THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

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

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
The Swimming Song by Loudon Wainwright III
Don't Let the Stars Get In Your Eyes by Jimmie Dale Gilmore
I Bought the Shoes That Just Walked Out on Me by Cornell Hurd
Whiskey, Weed and Women by Hank Williams III
Marie by Don Walser
Apartment # 9 by Tammy Wynette
Oklahoma Bound by Joe West
Honky Tonk Merry Go Round by Karen Hudson
I Knew Jesus Before He Was a Super Star by Tammy Faye Starlight

Lonesome, On'ry and Mean by Steve Young
Blue Wing by Tom Russell Band
Be Mine by Waylon Jennings
Don't Be Angry by Bobby Earl Smith
Cathead Biscuits and Gravy by Nancy Apple & Rob McNurlin
Robbers and Bandits and Bastards and Thieves by Drywall
Back in Your World by Billy Kandaurt
The Palace Roses by Todd Moore

VETERANS' DAY SET
Johnny Come Lately by Steve Earle with The Pogues
Good Christian Soldier by Kris Kristofferson
Distant Drums by Jim Reeves
Still in Saigon by Charlie Daniels
The Big Battle by Johnny Cash
The Burden by Terry Allen
Wild Irish Rose by George Jones

Country Bumpkin by Cal Smith
Walk That Lonesome Valley by Porter Wagoner
Twelfth of Never by Dolly Parton with Keith Urban
Black Granite by Blaze Foley
Dead Man's Will by Iron & Wine with Calexico
One of the Unsatisfied by Lacy J. Dalton
Scarlet Tide by Elvis Costello with Emmylou Harris
Love and Mercy by Jeff Tweedy
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: DIRTBOMB EXPLOSION

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
November 11, 2005

This is not your typical punk/noise/snot-rock/garage band.

I own two albums by The Dirtbombs — the new If You Don’t Already Have a Look and 2001’s Ultraglide in Black — and both of them have Stevie Wonder covers.

The group is from Detroit, just like The White Stripes, The Detroit Cobras and The Von Bondies -- though apparently this band cringes when people mention a “Detroit scene” or the “garage band movement.” (Check out their FAQ section on their Web site.)

I don’t care who you might try to lump them in with. The Dirtbombs play good old fashioned stripped-down fuzz-tone rock with a blast of raw punk power and strong nod to soul music.

That’s right, soul music. As in Stevie, Smokey, The Ohio Players and even Lou Rawls.

Led by singer/guitarist Mick Collins, who has played in a long line of Detroit bands for 25 years, The Dirtbombs have been rocking for a whole decade in relative obscurity with a lineup featuring two drummers and two bassists.

If You Don’t Already Have a Look is a two-disc set -- one of original songs, one of cover tunes.

The album consists of Dirtbomb singles going back to 1996, when Collins played off Janis Joplin’s “Mercedes Benz” to introduce a maniacal crank-damaged rockabilly car song called “High Octane Salvation.” With Collins shouting the refrain, “Fill it up with the power of God!” it was obvious that this band meant business.

Like The Monkees and The Archies, The Dirtbombs have their own theme song. “Theme From the Dirtbombs” is a minute and 15 seconds of crazed pounding energy. You might not be able to understand the lyrics (at least until you get to the point where Collins shouts, “Come on girl, get up! I think I love you!”

“Little Miss Chocolate Syrup” sounds like if Prince joined Mudhoney, while “All My Friends” takes the riff from “Proud Mary” to apply it to a melody that sounds like a long-lost Iggy Pop tune.

Collins gets lecherous on “Cedar Point ‘76,” goofy on “She Playde Me Like a Booger,“ depraved on “Pray for Pills,” spooky on “Infa-Red” and cocky on “Trainwreck.”

They pay tribute to The Angry Samoans’ “They Saved Hitler’s Cock” with “They Saved Einstein’s Brain” and to Gilligan Island’s Ginger with “Tina Louise” (allegedly one of four DB songs that mention Tori Spelling).

The covers disc is nothing but fun. Besides the Stevie song (an atomic-powered “Maybe Your Baby”), the band plays songs by the Ohio Players (“You Don’t Mean It”), Elliot Smith ( “Brand New Game,” which sounds like a cross between the Pixies and The Rolling Stones), Yoko Ono (“Kiss, Kiss, Kiss”), Flipper (“Ha Ha Ha”), The Bee Gees (“I Started a Joke” ) and Smokey Robinson (“I’ll Be in Trouble”)

The strangest cover has to be The Stones’ “No Expectations,” which incorporates the rhythms of “Sympathy for the Devil” and the fade-out chorus of “Hey Jude.” Apparently this was meant for some Stones tribute album. But as Collins says in the liner notes, “One day people will learn not to ask The Dirtbombs to do tributes.”

One of my favorite ones here is Lou Rawls’ “Natural Man.” Collins includes Rawls’ spoken introduction:

“You know, there was a time when, if someone told you to do somethin', you did it. Bam! Right on! No questions asked. It was "Yes, sir" or "Yes, ma’am". You never said no. But, you know, things are changing. It's a new day, baby. Folks want to take their own lives into their hands and make their own choices …”

Corny? Maybe. But I think The Dirtbombs have taken these words to heart.

Also Recommended

*Sliver: The Best of the Box by Nirvana. If you plunked down $40, $50 or $60 for With the Lights Out, last year’s box set of Nirvana rarities, this single-disc compilation will anger you and make you rue the day that Kurt Cobain and the boys ever sold out to the major-label corporate vampire. Nineteen of the 22 cuts all appear on Lights Out. However, there are three previously unreleased tracks on Sliver, just enough to tempt a Nirvana completist to break down and shell out full price for the new CD.

There ought to be a law …

However, for those who don’t have the box set, Sliver will be a sweet revelation.

It starts off with a lo-fi but loveable 1985 (!) version of “Spank Through” -- by an early Cobain band called Fecal Matter, Sliver is treasure chest of demos, outtakes and a few stray live numbers. There’s a party recording of a very young (1987!) Nirvana ripping through Led Zeppelin’s “Heartbreaker” and an early rehearsal of “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” which suffers from tape distortion and actually isn’t really very good.

My favorite tracks here include the band demo of “Rape Me” -- one of two versions of that song included here. Cobain here seems to have captured the spirit of raw horror that underlies so much of their last studio album In Utero.
Then there‘s “Ain’t It a Shame,” an upbeat Leadbelly which shows that Cobans love of Mr. Ledbetter didn’t stop with “Where Did You Sleep Last Night.”

But perhaps the most interesting number here is the title song. “Sliver” -- the story of a young boy who gets taken against his will to his grandparents’ hose -- always has been one of my favorite Nirvana tunes.

Part of the power of the song, at least in the more familiar versions, is that a listener is never sure exactly why the kid screams “Grandma take me home!” But on this home demo, recorded by Cobain with an acoustic guitar, there’s a verse in which Grandpa Joe accidentally burns the boy’s arm with a cigarette. By the time this song was released on vinyl in 1990, this verse had been dropped.

That scared little boy of “Sliver” would remain a major part of Cobain’s persona . It had to be something much deeper than a cigarette burn behind it.

ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: BLOGGERS FOR BILL

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
Nov. 10, 2005

The New Mexico political blogosphere isn’t always kind to Gov. Bill Richardson.

There are web logs by partisan Republicans who routinely rip into Richardson’s policies and proclamations. There are progressive Democratic blogs that aren’t afraid to stand up to the gov when they feel it’s necessary. Unaligned political junkie Joe Monahan is hardly vicious when it come to Richardson, but he normally sees beyond the spin of the governor’s p.r. effort.

Then there’s Santa Fe gadfly John Coventry’s “Fat Bill and Me” blog, an ongoing virtual character assassination.

But beyond the state’s borders there are at least two blogs by people supporting Richardson for president in 2008 that offer nothing but encouraging words for the governor of New Mexico.

And amazingly, both appear to be spontaneous grassroots eruptions, not products of Richardson’s political machine.

There’s The Bill Richardson Blog, run by two law students in two different states — Ian Samuel in New York and Andrea Saenz, in Cambridge, Mass. — and a Richardson blog with an intriguing name — Will the Wolf Survive? by Emmett O’Connell from Olympia, Wash.

In these little corners of blogdom, you’re more likely to read about the governor’s trip to North Korea and his recent book tour and national television appearances than Richardson’s problems appointing a judge in Rio Arriba County or his head-butting with state senators.

Wednesday morning on the BRB, there was a post giving Richardson partial credit for Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine’s victory Tuesday in the Virginia governor’s race.

“Though not about Gov. Richardson directly, I can tell you that he is a happy dude tonight. As the head of the (Democratic Governors Association), tonight’s wins are credits to him, too.”

(Most pundits believe that an even happier dude about that race is Virginia’s outgoing Democratic Gov. Mark Warner, who, like Richardson is considering a presidential run in 2008. Though Richardson did go to Virginia to campaign with Kaine, the conventional wisdom is that Kaine’s win will boost Warner. If so, that actually could be at the expense of Richardson.)

According to Saenz, she and Samuels are friends who met through college debate.

Saenz said in a recent e-mail, “I’m not from New Mexico, although my grandfather and his family are, originally, and I’ve visited a couple times.”

“I’m Mexican-American, and my family has been involved to some extent in California politics (my aunt was a state official under Gray Davis), so I’ve been aware of Bill Richardson as a Latino politician to watch for a couple years, though just in a vague sense,” Saenz said.

“I’m married to a moderate Republican,” Saenz said, “so I’m very interested in finding moderate candidates who have great ideas and can move beyond the crazy polarization of the religious right and the radical left that doesn’t seem to be getting us anywhere.”

Samuels is a native of Pueblo, Colo.

“I had first heard of Bill Richardson during the 2004 election season, when he was floated as a possible VP pick for Kerry (until he withdrew his name from consideration),” he said in an e-mail. “He seemed to have a background that you don’t find much in politics: a Democratic governor of a state that went for Bush, an executive with legislative, administrative, and even foreign policy experience, and a Latino politician who had strong appeal across demographics.”

Samuels says his Rocky Mountain roots guide his politics. “Western politics and politicians are just plain different than elsewhere, and I like the way we do it,” he said.

As for O’Connell’s blog, I’ve heard Richardson called many names, but “The Wolf” isn’t one of them.

O’Connell explained in a recent e-mail that he took the name from the Los Lobos song.

“ ... ever since (John) Kerry chose ‘Beautiful Day’ for his theme music during the primaries last year, I've been thinking about what songs would make better campaign themes. I love U2, and ‘Beautiful Day’ is a great song, but not a decent campaign theme. ‘Will the Wolf Survive,’ on the other hand, would be a particularly good song (especially the line ‘It's the truth that they all look for, Something they must keep alive.’)”

O’Connell, who is an information officer at the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, is an active in party politics, being an officer for his local Young Democrats club and an organizer for a Dem discussion group.

Before he created his Richardson blog, “I started a blog at winthewest.blogspot.com about Western Democrats which eventually was folded into westerndemocrat.com, a group blog.”

O’Connell’s latest Web project also is devoted to Richardson — “America For Richardson,” an “online community” he recently founded with Jeff Gulko of Virginia.

So far this site hasn’t attracted many participants. But the election is still three years off.

Meanwhile, back to the 2006 race: It’s not a blog, but J.R. Damron, a Santa Fe doctor who hopes to be the Republican nominee against Richardson next year has launched a Web site.

LUCKY BREAK?

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
Nov. 10, 2005

Is the embattled State Treasurer’s Office about to get Lucky?

Longtime Santa Fe lawmaker Luciano “Lucky” Varela is considering a run next year for the office — recently abandoned by Robert Vigil, who is indicted on federal charges of extortion, money laundering and other counts.

Varela, who has been in the state House of Representatives since 1987, worked for 25 years in the state Department of Finance and Administration, where he became state comptroller.

He currently is chairman of the Legislative Finance Committee.

Doug Brown, appointed last week to complete Vigil’s term, has pledged to not run for the office next year.

At a meeting of the Santa Fe County Democratic Party on Tuesday night, County Chairwoman Minnie Gallegos announced Varela as a candidate for treasurer as she was introducing various other Democratic candidates for office.

Gallegos said in an interview Wednesday that she hadn’t actually talked to Varela about the treasurer’s race, but like many local political observers, she’d heard rumors about him running.

“He just sat there and smiled when I called him a candidate,” she said.

Varela couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday.

A source close to Varela confirmed Tuesday that the legislator was considering the race and probably would announce next week.

Gallegos said she is excited about the possibility of Varela running for treasurer. But, she said, “We’ll sure miss him in the Legislature.”

Varela’s departure from the House would create a political vacuum in District 48, which includes much of the central part of Santa Fe.

Gallegos said she has not heard of any possible candidates for the legislative seat if Varela runs for treasurer.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

A buddy of mine got a closer look on the war on terror than most of us ever would want to have.

Jeff Young, who is a lawyer in North Carolina, is a frequent member of our little entourage at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin. I've known for years that he's nuts, but I didn't think he was nutty enough to travel to Jordan.

But he did. He was there on business in Amman today when the bombs went off. Our mutual friend Curt sent an e-mail that said, "Jeff was at another hotel in Amman today when the bombings occurred. His hotel was evacuated, and he apparently landed at the embassy of those peace-loving Swedes. Jeff represents a company that does a ton of work in reconstructing Iraq's infrastructure." Jeff had called his mom. He wasn't harmed.

Curt later said that he heard a t.v. news report that explosives had been found in the parking garage of the hotel where Jeff was staying.

As Curt said, "Close freakin' call."

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On a lighter note, my brother Jack just got back from his latest trip to Uzbekistan (he also visited The Ukraine this time). He was gone for nearly two months.

He told me that when he arrived at JFK in New York Tuesday, he looked up at one of the t.v. sets in the terminal. It was tuned to CNN.

Whose face on the screen greeted Jack back to American soil? None other than Bill Richardson!

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Speaking of the Gov, here's the strangest Bill Richardson story I've heard lately. When I heard about a false rumor Richardson had been killed, I thought it might have something to do with that story in The Onion a few weeks back.