ROUNDHOUSE ROUNDUP: GRUBESIC IS BACK

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New MexicanSeptember 29, 2005

The last we heard from state Sen. John Grubesic, it wasn’t pretty.

In late July he was in the news for an incident in which a neighbor had reported him for allegedly speeding and nearly hitting her children on Star Vista Road. When a sheriff’s deputy went to talk to him, Grubesic responded angrily, yelling and cursing at the officer — who captured it all on tape.

This was just a few months after another incident in which Grubesic had wrecked his sports utility vehicle and intially lied to state police about what had happened.

Grubesic has apologized for those incidents. He recently even apologized to me personally, though his worst slight to yours truly was not returning my phone calls following the last incident.

He’s purposely kept a low profile since then. Grubesic said in an interview this week that he’s been involved in counseling and Alcoholics Anonymous.

“I attempted to scurry back into my private life and ignore the insanity of politics as best I could,” Grubesic wrote in an email to selected local journalists. “However, recent events have reminded me why I decided to run for office — to be a different kind of leader, vocal, independent and unafraid.”

Said Grubesic, “I admit that I have spent the majority of my short career battling my personal demons (with varied success) and little time focusing on the evils of politics.”

The “recent events” that Grubesic says have compelled him to speak out are the upcoming special session of the Legislature — which he says will be a waste of time — and the recent kickback scandal in the State Treasurer’s Office — in which State Treasurer Robert Vigil and former treasurer Michael Montoya are facing federal extortion charges. This scandal could mean big problems for Democrats, Grubesic said.

Hot air and alligator briefcases: Grubesic said Richardson’s proposal to put $75 million toward gas tax refunds for all state taxpayers look like “ a quick fix designed to accomplish nothing more than garner good press.”

The senator said he likes an energy plan proposed by New York Gov. George Pataki, which, Grubesic said, provides tax credits for alternative vehicles and incentives for alternative fuel production.

“Oil is a finite resource,” he said. “Continued consumption is not the answer. ... Giving rebates or getting rid of the gas tax encourages people to continue to drive and consume, not conserve.”
Grubesic dismissed Richardson’s call to crack down on gasoline price gouging as “hot air.”

He recalled a previous ineffective attempt by the state to challenge the petroleum industry in the ‘90s when Congressman Tom Udall was attorney general. Udall was looking at possible gasoline price-fixing in Santa Fe. Grubesic was working for the AG then.

“I was two years out of law school, had no experience with anti-trust law and was asked to assist in the case the night before a hearing in Carlsbad,” he said. “The industry had strategically filed three separate suits in New Mexico to quash our investigatory subpoenas and all of them were in oil and gas country. When I showed up for the hearing there were 10 attorneys on the other side. They promptly crushed me and helped me pack up my cardboard box in my rental car to go back to Santa Fe, while they packed up their alligator brief cases and flew back to Houston on their private jet.

“We don’t have the people or the money to go on this wild goose chase,” Grubesic said. “Even if we could design an enforceable law and had the manpower behind it, the oil and gas industry would come up with some reason why prices are so high. These guys have been gouging us for years and are well prepared to fight this battle.”

Trouble at the Treasurer’s Office: Grubesic suggested that the speciual session is a “smokescreen” to draw attention away from the looming kickback scandal — even though the governor had been talking about a possible special session well before the FBI arrested Vigil and Montoya.

“As Democrats we should be worried,” he said “I know for a fact that there were memos and an audit lying around in various state offices that nobody dealt with or completely ignored. These activities were known about, but nobody had the guts to do anything about them. The Feds are doing it for us. Now we have lots of tough talk from the very people that sat on their hands while these guys took sacks of money out the back door.

“The only way to move forward is to acknowledge what has happened. As Democrats, let’s be honest and admit our failures and vow to fix it by doing a complete and honest investigation of how far this scandal goes, where the money is within our party, who knew what, when and why nothing was done.”

When asking where the money is, Grubesic acknowledged that he might have an idea where $50 of it went.

He is one of the three dozen Democratic candidates who received small contributions from Vigil in 2004. Others from the Santa Fe area include Sen. Phil Griego and Rep. Peter Wirth, both of whom received $50 from Vigil.

“I’ll return it or donate it to charity,” Grubesic said of his $50. “I don’t want it.”

Note: This morning, after this column appeared in the paper, Rep. Peter Wirth called to say that he returned his $50 contribution from Robert Vigil.

NO DIRECTION HOME

I found myself enjoying Martin Scorsese's docu-Dylan the past couple of nights even more than I thought I would.

I loved the concert and studio footage I'd never seen before. I loved seeing Dylan playing piano and singing "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" in a weird slow rhythm backstage somewhere with Johnny Cash. I loved seeing the interview segments with the late Dave Van Ronk. (I blame Van Ronk on my career choice. He was my first interview back in 1980.) I loved seeing Dylan and Joan Baez singing at the 1963 March on Washington. I loved hearing Baez cuss like a pro.

And I found a new respect for Dylan from the footage used of his new interviews. The man seemed thoughtful and sincere -- not the enigmatic joker of his old greet-the-press sessions.

Scorsese included lots of those old mid-60s press conferences shown in tonight's episode. Dylan looked like he was stoned half the time. And, I'm sorry to say, I was not proud of my press brethren, whose questions ranged from the pompous to the inane. One reporter wanted to know how many songwriters wrote protest songs. Dylan, in a face that wasn't even straight, answered, "136." "Exactly 136?" the newsgeek asked. Dylan could have written "Ballad of a Thin Man" about any one of these idiots.

I found myself raging when the film came to the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, when the folkies turned on Dylan for "going electric" with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Some of these dildos still are whining that Dylan betrayed them by "going commercial." Commercial! True, "Like a Rolling Stone" somehow became a major hit. But couldn't any of the Folk Nazis see how truly radical this song was? It twice as long as most pop songs of its day and Dylan's goofy nasal voice weird even for rock 'n' roll back then. And there was all this surreal imagery -- diplomats with Siamese cats, jugglers and clowns, Napoleon in Rags -- and all of it a snide celebration of a rich bitch who gets her comeuppance.

And so the folkies booed, as did their European cousins when Dylan toured with The Band the next year. It's almost as if they knew Dylan was special, but they wanted to keep him in their own little club, away from the great unwashed who aren't as hip and enlightened as them. Away from the crazy rock 'n' roll crowd. Away from grubby junior high kids in Oklahoma like me who would find hidden truths in Dylan's oracle rants (even though I wasn't quite sure who or what the "mystery tramp" was. In the end, the folkie guardians seemed as closed-minded as the conservatives they decried. Maybe they should have heeded one of the early Dylan songs they cherished so much: "You'd better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone ..."

I'm listening to the soundtrack now. I've been playing it for a few weeks now. It doesn't really follow the songs used in the movie, though it's got "Maggie's Farm" from Newport '65. Fortunately Mike Bloomfield's guitar is loud enough to drown out the pig-headed detractors.

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, September, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
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
Goin' on Down to the BBQ by Drywall
You You You! by Kevin Coyne & The Pine Valley Cosmonauts
Beautiful World by Devo
Hot Dog by The Detroit Cobras
Steal that Car by Alice Cooper
Gatorade by Heavy Trash
Something Broken in the Promised Land by Wayne Kramer
The Idiot Bastard Son by The Mothers of Invention

Treat Her Right by Los Straightjackets starring Mark Lindsay
King of the Rodeo by Kings of Leon
Already Gone by Tarbox Ramblers
Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat by Bob Dylan
The Bleeding Heart Show by The New Pornographers
Maps by The Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Tony Rome by Nancy Sinatra

NIGHT TRAIN TO NASHVILLE SEGMENT
Nashville Jumps by Cecil Grant
Boogie Woogie Jockey by Jimmy Sweeney
Anna by Arthur Alexander
Dr. Feel-Good by Dr. Feelgood & The Interns
Just Walkin' in the Rain by The Prisonaires
I'm Free (The Prisoner's Song) by Johnny Bragg
You Better Change by Hal & Jean
Sunny by Bobby Hebb
Just Sittin' Here Drinkin' by Christine Kittrell
Next to Me by Clyde McPhatter
She Can Rock by Little Ike

Poppy Nogood & The Phantom Band by Terry Riley
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

ON THE BOOKS

My sneak preview at an advance copy of Gov. Bill Richardson's autobiography Between Worlds: The Making of an American Life can be found HERE


If You want to pre-order on Amazon.com, it'll cost you you $17.13.

But a word to bargain hunters: You might want to wait, because these poltiical autobiographies have a pretty short shelf life. You can hardcover copies of John Kerry's 2003 page-turner, A Call to Service: My Vision for a Better America on Amazon for as low as 51 cents.

CHECK OUT GUITAR GEORGE, HE KNOWS ALL THE CHORDS

Rock critic J.D. Considine had some interesting comments about President Bush's infamous guitar phot op (taken with a guitar that Nashville hat Mark Wills gave him as New Orleans was sinking.)

Sayeth Considine:

"What bugs me about the photo, however, is that it gets described as showing the president “playing guitar,” when at best he’s only posing, trying to look like he’s a-pickin’. How do I know? Just look at his left hand. Like many a duff guitarist, he’s formed the hand shape for an open-G chord — except that instead of having his fingers in place to play G (third fret on the lower E string) and B (second fret on the A string), he’s a fret off, at G-sharp and C. His little finger may be adding an A (fifth fret on the upper E string), but it’s hard to be certain. In any case, were he actually to strum that guitar, the result would be utter dischord, revealing him as someone who doesn’t know diddley about guitar. Instead, he poses quietly, and only instrument geeks like me notice."

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, September 23, 2005
Webcasting on KSFR
Santa Fe, NM
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
I Hung it Up by Junior Brown
Roly Poly by Asleep at the Wheel with the Dixie Chicks
Brand New Heartache by Chris & Herb
Bloody Mary Morning by Willie Nelson
Cryin' Drunk by The Old 97s
The 12th of Never by Marti Brom
Walk That Lonesome Valley by Porter Wagoner

Prison on Route 41 by Iron and Wine & Calexico
On the Sly by The Waco Brothers
Money Like Water by Kevin Koyne & The Pine Valley Cosmonauts
Black Soul Choir by 16 Horsepower
What Did the Deep Sea Say by Dave Alvin
Cowgirl Hall of Fame by Joe West
Between Lust and Watching TV by Cal Smith
I'm Going to the City by Indian Bottom Association of Old Regular Baptists

Cry Like a Baby by Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham
Dark End of the Street by Frank Black
Kiss Her Once For Me by Delbert McClinton
The Outsider by Rodney Crowell
All Dried Up by Jon Nolan
Keep Your Hat on Jenny by Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodriguez
All You Rounders Better Lie Down by Clothesline Revival with Fred Fox Lee

Rain Keeps a Fallin' by Josh Lederman y Los Diablos
Acequia by Boris McCutcheon
Cornbread Nation by Tim O'Brien
Some Human's Ain't Human by John Prine
Love is Like a Butterfly by Dolly Parton
Wilderness by Peter Case
Afternoon by Eleni Mandell
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: TAKE THAT NIGHT TRAIN TO NASHVILLE

A version of this appeared in The Santa Fe New Mexican
Sept. 23, 2005
Nashville streets like 16th Avenue and “Lower Broad” (Broadway, that is, home of Tootsie‘s Orchid Lounge and just half a block away from the Ryman Auditorium) have been immortalized in song. But there’s another road in Nashville that nurtured a lesser known but amazingly vital world of music: Jefferson Street.

The Jefferson Street district, up to the 1970s, was an thriving business area for Nashville’s Black population. Among those thriving businesses, naturally were nightclubs where jazz, blues, R&B and soul music filled the air.


The musicians and the songs that roared on Jefferson Street in the mid 20th Century make up the core of the project known as Night Train to Nashville, Music City Rhythm & Blues, 1945-1970. The two-disc first volume was released last year -- and won a Grammy for best historical recording. The two-disc Volume Two was released just last week and it’s equally tasty.

While the Nashville R&B artists were undeniably exuberant, judging by the Night Train series, they were more derivative than original. On Volume Two for instance Little Ike’s “She Can Rock” sounds disturbingly similar to Little Richard. Roscoe Shelton’s “Strain in My Heart” is in the early soul style of Solomon Burke and Bobby “Blue Bland.” Johnny Jones & The King Casuals -- which at one point included a young Jimi Hendrix -- do an admirable take on the Stax-Volt sound with their 1967 instrumental “Soul Poppin’” (produced by Stax man William Bell), while you can hear mucho Motown in songs like Jimmy Church’s “Right on Time” or “That’s My Man” by Marion James.

Helen Foster covered the 1952 Jo Stafford hit “You Belong to Me” (“See the pyramids along the Nile/Watch the sunrise on a tropic isle …”) for the R&B market. The song was co-written by country bandleader Pee Wee King.

On the other hand, Volume Two contains songs recorded in Nashville (and some recorded elsewhere by Nashville singers) that later were big hits for others.

There’s a tune that Elvis Presley would later knock out of the park: Bernard Hardison‘s “Too Much.” (Volume One had Arthur Gunter’s pre-Presley “Baby Let’s Play House.”)

Night Train Volume Two includes Christine Kittrell’s gritty “I’m a Woman” (Peggy Lee had the hit); “Little Darlin’” by The Gladiolas, a South Carolina group who recorded this in Nashville before it became the signature tune for Canadian doo-woppers The Diamonds; and Freddy North’s “She’s All I Got” (co written by Gary “U.S.” Bonds and Jerry “Swamp Dogg” Williams), which later became a hit for country star Johnny Paycheck.

And Nashville was the home to a brooding soul man named Arthur Alexander, whose style didn’t seem to copy anyone. His song “Anna” (included on Volume One) became famous when The Beatles covered it. On this volume, Alexander sings a haunting ballad from 1962 called “Soldier of Love,” with the chorus “Lay down your arms and surrender to me …”

There are a couple of tracks here of R&B stars who came to Nashville to record with the famous C&W session musicians -- the boys who made the noise on 16th Avenue. Esther Phillips soulful voice cuts right through the strings and white-bread chorus of “Release Me” (a song previously covered by both Ray Price and Kitty Wells). Even better is Clyde McPhatter’s “Next to Me,” whose tenor soars over the gospel-style piano.

Among the standouts on Volume Two are Johnny Bragg’s “I’m Free (The Prisoner’s Song)” an autobiographical tale in which, following a spoken introduction that sounds straight out of a ’50s news reel, Bragg tells how he was “servin’ 99 in the penitentiary/but the governor came along and set me free.

Indeed, Bragg’s story is similar to that of Leadbelly, who in 1934 charmed Gov. O.K. Allen of Louisiana into releasing him early. (And some say the same scenario played out a few years before with Leadbelly and a Texas governor.)

According to the African American Registry web site, Bragg was serving six (!) 99-year sentences for rape when Tennessee Gov. Frank Clement heard him sing and commuted his sentence in 1959. Can you imagine the political poop storm Bill Richardson -- or any contemporary governor -- would face if he released a convicted rapist because he liked the guy’s music?

Bragg later went on to lead a group called The Prisonaires, who recorded for Sun Records. “I’m Free” is a home recording that sounds like a spiritual in which Bragg is accompanied only by an acoustic guitar. By the last he’s singing in a striking falsetto.

But I think my favorite song here is two minutes and 22 seconds of pure pleasure from 1963 called “You Better Change” by a duo called Hal & Jean. The song, sung by Hal Gilbert, is a basic take-off on Ray Charles’ “What I Say.”

What makes the song is the over-miked Jean Gilbert, who provides humorous asides (“you talkin’ through your head …”) and has one fo the sexiest giggles ever recorded in human history.

Basically this whole collection, like last year’s first volume, is one big sexy giggle.

Night Train on the radio: I’ll be playing songs from the Night Train to Nashville collections Sunday on Terrell’s Sound World, 10 p.m. to midnight Sunday on KSFR 90.7 FM (and streaming live on www.ksfr.org) (The Night Train segment will start at 11 p.m.)

Speaking of KSFR, the annual fall fundraiser starts in October. Get your checkbooks ready, because Santa Fe’s public radio station won’t last without the support of the Santa Fe public. And who else is going to play the crazy stuff I review in this column?