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.

Yep, I'm Still an eMusic Fiend

It's been several months since my last eMusic report and my inbox is full of angry emails demanding I get back on my monthly routine. (Actually, nobody has seemed to notice I'd stopped doing it. I guess I'm just posting this shows how obsessive I am.)

Anyway, I'm just going to give a quick glance at what I've downloaded in the past 3 or 4 months.

Naturally, I downloaded some of those excellent, bargain-priced compilations that eMusic is known for.

These include:

* Screaming Gospel Holy Rollers vol. 1. This just might be the most spirit-filled, tambourine-shaken', hallelujah-shoutin' old-time gospel collections I've ever come across. This music -- African-American gospel of the '40s and '50s -- truly is the spring from which rock and soul music flowed. And, yes, it was this collection that prompted me to include a wild gospel set on my recent Big Enchilada podcast Shout When the Spirit Says Shout.  Compiled by "Radio DJ and TV presenter" Mark Lamarr for the British Vee-Tone Records, this album features some gospel giants such as Marie Knight, the Famous Davis Sisters and the Blind Boys (both Archie Brownlee's group from Mississippi and their rivals, Clarence Fountain's group from Alabama), as well as several I've never heard of. Each track is tremendous And here's some great news: There's a Volume 2 of Screaming Gospel Holy Rollers.

* Rockin' Boppin' Hillbilly Gals. The title of this 40-track (!!) collection might be somewhat misleading. Whoever slapped this together -- and indeed, the album does have a slapdash feel -- has a bigger-tent definition of "hillbilly" than most of us. The "hillbilly gals" include country stars like Loretta Lynn, Rose Maddox and Kitty Wells; first-generation rockabilly fillies Wanda Jackson and Janis Martin; blues belters like Big Mama Thorton and Lucille Bogan; gospel great Clara Ward; and even an early jazz singers, Bertha "Chippie" Hill and Eva Taylor, both of whom sing on tracks with Louis Armstrong. With songs ranging from Bogan's "Shave 'em Dry" to Ward's "King Jesus is All I Need, " you can't say there's not variety here. 

 * Cool Town Bop. This is an international rockabilly revival collection from the early '90s. "International?" you ask. Indeed, there's Greek rockabilly, Dutch rockabilly, Swedish rockabilly, some token American rockabilly, a bunch of British rockabilly, and  my favorite Cannuckabilly, the late Ray Condo doing a song called "One Hand Loose." Condo is the only act I recognized here and his contribution probably is the best thing here, though I'm also fond of "Please I Wonder" by The Roomates, an English band, though it's more doo-wop than rockabilly. While there's no great revelations here, it's a good listen

I also downloaded these single-artist albums

* House of Blue Lights by Don Covay & The Jefferson Lemon Blues Band. Did I say I was obsessive? Back when I was a freshman in college, (1971-72) I was listening to the KUNM blues show (It was on Wednesdsay nights back then too.) and decided to tape it. One of the songs I remember from that tape was "The Blues Don't Knock" by Don Covay. It wasn't your typical blues song. it was slow and dreamy and featured a flute, I lost that tape years ago, but a few months ago I started thinking about that song and with a few quick Googles I learned it was on this 1969 album, which is available on eMusic. And I'm happy I found it. Though he's best known as an R&B and soul artist, this is a stab at raw blues, backed by a rock band. Though I came for "The Blues Don't Knock," I stayed for the title song, a seven-minute-plus minor-key show-stopper about a guy whose life is ruined by a whore house. (There's a shorter reprise of the song at the end of the album that's nearly as intense.)

* Fire On the Bayou by Stephanie McDee. I'll admit it. I downloaded this because it has the original version of "Call the Police," which was covered by The Oblivians on their great comeback album Desperation earlier this year. McDee's music is a hopped-up zydeco hybrid with elements of hip-hop and techno. This album is less than a half-hour long and it gets pretty repetitive. But I bet it's great live.

* Love Visions by Nobunny. Cwazy Wabbit! If he were more famous, singer/guitarist Justin Champlin would do for shopping mall Easter Bunnies what John Wayne Gacy did for clowns. And he should be more famous. Behind the ratty rabbit mask is a master of irresistible, hooky pop/punk songs. Just about all these songs will get you hopping.

* Live at the Fish Fry by Pocket FishRmen. This band of wild Texas punks started out in the mid '80s. They broke up around the turn of the century, but in recent years they've reunited at least once a year to host an annual charity show in Austin called "The Pocket FishRmen Fish Fry." This album, released in 2011, was recorded at one of those. It's full of frantic, foul-mouthed fun, including odes to Amy Carter, Santa Claus and Saddam Hussein.

* (The songs I didn't already have from) Blank Generation by Richard Hell & The Voidoids. The title song of this was one of the earliest and still one of the greatest punk anthems ever. While  no other song came close to "Blank Generation," the rest of the album is good. How can any band with Robert Quine on guitar be anything but? I love Hell's weird barking in "liars Beware." And I'm a complete sucker for the slow dance cover of the Sammy Cahn /James Van Heusen standard "All the Way." For punk/lounge music, it's matched only by Iggy Pop's version of "One for My Baby (and One More For the Road)."

* The Anti- Naturalists by The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. I downloaded this right after the death of Karen Black this summer. Black herself was a talented singer and songwriter, but, no, she wasn't part of this 1990s New York punk outfit that took her name and honored her voluptuous horror. VHKB, fronted by singer Kembra Pfahler, wasn't exactly groundbreaking, but this record showed they were a lot of fun.

* Moon Sick by Thee Oh Sees. Back in May, I declared Thee Oh See's Floating Coffin as my likely choice for album of the year. Months have passed and I still feel that way. This four-song EP consists of outtakes from the Floating Coffin sessions. The first three songs, "Born in a Graveyard," (which starts off with some computer beeping right out of Wall of Voodoo's "Mexican Radio") "Sewer Fire" (one of the band's harder-edged tunes) and "Humans Be Swayed" would have fit in on Coffin. The more I listen to this EP, the more I'm impressed with "Humans Be Swayed," which starts off with slow droning, then bursts into a frantic, choppy rocker. The last song "Candy Clocks" is almost folk-rock. I continue to be amazed and infatuated by Thee Oh Sees.

* The Devil in Me by Big Foot Chester. I just downloaded this album a couple of days ago. It's raw, minimalist punk blues from a 1990s band led by Texas harmonica man Walter Daniels, who has played with some of my favorite musical acts including Hickoids, Buick MacKane and Eugene Chadbourne. I saw Daniels last year in Austin playing an acoustic set with guitarist John Schooley and banjoist Ralph White.

Several of the albums I got from eMusic in recent weeks ended up being reviewed in my weekly Terrell's Tuneup column.

Namely:

* Signed and Sealed in Blood by Dropkick Murpheys (My review is HERE)
* Fayt by Cankisou (My review is HERE)
* Electric Slave by Black Joe Lewis (My review is HERE)
* Haunted Head by Kid Congo & The Pink Monkeybirds (My review is HERE)
And though it's not really an album ...
* Nine Songs by Tim Timebomb "(Between the Two of Us) One of Us Has the Answer"; "Dope Sick Girl"; "Gentleman of the Road"; "Hard Travelin' "; "Jim Dandy"; "Jockey Full of Bourbon"; "Rock This Joint"; "Squeezebox"; and "Rocks Off"  (My review is HERE)

I've also downloaded several individual songs including:

* Three Ty Wagner songs (who I'm looking forward to see this weekend in New Orleans at the Ponderosa Stomp.)
* "Blues in the Night" by Eydie Gorme. (R.I.P.)
* "Warmed Over Kisses" by Dave Edmunds. A nice dose of bluegrass-rock.
* Two songs from Nancy Sinatra's self-titled 2004 album (which since has disappeared from eMusic!) The best of these is "Ain't No Easy Way," which is funky duet with the mighty Jon Spencer. "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time" which is nice and pretty with Nancy singing disparagingly of "some skinny bitch in hotpants."
* Three songs from Other Voices by The Doors, the band's first post-Jim Morrison album. No Freudian pyscho-odysseys without ol' Jim. But these tunes, "I'm Horny, I'm Stoned," "Variety is the Spice of Life," and "In the Eye of the Sun" are just decent bluesy rock.)

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: Remembering Janis

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
July 27, 2012

Janis Joplin has been dead nearly 42 years. During her brief time in the sun, she was hardly prolific, recording a couple of albums with Big Brother & The Holding Company and two solo albums, the second released only after her death. 

But all these years later, her music does not seem dated. Her voice still seems like a tornado blowing through a human throat. When I listen to Janis Joplin, it’s not out of sappy nostalgia, some longing for the good old days of Haight-Ashbury or Woodstock. I listen because her albums are still some of the most powerful, soulful recordings ever made.

Joplin fans have a lot to be happy about this year. In recent months, we’ve gotten two albums with plenty of unreleased material. Here’s a look at both.

* Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968 by Big Brother & The Holding Company. One of the biggest musical crimes of the late ’60s was when the suits convinced Janis to leave Big Brother. True, she was the star and she was the main draw, and they never would have been famous without her. But Big Brother was a spirited little psychedelic combo, ragged but righteous.

Janis was the MVP, but guitarist James Gurley was an unsung monster. His solos here on songs like “Light Is Faster Than Sound,” “It’s a Deal,” and the nine-minute Joplin signature “Ball and Chain” are first-class examples of San Francisco psychedelia.

Most of the 14 tracks on this album were never made available, legally at least, before this cool document saw the light of day this year. (A few songs appeared on a box set several years ago.) The album was recorded over two nights in late June 1968, soon after the band finished recording its masterpiece (and final album), Cheap Thrills. Most of the songs from that album are here. And a few, such as “Summertime” and the ever-explosive “Ball and Chain,” are better than the album versions.

But most fun are the more obscure tunes: “Flower in the Sun,” “Catch Me Daddy,” and especially “Coo Coo” —this one is folk-rock at its very finest. For one thing, it’s an actual folk song. But more importantly, it really walks. Big Brother used a similar melody and arrangement for their Cheap Thrills song “Oh, Sweet Mary.”

The sound here might seem strange. Recorded by Grateful Dead sound man and famed LSD manufacturer Augustus Owsley Stanley III (who supervised the remastering for this package last year, before he died in a car wreck), the album has basically no overlap in the stereo mix. Drums and vocals come out of one speaker; everything else from the other.

And while Joplin’s vocals for the most part are right on target, sometimes Sam Andrews’ vocals seem off. It’s really apparent in the opening song, “Combination of the Two.” This might be because the group had no stage monitors back then, and finding their pitch was sometimes tricky.

* The Pearl Sessions by Janis Joplin. Pearl was Joplin’s last album, released posthumously. It’s not as strong as Cheap Thrills. By this stage in her career, she had basically become a soul singer, a wilder Etta James, not a psychedelic waif goddess. And, of course, Big Brother was long gone. But this was where most of us first heard some of Joplin’s landmark tunes — “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Move Over,” and her swan song, “Get It While You Can.”

This album is more for rabid Janis zealots than for casual fans. While disk 1 has the entire Pearl album, plus mono-mix singles of several songs, alternative takes and studio banter make up the lion’s share of the second disc.

Longtime fans will love hearing how these songs evolved in the studio. And it’s great hearing Janis’ wheezy horse-laugh as she chastises herself for blowing some of her vocal parts or gossips about fellow musicians.

Janis as muse: 

Not only did Joplin leave behind a lot of music of her own, she also inspired several songs about her.

* “Janis” by Country Joe & The Fish. “Into my life on waves of electrical sound/And flashing light she came.” This appeared on The Fish’s second album, I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die, in 1968.

Country Joe McDonald had dated Janis before either was famous. One day, according to an autobiography on his website, McDonald said he thought they should break up. Janis then “asked me to write her a song, ‘before you get too far away from me.’ I agreed.”

But even though “Janis” was written and recorded long before she died, the chorus almost sounds like an epitaph: “Even though I know that you and I/Could never find the kind of love we wanted/Together, alone, I find myself/Missing you and I/You and I.”

* “Epitaph (Black and Blue)” by Kris Kristofferson. Here’s another songwriter who had an affair with Janis. She included Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee” on Pearl, and he wrote this angry, heartbreaking tribute for her, which appeared on his album The Silver Tongued Devil and I.

 “When she was dying/Lord, we let her down./There’s no use cryin’/It can’t help her now. … Just say she was someone/Lord, so far from home/Whose life was so lonesome/She died all alone/Who dreamed pretty dreams/That never came true/Lord, why was she born/So black and blue?”

* “Chelsea Hotel No. 2” by Leonard Cohen. Yet another Janis tribute from yet another of her lovers. Like the best Cohen songs, it’s sad and funny at the same time.

“I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel/You were famous, your heart was a legend/You told me again you preferred handsome men/But for me you would make an exception. … You fixed yourself, you said, ‘Well never mind/We are ugly but we have the music.’”

* “Saw Your Name in the Paper” by Loudon Wainwright III. This entry, admittedly, is questionable. For 40 years I assumed this song was a lament for Janis. “Make yourself a hero, it’s heroes people crave/Make yourself a master, but know you are a slave.”

But last year, Time magazine mentioned the song, saying it actually was about Wainwright’s jealousy over “the rising fame” of his then wife and fellow singer, Kate McGarrigle.

But damn the facts. I don’t care. When I first heard the song as a freshman in college, only months after Joplin’s death, in my heart I knew it was a song for Janis. I’m sticking with that.