TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, February 13, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
Now Webcasting
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Valentine by Concrete Blonde
Laredo (Small Dark Something) by Jon Dee Graham
Reptilia by The Strokes
Crawl Through the Darkness by The Von Bondies
Berlin by Dickie B. Hardy
Time Warp/Brain Damage by Link Wray
Psychedelic Love by Big Ugly Guys
Valentine by The Replacements

The Ring by The Hangdogs
Wedding Day by Alejandro Escovedo
Ballad of the Soldier's Wife by Kazik Staszewski
Hard Times by The Moaners
Truth Doesn't Make a Noise by The White Stripes
I'm Leaving by The Fiery Furnaces
Brand New Special and Unique by Stan Ridgway
You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover by Bo Diddley

Memphis by Jerry Lawler
Nothing is Impossible (from Zakhmee Soundtrack)
Chunga's Revenge by Frank Zappa
Soulsville by Isaac Hayes
Just Step Sideways by The Fall
Robby, The Cook, and 60 Gallons of Booze by Louis & Bebe Barron
Please Warm My Weiner by Bo Carter

My Funny Valentine by Elvis Costello
Hashish in Marseilles by The Mekons
Two Circles by Sraddha
The Kindness of Strangers by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Blue Valentines by Tom Waits
Where or When by Dion & The Belmonts
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

HEY LORETTA!

I caught Loretta Lynn and Jack White on The Grammy Awards. Loretta's Van Lear Rose won -- rightfully -- country album of the year. White noted that it won without any airplay on (so-called) country radio.

I normally don't put much stock in The Grammys, but hey, when they're, right, they're right. And this is the second time in recent years the Grammys picked a top country album that had virtually no country radio play, the previous one being O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack.

When will these soulless radio twits learn?

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, February 11, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Now Webcasting
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Payday Blues by Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks
A-1 on the Jukebox by Elizabeth McQueen
St. Valentine by Joe Ely
Wasted by Laura Cantrell
Country Darkness by Elvis Costello
Blacklisted by Neko Case
Junko Partner by The Hindu Love Gods
Tiger Love and Turnip Greens by Duane Eddy
Train Kept a Rollin' by Paul Burlison

Violent Love by Cornell Hurd with Dee Lannon
Harder Than Your Husband by Frank Zappa with Jimmy Carl Black
There Ought to Be a Law Against Sunny California by Terry Allen
Where's the Dress by Joe Stampley & Moe Bandy
The President's Penis is Missing by Drive-By Truckers
Wanted Man by Johnny Cash
The Marriage Song by The Stumbleweeds
You Don't Miss Your Water by Jerry Lee Lewis
Too Many Parties and Too Many Pals by Hank Williams

On a Real Good Day, I'm the World's Best Friend by Robbie Fulks
2000 Man by The Gourds
A Beautiful Thing by The Handsome Family
Tramp on Your Street by Billy Joe Shaver
Right or Wrong by Wanda Jackson
If I Kiss You by Lynn Anderson
Back in My Home Town by Frank Hutchison

The Blue Girl Says Yes by Ronny Elliott
Better Word for Love by Big Al Anderson
Take Me by George Jones
Rough and Rocky by Michael Hurley
Lead Me On by Conway Twitty & Loretta Lynn
The Last Letter by Waylon Jennings
Everybody Needs Love by Robyn Hitchcock
The End by Justin Trevino
Valentine's Day by Steve Earle & The Fairfield Four
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: EEE Wow, eMUSIC

As published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
February 11, 2005

It seems like only yesterday that a major question haunting the music industry was whether people would actually spend good American money to download music from the Internet. After all, stodgy old members of My Generation had barely gotten used to the idea of buying their Eric Clapton and Bonnie Raitt albums on compact discs instead of vinyl, while the Napster generation had become used to getting anything they wanted for free.

But in 2003, Apple’s iTunes proved that the public indeed would pay for music from the Internet. The service has sold gazillions of music downloads for 99 cents a pop. It’s also spawned a whole line of imitators -- Musicmatch and RealRhapsody, prominent among them.

Even Wal-Mart has gotten into the act. For a mere 88 cents you can even buy Sheryl Crow’s “Love is a Good Thing” -- a song that initially got Crow’s 1996 self-titled album banned at Wal-Mart for talking about kids buying guns at the giant chain.

And of course the outlaw Napster, deflated, dismantled and basically destroyed by the music industry and the courts, has been reborn with a new corporate face. It’s all legal now, but good luck finding bizarre gems like Alfred E. Newman’s “It’s a Gas” like you could in the good old days.

Though iTunes remains the most popular, my favorite source of music downloads these days is a fun little service that specializes in independent labels -- eMusic.

eMusic is not as well known as it ought to be, even though it made history in 1999 when it released the very first Internet-only by a well-known musical act -- They Might Be Giants‘, Long Tall Weekend. (Yes, it’s still available.)

One major thing eMusic has going for it is its prices. You can find eMusic faves like Frank Zappa and even a smattering of The Fall at some of the bigger services, but they will cost you three or four times more.

It was the 50-free-downloads trial membership that first attracted me (that offer is still going on). I initially subscribed to the cheap plan -- $9.99 for 40 downloads, though I later switched to the $14.99 for 65 downloads plan. That’s less than a quarter a song. (There’s a more expensive plan -- 90 downloads for $19.99. I’m not there yet.)

In the last 10 months or so, I’ve found a wide array of music here -- from nasty blues songs to emotional and very musical sermons from the Rev. C.L. Franklin (Aretha’s dad); from Steeleye Span to Bollywood extravaganzas; from Bootsy Collins to Billy Joe Shaver; from Keely Smith to Queen Ida.

I've looked, and eMusic is the only place you can download the breathtaking, jazzy funk workout that is the Isaac Hayes At Wattstax album or the alien horror-shocker, proto-electronic music classic Forbidden Planet soundtrack, which might be described as "blip-blop music.

Some of the albums I’ve reviewed in this paper recently -- Frank Black Francis, for instance. and Lynn Anderson’s The Bluegrass Sessions, I downloaded from eMusic.

I’ve also found stuff from rockabilly bizarro Tav Falco, Charles Mingus, country forefather Uncle Dave Macon, The Kinks, Louis Jordan, acoustic maniac Eugene Chadbourne and 16 Horsepower.

Some of my favorite eMusic finds are old blues and hillbilly compilations. The Yazoo/Shanachie label as well as the more obscure Birdman label are well represented on eMusic.

There’s Please Warm My Weiner, a collection of blues tunes dealing with sex, drinking and gambling, featuring the likes of Butterbeans & Susie, Memphis Minnie and Bo Carter; The Roots of Rap, a strange collection of early blues and country in which much of the vocals are spoken rather than sung; and Jim Dickinson’s Field Recordings, AXPCV3, which features rare tracks by blues greats like Sleepy John Estes, Otha Turner and Furry Lewis.

Among my eMusic haul from recent months are several live albums on eMusic’s own label, eMusic Live. There’s fine shows by alternative country stalwarts like Robbie Fulks (which features several tunes that haven’t made it on his “real” albums), The Gourds and The Handsome family. And an exciting 2003 performance by rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson called Alive and Still Kickin'.

eMusic apparently is licensing some of its live album to iTunes. You can find the Gourds, Fulks and Wanda concerts there.

But exclusive to eMusic are a high-energy June 2004 concert album by garage band marvels The Fleshtones and a delightfully reprehensible romp of a 2003 Mojo Nixon show, where his verbal victims include the late Princess Diana and the Bush twins.

So far the only slightly disappointing live set I’ve downloaded from eMusic is Live at Maxwell’s, a show by British garage princess Holly Golightly. Recorded in late November, it just has a flat monotonous sound that doesn’t do her justice. (There’s actually two Golightly live albums available. I haven’t heard Live at the Casbah, recorded about a month earlier.)

My chief complaint about eMusic is that on some concert albums, a few seconds of concert patter counts as a “download.” True, you can skip downloading all these. But for lazy clickers like me it’s far less convenient to have to go through and weed these out instead of just clicking the “Download All” button.

But on the other hand, there are several examples of extremely lengthy tracks that only count as one download. Therefore the 16-minute “Ain’t No Sunshine” from Isaac Hayes At Wattstax or even a 40-minute sermon from Rev. Franklin counts the same as a 16-second wisecrack by The Handsome Family, so I guess it all comes out in the wash.

ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: MINOR PARTY BLUES

As published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
February 10, 2005

Just two years ago one of the Legislature’s most bitter controversies was a move by House Speaker Ben Lujan to make it harder for The Green Party to keep its "major party" status.

Greens themselves referred to it as the "Kill-the-Greens" bill. And Senate Republicans even threatened to use the "F" word (“filibuster”) if the measure made it to the floor of their chamber. It never did.

But now it appears that all the noise and bitterness in 2003 was unnecessary. The Legislature didn’t have to "kill the Greens." In effect, the voters did.

The Secretary of State’s office recently informed the party’s leaders that because their presidential candidate failed to get five percent of the vote last November under state law they were no longer "major."

As a matter of fact, National Green standard bearer David Cobb failed to get even one percent of the vote in New Mexico. He got fewer votes than independent candidate Ralph Nader and Michael Badnarik, candidate of the non-major Libertarian Party.

Having major-party status assures a political party of being on the ballot for the general and primary elections. Without that designation, Green candidates will have to gather petitions to get on the ballots.

But despite the secretary of state’s letter, the Greens aren’t giving up.

Carol Miller, state chairwoman of the Green Party, said Wednesday that the secretary of state is wrong. Even though Cobb missed the 5-percent mark, in Bernalillo County Steve Cabiedes, a Green candidate for county clerk, got better than 17 percent.

In 1996, Miller pointed out, then-Attorney General Tom Udall issued a legal opinion that said as long as any candidate gets more than five percent, the party can retain its major party status.

The Greens first got major-party status when Roberto Mondragon won 11 percent of the gubernatorial vote in 1994. But in 1996 and 1998, the Greens kept that status through a State Corporation Commission race in 1996 and a state auditor race in 1998.

However, in 2000 Santa Fe state District Judge Stephen Pfeffer ruled that either the presidential or gubernatorial candidate must receive five percent. Lesser candidates don’t count.

Since then it’s been up or down for the Greens in this state.

When their presidential candidate Ralph Nader failed to get that percentage in 2000, the party’s status was downgraded. They won it back again when Green gubernatorial candidate David Bacon got 6 percent in 2002.

Miller said the party has until the governor’s call for the next election to take action. "We need clarification from the Legislature or a court," she said.

Star Spangled Spin: Wednesday was Veterans Day at the Legislature — as well as Animal Protection Advocacy Day and Freedom Day for people with disabilities, but that’s beside the point — and the air was thick with patriotism.

Sen. Joe Carraro, R-Albuquerque, made a move to have 12 military-related bills heard Wednesday in the Senate Finance Committee. He argued that expediting consideration of these bills and cutting some red tape would be a good way to honor our men and women in uniform.

Senate Democrats disagreed. Some even accused Carraro of grandstanding. His motion failed on a straight party-line vote.

There may well be good reasons for not hearing all those bills at once. For instance, some of the bills weren’t even assigned to the Finance Committee.

But within minutes of the votes the Dems issued a statement that revealed their position wasn’t one of pragmatism, but patriotism.

“Senate Shows Support of Military,” said the headline.

There Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez was quoted praising war veterans. “One of the many things they fought for was the continuity and process of this august body.”

I haven’t seen any polls of veterans on this, so I’m not sure how many would actually say they went into battle and risked their lives to defend the state Senate committee process.

PAZZ & JOP

The annual Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll is in. CLICK HERE

I was one of 793 critics who voted this year.

If you scroll down far enough you can see some of my wise words on this page.

RACIST MUSIC UPDATE

Looks like the Panzerfaust label was afraid of a little mariachi in their skinhead metal. CLICK HERE

Hasta la vista, pendejos!