SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST: DAY 1

Greetings from Austin, Texas, Live Music Capitol of the World.

Ever since I started going to the South by Southwest Music Festival nine years ago I've heard people complain about how big the festival has gotten. The general line is that back in the good old days it was a human-scale event in which unsigned, mainly local, bands showed off their stuff to grateful, mainly local, audiences and maybe a few music bizzer types. It was quaint and good and everyone had a great time.

But then it got ruined by people like me -- a decent local festival grew into Spring Break for the Industry with Austin becoming a hill country Fort Lauderdale with hoardes of unworthy outsiders clogging the streets; musicians corrupted by visions of greed kissing up to the music biz creeps with their cell phones and pony tails; long lines and high prices; another good thing done gone.

Normally I ignore such sentimental blather. But after a day of traffic jams all around Austin (much of which, in fairness, can't be pinned on SXSW), an oppressively long line to pick up the official SXSW badge, the huge crowds at most the venues and the throngs of revelers out on the downtown streets, I began to wonder if perhaps this thing hasn't grown out of hand, exploding beyond repair.

Or maybe I've just gotten old and feel like it's my turn to gripe about the passing of the good old days.

But even with the problems that come with what seem to be the bigger crowds, the basic pleasures that draw me back to Austin and SXSW -- the music, the food, and seeing old friends -- are still pleasurable.

My little entourage kicked off the festival with our usual ritual -- Frito Pies at the The Texas Chili Parlor, made famous in Guy Clark's "Dublin Blues." No Mad Dog Margaritas for me this year though. In fact this is my first SXSW since I gave up drinking. (Maybe that's why the long lines and big crowds seem worse to me.)

Wednesday nights are traditionally lighter than subsequent nights on big national talent. This gives festival goers a chance to check out new, unknown bands.

Last time I came here we started out seeing a local group called The Girl Robots, an artsy New Wavey band that was lots of fun. This year we decided to stick with the robot theme and check out The Baby Robots. They sound a lot like Sonic Youth, doing weird things with screeching feedback and odd guitar tunings. But they've also got a good garage sensibility and are well acquainted with the "I'm Not Your Stepping Stone" chord pattern. You can even hear a little Talking Heads in the Baby Robots. And just like people used to say the Talking Heads looked like Young Republicans, the Baby Robots are freshfaced youngsters who look like the kind of kids you'd trust to babysit your children.

We also checked out a few songs by a band from Mexico called Vaquero. These guys epitomize the concept of "crossover dreams." All their new songs seem to be in English. Basically a guitar band, who employ some elements of Flaming Lips syntho psychedelia in some songs, Vaquero creates some extremely beautiful and catchy melodies. One of my favorites was an instrumental in which the singer played a melodica. It sounded like the theme from an imaginary French movie.

I tried to check out Los Lonely Boys at the Austin Music Awards show at the Austin Music Hall. But the staff wouldn't let me in with my camera. I was sincere when I told them I wouldn't take any pictures. But that didn't get very far with these by-the-book volunteers. Can't really blame them for not buying my sincerity. After all, they have to deal with music industry folks all week.

So I headed east towards Stubbs BBQ, where unfortunately I was too late for the Von Bondies. However I was just in time for The International Noise Conspiracy. This is a politically-minded high-energy guitar-based band from Sweeden. They have black leather jackets like The Ramones, but their sound is colored by an electric organ that sounds right out of Steppenwolf.

At one point the singer told the crowd that he knows that Americans don't like Swedes coming over here and preaching to them about politics. "But what you do in America affects the whole world," he said. "So fuck you if you're going to vote for George Bush again!"

The crowd -- who I assume to be mostly American -- applauded wildly. (However, Bush might have the last laugh. If statistics hold up, only a fraction of the young people who were cheering will even bother to vote.)

Capping off the evening was an old favorite rocker, Joan Jett, who concentrated mainly on enthusiastic takes on her hits of yore -- "Bad Reputation," "I Hate Myself For Loving You" and, of course "I Love Rock 'n' Roll."

Queen Joan has a knack for choosing perfect cover songs -- Tommy James' "Crimson and Clover," Sly & The Family Stones' "Everyday People," The Replacements' "Androgenous." Her strangest one last night though was a rousing "Love is All Around" -- the theme from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. There is a Texas rock 'n' roll connection here though. It was written by Sonny Curtis, a Buddy Holly crony and sometimes Cricket. Curtis' other well-known song is "I Fought the Law (and The Law Won)."

Gotta hit the hay. Little Richard is giving the SXSW keynote address Thursday morning ....

SXSW Here I Come!

I'll be leaving for Austin tomorrow from beautiful Santa Fe. I just secured a lap top from The New Mexican, which I'm using now, so I'll be posting nightly (or rather, early morningly, from my motel room on all the bitchen rock 'n' roll action, from Little Richard's keynote address to the last showcase early Sunday morning.

There should be a link from the New Mexican web site.

Please, as always, feel free to leave your comments.

There will be no Roundhouse Round-up this week. And Terrell's Tune-up might be late getting posted here. But there will be lots more music.

Terrell's Sound World Play List

Terrell's Sound World
Sunday, March 14, 2004
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Sunshine by The Red Elvises
Bikini Girls With Machine Guns by The Cramps
Head Held High by The Velvet Underground
Broken Man by The Von Blondies
Berlin by Dickie B. Hardy
Garden of Delight by Johnny Dowd
Lady Wendy by Mummy the Peepshow
Fukin Huge Crisis by Chopper Sick Balls
Little Annie Fanny by The Kingsmen

The Workaholic Song by Mylab
Gilman Report by Pedal Steel Transmission
Everyone Comes to the Freak Show by The Residents
Chords of Fame by Jad Fair & Daniel Johnston
Downfall by Stuurbaard bakkebaard
Philosophy of the World by The Shaggs
You Got That Thing by Holly Golightly

Function at the Junction by Little Richard
Hello It's Me by The Isley Brothers
Let Me Down Easy by Bettye Lavette
If You Don't Know Me By Now by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes

Women Help to Create the Kind of Men They Despise by Lambchop
The Comedians by Roy Orbison
We Are Never Talking by Roky Erickson
Somebdy's Watching by X
Innocent When You Dream by Kazik Staszewski
Lucky Day by Tom Waits
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

The Santa Fe Opry Play List

The Santa Fe Opry
Friday, March 12, 2004
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Pussy, Pussy, Pussy by The Light Crust Doughboys
Reprimand by Joe West
Say a Little Prayer by Mary and Mars
Indian Cowboy by The Flatlanders
Play Some George Jones Songs by The Last Mile Ramblers
The Race is On by George Jones
One Has My Name by Jerry Lee Lewis
If I Needed You by The Holmes Brothers

Precious Memories (Is a Song I Used to Hear) by Norman & Nancy Blake
Sputnik 57 by Jon Langford
Cowboy Peyton Place by Doug Sahm
Country's All I'll Ever Be by Poodle Lynn
Let Me Play With Your Poodle by Tampa Red
Last Days of Tampa Red by Ronny Elliott
Payday Blues by Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks
New Country by Dollar Store

Maintenance Nightmare by Emily Kaitz
Why Are You Always Cheatin' on Me by Nancy Apple
Don't You Want Me by Moonshine Willie
River of No Return by Jon Rauhouse's Steel Guitar Rodeo with Neko Case
Someone to Give My Love To by Johnny Paycheck
Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again) by Kris Kristofferson
Strange Things Happening Every Day by Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Lonesome Road Blues by W. Lee O'Daniel & His Hillbilly Boys
The Marriage Song by The Stumbleweeds

Trying to Get to You by Elvis Presley
He'll Have to Go by Ry Cooder
The Last Word in Lonesome is Me by Roger Miller
Li'l Wallet Picture by Richard Buckner
Alone and Forsaken by Hank Williams
Blue Distance by Peter Case
Little Bird by Furnace Mountain
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

Terrell's Tuneup: Mylab, Ai Phoenix, Pedal Steel Transmission

As published in The Santa Fe New Mexican, March 12, 2004

One thing that most serious musicians hate is when people try to pigeonhole music into neat categories. It’s true that all these genres and subgenres are mainly for the benefit of marketers -- not to mention being a shorthand for lazy critics or a framework for academic types.

It’s truly refreshing therefore to hear a work of music that scrambles all sorts of disparate styles and genres into a seamless whole. Such is the case of Mylab, the musical brainchild of Seattle musicians Tucker Martine and Wayne Horvitz, If I owned a record store, I wouldn’t be able to decide whether this mostly instrumental CD should be filed under jazz, trip hop, funk, avant garde or worldbeat. And even if I settled on one of those, how would you explain the pronounced bluegrass element, those eerie fiddles and banjos on several of the tracks?

Martine, who has mainly earned his reputation as a recording engineer, and keyboardist Horvitz, started the music that would become Mylab by sampling and looping musty, crusty old folk recordings from the early 1900s. The duo, aided by a gaggle of Seattle musicians -- including guitarist Bill Frisell, Bad Livers banjo madman Danny Barnes (who also plays dobro on some cuts) and singer Robin Holcomb (Horvitz’s missus) -- fleshed out the sound. Unlike projects like, say Moby’s Play, where the folk stuff was at the forefront, by the time the Mylab duo finished, most of the old samples had been replaced by the work of living musicians or altered beyond recognition.

The album starts off with “Pop Client,” a funky little number with James Brown-style horn riffs, mad-scientist piano and what sounds like an upright bass.

On the next track, the music sounds like it’s coming from some third world street. The song’s called “Master Korean Musicians of Canada,” but the guitar loop suggests some lost strain of African music.

The next song, “Land Trust Picnic” starts of with what could be a ‘60s garage-band lick. Then a church organ comes in, which turns jazzy. Then comes Barnes on banjo, as if to let everyone know that this picnic is in the country.

The grass turns even bluer on “Varmit,” which is based upon a spooky fiddle riff (Orville Johnson) backed by Barnes’ dobro and some creepy ooo-ooo-whos by Barnes and Holcomb. The sinister atmosphere is sealed by the lunatic-is-in-my-head laughter in the background.

Mylab never lets up. There‘s tracks like “Earthbound,” built around a monotonously repetitive bass line, with crime-jazz saxes playing off otherworldly electronic effects; the vaguely African-sounding “Phil and Jerry“; the intense “Not in My House” that somehow mutates from guitar-trumpet interplay into drums and electonic rumbling; the sax, synth and percussion madness of “Ask Mickey.”

The wonder of Mylab is that it never becomes predictable.


Also Recommended:

*The Driver is Dead by Ai Phoenix. What was I saying a couple of weeks ago about my newfound love of European art rock? The good people of Scandinavia have been enjoying this low and slow CD by this band from Norway for three or four years but it only got released here a few months ago. Sometimes good things just take time.

Don’t get this mixed up with the high-energy 21st Century punk rock of their Swedish cousins, The Hives. What we have here is smoky, narcoleptic guitar rock with sweet melodies and foreboding undertones.

When sandy-throated singer Mona Mork gets breathy, Ai Phoenix sounds like The Red House Painters fronted by Claudine Longet. I also hear echoes of Mazzy Star (that psychedelic organ, which won’t let go of your ears), Lisa Germano, and even a stripped-down Polyphonic Spree (add about 20 singers, a French horn and some robes and “This is Close” could pass for a Spree melody).

All in all, this is fine dark-night-of-the-soul music. I hope some more recent Ai Phoenix music finds its way to these shores.

*Angel of the Squared Circle by Pedal Steel Transmission. Fans of Wilco and fans of the Mexi-noir sounds of Calexico should give a listen to this Chicago band.

Despite the name of the group, it’s not the steel, but the good old fashioned electric guitar that’s in the forefront of this album. An excellent overview of the PST sound is in the opening 10-minute song “Waiting.” It starts out as a slow tango, but builds up into pure guitar rage.

Some songs are fairly close to country, such as “Amy” (no, not the Pure Prairie League hit), which features prominent pedal steel and Buffalo Springfield guitar licks.

But the best songs are bittersweet and surreal, such as “I Saved the Last High Style for You,” a dreamlike, minor-key melody that is built around a one-finger piano riff. This is followed by a lo-fi piano-based instrumental called “In Mourning,” which sounds as sad as its title.

My favorite tunes here tend to be the long, drawn out jams like the 6-minute“Editene,” which, with its hallucinogenic organ, shows PST could play on the same bill with Ai Phoenix or Wilco; and the shambling ending track, “Baionette.” Try to listen to the first five or six minutes of that one and not think of The Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Nothings” -- though it builds up to a screaming crescendo.

ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: ROYAL RUMBLE IN DISTRICT 25

As published in The Santa Fe New Mexican

You always have to wonder about coincidences in politics.

But the day the news broke about the bad blood between family members of longtime incumbent Sen. Roman Maes and his challenger Letitia Montoya -- a strange saga involving restraining orders and a Sunday morning confrontation involving mutual allegations of the use of profanity and the throwing of fingers -- two other candidates surfaced for the District 25 Senate seat in Santa Fe.

Both John Grubesic and Geraldine Salazar are making their first runs for political office. Though political novices, both have state-government experience.

In fairness, Grubesic didn't plan on announcing the day after the Maes/Montoya squabble was reported. I contacted him, after hearing that he's been busy getting petition signatures.

Grubesic, a 38-year-old lawyer, is a Santa Fe native who has spent most of his career working for the state Attorney General's Office. He started there under then-Attorney General Tom Udall in 1992, left about three years later and returned to work for Attorney General Patricia Madrid about four years ago.

Grubesic also worked as a prosecutor for District Attorney Henry Valdez in the 1990s and for a short time in private practice.

He's a 1983 graduate of St. Michael's High School, where he was on the all-state football team.

Also joining the race Wednesday is Salazar, 50, who is a former director of the Behavioral Health Services Division in the state Department of Health during the last Bruce King administration, and as the outreach coordinator for the Santa Fe Rape Crisis Center.

Salazar also has worked as director of Pojoaque Pueblo's Early Childhood Center.

Neither Salazar nor Grubesic have filed any restraining orders against other candidates -- or had any filed against them.

But the race is still young.

District 25, which includes most of the city of Santa, plus outlying areas including Tesuque and Eldorado, is attracting lots of candidates. In addition to the four Democrats, there's a contested Green primary with longtime party activist Rick Lass and newcomer Joseph Niesley. An independent named Robb Hirsh is trying to get on the November general election ballot.

From Bill to Max: Several folks, inside and outside the Roundhouse expressed surprise that Gov. Bill Richardson had nothing but a pointed "no comment" about Max Coll's decision last week to leave the Legislature. That was the word from not one but two of the governor's press aides.

But apparently Richardson had a change of heart over the weekend. At a Monday morning press conference the governor publicly thanked Coll for his 32 years of service and wished him well in his retirement.

Asked afterward why he couldn't have said that on Friday, Richardson replied, "I was traveling." Indeed he was in Española and Taos signing bills.

Then again, House Speaker Ben Lujan was traveling with the governor also. But somehow, the Speaker and his staff managed to release a page-and-a-half written statement praising Coll.

From George to Barbara: The national Republican Party isn't letting off New Mexico's First Lady Barbara Richardson.

Last year this column revealed that Mrs. Richardson got a letter from the Republican National Committee calling her a "strong grassroots Republican" and saying "... President Bush and Republicans can win only if GOP activists like you give our candidates the support they need to compete."

In reality, Barbara Richardson, like her husband, is a Democrat. She sent them back a good-natured letter explaining that fact last year.

But that didn't stop the Republicans in their effort to woo her. Recently she received a letter signed by -- well, it looks like it was signed by -- George W. Bush himself asking her to contribute $25 or $50 to his campaign.

"Thank you for your friendship and may God continue to bless America," the president's letter said.

But this time the letter didn't identify Barbara as a Republican.

Critiquing Music Critics.

A lot of people are saying the internet is making us rock critics obsolete. Still others say Bevis and Butthead killed the critic 10 years ago.

Here's a thoughtful piece by Gemma Tarlach of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

What's my take on my role as a critic? Hell, I just like mouthing off about music and sometimes turning folks on to a singer or band they've never heard of. If people want to read it, fine. If they want to argue, even better. (My e-mail link's always on the right side of this blog and there's a comment feature right below every post. Don't be afraid to use either.)