JUST MY OPINION

The Pasatiempo letters section today got me hot under the collar.

There were all these letters blasting Pasa's opera critic, Craig Smith. One even called Craig "the MOST jaded reporter on your team" for his July 3 review of Turandot.

Hey, what about me? I feel left out! Granted, I do get some angry letters about my political writing (right wingers calling me a loony liberal, left-wingers calling me a Republican), but only rarely do get a stray letter in Pasa disagreeing with one of my CD reviews.

(Oh, o.k, I did get Dave Grusin writing in once to denounce me for contributing to the "dumbing-down of America" or something like that. And there was that package I got in about 15 years ago from an angry Stevie Ray Vaughan fan who sent me a ready-to-use Fleet enema in response to one of my Tune-up columns. )

I get to pick and choose from hundreds of CDs or music DVDs to review and usually I prefer to tell the world about the ones I like instead of kicking some musical dog. On the other hand, Craig, in his role as opera critic, has to review whatever opera is playing here.

I know far more about the Opry than the opera -- and I haven't seen Turandot. So I won't attempt to defend Mr. Smith. I don't know whether his scathing remarks about the direction and the set and other problems were justified or not.

But I will attack some of the letters. There were some real bone-headed statements there.

Some guy from Kansas City complained:

... one may reasonably doubt that Craig Smith has ever been a director of opera or otherwise a an opera singer, a conductor of an orchestra, a performing musician in any orchestra, a choreographer, a lighting expert, a set designer, a composer, a practicing pyschoanalyst or even a stagehand.

Uh oh. I cover politics but have never held or even run for public office.

Then, after calling Craig arrogant and a bunch of other stuff, he turns on the UPPERCASE and notes that unqualified, arrogant Craig wrote all this

... WITH NO HUMBLE SUGGESTION AT ANY POINT THAT THIS IS JUST MY OPINION

Hey pal, I don't know how they do it K.C., but around here just being labeled a "review" is enough to warn most folks that it's the writer's opinion.

The lady who called Craig the most jaded reporter went on to say,

"That he should be allowed to be so-o-o negative on the front page of the paper is scandalous. We are supposed to be promoting Santa Fe, not bringing it down. We want visitors to come and enjoy our city and an awful lot of them come for the Opera."

Oh for the love of Christ!

Here's the deal, lady. We're not a Chamber of Commerce rag and Craig isn't a tourism flack. His duty is not to "promote Santa Fe" but to give his honest opinion about the performance he's reviewing.

A Santa Fe man claimed that Smith's review had ruined the career of stage director and scenic designer Douglas Fitch.

"Craig Smith, for all his knowledge, does not have the right, with a flick of his pen, to kill the professional future of a young person."

Goodness Gussie!

For one thing, yes, he does have that right. And if they do repeal the First Amendment, it probably won't be over opera reviews.

Secondly, if someone's "professional future" is so delicate that one bad review can snuff it out, maybe that person should consider another career.

Maybe opera fans could learn something from us rockers and meditate on the zen-like mystery of this adaptation of a common rock 'n' roll wisdom:

Your favorite opera sucks.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: SETTIN' THE WOODS ON FIRE

A version of this appeared in The Santa Fe New Mexican
July 15, 2005


Sleater-Kinney has done it again. With their new album The Woods, This roaring, all-girl, Pacific Northwest trio shows how screaming guitar rock can still have brains, soul and relevance.

In many ways it’s too bad that this group seems destined to never rise above "critics’ darling" status. They keep making wonderful records, critics, including me, and enlightened fans drool and heap praise on them -- and the general public ignores them in favor of vastly inferior dribble.

But, as Mr. Sinatra said, "That’s life."

Believe it or not, Sleater-Kinney has been around now for a whole decade. Their self-titled debut was released in 1995, at the tail-end of the Riot Grrrl scare.

S-K quickly transcended the bonds of the basic girl-punk sound. They kept the same basic arrangement -- the two guitar attack of Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, Tucker’s hopped-up Banshee wail (which I think is the band‘s greatest weapon). And no bass. (Drummer Janet Weiss -- who’s starting to remind me a lot of Mitch Mitchell of the original Jimi Hendrix Experience -- came to the band in the late ‘90s.) But they’ve been growing and evolving through the years without losing their original frantic energy.

The Woods is a logical progression for S-K. In their previous albums their songs rarely if ever hit the four-minute mark. Here, more than half the songs are that long. And one of them -- "Let’s Call it Love" -- is a savage 11-minute frenzy that brings back memories of Steppenwolf‘s "Magic Carpet Ride," The Count Five’s "Psychotic Reaction" and Patti Smith’s "Radio Ethiopia."

Amazingly, The Woods is produced by Dave Fridmann. He’s a member of Mercury Rev and he’s produced albums for that band as well as for The Flaming Lips. In recent years both those bands, thanks largely to Fridmann, have become known for a lush, soundtracky -- some would argue even symphonic -- ambiance. But there’s little if anything on this album to suggest Fridmann’s signature sonic sweetness.

The album starts out with a strange little psycho-sexual Aesop-like fable called "The Fox." The title character notices the birth of a baby duck and bellows (well, at least Tucker bellows) "Land Ho!" This description might sound like a sweet little animal tale (indeed the innocent little duck escapes the wiley fox), but with the blast of feedback that opens the song, the harsh chords and Weiss’ machine-gun drums, nobody will mistake this for a Raffi song.

Love relationships seems to be the main focus of this album.

"What‘s Mine is Yours" starts out bouncy and sexy, with Tucker inviting a lover to "rest your head on this heart of mine." The music builds up to an explosive climax as Tucker wails in a combination of dread and ecstasy. Then, right in the middle of the song there’s a guitar feedback freakout that melds into a grating electric bluesy stomp.

"Wilderness" is about a couple that "Said `I do in the month of May/ Said ’I don’t’ the very next day."

But by the end of the song, the relationship between "Kenny and Linda" seems to be a metaphor for a politically divided country: "A family fued/ The Red and the Blue now/ It’s Truth against Truth/ I’ll see you in hell, I don’t mind." This is a reversal of the song "Faraway" on their last album One Beat, which started out as a harrowing account of watching September 11 unfold on television, but then turns those events into a metaphor of the personal: "Why can’t I get along with you?"

Then on "Night Light," which closes the album, the lyrics -- and the foreboding roar of the music, speak of a nightmarish real world, in which your only source of strength is in your loved ones. "How do you do it /This bitter and bloody world/Keep it together and shine for your family …"

The song that stands out for its strangeness here is "Modern Girl." With relatively soft guitars and a sweet harmonica, the initial lyrics sung by Brownstein, remind me of some long-lost sitcom theme, somewhere between The Partridge Family and The Facts of Life: "My baby loves me/I’m so happy/Happiness makes me a modern girl … My whole life/was like a picture/ on a sunny day …"

Of course there’s a sinister undercurrent here. By the last verse, the drums come in and it’s "anger" that makes her a modern girl . Her money won’t buy nothing’ and she’s sick of the "Brave New World."

Besides these fine new songs, one thing I like about The Woods is that includes a DVD of the band performing live. Alas, it’s only four songs, but watching Sleater-Kinney in action makes you appreciate them even more.

Also Recommended:
*Before the Poison by Marianne Faithful. It’s not hard to imagine Marianne Faithful as Sleater-Kinney’s mom. Faithful doesn’t really sound like S-K -- certainly her weathered heroin-and-cigarette-damaged voiced couldn’t handle a fraction of Tucker’s crazy wails, though I bet Sleater could do a powerful version of Faithfull’s insane tirade of sexual betrayal "Why d’ya Do It?"

On her latest album, released early this year, Faithful teams up with a couple of other rockers who could pass as her spiritual children -- P.J. Harvey and Nick Cave. Echoes of Faithful’s 1979 "comeback" album Broken English can certainly be heard in the works of Harvey and Cave.

Harvey wrote or co-wrote five of the 10 songs here, while Cave co-wrote three songs with Faithful, including the glorious screechy rocker "Desperanto."

While Faithful’s more morose songs — like "Crazy Love" and Harvey’s "In the Factory" — can be addictive, so to speak, I wish more of Before the Poison rocked like "Deperanto" and Harvey’s "My Friends Have."

ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: RICHARDSON STILL STRONG IN POLL

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
July 14, 2005

Gov. Bill Richardson hit an ugly patch of negative publicity about a month ago. But according to a recent statewide poll by a national firm, if Richardson’s renown ego has taken some lumps with the spate of bad headlines dealing with fancy jets, speeding SUVs (also CLICK HERE) and Wen Ho Lee, it has barely affected his popularity here.

The latest New Mexico tracking poll by the New Jersey-based Survey U.S.A. found 53 percent of New Mexicans polled approved of the job Richardson is doing, while 41 percent disapproved.

This compares with 54 percent approving and 39 percent disapproving in a Survey U.S.A. poll in early May. That’s a net loss of 3 percentage points in the last two months.

And it’s been a pretty bumpy two months for the governor.

First there was the jet story — how Richardson’s administration had bought a $5.5 million airplane, a far superior ride than any of our neighboring governors have access to. State Republicans seized on the opportunity to portray Richardson in radio ads as a high-rolling jet-setter .

Then there was the speeding story — how Richardson, already notorious for commanding his state police drivers to drive at breakneck speeds, refused to stop for an Albuquerque police officer.

And more recently, there was the return of an old headache for Richardson — Wen Ho Lee, the fired Los Alamos scientist who initially was suspected of espionage but was convicted on only one count of mishandling classified information. A federal appeals court judge presiding over Lee’s violation-of-privacy lawsuit listed Richardson , who was energy secretary during the Lee debacle, as a likely leaker of information about Lee months before the scientist was charged.

Sanderoff the Sage: Richardson spokesman Billy Sparks noted Tuesday that the 3 points the governor dropped is within the poll’s 4.1 percent margin of error.

But New Mexico pollster Brian Sanderoff of Research & Polling Inc. was right on the money last month when I interviewed him about Survey U.S.A.’s May poll.

Sanderoff noted the previous poll was taken before the jet and speeding controversies broke. “The jet story was really the first (Richardson controversy ) that has gotten to the point of water-cooler talk,” Sanderoff said in June. “Something like that probably would affect his rating by 3 points or so.”

Poll numbers: Survey U.S.A.’s New Mexico poll was conducted between Friday and Sunday. Six hundred New Mexico residents were randomly called to participate in an automated phone poll. Similar polls were conducted in all 50 states.

The poll breaks down the respondents in terms of gender , ethnicity, party affiliation and other categories.

Hispanics approved of Richardson’s performance by nearly a 2-to-1 margin. However , 50 percent of Anglos disapproved of Richardson’s performance, while only 45 percent approved.

The poll also revealed something of a gender gap.

Women tended to support the governor more than men. Seventeen percent more women approved of Richardson’s performance than disapproved (55-38 percent). The difference for men is 7 percent (52-45 percent).

Not surprisingly, Democrat Richardson scores highest with members of his own party (75 percent approving to 19 percent disapproving) and lowest with Republicans (34 percent approving, 61 percent disapproving).

As far as educational level goes, most of those who had been to graduate school were Richardson admirers. Sixtyfive percent of respondents in that category approved of his performance while only 29 percent disapproved. He also was popular with those who had no college experience — 52 percent to 41 percent. Those who graduated from college and those with some college experience were fairly evenly split on Richardson.

The Church of Richardson: The poll results also broke down Richardson’s numbers in terms of the respondents’ church attendance.

Regular churchgoers approved of Richardson by a shaky 48-46 percent margin. The support goes up to 57 percent among those who “sometimes” go to church (with 39 percent disapproving) and 56 percent for those who say they never go to church (38 percent disapproving.)

In an issue with some religious overtones, Richardson won approval from a big majority of those who described their view on abortion as “pro-choice” (63-33 percent). Fifty-three percent of “pro-life” voters disapproved of Richardson, while 41 percent of pro-lifers in New Mexico polled approved of his performance.

Richardson supports women’s right to have abortions. However, he has said he would sign a bill requiring doctors to notify parents of minor girls seeking abortions. This could have lost Richardson some pro-choice support, though it could have gained some support from pro-lifers.

Forty percent of those polled said they were pro-life, while 54 percent said they were pro-choice.

FREE FLAMING LIPS DOWNLOADS

The fabulous Flaming Lips are offering some free downloads to promote their film The Fearless Freaks, a documentary I heartily recommended a couple of weeks ago.

You can find those downloads HERE.

These are live tracks culled from Lips performances between 1986 and 1996, compiled for a promo CD given away at early showings of the movie. In his spoken introduction track, Coyne encourages fans to copy the disc, put it on the internet and "please, please, do not pay hard-earned money for it."

The songs are, "With You," "Can't Stop the Sping," "Shine On Sweet Jesus,"Space Age Love Song," "Moth in the Incubator," "When You Smile," and "Sleeping on the Roof."


I can't honestly say how good these are yet. My computer's slowly downloading them now. All I've heard so far is "Wayne's Introduction." If the tunes are decent -- and as a Lips fan, I've got to assume they are -- I'll play a track or two on this Sunday's Terrell's Sound World.

TERRELL'S SOUNDWORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, July 10, 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
Black Tongue by The Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Journey to the Center of Mind by The Ramones
Is it My Body? by Alice Cooper
Blue Orchid by The White Stripes
Entertain by Sleater-Kinney
Sheela Na-Gig by P.J. Harvey
The Mystery of Love by Marianne Faithful
It's So Hard by John Lennon
Anna by Aurthur Alexander

Rock Show by Iggy Pop
Are We the Waiting by Green Day
Jubilee by Patti Smith
My Friend Goo by Sonic Youth
I Want to See You Belly Dance by The Red Elvises
The Slim by Sugar
Santana, Castanada & You by Giant Sand
Bridget the Midget by Ray Stevens

HOWLIN' WOLF vs. SON HOUSE
House Rockin' Boogey by Howlin' Wolf
Death Letter Blues by Son House
Built For Comfort by Howlin' Wolf
Preachin' Blues by Son House
Spoonful by The Super Super Blues Band
John the Revelator by Son House
Coon on the Moon by Howlin' Wolf

Just Like Greta by Van Morrison
No Time to Think by Bob Dylan
Have You Seen the Stars Tonight by Paul Kanter & The Jefferson Starship
Forever Changed by Bobby Purify
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, July 8, 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
Bandages and Scars by Son Volt
Lincoln Town car by The Waco Brothers
Virgin of the Cobra by Kev Russell
Lonesome Valley by Jon Dee Graham
Whiskey in a Jar by Hazeldine
Rated X by Neko Case
Rainbow Stew by Jason Ringenberg
Dumb Blonde by Dolly Parton
Track 2 by Charlie Tweddle

A Cigarette, A Bottle and a Jukebox by Big Al Downing
Just Between You and Me by Charlie Pride
Blame the Vain by Dwight Yoakam
Hey Bartender by Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks
I Just Lost My Mind by Rex Hobart & The Misery Boys
Wayside/Back in Time by Gillian Welch
Drunkards Go to Hell by Foddershock
Misty by Ray Stevens

I'm Working on a Building by Bill Monroe & The Bluegrass Boys
I'm Working on a Road by Flatt & Scruggs
Propiniquity by Earl Scruggs with The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
Dark Hollow by David Bromberg
Are You Washed in the Blood by Red Allen
I'm Not a Communist by Grandpa Jones
Grapevine by Tom Russell
A Summer Love Song by Dr. West's Medicine Show & Junk Band
Cover of the Rolling Stone by Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show

Don't Get me Started by Rodney Crowell
Baghdad by Ed Pettersen
Out of Line by Michael Martin Murphey
Belshazzer by Johnny Cash
The Bloody Bucket by Grey DeLisle
A Whorehouse is Any House by Bonny Prince Billy
It Sure Was Good by George Jones & Tammy Wynette
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: NOW HERE'S A MAN WITH THE BLUES

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
July 8, 2005

It’s a sad confrontation, a clash of the titans that nobody wanted to see.

The scene is backstage at the Newport Folk Festival in 1966. Ethnomusicologist and folk music heavyweight Alan Lomax, who brought several old Mississippi blues greats from the ‘20s and ‘30s to the show, had set up what he called a “juke joint” backstage where he filmed informal performances.

Son House, one of the most venerated of all the early bluesmen was there. He’s drunk and belligerent and he‘s made the mistake of interrupting the performance of Howlin‘ Wolf, the Mississippi-born Chicago bluesman, who was more of a demiurge than an entertainer.

At first Wolf tries to joke with House, who had been one of his mentors back in the Delta. “Now here’s a man with the blues,” Wolf growls.

But when House doesn’t stop, the Wolf pounces. “You had a chance with your life, but you ain’t done nothing’ with it,” he says. “You don’t love but one thing, and that’s some whiskey.”

This was captured on film and is, in fact the most intense moment in Don McGlynn’s 2003 documentary The Howlin' Wolf Story: The Secret History of Rock 'n' Roll, which is showing Saturday and Wednesday at Santa Fe Film Center.

There’s lots to like about this film. One of my favorite parts is the home movie footage from Wolf drummer Sam Lay’s camera of 1960s gigs at long-gone Chicago joints like Sylvio’s -- where you can spot Chicago blues royalty like Sonny Boy Williamson and Little Walter in the audience.

But the scene that keeps haunting me is the one with Son House. It’s hard to watch and embarrassing to everyone involved, including present-day viewers. The hard fact is Wolf is right.

House, who was eight years older than Wolf, had lived an archetypal blues life. He’d been a traveling troubadour, a preacher and a hobo. In his early years he’d killed a guy and served time in the infamous Parchman prison. He had a brief recording career in the ‘30s, then disappeared until 1941 when Lomax tracked him down, then disappeared again until the early ‘60s when folkie revivalists “rediscovered” him. House had spent most of those missing years working as a Pullman porter in Rochester, N.Y.

Wolf, born Chester Burnett, on the other hand, never turned his back on his music. Learning guitar from none other than Delta blues founding father Charlie Patton himself, Wolf went to West Memphis, Ark., where he hooked up with Sun Records’ Sam Phillips, then to Chicago, where, along with his friend and rival Muddy Waters, he pioneered electric blues.

His music and his wild stage persona personified the rough and raucous spirit of the blues, but, as becomes apparent in McGlynn’s film, he was a hard-working, big-hearted conscientious man — which counters the blues stereotype.

He paid unemployment insurance for his band, even back in the ‘50s. He was a family man. His grown daughters recall how he bought them back fancy clothes when he toured Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival. He was intent on self improvement, taking classes to learn to read and write when he was in his ‘50s and even taking music lessons to improve his guitar playing.

Like most the bluesmen we know and love from that era, Wolf was born under the bad signs of extreme poverty and racial oppression. His own mother, a religious fanatic, threw him out of the house as a child of 13. (In the film his longtime guitarist Hubert Sumlin tells how Wolf, while touring Mississippi, came across his mother. He tried to give her some money, but she threw it on the ground and stomp on it. She didn’t want any money that came from the Devil’s music.)

So when Wolf tells Son House, “You had a chance with your life, but you ain’t done nothing’ with it,” it’s coming from the realization that he could have ended up like House -- drunk, broke and living on past glories -- had he not worked so hard.

The Howlin' Wolf Story will show at The Santa Fe Film Center at Cinemacafe, 1616 St. Michael's Drive 4 p.m. Saturday and 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. Tickets are Tickets $8; $7 for students and seniors; $6 for film festival members.

Also Recommended:

* Blues With a Message by Various Artists. In the minds of too many modern fans, blues is nothing but party music, celebrating drinking, fighting, gambling and -- especially -- skirt-chasing.

But besides other mules kicking in his stall, sometimes the wolf knocks at a bluesman’s doors. In other words, besides the songs about drinking and fornicating, there’s also a tradition of socially conscious blues tunes.

Blues with a Message is a collection of 18 songs that deal with issues of poverty, racism, war, prison and even one medical epidemic (“The 1919 Influenza Blues” by pianist/singer Essie Jenkins.)

The artists represented here are mainly older acoustic players, such as former Mississippi Sheik Sam Chatman, who sings about racial stereotypes in “I Have to Paint My Face” and former inmate Robert Pete Williams, who tells a long sad tale called “Prisoner’s Talking Blues”

There’s also some electric blues, such as Juke Boy Bonner’s “What Will I Tell the Children,” (“Listened, looked around all day for a job/and I looked almost every place/It’s hard to come home and find hunger on your children’s face.”) and “Little Soldier Boy” a Korean War-era song by a Detroit singer named Doctor Ross.

One of the most uplifting songs here is “Why I Like Roosevelt” by sacred steel icon Willie Eason. He praises FDR (“Racial prejudice he tried to rule out/Invited Negro leaders to the White House …) while recalling the dark days of his predecessor (“After Hoover had made the poor man moan Roosevelt stepped in, they was a comfortable home.”)