ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: USED CARS

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
December 22, 2005

Would you buy a used car from this administration official?

Jeff Siembieda, deputy director of the New Mexico Sports Authority has been appearing on television lately. But it’s not for talking up Gov. Bill Richardson’s efforts to bring a National Football League team to the state.

No, he’s selling cars in a commercial for Cross Country Auto Sales, an Albuquerque business.

Siembieda, a former morning news anchor on Channel 13 and sportscaster on Channel 7, said he’s not violating any state rules by making a commercial. In an interview Wednesday he said he checked it out with the governor’s office before doing the ad.

“It has nothing to do with my duties as deputy director,” he said. Cross Country wanted him, he said, because of his radio show.

Siembieda hosts a sports talk program called “The Big Show” weekday afternoons on Albuquerque’s KKNS, 1310-AM. Cross Country, he said, is an advertiser on the station.

Siembieda ran into some criticism earlier this year for keeping his radio show while taking a job in the administration. He earns about $50,000 for the state.

But apparently, there’s no problem with the governor’s office with the show, and indeed no problem with the commercial.

Richardson spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said Wednesday that the commercial was “just a one-time deal.”

“It was just a favor for a friend,” Gallegos said. “It’s not an ongoing thing. He wasn’t representing the Sports Authority. There’s no conflict with his job.”

O.K. But if we start seeing commercials with state Public Safety Secretary John Denko endorsing Blake’s Lota Burger or Department of Finance and Administration chief James Jimenez plugging Cliff’s Amusement Park, we’re going to start to wonder.

Who did you support? Santa Fe art and real estate tycoon Gerald Peters’ fund raiser to help retire state tax secretary Jan Goodwin’s 2002 campaign debt was Wednesday night. Goodwin ran in the Democratic primary that year, losing to Robert Vigil, who has since resigned in the face of scandal and federal indictment.

In a cover letter that went out with the invitation, Peters wrote, “As you may know, I also supported her 2002 campaign for the position of state Treasurer.”

Perhaps it was only moral support.

A search of Followthemoney.org, the Web site for The Institute of Money in State Politics found no contribution from Peters or any of his companies to Goodwin’s campaign.

However, according to the Web site, Peters’ umbrella Peters Corp did make one contribution to the treasurer’s race. In October, 2002, the company gave $500 to Vigil, who was running unopposed in the general election.

Goodwin said last week she has an outstanding campaign debt of $71,500. More than $100,000 of the $179,000 she spent on that race was from herself and her family.

Carraro weighs his options: State Sen. Joe Carraro might try to change Senates.

In an interview last week, the Albuquerque Republican said he’s considering a race for incumbent U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman’s seat next year.

“I’ve made several trips to Washington, D.C. where I’ve talked with various people,” Carraro said. At first he was talking with “conservative groups,” he said. Recently he’s been talking to official Republican organizations, he said.

If he does run, Carraro said that none other than Jack Kemp, the 1996 GOP vice presidential candidate, would be his national fund raiser.

Candidates in the Republican primary so far include Santa Fe City Councilor David Pfeffer and former state Sen. Tom Benavides of Albuquerque.

Nobody’s saying it’ll be easy beating Democrat Bingaman, whose approval rating is nearly 60 percent according to the most recent Survey USA/KOB poll, conducted on Dec. 12.

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, December 18, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

THE STEVE TERRELL CHRISTMAS SPECIAL
Santa Claus is Coming to Town by The Rev. Horton Heat
Counting the Days, A Christmas Polka by Marah
Aou Tumhen Chan Pe by Asha Bhosle, Bappi Lahiri, Chorus, Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, Mohd. Rafi, Sushma Shreshtha
Egg Nog by The Rockin' Guys
Gloria by Elastica
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer by Pietra Wexstun
Even Squeaky Fromme Loves Christmas by The Rev. Glen Armstong
Santa Doesn't Cop Out on Dope by Sonic Youth
Santa and the Sidewalk Surfer by The Turtles

Merry Christmas From the Family by Robert Earle Keene
Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight by The Ramones
Go Tell it on the Mountain by Mojo Nixon & The Toadlickers
Lucy's Tiger Den by Terry Allen
Christmas in Jail by The Youngsters
Did You Spend Christmas Day in Jail by The Rev. J.M. Gates
Must Be Santa by Brave Combo
Six Bullets for Christmas by Angry Johnny & The Killbillies
Deck the Halls with Parts of Charlie by The Cryptkeeper
Little Drummer Boy by Joan Jet

St. Stephen's Day Murders by The Chieftains with Elvis Costello
Fairtytale of New York by The Pogues with Kirsty MacColl
Christmas in Paradise by Mary Gauthier
The Last Month of the Year by The Fairfield Four
Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto by James Brown
Blue Christmas by Stan Ridgway
Christmas is a Special Day by Fats Domino
Christmas Boogie by Canned Heat with The Chipmunks
Good King Wenceslas by The Jingle Cats

Oy to the World by The Klezmonauts
Goyim Friends by The LeeVees
White Christmas by Otis Redding
Oh Holy Night by Brian Wilson
A Change at Christmas by The Flaming Lips
Christmas Everyday (Maybe It'll Help)by Giant Sand
Silent Night/What Christmas Means by Dion
Star of Wonder by The Roches

THE POETRY OF SPAM

I don't think I've ever actually bought a can of SPAM, and I know I've never actually read the label.


But my friend Ciskoe, as part of a "Secret Santa" package, gave me a Christmas stocking containing a can of the the pride of Austin, Minn.

On the back is a recipe for SPAM quesadillas. And beneath the recipe is this commentary:

"Do not be fooled by the simplicity of this recipe. Yes, it is easy to make, but the flavor is complicated and exotic. Like something that pulls at your senses and then flies away, wanting to be chased. And you will chase it, oh yes you will."

It struck me that somebody is actually paid money to write stuff like that. It also struck me that this particular writer really enjoys his or her job.

Almost makes we want to make some SPAM quesadillas.

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, December 16, 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
Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Pretty Boy Floyd by The Byrds
Anacostia by Son Volt
Burn, Burn, Burn by Ronny Elliott
Master of Diaster by John Hiatt
Crazy as a Loon by John Prine
For Too Long by Eric Hisaw

The First Christmas by Nancy Apple & Rob McNurlin
Walking the Floor Over You by Jimmie Dale Gilmore
Cocktails by Robbie Fulks
Pair of Goats by The Gourds
Let's Leave it Alone by Kelly Hogan
Three-Teared Cake by Margaret Burke & Jim Terr
Five Fingers to Spare by Marti Brom
Caryl Chessman by Country Johnny Mathis
Can Man Christmas by Joe West & Mike the Can Man
Blue Christmas Lights by Chris & Herb

Candy Man by Mississippi John Hurt
Angels Laid Him Away by Lucinda Williams
My Creole Belle by Taj Mahall
Dupree's Diamond Blues by The Grateful Dead
Betty and Dupree by Brownie McGee
Angel Band by Bethleham & Eggs
Gabriel's Call by Hazel & Alice
Angels in the Street by Hank Webster

There's No Place Like Home For the Holidays by Leon Redbone
Blue Wing by The Tom Russell Band
Big Boy Can't You Move 'em by Clothesline Revival with "Uncle" Bradley Eberhard
Wilderness by Peter Case
It's Not My Time to Go by Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks
Nothing But a Child by Steve Earle with Maria McKee
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: LENNON'S "WORST ALBUM" RECONSIDERED

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
December 16, 2005

Imagine this scenario. It’s December, 1971 and President Richard Nixon is sweating like a maniac in some underground White House bunker. He’s just read a FBI report on a concert in Ann Arbor. Mich. -- 15,000 screaming hippies raising their unwashed fists and singing along with an ex-Beatle to demand that some pot-smoking anti-war crank be sprung from prison. The president shivers as he reads every word the FBI agent had written down: “…"gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta set him free."

It wouldn’t end there. Nixon knows that bastard John Lennon was intent on uniting with crazy radicals and marijuana addicts. Not just to disrupt the convention and lead the youth vote against him in next year’s election like some sinister foreign pied piper, but to force him to strip naked and dance with Mao Tse-tung.

He had to be stopped. The FBI was trying, but they weren’t doing enough. The INS were a bunch of impotent gimps. Liddy and the boys were busy with other projects.

There was only one he could turn to, someone who had warned him years ago about those nefarious Beatles, their drugs and their communistic ways. Someone who had offered to help and had already been commissioned as a special law enforcement officer.

Nixon calls in Ron Zeigler and beats him with a flyswatter until he draws blood. That feels better, Nixon sighs. He picks up the phone to make the call.

“Rosemary, get me Elvis Presley.”

XXXXXXXXXXX

Last week, on the 25th anniversary of John Lennon’s assassination, I awoke to a radio interview on Democracy Now with Jon Weiner, a history professor at the University of California who has written two books about Lennon’s political activism in the early ‘70s and the Nixon administration’s attempts to have Lennon deported.

“He wanted to be part of what was going on,” Weiner told Amy Goodman. “What was going on in New York was the anti-war movement, and he became friends with Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman and Bobby Seale and other activists … That's what got him in trouble with the Nixon administration.

And yes, according to Weiner an undercover FBI agent actually attended a “Free John Sinclair” concert starring Lennon and actually “wrote down every word John Lennon said, including all the words to the song (“John Sinclair”) , including `gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta set him free.’ ” (Sinclair was the manager of the MC5 and leader of a group called he White Panthers. He’d been sentenced to 10 years in prison for possessing two joints of marijuana.)

After hearing the interview, I knew that I gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta get myself a copy of Some Time in New York City, which was re-released last month on CD. So I did.

This work, in which Yoko Ono wrote and sang about half the songs, generally is reviled as Lennon’s worst album.

The basic rap on the record is that a mighty Beatle, the mad genius responsible for “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “I Am the Walrus” had been reduced to writing third-rate, radical chic political screeds.

It’s true, writing protest songs is tricky business. Recently I received a CD called Christmas in Fallujah by someone called Jefferson Pepper. I can’t figure out how someone could make a song about the ravages of war sound so smug and banal.

On the other hand, the Iraq war has produced several top-notch protest songs -- Terry Evans’ “My Baby Joined the Army” (written by Ry Cooder), “Can’t Make Here,” by James McMurtry” Robert Cray’s “20.” It’s also shown that a good protest song can be timeless. Pete Seeger’s “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War,“ Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” and Mose Allison’s surreal “Monsters of the ID” (revived recently by Stan Ridgway) with lyrics about “goblins and their hags … out there waving’ flags…” still resonate.

For the most part, Lennon and Ono’s lyrics to these songs fall well short of “Masters of War” or “Monsters of the ID.”

Only a few of them are outright embarrassing. The worst undoubtedly is “Angela” about jailed radical professor Angela Davis. With a goopy, string-sweetened arrangement, Lennon sings, “They gave you coffee/They gave you tea/They gave you everything but equality.”)

However, Some Time in New York City isn’t nearly as bad as detractors say. And some of the songs are good old-fashioned kick-ass rockers.

Lennon’s band here was a gritty and greasy New York group called Elephant’s Memory, led by sax maniac Stan Bronstein.

“John Sinclair” and “Attica State” are high-powered stompers featuring Lennon on a mean National guitar. “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” about the troubles in Northern Ireland, might also have its roots in Lennon’s rivalry with Paul McCartney. McCartney had recently released a tepid and polite tune called “Give Ireland Back to the Irish.” Lennon’s song, aided by Yoko’s weird warble and Bronstein’s sax, blew McCartney’s song to smithereens. And the autobiographical “New York City” is good, mindless fun.

The oft-vilified Ono even has a couple of good contributions here. “Sisters O Sisters” is the type retro girl-group charmer that would have fit in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. But her song “We’re All Water” with its great beat and crazy images -- “There may not be much difference between Chairman Mao and Richard Nixon/If you strip them naked” -- should have made everyone forgive her for breaking up The Beatles.

There’s some wonderful live bonus material here, including a powerful “Cold Turkey.” My only beef here is that in this release Capitol Records cut some of the Lennon jams with Frank Zappa, which appeared on previous versions of Some Time In New York City, replacing it with a bland Yoko song “Listen the Snow is Falling” and “Happy Xmas (War is Over).” This is a great holiday hit, but it’s already included on who knows how many Lennon compilations.

In the end, Tricky Dick didn’t really have much to worry about in regard to John Lennon. But what a time of wonder, when a rock ‘n’ roll star could make a president shake.

HIGH-FLYIN' SID

In regard to today's column, a reader just pointed out that while Jack Schmitt is indeed the only New Mexican to ever walk on the moon, he is not our only astronaut.

Sid Gutierrez is another high flying New Mexican. He's a space shuttle pilot, having flown two shuttle missions.

He's from Albuquerque and works at Sandia National Laboratories.

ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: N.M. TAKES UP SPACE

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
December 15, 2005


At a star-studded event at the Eldorado Hotel (well, Victoria Principal of Dallas fame was there) Wednesday morning, Sir Richard Branson, chairman of the Virgin Companies (and star of his own reality t.v. show) joined Sir Bill Richardson to announce a plan to build a $225 million space port in southern New Mexico.

Virgin Galactic is already selling $200,000 tickets for two-and-a half hour trips to space. Principal has already has paid for the first flight.

Of course the guv has to go through the formality of convincing the Legislature to go along with setting aside $100 million over the next three years for the project. Legislative leaders at the announcement seemed agreeable. But even if the Legislature approves, Richardson will have to convince the voters in conservative southern New Mexico counties to approve a sales tax increase to help fund what Richardson is calling “The Second Space Age.”

After the presentation, I asked the Rebel Billionaire a question that apparently no state official thought to ask:

Will there be discounts for New Mexicans for space rides?


After all, we’re paying for the space port. And we’’d even allow Virgin Galactic to install a huge replica of one of Branson’s irises — which is part of the logo for the company — which would be visible from outer space.

Branson chuckled. “I hadn’t thought about that. I’ll consider it.”

Return to the Moon: Only one New Mexican has any first-hand experience in space travel. That’s former U.S. Sen. Harrison “Jack” Schmitt. In 1974, as an Apollo 17 crew member, Schmitt was the last man to step on the moon.

Schmitt, a geologist by profession, is a long-time supporter of private industry leading the way into outer space. But in a telephone interview Wednesday, Schmitt said the state should be very careful about investing millions of taxpayer dollars in space ventures.

“Ultimately the value has to be sufficient to support private investment,” he said. “If the investors believe they’ll get a return on their investment. I don’t see that the taxpayers, in general terms, should be investing.”

Richardson said that two studies have shown the proposed spaceport would bring thousands of jobs to the state and have an economic impact of $750 million. But Schmitt said the state should have the studies reviewed by an independent company.

Schmitt was a consultant for the state about 10 years ago when New Mexico first started talking about a space port. “I supported the idea of building an airport in southern New Mexico that also could serve as a space port,” he said. An airport would pay for a spaceport, he said.

Several years ago, he helped start a company called Interlune-Intermars Initiative Inc. to attract investors to fund a project to mine the moon. The moon, he says, contains a form of helium called Helium 3, which he says could be used to create a clean energy-source through nuclear fusion.

Schmitt’s book, Return to the Moon, which deals with lunar mining, was published last month.

Monkeys and moon walks: A media handout package at the Virgin Galactic announcement included a “New Mexico Space History Timeline.”

It mentioned Robert Goddard, who moved to Roswell in 1929 to build and test rockets and Werner von Braun, who launched a V-2 rocket into space from White Sands Missile Range in 1946. It even mentioned Enos, the space chimp who orbited the Earth in 1961. Enos was trained at Holloman Air Force Base.

But somehow, the list didn’t mention the only New Mexican to go to the moon.

House Speaker Ben Lujan, however, paid verbal tribute to Schmitt, saying his moon trip was inspiring to all New Mexicans.

Indeed, that moon walk was taken very seriously by voters.

Republican Schmitt beat Democrat incumbent Sen. Joe Montoya in the 1976 election. Many political observers believed the turning point in the race was when Montoya gave a speech mocking Schmitt, saying that a monkey could be trained to go into space.

Schmitt lost to Democrat Jeff Bingaman in 1982.

Back to Earth: Eric Serna’s not the only politico around here who knows how to throw a fundraiser.

Art mogul/real-estate baron/would-be-casino operator/former state Board of Finance member and major Bill Richardson money-man Gerald Peters is throwing a benefit for Tax and Revenue Secretary Jan Goodwin.

Richardson is listed as host on the invitation, along with Peters and his wife. Co-hosts include New Mexico Finance Authority Chairman Steve Flance, Transportation Commission member Johnny Cope and longtime Richardson ally Butch Maki.

Goodwin ran for state treasurer in 2002, losing in the Democratic primary to Robert Vigil — who went on to get indicted on federal extortion and money-laundering charges and resign. She said Wednesday her campaign debt is about $71,500.

The Dec. 21 fundraiser starts out with cocktails at Peters’ gallery — which costs $500 a head. A buffet dinner at Peters’ home will cost $1,000.

Asked whether Goodwin will be running for treasurer again next year, Goodwin said, “I like my job. I’m very happy where I am.”

Of course, that didn’t stop her from applying for the treasurer’s job after Vigil quit.