TERRELL'S TUNEUP: Dark & Savage plus Fun & Goofy

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
August 5, 2011


Holy Red Headed Stranger, Batman! It’s a cosmic concept album set in the Old West.

And just like Willie Nelson’s classic musical parable, El Santo Grial: La Pistola Piadosa, the new album by Joe Frankland, who goes by the name of Slackeye Slim, is a low-key, minimally produced work that tells a story of a loner whose religious faith is tested and remolded by his gun.

You can easily imagine Slackeye’s Drake Savage, “the Chosen One,” crying like a baby and screaming like a panther — like the Preacher in Red Headed Stranger.

Both anti-heroes chalk up notable body counts. But unlike Nelson’s Stranger, Slackeye’s Chosen One never seems to find his Denver, never quite gets his hand on the wheel. Pistola is a much darker story.

“Come one! Come all! And listen to a tale of a gun that came from heaven.” This invitation comes early in Slackeye’s story. It sounds like a pitch from a medicine-show huckster. It’s obvious that the gun from heaven is going to send a bunch of people to hell.

Slackeye, who lives in rural Wisconsin and is pursuing a degree in engineering, recorded this album in some unusual locales — a junkyard, a cabin, an abandoned radio station, a fine-arts museum, and an old mansion — in Montana. Singer Graham Lindsey, like Slackeye, a Farmageddon recording artist, collaborated on some of the tunes on Pistola. The album is Slackeye’s second.

In an online interview last month on the It Burns When I Pee podcast, Slackeye explained, “It’s basically about this guy whose family is really really religious, and they push it on him really really hard, and that obviously will push him away from it. So he turns his back on God and people in general and hates the world and does all this evil shit.”

Finding the “Pistola Piadosa,” young Drake realizes he must carry out Judgment Day.

I won’t give away the whole plot here, but by the lovely dirge “Tomorrow Morning’s Gonna Come,” Savage finds his way to his boyhood home, where he says, “I’ve forgotten all the nightmares here/ I remember all the dreams.” And in the next song, “The Chosen One (Part III),” he repeatedly growls, “I’ve got some killin’ to do” during the last half of the song.

Musically, there’s a definite mariachi/spaghetti-Western feel on much of Pistola. I’ve already noted in this column that the song “Introducing Drake Savage” (which is part of the free Southern Independent XXX, Vol. 1 compilation I reviewed here a couple of weeks ago) reminds me a lot of Calexico. That’s true of several songs on the album, such as “Vengeance Gonna Be My Name,” in which I keep expecting Mexican trumpets to come in. They don’t, but there’s a tasty overheated guitar solo toward the end.

I also hear a lot of Nick Cave in this album, especially in the moody minor-key numbers. Slackeye’s voice is deep, as is Cave’s, but it’s more scratchy and not quite as rich. It’s perfectly suited for a surreal song cycle about God’s gunslinger.

El Santo Grial: La Pistola is available as a download at Slackeye's website. A CD version allegedly is in the works.

Also recommended:


* A Sure Sign of Something by Peter Stampfel & The WORM All-Stars. It must be Wisconsin week here at “Terrell’s Tune-Up.” Although I normally associate Stampfel with New York bohemia, I realized after I started writing this that he was born in the Dairy State. This album is as goofy as Slackeye’s is grim.

So, on Wisconsin!

A Sure Sign of Something sounds like Stampfel and a group of friends fooling around and having fun with a bunch of weird songs, both familiar and unknown — which, I believe, is the true definition of “folk music,” despite the uptight, self-absorbed connotations that the concept of folk music has unfortunately taken on.

For the uninitiated, Stampfel, 72, is best known as founder and perpetrator of The Holy Modal Rounders, a group that played folk music through a psychedelic filter. He and fellow Rounder Steve Weber were also members of The Fugs. I don’t remember the name of the critic who described Stampfel’s voice as resembling that of a chicken who just won the lottery, but he or she was spot on.

This isn’t an essential Stampfel album by any means, but it’s full of strange joys. It was recorded with several musicians from the WORM art collective Stampfel met in Rotterdam a few years ago.

The album starts off with a joyful little tune, "Fucking Sailors in China Town," written by Stampfel’s ex-wife Antonia, This first-person story of a prostitute who doesn’t charge sailors has been in Stampfel's repertoire for years. Critic Robert Christgau once wrote that this song would never be recorded. He was wrong.

Stampfel and his WORM pals romp through standards like “Peg and Awl,” The Stanley Brothers’ “How Mountain Girls Can Love,” the old fiddle tune “Wake Up Jacob,” and an irreverent version of “Because, Just Because.” I first heard this song on Elvis Presley’s Sun Sessions. Stampfel writes in the liner notes he first heard it played by a Milwaukee polka band in the ’40s.

And there’s an insane cover of a crazy doo-wop song called “Shombolar,” recorded in the ’50s by a group called Sheriff & The Ravens, though Stampfel said it was written by Aki Leong and is based on an African work song.

Stampfel’s knack for rediscovering and reinterpreting gems like this is a major reason we all should love him.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: GOGOL a GO-GO

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
November 13, 2009

Here's the perfect introduction to Gogol Bordello for those who have not been initiated to the wild joys of this international troupe — our impoverished state is one of the few places in the world in which Gogol has never played, and that's a whole lot of people. (In recent weeks the band has played Colorado, Arizona, and Texas. I swear to God, sometimes it seems like New Mexico is just a giant hole in the rock 'n' roll map.)

Live From Axis Mundi is a CD/DVD set that pretty much sums up this nine-member New York-based band. The 11-song CD consists mainly of live performances of Gogol classics, plus a couple of outtakes from previous studio albums, a few demos, and a dubby instrumental version of "Immigrant Punk." The DVD is a concert video culled from two New York shows on consecutive nights in July 2007, around the time of the release of the band's last studio album, Super Taranta!.

A little history: this band is fronted by singer/guitarist/songwriter Eugene Hütz, a Ukrainian whose family fled that land after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. Gogol fans just assume that Hütz, like Dr. Bruce Banner, was mutated and transformed by radiation. Whatever the case, The Incredible Hütz landed in New York City in the early '90s, where he fell in with like-minded musicians, many of them immigrants like himself. In an early incarnation of Gogol, the band reportedly played straight guitar/accordion-driven Gypsy music for Russian weddings. But Hütz is a rocker at heart and before the end of the decade, he crafted a sound he calls "Gypsy punk."

I find that phrase, like I do so many neat tags, a little too cute and glib. "Gypsy punk" doesn't come close to doing justice to the sound of the band, which includes musicians from Russia, Israel, Ethiopia, and Scotland. True, there are elements of Gypsy music in the mix. Sometimes there are even acoustic guitar parts suggesting flamenco. As for the "punk" elements, you won't hear much Ramones or Sex Pistols in the Gogol sound. But there are certain similarities with some of the latter-day Clash experiments. If Joe Strummer were still alive, I bet he would have produced at least one Gogol Bordello by now.

The Axis Mundi CD is not quite a greatest-hits affair or even a good survey of the four previous Gogol albums. It's weighted toward Super Taranta! (four songs from that album, plus an outtake) and, to a lesser extent, its predecessor, Gypsy Punk: Underdog World Strike.

But it does contain some of Gogol's finest tunes. Perhaps my personal favorite Hütz song of all time is "American Wedding" ("Have you ever been to American wedding? Where's the vodka; where's the marinated herring?"). The BBC version here is all fired up, even when Hütz fakes snoring in a quiet instrumental bridge. By the end of it, you're craving marinated herring.

"Stivali E Colbacco," an outtake from the Super Taranta! sessions, has an instrumental section featuring a guest banjoist playing off Moscow-born Sergey Rjabtzev's fiddle. For a minute or so, it's like a Slavic hoedown. A new treat is "You Gave Up," a multisegmented odyssey that takes a few minutes to heat up. In this tune you can hear the influence of one of Hütz's musical heroes, Nick Cave. I'm not sure why Hütz shouts "Cumbia!" at the end of the tune. (The electric guitar solo in "Mishto" sounds a lot closer to cumbia than it does in "You Gave Up.")

Gogol Bordello is one of those bands whose true disciples insist that you have to see the group live before you can really claim you're a fan. I tend to dismiss talk like that, but the DVD part of this package shows that the band's live performance is a wondrous thing.

Of course, watching the DVD in the comfort of your living room, even with the volume cranked loud enough to frighten your neighbors, isn't the same as being in the same room with the band and thousands of sweating, bouncing devotees. But seeing the stage show — Hütz's intense singing and wild antics (at a couple of points he pops up, as if by magic, in the balcony, surrounded by fans); Rjabtzev playing his fiddle like some subversive shaman and looking like a crazy Russian version of Mick Fleetwood; dancers Elizabeth Sun and Pam Racine playing cymbals and a big bass drum as if they've just escaped from some bizarre marching band — you realize that, besides being crafty musicians, the band's members are ace entertainers.

The song selection on the DVD includes most of the essential Gogol repertoire: "Start Wearing Purple," "Dogs Were Barking," and "Not a Crime" — my favorite besides "American Wedding" — complete with obnoxious sirens. The DVD also contains four promotional videos (Did MTV ever play these?), an enjoyable little bio doc called Creative People Must Be Stopped, and stray Gogol performance footage.

My only complaint about the whole package is that I wish there were audio versions of the concert songs so we could stick them in our computers and iPods. That way Gogol fans would never have to leave the show.

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: LIFE OF BRIAN

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
September 19, 2008


If Brian Wilson's new album, That Lucky Old Sun, truly were the follow-up to Smile, I could see why it would be considered something of a sophomore slump.

That Lucky Old Sun is Wilson’s first album since Smile. (not counting his 2005 Christmas album). But let’s be real. Smile is a bizarre masterpiece that Wilson first began working on more than 40 years ago with The Beach Boys. It was rescued and revived four years ago by Wilson, with the loving, patient, and determined assistance of members of his band Wondermints. (Wilson fans should, if they haven’t already, immediately get their hands on the DVD Brian Wilson Presents Smile. I came away respecting his young band mates nearly as much as I respect Wilson himself.) Smile is in a class by itself, but you shouldn’t hold that against this new album.

It could be argued that, on the surface, That Lucky Old Sun sounds like a follow-up to Smile. Both albums are song cycles featuring recurring musical themes, tunes ranging from the whimsical to the melancholy, and obvious references to longtime Wilson sources like Phil Spector and The Four Freshmen. You hear strains of doo-wop, barbershop, California pop, quasi-chamber music, and lounge sleaze. The lyrics are frequently clunky — but that’s been true ever since Wilson, now in his mid-60s, was a little-bitty Beach Boy.

The tune for which the album is named, which appears as a brief introduction and reappears in short snatches elsewhere in the album, is indeed that old Frankie Laine hit. My initial encounter with the song was Ray Charles’ version in the 1960s. I was just a kid, and this big-orchestrated production was one of the first times a song actually made me sad. I could feel the depths of sorrow and frustration as Charles sang, “I fuss with my woman and toil with my kids/Sweat ’til I’m wrinkled and gray/I know that lucky old sun has nothin’ to do/But roll around heaven all day.”

But Wilson’s version of the song doesn’t evoke the same level of sadness or world-weariness. There’s no fussing or toiling here. Wilson’s take is fortified by a strange optimism, as if he’s saying, “If you’re lucky, you can be like the sun and roll around heaven all day.”

The first half or so of the record is an update of one of Wilson’s longest-running themes — his love for Southern California. It’s a celebration of Los Angeles, from the beach to the barrios to Hollywood Boulevard. “The sun burns a hole through the 6 a.m. haze/Turns up the volume and shows off its rays/Another Dodger-blue sky is crowning L.A.,” Wilson sings in the peppy “Morning Beat.” You almost expect him to intertwine pieces of Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.”

But in the second half, Wilson gets more interesting as he begins to confront himself about his infamous “lost years” of mental illness. “At 25 I turned out the light/Couldn’t handle the glare in my tired eyes,” he sings in “Going Home.”

In “Oxygen to the Brain,” he moans, “How could I have got so low/I’m embarrassed to tell you so/I laid around this old place/I hardly ever washed my face.”

Then there’s “Midnight’s Another Day,” in which he sings, “Swept away in a brainstorm/Chapters missing, pages torn.”

Alas, there are aspects of this album that prevent it from being a classic. For instance, the silly doggerel “narratives” that pop up between some songs are corny and annoying. Surprisingly, they are written by Smile lyricist Van Dyke Parks. Sadly, they are Parks’ only contributions to the record.

“Mexican Girl,” about some lovely señorita in East Los Angeles, is downright embarrassing — at least the lyrics are. “Hey bonita muchacha/Don’t-cha know that I want-cha. ... You have my sacred heart/We’ll finish at the start.”

And while the music of “Forever She’ll Be My Surfer Girl” isn’t bad, the self-referential sentimentality is a little much for these jaded ears.

So no, That Lucky Old Sun is not in the same league as Smile. But consider this: even though Beethoven’s Sixth is no Beethoven’s Fifth, it’s still Beethoven.

Bonus:

Steve Terrell’s Brian Wilson List
* Best Brian Wilson Song of All Time: “Surf’s Up,” co-written by Van Parks. My favorite version of this song, originally written for Smile, is the one that appeared as the title song of the Beach Boys’ 1971 album.
* Best Brian Wilson Song of All Time Runner-Up: “Heroes and Villains.” My favorite version is from the original Smile sessions; it appears on the Beach Boys’ 1993 box set, Good Vibrations.
* Best Cover of “Surf’s Up”: David Thomas & Two Pale Boys.
* Worst Cover of “Surf’s Up”: Vince Gill, Jimmy Webb, and David Crosby on the DVD An All-Star Tribute to Brian Wilson.
* Weirdest Brian Wilson Song: “Rio Grande,” from his self-titled 1988 album. It sounds like the soundtrack for an imaginary theme-park ride based on a Western starring Pee-wee Herman.
* Saddest Brian Wilson Song: “Still I Dream of It.” My favorite version is the lo-fi demo track on I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times.
* Best Brian Wilson Celebrity Ode: “Johnny Carson,” from The Beach Boys Love You.
* Best Ode to Brian Wilson: “Brian Wilson” by Barenaked Ladies
* Best Brian Wilson Song I Don't Care If I Never Hear Again in My Whole Life: “Good Vibrations.” It’s a great song, but Sunkist ruined it for me years ago.
* Best Brian Wilson Song That’s Not Really a Brian Wilson Song: “Meth of a Rockette’s Kick” by Mercury Rev.
* Best Brian Wilson Radio Tribute: This Sunday at 11 p.m. on Terrell’s Sound World, KSFR-FM 101.1.

Bonehead correction: This is embarrassing, but I got the title of the Zeno Tornado album reviewed in last week’s Tune-Up wrong. (I corrected it in my blog) The correct title is Rambling Man, which appears in near illegible letters on the cover. I called the album Lover of Your Dreams, which is the name of the first song. And this is what confused me: It’s also the name of a previous Tornado album

eMUSIC NOVEMBER

* Still Stuck in Your Throat by Fishbone. I've been on a real Fishbone kick for the past couple of weeks. It started when I found a used copy of their 2002 album The Psychotic Friends Nuttwerx at Natural Sound. I'd nearly forgotten about this group and I was surprised at how vital they still sounded. I saw them play the 1990 Lollapalooza in Denver and loved how they could sound like George Clinton one moment, Pantera the next, and then Frank Zappa -- all mixed in with a hopped-up ska sound. I also was impressed, back then in '93, at how they weren't aftraid to lay on the showmanship -- a quality you didn't much find with some of the other acts like Dinosaur Jr., Alice in Chains and Rage Against the Machine.

So in recent days I was lucky to get a couple of Fishbone albums from LaLa.com (the classic Truth and Soul and the relatively new Live at the Temple Bar and More. I also ripped the Fishbone CDs I already had onto my computer -- and then I stumble across this album, released just last year, on eMusic. Nearly six and a half hours of Fishbone is going through the shuffle mode of my mind. I want to say Fishbone is a major overlooked band of the '90s -- but they're still going strong and still seriously underrated -- in this century as well.


*100 Days, 100 Nights by Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings. I reviewed this one recently in Tune-up, along with the new Bettye LaVette CD and the new 3-disc Wattstax collection. You can find the whole piece HERE

In fact, I liked 100 Days so much, I downloaded Sharon & Dap-Kings' 2005 album, Naturally. And if anything, I'm liking it even more. There's a duet with Lee Fields ("Stranded in Your Love") in which Lee & Sharon become a modern Butterbeans and Susie. And there's a totally revamped "This Land is Your Land." It doesn't sound like Woody, but I bet he'd love it.

Basically, I can't get enough soul music. I'm happy there's a cool "soul revival" going on and especially happy that the focus is on the music, not some bogus nostalgic cuteness. The world needs more soul.


*The Big Eyeball in The Sky by Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains. This is a good-time collaboration between Les Claypool and drummer Brain of Primus , funk keyboard great Bernie Worrell and the guitar goon known as Buckethead. So while basically it's a supercharged version of Primus with Col. Claypool in command, Bernie and Buckethead put their own peculiar stamps on the music. There's lots of tasty jams and nary a dull moment. Even the 10-minute epic "Elephant Ghost" slinks along quite nicely. It sounds like the funkiest circus you've ever seen.


*Live at Joe's Place by Hound Dog Taylor. Hound Dog was the closest the blues ever came to punk rock. Well, maybe T-Model Ford, but Hound Dog was out there a ways.

This live record (a 1972 bar gig) is nice, raw and raucous. A few standards here -- "Dust My Broom," "The Sky is Crying," "Kansas City" and a good nine-minute "Freddy's Blues."

And there's one of those strange and unintentionally funny eMusic typos -- "Give Me Back My Wig" somehow becomes "Glue Back My Wig." I like that title better.



* Emotions by The Pretty Things. Talk about being a latecomer -- I didn't really really get into this 40-plus-year-old British Invasion band until Balboa Island, thier latest, released just this year.

Emotions is from that golden year of 1967, when the group plunged into psychedelia. Unfortunately in many cases they went overboard with the horns, strings, harpsichords, harps and other Sgt. Peppery affects. Still some bitchen stuff though. Love the fuzz tone on and whatever stringed instrument (I don't think it's a sitar -- sounds almost like a banjo) on "One Long Glance." I'm also loving the acoustic pyschedelic blues of "Tripping."

*The Live Ones 6 Tracks by The Standells. Eddie Munster was right. The Standells were cool guys. Only few have surpassed their level of bitchenicity. If you don't like 'em, flake off! Get yourself a crewcut, baby! This is a way too short live show by the Dirty Water boys at Michigan State University in 1966. Good clear sound quality. My only regret is that there are only six tracks.


*Mutiny/The Bad Seed by The Birthday Party. Although I've been a Nick Cave fan for years, I basically missed out on his earlier band back in the '80s. (I wasn't invited to the Birthday Party!) I really did miss out! This band has all the spooky, threatening power of the Bad Seeds, abrasive but very listenable. Lots of critics -- including me, I think -- compared Cave's current band Grinderman to The Birthday Party. For good reason.

This collection is two BP EPs starting out with Cave shouting, "Hands up! Who wants to die" in the hard crunching "Sonny's Burning." It doesn't let up from there. "Deep in the Woods is especially frightening. "Deep in the woods a funeral is swingin' ..." Yikes!

*Nuclear War by Sun Ra Akestra. I already had an MP3 of the title track and I needed seven tracks to make my monthly 90, so this worked out perfectly.

The story behind the album, as told in the Allmusic Guide is hilarious in itself:

"Originally Ra was so sure the funky dance track was a hit, he immediately took it to Columbia Records, where they immediately rejected it. Why he thought a song with the repeating chant "Nuclear War, they're talking about Nuclear War/It's a motherf***er, don't you know/if they push that button, your ass gotta go/and whatcha gonna do without your ass" would be a hit is another puzzle in the Sun Ra myth.

Beyond the title song, many tracks here -- "Celestial Love," "Blue Intensity," "The Nameless One Number Two" -- have a cool, bluesy, sleazy yet otherworldly quality with Ra's magial roller-rink organ out front. Call it crime jazz from Neptune.

UPDATED UPDATE: Soon after I posted this I discovered that Bloodshot Records is offering its Free Label Sampler 2007: Yr Welcome, World compilation for free. So I added that too. It's got a few tunes I already have on CD by the likes of Graham Parker, The Detroit Cobras and The Gore Gore Dirls, some new material by Bloodshot stalwarts like Jon Rauhouse and Deano Waco's Dollar Store, and some acts I'm not familar with like The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir and Ha Ha Tonka.

Speaking of which, the roots-rocking Ha Ha Tonka also is offering a free five-song live in-studio set called The Hear Ya Sessions on eMusic. I think these guys would have a lot to talk about with Hundred Year Flood. It's a little bit country, a little bit psychedelic. And, like I said, it's free!

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: STICK TO THE PLAN, GRAHAM

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
April 13, 2007

With a song called “Stick to The Plan” on his new album Don’t Tell Columbus, Graham Parker proves that mixing rock ’n’ roll and political commentary doesn’t have to result in heavy-handed screeds — and in fact can be good wicked fun.

Parker went into the amazingly strong latest stage of his 30-plus-year career when he began his association with Chicago’s Bloodshot Records in 2004. “Stick to the Plan,” while topical, is one of his strongest statements ever.

The just-under-six-minute song reminds me a lot of the cool blues-rock found on Dylan’s Modern Times. The lyrics also show the influence of prophet Bob — a little apocalyptic, a little tongue-in-cheek, outrage balanced with hipster humor. Starting out with the image of hurricanes “howling up the Florida coast,” the song, over the course of five verses, skewers the White House, the religious right, polluters, paranoia, and pigheadedness in general.

In perhaps a sly reference to the first verse of Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited,” Parker sings,

“Well God said to the president listen to me/I will advise you on
the way it’s gonna be/So the president got to his knees and accepted his fate/It’s a done deal now if you got some objections too late/Meanwhile in the corner there’s a drunk on a stool/Slurpin’ up ketchup and acting the fool/Pretending to fight for the truth but he ain’t getting far/Because he’s working for the same team just from the other side of the bar.”

The song bounces along, with images of persecuted scientists, philandering preachers, and Arabs being tortured — punctuated by cheery choruses in which Parker and a female chorus sing, “Good things are coming if we stick to the plan ... Keep your finger on the trigger, stick to the plan.”

After what can only be described as a murderous kazoo solo, Parker slides into the last verse,
which concludes with,

“Inside the airport every worker wears a turban/At the check point they’re stripping a suburban/couple of all their clothes and smelling their feet/But the found out the odor of stupidity isn’t too sweet.”

Parker has other politically charged tunes that you’ll never find on George Bush’s iPod.
Just last year he released a digital-only single called “2000 Funerals,” a somber tune about Americans killed in Iraq. (The number, as the press release for Don’t Tell Columbus points out, is “sadly outdated” — though if you count Iraqi casualties, it was outdated long before it was written).

And on the new album there’s “The Other Side of the Reservoir,” a slow, seething song about the destruction of a community for the sake of a water project — which might just be Parker’s equivalent of John Prine’s “Paradise”: “What were they thinking when they dug that hole/and bulldozed that town down/wall by wall,” Parker spits.

No, Columbus is not a protest album. It’s not Parker’s Living With War. It has soulful love songs like the sweet “Somebody Saved Me” and the desperate “Love or Delusion,” a smoldering, understated rocker.

There’s the scathing “England’s Latest Clown,” which concerns the well-covered travails of drug-plagued British rocker Pete Doherty (who gets out of prison “looking handsome with a ton of pride/With muscles on his muscles and Kate Moss by his side.”)

And there’s “I Discovered America” (the album’s title comes from the chorus), a harmonica-and-organ-driven folk-rocker in which Parker recounts moving to this country from England while looking back at his career.

“There was smoke up to my eyeballs/Poison burned my throat/But I said I’d keep on going when everyone said don’t/With my bony-chested T-shirt/Some stolen guitar licks/navigating by dead reckoning in 1976.”

A quick Creedence Clearwater Revival riff cleverly answers the “stolen guitar lick” line. Indeed, Parker’s pilfered from some of the best. But like Johnny Cash in “One Piece at a Time,” he’s used his stolen parts to create a unique vehicle. Let’s hope he sticks to his own weird plan and keeps it going.

Also Recommended:
* Standard Songs for Average People by John Prine & Mac Wiseman. This has been a good year for good country cover albums. There was Last of the Breed by Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard and Ray Price, as well as Southern Culture on the Skids’ Countrypolitan Favorites. And now this Marvel Team-up of one-time “New Dylan” Prine and venerated octogenarian bluegrass sensei Mac Wiseman. It almost makes me suspect that something big might be gurgling below the surface of country music, but I’ll leave that line of thought to the mystics.

While I would have preferred some new Prine songs, this is an easygoing, friendly little album, with some fine takes on some good ol’ songs.

There’s a couple of Elvis Presley’s Sun Sessions classics (“I Forgot to Remember to Forget” and “I Love You Because”); a Bob Wills obscurity (“Don’t Be Ashamed of Your Age”); a Lefty Frizzell faux-folk tune (“Saginaw, Michigan”); an Ernest Tubb tune (“Blue Eyed Elaine”); a Patti Page pop hit (“Old Cape Cod”); some hymns (“The Old Rugged Cross,” “In the Garden”); and a couple of wonderful examples of ’70s country — Tom T. Hall’s “Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine” and Kris Kristofferson’s “Just The Other Side of Nowhere.”

Standard Songs won’t take a place in the upper pantheon of records by either artist. But when you hear these old guys trading verses on these songs they both obviously love, it’s hard not to love it back.

Terrell's Tuneup: My Search For Jerry J. Nixon

As published in The Santa Fe New Mexican, April 2, 2004

Every few years about this time, I toy with the idea of writing an April Fool’s column and make up a bunch of ridiculous titles for CDs to review. “Where the Rude Boys Are: A Reggae Tribute to Connie Frances”; “Ebony and Ivory: The Ray Charles/Elvis Costello Sessions”; “The Symphonic Iggy Pop”; The Essential Eddie Money (oops, that’s a real one!)

Somehow it always seemed too cute to do a whole column of that stuff.

However in late March I stumbled across a real CD, that, after a little research, I’ve come to believe is an April Fool’s Day joke at Santa Fe’s expense by an obscure Swiss record label, Voodoo Rhythm.

Gentleman of Rock ‘n’ Roll. The Q Recordings, New Mexico ‘58-‘64, released last year, is by an unknown rockabilly singer named Jerry J. Nixon with sad eyes, pale skin and greasy hair.

Nixon’s life story is told inside the package.

Indeed, it was like uncovering a secret history of this place I call my home.

Born Gerald James Hall in 1937 in Yorkshire England, the future rockabilly gentleman was involved with a botched armed robbery in Southampton. But because of his youth, he got off with a light sentence, joined the merchant marines and sailed to America, where he adopted a fake identity — Jerry J. Nixon — and stayed.

By 1956 “Nixon” ended up here in Santa Fe, where he initially worked at a cardboard box and packing company. Perhaps the oppression of this factory was what led Nixon to join the Communist Party of New Mexico.

Inspired by Elvis Presley, Nixon hooked up with a band playing at Atahualpa Bar & BBQ. The were initially called The Santa Fe Flames, but under Nixon’s sway, they became The Volcanoes.

Santa Fe businessman Leonard E. Sanchez, who managed entertainers and owned Q Studios and Quality Records, heard a Nixon and The Volcanoes gig, signed them up, made some records and toured the Southwest and even Mexico.

Like the archetypal rock manager of the day, Sanchez took songwriting credits on nearly all Nixon’s original songs.

After a few short years, however, things soured between Nixon and Sanchez, who gambled away all the band’s money betting on card games and cockfights. He also favored one of his other stars, local country singer Dick Lotner.

The bad blood came to a head in 1963 when the two got into a fight that ended with Sanchez in the hospital and the Gentleman of Rock ’n’ Roll in jail. The bio in the CD says the two never spoke again. However, according to the album notes, the song “Red Sun” was recorded at Q Studios in March 1964.

But shortly after that, Nixon left the Volcanoes and the music biz in general. After doing some work in the Texas oil fields, Nixon settled in Albuquerque by 1967, working as a driver for the Sunset Glades retirement home. He died in Albuquerque in 1999.

Damn! Had I known about him, I could have interviewed him. How come nobody ever told me about Santa Fe’s greatest rockabilly commie?

But the more I thought about it, the more I suspected there was a good reason why nobody told me about Jerry J. Nixon.

The fact that I had never heard of any of the people or the places mentioned in the Nixon story made me wonder.

Checking city directories and phone books between 1957 and 1961 I found no listings for Atahualpa Bar & BBQ, Quality Records, Q recording studio or KWXL radio. There’s no current listing for Sunset Glade retirement home in the Albuquerque directory. I couldn’t find a listing for any cardboard factory in Santa Fe During those years.. There were no residential listings for Leonard Sanchez, Dick Lotner or Jerry Nixon.

Whoever wrote the stuff on the CDs knows something about Santa Fe though. Q Studios was said to be located above a garage on Galisteo Street, while Atahualpa Bar & BBQ allegedly was off Old Taos Highway.

So where did this music come from? One online critic said there are similarities between Nixon and Die Zorros, a Swiss band led by “Beatman” the head honcho of Voodoo Rhythm.

The sad part is, I wanted the album to be real. While not exactly revelatory, this is the sound of a journeyman rockabilly cat who captures the wild spirit of that era.

The music is tough and cranking. Several cuts feature an eerie organ sound (think Joe Meeks or Del Shannon), while “Saturday Midnight Bop,” has a cool sax (credited to one Jose Martinez, if that can be believed) and Latin rhythm that could pass for proto-Los Lobos.

You could almost believe it’s a frustrated cardboard worker releasing his tensions in a cluttered little studio overlooking a garage on Galisteo Street.

Of course the real Santa Fe wasn’t devoid of real rock ’n’ roll during this area. Wouldn’t it be great if some record company recorded a compilation of real Santa Fe bands — The Defiants, The Rocking Aces, The Morfomen?

Jerry J. Nixon Lives on the Radio: Hear songs from the Gentleman and other rockabilly renegades on The Santa Fe Opry, country music as the Good Lord intended, Friday 10 p.m. to midnight and Terrell’s Sound World, freeform weirdo radio (same time Sunday.)