms” at Petty Studios in Clovis (most famous for recording the lion’s share of Buddy Holly’s hits).

Goldust was the home of a Las Cruces band called The Four Dimensions, which provides the title song of Sand Surfin’. It’s about the joys of riding plywood planks down the gypsum dunes of White Sands National Monument: “Down in the wastelands of New Mexico/Where there’s a definite lack of H2O/The kids get their kicks in this barren land/When they go surfin’ on pure white sand.”

In an interview for the website Garage Hangover a few years ago, Dimension Jack Starkey recalled his Goldust days. “We had a great relationship with Emmit, and he shared in the cost and profit of the record (I don’t think there was any profit). We backed other performers at the studio also.”

Goldust is also the label that released “Don’t Need You No More” by The Outer Limits, also on Sand Surfin’. The liner notes say the (unidentified) lead singer was frequently compared to Roky Erickson. I don’t hear 13th Floor Elevators in the song so much as I hear the melancholy folk rock of The Beau Brummels (“Laugh Laugh,” “Just a Little”). Though not included on the Norton compilations, Santa Fe’s Morfomen also recorded at least a couple of tracks for Goldust in the ’60s.

Starkey, in that Garage Hangover interview, also talks about hanging out with other Las Cruces and El Paso rockers of the day at The Lobby in Juárez, where he watched and undoubtedly picked up licks and tricks from bluesman Long John Hunter, who recorded with Yucca Records of Alamogordo.

A couple of years ago, Norton Records acquired Yucca’s entire catalog, including music that never saw the light of day. Nortonville’s blog describes Yucca as “a star in Norton’s ever growing constellation of able labels. Yucca’s output in the 1950’s and 1960’s is equaled by the number of world-class recordings that sat in the can for fifty years.”

It was headed by the late Calvin Boles, who, like Emmit Brooks, was a country musician. With a voice like Ernest Tubbs’, he played in a band called The Rocket City Playboys. Yucca recorded some great rock, country, and blues sounds in the 1950s and ’60s.

The best-known artist to record with Yucca was an El Paso singer named Bobby Fuller, who released two singles on the label in 1962. Not long afterward, Fuller would hit it big with “I Fought the Law.” Fuller’s music makes up the first three volumes in the El Paso Rock series.

Among Yucca’s classics is a politically incorrect 1961 rockabilly single by Big Lloyd Dalton & The El Paso Trail Blazers called “Thees Plane Ees Mine.” It was inspired by Antulio Ramirez Ortiz’s hijacking of a National Airlines flight to Cuba that year, eight years or so before hijacking planes to Cuba became a national plague. Unfortunately Dalton’s song hasn’t yet been reissued by Norton. I hope they rectify that situation.

El Vampiro has five tracks, some previously unreleased, from Yucca by The Monarcs, featuring guitarist Tim Taylor. The best Monarcs song is the slow, eerie, whammy-bar heavy “Forever Lost.”

The other Yucca acts represented on these recent El Paso Rock compilations are: Steve Cooper & The Avantis, whose stinging 1966 instrumental “Sky Diver” is on Sand Surfin’; Las Cruces guitarist Chuck Sledge, who has three previously unissued instrumentals, including his version of “La Bamba,” on El Vampiro; The Pitiful Panics, whose low and slow “Why I Cry” on Sand Surfin’ is as full of teenage yearning as the title suggests; and The Fortunes, an Alamogordo band whose “Chi-Wa-Wa,” which is on El Vampiro, was a favorite of the late Steve Crosno, a DJ on the popular KELP station in El Paso (a religious station these days). Crosno used it as the background music leading up to the news breaks during his show.

Crosno was perhaps El Paso’s major go-to rock ’n’ roll figure of the ’60s. In addition to his radio show, he had an American Bandstand-like TV show in El Paso and promoted concerts in the area. And he’s also responsible for the third New Mexico label and studio to be featured on these albums, the slightly more obscure Frogdeath Records. Yes, decades before New Mexico had Frogville Records, it had Frogdeath Records.

Crosno, who died of cancer in 2006, operated Frogdeath out of his home in University Park (part of the Las Cruces area). Crosno’s goofy sense of humor was apparent in Frogdeath’s logo. It was a parody of RCA-Victor’s logo — Nipper the dog listening to “his master’s voice” on a Victrola. Frogdeath had a frog instead of a dog. And right above the poor creature’s head was a boot, apparently ready to stomp.

Sand Surfin’ includes the first Frogdeath single, “Wipe In” by The Imposters. This is basically a parody of The Surfaris’ hit “Wipe Out,” down to the crazy laugh that opens that record. (There’s another song on this album, “Bogus” by The Scavengers, which sounds like a slowed-down version of “Wipe Out.”)

Also on Sand Surfin’ is the instrumental “Mr. Big” by The Four Frogs. According to the liner notes of the album, one of the Four Frogs, Colin Flannigan, also has a song here — “You Came to Me,” a Beatles-ish rocker he recorded for a different label, Suemi, under the pseudonym Dave Caflan. Frogdeath also released “When Will I Find Her,” a fuzzy garage rocker by Mike Renolds (real name Reynolds) backed by The Infants of Soul.

And while its records weren’t released on Frogdeath, a Las Cruces band called The Key Men was produced by Crosno. The group’s instrumentals “Sun-Burstin’” and “Up to News” are on El Vampiro.

Southern New Mexico and El Paso are very rarely, if indeed ever, mentioned as major rock ’n’ roll meccas of the ’60s. But these compilations show that this area was bursting with crazy energy back in those daysin those days.

Here's some songs from those three New Mexico labels. There are some more Youtubes from Yucca Records on this old blog post.








UPDATE 12-23-13

Santa Fe musician Flash Swank sent me this anecdote after reading this column. I'm copying it here with his permission.

Sometime around 11 years ago I was working on a small job in Alamogordo. My rental car had a CD player, and I was coincidentally listening to Long John Hunter on what I believe was one of the early Norton records  “El Paso Rock” series. I had recently been exposed to Long John by seeing him at one of the free blues shows at the recently built Camel Rock Casino, and had purchased the CD after seeing a review in Vintage Guitar magazine.

One night I remembered that the tunes I was listening to were recorded in Alamogordo, and I reread the excellent liner notes on the Norton release. When I got back to the motel, I got out the phone book to see if Calvin Boles was still listed there. He was. I spent some time wondering if he would welcome a cold call from someone he had never met. His wife answered, and put Calvin on the line.


I opened with an apology for bothering him, but it turned out that he loved getting the call. He was in declining health and on dialysis, but loved talking about Yucca Records and the old days. He really got energized talking about music. When we were saying goodbye, he said he was going to warm up the garage and write some songs.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: Handsome Family Flees Into The Wilderness

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
May 3, 2013


Wilderness, the new album by The Handsome Family, is as mysterious, dark, and utterly alluring as fans of this band — actually an Albuquerque couple named Brett and Rennie Sparks — have come to expect.

The melodies are mostly pretty, sentimental, and frequently sad, with sweet harmonies from Mr. and Mrs. Sparks. Many tunes may remind you of old folk songs or parlor music from some century gone by.

But when you allow the lyrics to sink in, you realize there’s a lot more going on here than sweet nostalgia.

Years ago I wrote that the Handsome Family’s lyrics “take you to mysterious places, telling strange tales of ghosts, dead children, murders, supernatural animals, drunken domestic disputes, uneasy little victories, and somber little defeats.” I’ll stand by those words. Wilderness continues along that shadowy path.

Like their previous album, Honey Moon, which examines the idea and practice of love from a variety of angles, Wilderness is a concept album. Every song is named after a different animal: “Eels,” “Octopus,” “Lizard,” “Owls,” etc.

“The record is all about animals, but it’s not really about animals,” Brett said during a recent interview on my radio show, The Santa Fe Opry on KSFR-FM. “They’re about a lot of things, but I guess animals are the jumping-off point for a lot of themes.”

Rennie, who writes all the lyrics for Handsome Family songs, said, “I was thinking about it like a medieval bestiary, which are factual, but factual about the world as we know it now but not necessarily about the truth of the world.”

Several of the songs deal with humans — including historical figures from the 19th century.

There’s “Flies,’ which starts off about George Armstrong Custer, lying dead at Little Bighorn (“His red scarf tied, his black boots shined/How beautiful he looked to the flies, the happy kingdom of flies”); there’s “Wildebeest,” which deals with the lonesome death of songwriter Stephen Foster (“He smashed his head on the sink in the bitter fever of gin/A wildebeest gone crazy with thirst pulled down as he tried to drink”).

And there’s “Woodpecker,” which is about Mary Sweeney, a Wisconsin schoolmarm notorious for having manic fits and smashing windows. Her story is told in Michael Lesy’s 1973 book Wisconsin Death Trip.


“That was my century. … I would have fit in,” Rennie said about the 1800s. “When the train tracks went through, everything went to heck. To me, people like Stephen Foster or Custer or Mary Sweeney were people who had one foot in the old world and one foot in the new world.”

Brett added, “We’re kind of obsessed with that turn-of-the-century kind of thing. We started this new little project called the Parlour Trio [featuring longtime Handsome colleague David Gutierrez on mandolin] where we’re playing turn-of-the-century parlor music just around Albuquerque for fun. … That was a time when everything in America maybe started becoming less European, in a way. … I think that’s an amazing period in American history and American music history.”

Wilderness also has many songs in which Rennie continues her fascination with insects and other creepy crawling things. Besides “Flies,” there are songs titled “Spider,” “Caterpillars,” and “Glow Worm.” Insects also star on several tunes on Honey Moon, my favorite being “Darling, My Darling,” told from the perspective of a lusty male insect willing to sacrifice his life to the waiting fangs of the female of the species.

One of my favorite images on the new album is the last verse of “Flies,” which takes place in some trashy vacant lot near a Wal-Mart: “Great armies of the smallest ants fight battles for the glory of their queen/Such a tiny, glorious queen.”

Behold the Sphinx Moth Larva

Asked about this apparent bug fixation, Rennie laughed. “You live in New Mexico. My God, we have some amazing insects here. … Two summers ago, we saw our first sphinx moth larva out in the yard. Once you’ve seen that, trying to wiggle their way down …” Brett interjected, “It looked like a little hot dog was crawling across the yard.”

“They look like caterpillars when they’re first born, but when they get ready to pupate, they drop all their legs off, and they look like a finger. A little finger rising from the ground,” Rennie said.

“When I first saw this thing, and I’m from New Mexico, I was like, it was one of those things where you say, Oh, my brain doesn’t want to do this — what am I seeing?” Brett said.

Asked about the battling ant army imagery in “Flies,” Rennie said, “I’ve watched great battles out in my driveway. There’s two competing ant holes.”

Brett reminded her of the time, not long after the couple first moved to Albuquerque, that Rennie, a New York native, learned the hard way that “I got ants in my pants” isn’t just a James Brown song.

“Honestly, I feel like I was a different person after I was bitten by those ants. There was a point in the middle, when I was just writhing in pain, that I could feel the queen calling me down in the earth. And I wanted nothing but to do her bidding.”

There is a CD release party for Wilderness at 9 p.m. on Saturday, May 4, at Low Spirits, 2823 Second St. N.W., Albuquerque, 505-344-9555. Tickets are $11. 

BLOG BONUS

Here's the Santa Fe Opry segment where I interviewed Brett & Rennie. I used a lot of quotes from it in the above column -- but there's lots more that I didn't write about.

The interview starts about 15 minutes into the show.

Santa Fe Opry 4-26-13 with Handsome Family interview by Steve Terrell on Mixcloud

Here's a live version of  "Woodpecker."

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, April 27, 2012 
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM 
Webcasting! 
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell 
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org
 OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Bring the Noise by Unholy Trio
Outlaw Convention by Hank 3
Thirteen Women by T. Tex Edwards
Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad by Wanda Jackson
In the Summertime by O'Brien Party of 7
Sick Rick by The Misery Jackals
Trucks, Tractors and Trains by The Dirt Daubers
Hoboes Are My Heroes by Th' Legendary Shack Shakers
Gee Baby by Great Recession Orchestra with Maryanne Price

Lead Me on by Conway Twitty & Loretta Lynn
Big Time Annie's Square by Merle Haggard
Sing Me Back Home by Chesterfield Kings
Ain't No Diesel Trucks In Heaven by Bob Wayne
Got My Mojo Working by The Asylum Street Spankers
Life's Lonesome Road by Wayne Hancock
Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad by Cathy Faber
Ramblin' Man by Soda
Beatin' on the Bars by The Travelin' Texans
Farmer Had Him Rats by Black Jake & The Carnies

A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall by The Waco Brothers with Paul Burch
Wreck on the Highway by The Waco Brothers
Tennessee Jed by Levon Helm
Cheatin' Games by Little Lisa Dixie
Running on Pure Fear by Martin Zellar & The Hardways with Kelly Willis
Vacant Lot by Deano Waco & The Meat Purveyors
Rockin' and Knockin' by Gayle Griffith

My Rifle, Pony and Me by Dean Martin & Ricky Nelson
Righteous, Ragged Songs by Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires
Blunderbuss by Jack White
Burnt Toast Mornin' by Jason Eklund
Plane Of Existence by Giant Giant Sand
Four Years by Tom Armstrong
Same God by The Calamity Cubes
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, Feb. 10, 2012 
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM 
Webcasting! 
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell 
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org
OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Big Balls in Cowtown by Waylon Jennings
Honky Tonk Merry Go Round by The Stumbleweeds
Down Down Down Down Down by Dale Watson & The Texas Two
Tennessee Rooster Fight by The Howington Brothers
Beautiful Blue Eyes by Red Allen & The Kentuckians
Pass the Peacepipe by Peter Stampfel
Chinese Honeymoon by The Great Recession Orchestra
Dirty Dog Blues by The Modern Mountaineers
Oklahoma Hills by Jack Guthrie & His Oklahomans
High by Zeno Tornado & The Boney Google Brothers
String's Mountain Dew by Stringbean
I Like Drinking by The Gourds

Live Set (Pickers Remember Kell Robertson)
When You Come Off of the Mountain by Mike Good
Mr. Guitar by Kevin Hayes
Great Big Donut by Tom Irwin
Madonna on the Billboard by Bob Hill
I'll Probably Live by Jason Eklund

Julie's Neon Shoes by Mike Good
Prison Walls by Kevin Hayes
Me and You and The Wind by Jason Eklund
Writing it Down in the Rain by Mike Good
Junkie Eyes by Bob Hill
(CD break) As Long As You've Still Got a Song by Kell Robertson
Tell 'em What I Was by the whole crew
Dust off Them Old Songs by Jason Eklund, Mike Good & Tom Irwin (recorded)

When a House is Not a Home by Roger Miller
Old Rattler by Grandpa Jones
Santa Cruz by The Imperial Rooster
Roll in My Sweet Baby's Arms by Buster Carter & Preston Young
A Woman's Intuition by Johnny Paycheck
What Do I Care by Eddie Spaghetti
Road to Hattiesburg by Robert Earl Reed
One Has My Name, One Has My Heart by Jimmy Wakely
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

eMUSIC OCTOBER

* Pachuco Cadaver by The Jack and Jim Show. So you didn't think it was possible to make Captain Beefheart sound even weirder?

Well take a bite out of this little tribute album by guitar mutant Eugene Chadbourne and Frank Zappa's late original Mothers drummer Jimmy Carl Black. Some tunes sound like a lost congregation of hillbilly snake handlers somehow got hold of Beefheart's songbook and turned them into insane hymns and, in some cases like "Dropout Boogie," surreal comedy routines.

Black's gruff voice is perfect for the bluesier tunes here like "Sure 'Nuff Yes I Do," and "Willie the Pimp," done here as a Delta blues with Chadbourne playing slide.

When Beefheart did "I'm Gonna Booglarize You Baby" it was a blues growler. But here it's a pilgrimage  into the Dark Dimension, featuring the insect hum of a didgeridoo,  a jazzy basson and other instruments played by guests. Chadbourne plays banjo on this, as he does on several other tunes here, most notable, the seven-minute version of "Clear Spot" and the stompin' "Steal Softly Through Sunshine Steal Softly Through Snow."

I was lucky enough to see The Jim & Jack Show live in Albuquerque about a year before Jimmy died.  He lived in Germany the last years of his life and his trips to the states weren't that frequent.

A bunch of Jimmy's children came up from El Paso and Anthony to see the show. Both he and Chadbourne seemed to be having a great time. And they even did a couple of Beefheart songs -- "Willie the Pimp" and "The Dust Blows Forward and the Dust Blows Back" .


And I never miss an opportunity to brag that when I did Picnic Time for Potatoheads in the early 80s, Jimmy Carl Black was the Indian of my group. Hear his magic drums on "The Green Weenie" HERE. (It's the second song down.)

* Rockabilly Frenzy by Various Artists. Here's 53 tracks for $5.99. You do the math. It's a great bargain, like other cool compilations on the Rock-a-Billy label available at eMusic. (I've previously picked up 50s Rockabilly Hellraisers and 1950s Rock N' Roll & Rockabilly Rare Masters. I just can't get enough.) Many of the selections seem more hardcore honky tonk than rockabilly, but who's gonna quibble?

Frenzy concentrates mostly on unknown performers, though "Corky Jones," the rockabilly alter ego of   Buck Owens, is here with his shoulda-been-a-hit "Rhythm & Booze."

Speaking of booze, this album is overflowing with songs about alcoholic beverages. There's "Set Up Antother Drink" by Carl Phillips, "Booze Party" by Three Aces and a Joker (The Cramps covered this),  "Flop Top Beer" by Buddy Meredith, "Moonshine" by Montie Jones, "I'm Drinkin' Bourbon" by Billy Starr, "Wine Wine Wine" by Bobby Osbourne, "Whiskey Women and Wilid Living" by Tommy W. Pedigo, "Moonshine Still" by Jack Holt and "Pink Elephant" by Wally Willet.

What kind of message does this send to the children? I feel almost drunk after listening to all these.

But wait, there's more ...

There's a not-bad cover of George Jones' "White Lightning" by a band called The Valley Serenaders. But that's not nearly as remarkable as "White Lightning Cherokee" by Onie Wheeler. No, it's not a politically incorrect look at Native American alcoholism. It's about a guy who gets a better thrill from kissing his Indian girlfriend than drinking his pappy's brew. But he has no intention of giving up either.

And there's not one not two but three versions of a song called "Beer Drinkin' Blues." One's by Eddie Novak, another by Rocky Bill Ford. Johnny Champion calls his song "Beer Drinkin' Daddy." All deal with a hard-drinking alcoholic whose drinking is interfering with his marriage. Ford plays it sad, while Novak seems more comical. My favorite though is Champion's. It's an upbeat song with a snazzy organ solo. He seems almost defiant about his beer drinkin'.

* Mississippi Masters: Early American Blues Classics 1927-1935 by Various Artists. The Mekons led me to this one. On their latest album Ancient & Modern, Sally Timms sings a song called "Geeshie," a spooky, bluesy little number I said sounds as if it came from "a speakeasy near the gates of Hell." The group based this song on an obscure blues song called "Last Kind Words" by a woman named Geeshie Wiley.

When I read that, I searched for the song on eMusic and found it here in this Yazoo Records collection, along with two other Geeshie tunes, "Skinny Legs Blues." (Look out, Joe Tex, the ghost of Geeshie is looking for you!) and "Pick Poor Robin Clean," which sounds like a crazy cousin of "Salty Dog" sung with Elvie Thomas.

Wiley is fairly obscure, but she might be the best known artist on this album. There's King Soloman Hill, who has a piercing voice that might remind you of Skip James. Blind Joe Reynolds does "Outside Woman Blues," a song revived in the '60s by Cream. I know now where Canned Heat got the "Bullfrog Blues." (It's by a guy named William Harris, who does that and two other tunes here.)

And Mattie Delaney was singing "Tallahatchie River Blues" decades before Bobbie Gentry and Billy Joe were throwing stuff off the bridge.

ALSO


* The final five tracks of Fire of Love by The Gun Club. As I said last month when I downloaded the first six tracks, I came to this band decades too late.

I don't regret that. In fact it's pretty cool that I left some great musical surprises for my old age.

This was the first album by Jeffrey Lee Pierce and the boys and it just gets better after each listening.  There's some pumped up version of old Mississippi blues -- Robert Johnson's "Preaching the Blues" and a six minute wrestling match with Tommy Johnson's "Cool Drink of Water."

But Pierce's originals are powerful in their own right. "Ghost on the Highway," "Black Train" and "Good Bye Johnny" are raw and wild. Even though I'm a new initiate, it's hard to imagine rock 'n' roll without these songs.

* "Rainmaker" by Eliza Gilkyson. I stumbled across this song a few weeks ago when looking for songs by New Mexico artists for one of my Spotify playlists. Released on a 2005 Gilkyson compilation called RetroSpecto, this is one of her earliest recorded songs, released in the late '60s or early '70s under the name of Tusker, a Santa Fe band that Gilkyson fronted back when she was known as "Lisa. Along with my personal favorite group of that era, The Family Lotus, Tusker represented the best of New Mexico hippie music.

The lyrics are pure hippie-dippie wanna-be Indian: "We can dance, people, bring that rain down from the sky/We don't have to let the land go hungry or run dry/We can dance and bring Rainmaker back before we die ..." But it sure brings back great memories.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: Arhoolie Howls!

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
April 29, 2011

American music would have been a lot poorer had German immigrant Chris Strachwitz not gotten the weird notion to make trips to Texas to record bluesmen Lightnin’ Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb a half century ago and start his own record company to make these treasures available to the public.

Over the years, Strachwitz’s Arhoolie label has given us music by some of the most important blues, hillbilly, folk, zydeco, Cajun, Tex-Mex and gospel musicians known (or unknown) to humanity. Arhoolie albums are like musical DNA, building blocks of a musical heritage most of us take for granted. Its catalog has branched out to include music from Mexico and the Caribbean, but it’s the sound of the rural South that is the core of Arhoolie.

In honor of Arhoolie’s 50th anniversary, the company has given us Hear Me Howling! Blues, Ballads and Beyond. The package consists of four CDs, plus a book detailing Arhoolie’s history.

Mississippi Fred McDowell with  Strachwitz 

Most of the music — four hours and 40 minutes worth — has never been released before, and many of those songs that previously have seen the light of day had only been on LP decades ago. All the music here was recorded in Strachwitz’s adopted hometown of San Francisco, some in the pre-Arhoolie ’50s. Tony Bennett might have left his heart there, but Hear Me Howling shows that other musicians just left a lot of great recordings there.

Some of the musicians lived in the land of Rice-A-Roni, but many were passing through and were captured live at festivals, coffee-house concerts, and even house parties. Mississippian Skip James, for instance, was recorded at Strachwitz’s home. Can you imagine how cool it must have been to have Skip James in your living room, playing your piano and moaning his ghostly blues?

James isn’t the only major dude to appear in this collection. There are San Fran bluesman Jesse Fuller, Sonny Terry (born Saunders Terrell, no relation), Bukka White, Lonnie Johnson, zydeco deity Clifton Chenier, Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, Rev. Gary Davis, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Big Joe Williams and, of course, Hopkins and Lipscomb.

Some highlights of this collection include Hopkins’ “Up on Telegraph Avenue” — also recorded at Strachwitz’s house — which is a funny and lecherous encounter between the old blues codger and “a little hippie girl” in a miniskirt who offers herbal treats.

There are four Lipscomb songs here. This soft-spoken guitar picker is a Texan, but his music reminds me a lot of that of Mississippi John Hurt, especially the tune “Sugar Babe.”

Some of the most intense songs are by Big Joe Williams. His session was recorded shortly after he had been released from the psychiatric ward of the local jail. Thus he sings “Greystone (Alameda County Jail) Blues” with blood in his eye. And “Oakland Blues,” sung by his wife Mary Williams, sounds even more frightening.

There’s even a 1965 version of the anti-war classic “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” by an early version of Country Joe & the Fish. This was a pre-electric Fish that sounded like the West Coast cousin of Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band. One thing I learned from the Howling book — Joe McDonald was named by his leftist parents for Joseph Stalin, whose nickname was “Country Joe.” Maybe this was a Communist plot!

Those musicians mentioned are just the ones you’re likely to have heard of. Some of the most amazing performances here are by those who are mainly known to Arhoolie devotees and other serious lunatics. For instance there’s the Rev. Louis Overstreet, a Southerner who ended up in Arizona, preaching at a church called St. Luke’s Powerhouse Church of God in Christ. Overstreet played electric guitar with his hands and played a bass drum with his feet, backed by his four sons on vocals.

There’s K.C. Douglas, a singing garbage man — I’m not making this up — who lived in Berkeley. There are four tracks by Douglas here including the title song. Most of his contributions are acoustic numbers — my favorite, “I Know You Didn’t Want Me” features a band, including sax and piano.

I had actually heard of Toni Brown before. She was in an old female-fronted hippie band called the Joy of Cooking that made several albums in the post-flower-power era. But I never realized until now what a great country singer she was. Hear Me Howling has three songs credited to Brown, all of them sweet, soulful acoustic hillbilly tunes in which she sings like a young Kitty Wells.

There’s also “Charles Guiteau,” a fun little assassination ballad by Crabgrass, an old-timey string band of which Brown was a member. And there’s an acoustic Joy of Cooking song, “Midnight Blues,” though I prefer Brown’s country stuff.

Santa Fe’s most prominent folkie, the late Rolf Cahn, isn’t on this album. But there are songs by two of the women he loved — Barbara Dane and Debbie Green, so Cahn is here, howling in spirit.

Country, blues, and folk tunes make up the bulk of this collection. But the fourth disc includes some jazz from the Bay Area by acts like the Now Creative Arts Jazz Ensemble, guitarist Jerry Hahn, drummer Smiley Winter, and saxman Huey “Sonny” Simmons. Interesting stuff, but Chenier’s “Louisiana Rock” and Big Mama’s “Ball and Chain” are the highlights of disc four for me.

Strachwitz is pushing 80 now, but Arhoolie isn’t showing its age. As a foreigner, Strachwitz found the music of America wild and magical. We should thank him and Arhoolie for letting us here these crazy sounds through fresh ears.

Check out www.steveterrell.blogspot.com. Arhoolie on the airwaves: Hear a special Arhoolie set on The Santa Fe Opry 10 p.m. Friday on KSFR-FM 101.1.

Blog bonus: Here's  my personal Top 10 favorite Arhoolie albums.


1 America’s Most Colorful Hillbilly Band Vol. 1 by Maddox Brothers & Rose: These southern immigrants to California had more fun than hillbillies ought to be allowed to have.


2 Pachuco Boogie: The lion’s share of the songs and indeed, the heart and soul of this CD belong to Edmundo Martínez Tostado, an El Paso native better known by his stage name: Don Tosti. Tosti — an accomplished jazzman who became a jump-blues icon of zoot-suit culture.

3 Louie Bluie Soundtrack: This is music from a quirky documentary made in the mid '80s  by Terry Zwigoff, who is more famous for Crumb. It stars fiddler/mandolinist Howard Armstrong, who plays blues, gospel and jazz tunes — not to mention a German waltz and a Polish tune. As he explains in the movie, Armstrong was fluent in several languages, including Italian and a little Chinese, which, he said, helped him get gigs when he moved from Tennessee to Chicago.

4 Live at the Powerhouse Church of God by Rev. Louis Overstreet. An electric guitar-picking, bass-drum-pounding preacher whose church was in Phoenix. Most of this album was recorded by Strachwitz during church services in 1962. But the CD version has some bonus tracks,  including several recorded at Overstreet's home in which the preacher plays acoustic guitar.

5 Big Mama Thornton with The Muddy Waters Band. Good basic Chicago blues, recorded in San Francisco. I’d have hated to have been the “hound dog” Big Mama sang about. But the “Black Rat” she lays in on this album sounds like he’s in worse trouble.

6 Good Morning Mr. Walker by Joseph Spence. Bahaman Spence was an amazing guitarist whose thick dialect made him sound like a wino from Mars when he sang his joyful tunes.

7 Sacred Steel. This style of gospel music began in the late 1930s in the House of God, an African- American Pentecostal denomination. Although the steel guitar became popular in House of God congregations that were not able to afford an organ or piano. Arhoolie has done several sacred steel compilations. The first one, release in 1997, features some of the giants of the genre including Willie Eason, The Cambell Brothers, Aubrey Ghent and Sonny Treadwell.

8 & 9 Calypsos From Trinidad: Politics, Intrigue and Violence in the 1930s; and The Roots of Narcocorrido.  These collections, although representing different countries and different styles of music, both are collections of songs, many of them controversial, dealing with politics and crime.

10 Old Time Black Southern String Band Music by Butch Cage & Willie B. Thomas,  Recorded back in 1960, but not released until five years ago,  this is nothing but party music, at least the way they used to have parties in the rural South. I was too young to have been invited to this party, but this is the next best thing.

eMusic April

* Louie Bluie Film Soundtrack by Howard Armstrong. About 30 years ago, my pal Alec turned me on to a fun little LP called Martin, Bogan & Armstrong. It was an old African-American string band recorded in the early '70s.

It wasn't "blues," there there were some bluesy tunes there. It wasn't "jug band." These guys were playing mainly pop and jazz tunes of bygone eras. The players were old guys but all excellent musician -- and they were full of Hell. They'd been playing together in various combinations since the '30s under names such as The Tennessee Chocolate Drops and The Four Keys.

For instance, they start out with a straight version of the  uptight WASPy frat  song "Sweetheart of Sigma Chi" (which before, I'd only heard performed by The Lettermen!) before they slip into a parody that was popular in the '20s ("She's the sweetheart of six other guys.") But my favorite MB&A song was "Do You Call That Buddy," which has a line that stuck with me for years: "If I had a million doughnuts, durn his soul, I wouldn't even give him a doughnut hole."

Just a few years ago I found Martin, Bogan & Armstrong on CD, as part of a twofer with a subsequent album That Old Gang of Mine. But even more recently I discovered a documentary called Louie Bluie made in the mid '80s directed by Terry Zwigoff, who is more famous for Crumb. The title character of Louie turns out to be fiddler/mandolinist Howard Armstrong. Also featured here is guitarist, singer Ted Bogan -- who catches continual unmerciful ribbing from Armstrong throughout the film.

The film tells the story of Armstrong (who got the nickname of "Louie Bluie" from a tipsy mortician's daughter) To quote Roger Ebert, "The movie is loose and disjointed, and makes little effort to be a documentary about anything. Mostly, it just follows Armstrong around as he plays music with Bogan, visits his Tennessee childhood home, and philosophizes on music, love and life." And I love it.

This soundtrack album on Arhoolie captures some of the greatest moments of the film, as well as some that didn't make the final cut. There's a delightfully filthy version of "Darktown Strutter's Ball." There's blues, gospel and jazz tunes. Also, a German waltz and a Polish tune. Yes, Armstrong, as he explains in the movie, was fluent in several languages, including Italian and a little Chinese. This, he said, helped him get gigs when he moved to Chicago.

Included on this album are some old songs originally released on 78rmp records, including some with Yank Rachell, who appears in the movie. A couple of these feature Sleepy John Estes on vocals.

Armstrong died in 2003 at the age of 94.

* Unentitled by Slim Cessna's Auto Club. This band often is billed as a "country gothic" band. Led by Cessna, who shares vocal duties with sidekick Jay Munly, the Auto Club often takes the guise as sinners in the hands of an angry God.

But on this album, which some critics are saying is the group's most accessible, so many songs are so upbeat and happy sounding, I really don't think the "gothic" label does them justice.

True, they've that 16 Horsepower banjo apocalypse vibe going full force on the first song, "Three Bloodhounds Two Shepherds One Fila Brasileiro" a harrowing tale that deals with bloodhounds being set loose on some hapless target, perhaps an escaped prisoner.

However, the very next song takes off with an eye-opening, frantic, almost '90s ska-like beat. The music is fierce and thundering and not very "country." Then  the following song "Thy Will Done" gets back to the banjo with an almost raga-like melody and some otherworldly whistle instrument I've yet to identify. The only thing this one lacks is Tuvan throat singers.

That old time religion is a major theme with the Auto Club. The 7-minute "Hallelujah Anyway" is a twisted tale of an arranged wedding. But even better is the closing song, "United Brethren," an emotional song of a preacher losing his congregation to another church -- just as his great-grandfather had experienced. It's not a problem most of us will ever face, but as Munly pleads, "Lord have mercy upon us ..." in his lonesome tenor with just an autoharp behind him, only the the most hard-hearted heathen would be unmoved.

* The Swan Silvertones 1946-1951. And speaking of spiritual crisis, the song "A Mother's Cry" on this album starts out with "Oh this world is in confusion .." -- and the listener isn't confused at all. It's the story of a mother whose son is fighting overseas. I would guess Korea.

Yes, those post WWII years covered by this album were confusing times indeed and, probably not coincidentally, great years for Black gospel music as well.

Take  "Jesus is God's Atomic Bomb," another tune in this collection. The Silvertones sing, "Oh have you heard about the blast in Japan/How it killed so many people and scorched the land." But it gets scarier. "Oh it can kill your natural body, but the Lord can kill your soul ...'

Yikes! World in confusion indeed.

The Swan Silvertones was an a capella group led by the great Claude Jeter, a former coal miner from Kentucky who wrote many of the songs here, including the ones I mentioned. This album captured their years at King Records. They weren't as raw sounding as The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi. They didn't have the irresistible personality of Sister Rosetta Tharpe or the sweet grace of Mahalia Jackson. But the Silvertones were solid and credible. And even now, a respite for confusing times.

* The tracks I didn't get last month from Hannibalism! by The Mighty Hannibal. This is not your average obscure lost '60s soul-shouter compilation. This album contains the greatest anti-war song of the Vietnam era that you've never heard. Written and recorded in 1966, "Hymn #5" is a first-person tale of a scared soldier. It's a minor-key moan that sounds like one of the spookiest minor-key gospel songs you can imagine.

"I'm waaaaayyyy over here, crawling' in these trench holes, covered with blood. But one thing that I know, (chorus comes in) There's no tomorrow, there's no tomorrow ..."


There's a sequel that came four years later -- following a stint in prison by Hannibal  for tax evasion -- another soldier's-eye-view of the war. It's good, but not a fraction as jolting as "Hymn #5."

I love Hannibal's early dance '60s tunes like "Jerkin' the Dog" (Settle down, Beavis!) and "Fishin' Pole." But I find his religious cautionary tales extremely fascinating. The moral of "The Truth Shall Make You Free" basically is that Jesus can help you kick heroin. Hardly original, but Hannibal sings with wild conviction. He was an addict for some years in the '60s. "There's nothin' I wouldn't do when I needed a fix/ I met the mother of my children goin', turning tricks," Hannibal testifies. And  its dark psychedelic/Blaxplotation guitar touches and the "Pappa Was a Rollin' Stone" bass line make you wonder why the song and the singer didn't become better known.

Even wilder is the final song, "Party Life." What can you say about a song that starts out "There was a pimp by my house the other day ..." Next thing you know, said pimp has taken the singer's daughter and she ends up in a hospital in Kentucky in such bad mental condition she doesn't even recognize her own dad. Seriously, people, keep those pimps away from your home!

eMusic February

* Rock N' Roll '50s Blues Essentials This is a generous helping of blues and R&B. and one of those bargains you can find on eMusic that keep me coming back.

Just one problem. Many of the tracks were mislabeled. It looks as if there are duplicates of several songs, 11 in all. It's not eMusic's fault. The same album is listed on Amazon and iTunes with the same mistakes. It's probably the fault of the digital distributor.

This points to one of the problems with the digital age. Without an actual physical product in hand, it's way too easy to spread the wrong information about an album. And with obscure tracks, who'll know but the fanatics?

Using several internet sources, I was able to identify 6 of the mislabled songs. But 5 of them still stump me. I'm not sure of the artists on any of them. They are Track 2 (It might be called "Tommy T"), Track 6, which I'm pretty sure is called "Take the Hint"; Tracks 27, 28 and 37.If anyone has a clue, please let me know.

I stumbled across this while searching for some early stuff by Guitar Shorty, who played a benefit in Santa Fe last month for our mutual friend Kenny Delgado. In this collection I found an early tune by Shorty called "Ways of a Man." It's a funny little tune about all men basically being scumbags.

Among my other favorites here are "The Hunt" by Sonny Boy Williamson, which is a humorous novelty tune about coon dogs, the two (!) Ligntnin' Hopkins rockers and Jesse Knight's "Nothing But Money." If Big Joe Turner was the Boss of the Blues, Jesse sounds like his thug enforcer.

But the compilers might have saved their best for the first here. "Get Your Clothes and Let's Go" by Crown Prince Waterford probably sounded pretty risque back in the '50s. Now it's just crazy fun. (Unfortunately this opening song is one of the mislabled tracks.)

* Calypsos From Trinidad: Politics, Intrigue and Violence in the 1930's  by Various Artists. Another great Arhoolie compilation.

What is it about calypso that can even make a song about injustice, poverty and murder sound almost ...  happy? You hear very little outrage or despair in these songs. The singers -- who have cool stage names like Growling Tiger, Roaring Lion, Tiger, Atilla the Hun and The Executor -- skewer their politicians with a wise, sly smile and wicked lyrics.

Somehow these singers pull off political protest without the self-righteousness of so many American folkies or the pre-fab poser rage of second-rate rappers.

Wouldn't it have been great if we'd had Lord Executor around here in New Mexico to sing "Treasury Scandal" during the whole Robert Vigil /Michael Montoya mess.

Of course, politicians in Trinidad often were not amused. In fact "Sedition Law" by King Radio deals with censorship of the calypso menace.

(Beware! There's lots of mislabeling on this album too. Among other thins, they took the "growling" and "Roaring" from the Tiger and the Lion. Get it together, e-Music!)



* Sanders' Truckstop by Ed Sanders. Here's further proof that I have unhealthy obsessions about music.

Back in my early years of college, I remember KUNM playing this funny faux-country song called "Jimmy Joe, The Hippybilly Boy." Sung by Ed Sanders, a founding member of The Fugs, it's about a long-haired country boy who meets a tragic end.

I'd looked for this for years but was unable to find it. I'm not sure what made me think of  "Jimmy Joe" recently, but I looked up Sanders on eMusic and lo and behold ...

I probably should have just downloaded that song. It's still funny to me. There may be a couple of others -- For instance, "The Iliad," which is the tale of the legendary shit-kicking homophobe Johnny Pissoff. And maybe "Banshee," which is about one of Satan's demon lovers.

But most of the rest of the album doesn't hold up. The hippie humor is dated and Sander's fake hick accent gets annoying. If you want to hear really funny, really warped music about rednecks and hippies, check out Twisted Tales from the Vinyl Wastelands Volume 4: Hippie in a Blunder.

In Ed's defense though, you could argue that his work was a precursor to Mojo Nixon, Angry Johnny & The Killbillies and maybe even Southern Culture on the Skids (though none of the Hemptones can pick a guitar anything like SCOTS' Rick Miller can.)

PLUS:

* The 16 tracks I didn't get last month from Soundway Records Presents The Sound of Siam : Leftfield Luk Thung, Jazz and Molam from Thailand 1964 - 1975. The Soundways label never ceases to amaze me. It's best known for its compilations of amazing African rock, funk and soul. Now they've turned their ears to Asia.

There's some cross-cultural hijinx that would make 3 Mustaphas 3's heads spin. For instnace "Diew Sor Diew Caan" by Thong Huad & Kunpan basically is an Irish fiddle reel gone Siamese.

You can find direct influences from Western rock and pop in these grooves. Because none of the songs on this Soundways collection are sung in English, it's not as obvious as the Thai Beat a Go-Go collections where you find Siamese versions of songs like "Hit the Road Jack," "Lady Madonna" and Hank Williams' Kaw-Liga.

But on "Sao Lam Plearn," The Petch Phin Thong Band draws straight from "Jumping Jack Flash, " And in the middle of "Kai Tom Yum" by Kawaw Siang Thong, the melody seems to change to that of Leo Sayer's 1970s AM Radiio sap hit "More Than I Can Say." (But since Leo didn't release that song until the late '70s, Thong probably got the tune from the earlier version by Bobby Vee.)

For those who don't speak the language, the rueful laughter and dialog toward the end of "Kai Tom Yum" by Kawaw Siang Thong might sound sinister, like foreign mobsters about to commit some atrocity.

But it doesn't get anywhere as sinister as The Viking Combo Band's "Pleng Yuk Owakard" The title means "Space Age Music," but with its Dirty Dog bass, shouted lyrics, machine-gun drums and weirdo organ, it sounds like a murder after hours at a roller rink. (This song was included on Thai Beat a Go-Go Volume 1. Except there it's called "Phom Rak Khoon Tching Thing (I Really Do Love You)")


* Two songs from Battle of the Jug Bands. I'd never heard of any of these groups on this album, released in 2000. But who cares? The beauty of jug band music is that anyone with the proper spirit (and in some cases, proper spirits) can play it. The album is connected with an actual annual event, the "Battle of the Jug Bands," which takes place in Minneapolis every weekend after the Superbowl.

I picked up jug band versions of "Kung Fu Fighting" by a group called Girls on Top and the Rolling Stones classic "Sweet Virginia" -- a natural for a jug band treatment -- by Hoakim Yoakim & The Eggwhites. More on this album next month.

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: DOWD OUT LOUD

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
June 18, 2010

Two-bit hustlers living in shame. Men with broken hearts and bitter dreams. Dark secrets, ugly schemes, and soiled pleasures. Welcome to the world of Johnny Dowd.

The singing moving-company operator is back with another warped little masterpiece, a 13-song album called Wake Up the Snakes, which, unfortunately, is destined to be appreciated mostly by the scattered cult that reveres him. I’m proud to be part of that. Care for some Kool-Aid?

Quick recap for the uninitiated: Dowd is a Grandma Moses-like latecomer to showbiz. Living in Ithaca, New York (but with roots in Fort Worth, Memphis, and Pauls Valley, Oklahoma), he didn’t release his first album until he was 50 years old. That was 1997’s Wrong Side of Memphis.

Like the title of one of his early albums (which was lifted from a Hank Williams song), this CD is full of pictures from life’s other side. For reasons I’m not sure of, Dowd is frequently classified as “alternative country.”

True, he rose out of alt country circles. The first time I saw him play was at a No Depression magazine party at South by Southwest in Austin. And it’s true, he has that Pauls Valley drawl, and he has covered a couple of Hank songs.

But I don’t think Hank done it that way. With keyboards that zigzag between “96 Tears” and Fright Night With Seymour and background vocals by Kim Sherwood-Caso, who sounds like a torch singer from the dark dimension, Dowd doesn’t easily fit into any category.

Wake Up the Snakes is a classic Dowd album. It starts off with “Yolanda,” which has a slow, smoky, almost Latin beat, with keyboardist Michael Stark sounding as close to original Santana organ-man Gregg Rolie as you’re going to hear on a Dowd record. Dowd recites — almost whispers — the story of a guy whose girlfriend tries to involve him in a plot to kill her own father. He balks, but she goes through with the evil deed. You can almost taste his regret that he didn't help her.

“Lies” is built on the classic ’50s grease- ballad chord pattern. Dowd sings verses (“Do you think I’m pathetic and easy to ignore?/Does it bother you when I pace up and down the floor?”), while Sherwood-Caso comes in crooning sweetly on the chorus (“Lies, I told you nothing but lies/Everything I said/Was a lie”).

There are some bitchen garagey rockers like “Howling Wolf Blues,” “Fat Joey Brown” (where did that weird trombone come from?), and “Swamp Woman.” On the last, Dowd praises his woman: “Lord God a mighty, my baby is hot!” goes the refrain, even though he later observes, “She’s got the moral perspective of an alley cat.”

“Words of Love” is another Santana-influenced tune — and a solo spotlight for Sherwood-Caso — while “Hello Happiness” is a sinister bossa nova with Dowd and Sherwood-Caso trading lines like a damaged version of Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme.

Meanwhile, “Demons and Goats” lives up to its name — it’s pure evil. So is “Voices,” which starts with the line, “I wish the voices in my head would shut up.”

The one big misfire here is the song “Mary Lou,” about a father who sexually abuses his daughter. The subject matter seems like a good one for Dowd; he sings from the perspective of the father, who realizes that he will “burn in hell” for his sins.

But what bothers me is the name of the daughter/victim: Jessie Mae Hemphill. Didn’t Dowd realize that this was the name of a great Mississippi blueswoman? Or is this Hemphill’s actual story? I honestly don’t know.

That quibble aside, it’s always an adventure to explore darkened corridors with Johnny Dowd.

Also recommended:

* Self-Decapitation by Delaney Davidson and 5th Sin-Phonie by The Dead Brothers. New Zealand native Davidson used to play guitar with the Swiss “funeral” band The Dead Brothers, and his solo album reminds me of his old group.

Traces of Salvation Army marching bands and dark blues permeate Davidson’s album, as they do the latest Dead Brothers outing.

Self-Decapitation begins with “Around the World,” which recalls a little of the old faux-Dixieland hit from the early ’60s “Midnight in Moscow.” As on that earlier song (made famous by the long-forgotten British group called Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen), you can hear influences of American blues, early jazz, and Eastern European/Gypsy sounds on “Around the World.” And you can hear them loud and clear on “Back in Hell” and “Ladies Man,” which features a pretty amazing Gypsy-jazz guitar solo.

Davidson does a credible version of “In the Pines,” a close cousin of Leadbelly’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night.” He does it as an industrial-edged blues tune with an acoustic guitar and altered vocals yielding to overamped guitar and crazy-loud drums.

My favorite here, though, is the delightfully filthy “Dirty Dozen,” a foul-mouthed country-blues stomp that reminds me why I love this music in the first place.

The Dead Brothers are in top form, too, on this, their fifth album. Starting out with an old-timey Appalachian-sounding fiddle-and-banjo tune called “Drunkards Walk,” the bros go into a Tom Waits-y stomp titled “Death Blues.”

The one song I don’t like is one called “Teenage Kicks.” Somehow it reminds me of a chamber quartet doing Ruben and the Jets.

But they make up for it with “Drunkards Dream,” which sounds as if Bertolt Brecht started a bluegrass band, and a cover of Bauhaus’ “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” an ode to the old vampire that evokes fond memories of Alejandro Escovedo’s pseudo-baroque take on The Stooges’ “Now I Wanna Be Your Dog.”