I DO NOT CRUISE FOR TRANSVESTITES IN AN EXPENSIVE SPORTS CAR

My friend Dana sent me the link to this amazing E-Bay auction.

Indeed, sometimes the stories behind the auction are better than the actual product being auctioned.

(This one's not going to be up for long so you'd better CHECK IT OUT FAST)

NO OPRY PLAYLIST

As I mentioned earlier, I didn't do The Santa Fe Opry last night. I was being held hostage in this big round building.

I did escape my captors in time to hear most of the show, hosted last night by the ever capable Laurell Reynolds.

She did a great job as usual, though she played a couple of songs that I almost certainly wouldn't have -- "Cook Yer Enchiladas" and "Brother to the Bear" by Steve Terrell. I'm not sure, but this might be the first time "Brother to the Bear" -- based on a story an inmate serving a life sentence told me 20-some years ago -- has ever been played on the radio.

Anywho, you can find what kept me from my radio show -- my recent contributions to the ongoing Robert Vigil saga -- HERE and HERE.

I'll be back at KSFR for Terrell's Sound World 10 p.m. Sunday.

Now go give some money to the KSFR fund drive!

IMPEACHMENT PROCESS STARTS, HANG ON TO YOUR PENS

You can find a lovely photo of me chewing on a pen with my story about the new House panel looking at the possible impeachment of State Treasurer Robert Vigil in today's New Mexican.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: WHEN COBRAS STRIKE

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
October 7, 2005

Back at the turn of the century (this century) the phrase “garage rock” was thrown around a lot to describe basically any guitar-based, indie-spawned band. Although the label sounded cooler than say “punk” or “alternative,” few of the groups that fell under this umbrella actually sounded like a garage band as I remember them from my misspent youth in the 1960s.

However, one of the neo-garage bands that actually sounds like real garage music is a female-led group The Detroit Cobras whose sex-charged, slightly retro but never campy sound is a high-voltage joy.

Like their previous efforts, The Cobras’ latest CD Baby is full of covers of mostly obscure R&B and ‘60s rock tunes -- and, on this CD, even a gospel tune. It’s a great trick -- pick songs most people haven’t heard and bring them back to life in your own style. Among the songwriters drawn from here are Pops Staples, Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, Allen Toussaint, Hank Ballard and Bobby Womack.

There is one original song here, though “Hot Dog (Watch Me Eat)” has historical antecedents -- Butterbeans & Susie’s “I Want a Hot Dog For My Roll,” Bessie Smith’s “I Need A Little Sugar In My Bowl" (she also needed a little hot dog for her roll), and Buck Owens’ “Hot Dog.” Still, hearing Rachel Nagy sing, “It takes a lot of dogs to satisfy a girl like me,” makes the whole concept sound fresh, at least for a moment.

Indeed, The Cobras’ greatest asset is front woman Nagy, whose sultry, husky voice sounds like Chrissy Hynde before she became a vegetarian nag. She can sound rough and raunchy, but she can sound sweet in a soulful way, such as her admirable take on Naomi Neville’s “It’s Raining.”

Just about every cut on Baby is a load of fun, from the goofy “My Baby Loves The Secret Agent,” (Those of My Generation have to remember the mid-’60s secret-agent craze) to the intense “I Wanna Holler (But the Town’s Too Small),” which was a minor hit by Gary U.S. Bonds.

And yes, for all the lust in her heart and bedroom in her voice, Nagy sounds fine singing gospel. “You Don’t Knock” is an irrestible stomper.

Two slight quibbles.

“Cha Cha Twist” was included on The Cobra’s early album Mink Rat or Rabbit. The new version on Baby doesn’t add anything.

Secondly, I’m biased because I so love the original version of “Insane Asylum” by Koko Taylor and Willie Dixon. The Cobras do an OK job on the song, but they don’t come anywhere near the original.

Then again, I’m impressed with a band that would event want to cover “Insane Asylum.”

Also Recommended:

*Dirty Diamonds by Alice Cooper. Auntie Alice has been making me laugh for nearly 35 years now. “I’m a killer and I’m a clown,“ he crooned on an early record. I still chuckle when I think of “The Ballad of Dwight Frye,” where Cooper, in the guise of a mental patient sings about stealing toys from his children, working himself into a frenzy until he finally screams, “Don’t touch me!”

Cooper’s latest album isn’t a great one. With the possible exception of the pensive crime-jazz intro to the title song, He doesn’t break any new ground. Cooper seems a little too comfortable in his lite-metal mode, though “Pretty Ballerina” shows he didn’t get the wimp rock out of his system with “Only Women Bleed” all those years ago.

But the jaded old sap can still make me laugh. First time I popped this CD into my car stereo, I chuckled all the way down Cerrillos Road at the “shock-rock Romeo’s” lyrics like, “The first time I saw her, she said she want to date me/The next time I come back she tried to castrate me ...”

Then there’s “The Saga of Jesse Jane” about a cross-dressing truck driver who gets arrested in Texas. “I drive a truck all night long/Listening to Judy Garland songs ... ” It gets worse from there.

In “Perfect,” he mocks a would-be pop star who thinks she sounds great in the shower, but falls apart at the karaoke bar. Then there’s the middle-age angst of the guy whose “heart is pumping bacon” and drinks “enough coffee to wake the dead” in “Your Own Worst Enemy.”

Cooper might not be cutting edge like he was back in the early ’70s. But if you need a good cheap laff, you can still go ask Alice.


*Driftin’by BigUglyGuysThis is pure, visceral, independent Kansas City biker rock. Chief ugly guy Rio DeGennaro is over 60, but he rocks like a crazed teenager. Backed by a basic guitar/bass/drums unit colored by a greasy sax, DeGennaro sings of boozing, biking and lusting for young girls and their moms like a true believer.

Most of the tunes are just plain fun, but the Uglys get serious on a couple of tunes. “Dreamin’ Part 2” is about a soldier in Iraq missing his lover and afraid he won’t come home. Likewise, “Life Blues” is the song of a man who’s separated from his wife and kids. He misses them and he misses the comfort of his childhood home and the love between his parents.

But DeGenero doesn’t dwell on such misery too. Long the album ends with “Yo Beanhead,” a highly-caffeineated ode to a good cuppa joe.

ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: GOODBYE GAS GUZZLER

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
October 6, 2005

A governor should lead by example, Gov. Bill Richardson told reporters Wednesday. Therefore, in this energy-conscious time in which the high cost of gasoline is on the minds of most citizens, Richardson has decided it’s time to trade in his gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle for something more fuel-efficient.

“We’ve been talking about a hybrid vehicle or a natural-gas vehicle,” Richardson said at a news conference when asked about the SUV he uses for state business.

Two weeks ago, this column pointed out that the governor showed up in his huge Lincoln Navigator — which gets about 13 mpg — for a press conference to talk about the country’s over-dependence on gas and oil.

Richardson’s decision to trade in his Lincoln comes a couple of months after U.S. Rep. Tom Udall bought a Toyota Prius to use in his travels around his northern New Mexico Congressional District.

“He seems to like it a lot,” Udall spokesman Glen Loveland said Wednesday. “It saves a lot on gasoline costs.” The gas-electric hybrid gets 60 mpg in the city, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

“The Prius is for use in New Mexico,” Loveland said. In Washington, D.C. Udall usually walks from his home to the Capitol, Loveland said.

Richardson, however, said he probably won’t buy a Prius. “I’ll stick with American companies,” Richardson said. A spokesman later told the Associated Press that Ricahrdson is considering a Ford Escape, a hybrid SUV that gets about 36 miles per gallon.

Richardson said that state police, who are charged with protecting the governor, will have a say in what type of vehicle he eventually buys. “Security is a concern,” he said.

Beam me up: Don’t call her “Gail Beam” any more. The nine-year state House member announced Wednesday that she has legally changed her name to the one she was given at birth: Gail Chasey. The next part of her name will remain “D-Albuquerque.”

Chasey, a member of the House Judiciary Committee said the fact that she just started law school at the University of New Mexico had something to do with changing her name.

“This is a time of new beginnings for me,” she said in an e-mail “Going to law school has been a longtime goal of mine. I also feel that the time is right for me to reclaim my birth name, Chasey. Making both changes now seemed like an appropriate synergy in my life.”

She said her name changes honors her mother, who worked for many years at UNM, and her father, an Air Force B-29 pilot in World War II, who died earlier this year.
Chasey is married to former state Attorney General David Norvell.

Gavel me down: When Lt. Gov. Diane Denish calls the state Senate to order for the special session today, she will have one less gavel to chose from which to chose for the task.

Denish gave one of her four gavels to Sonya Carrasco-Trujillo, her former deputy chief of staff who recently became acting Santa Fe municipal judge while the state Judicial Standards Commission investigates suspended Judge Fran Gallegos.

Let’s just hope Denish doesn’t need four gavels during the special session.

Remembering the ‘90s gas wars: Last week in this column, Sen. John Grubesic talked about how state lawyers are no match for high-price oil company lawyers — with their “alligator briefcases” and “private jets” — in trying to prove price gouging.

He recalled how as a rookie lawyer for the state Attorney General’s Office was promptly humiliated in court by a small army of Houston lawyers in the early ‘90s.

This was when then-Attorney General Tom Udall was looking into allegations of price fixing by petroleum companies in Santa Fe.

“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,” Grubesic said.

Jerry Marshak, an assistant attorney general who was with the office back then, has different memories. The oil companies had filed 35 to 40 cases to stop the attorney general’s subpoenas, Marshak said in an interview last week.

Marshak said he got “roped in” to handle the subpoena cases after Grubesic’s courtroom loss in Carlsbad. Marshak said he convinced the courts to consolidate all the remaining cases, and eventually the courts ruled in his favor.

“The suits and jets lost,” Marshak said.

The battle maybe, but not the war.

While the state got the documents they were seeking, the state never took any legal action concerning gas price fixing.