TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, September 10, 2006
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell Guest Co-host Stan Rosen

SONGS FOR THE WORKING MAN
POST LABOR DAY SPECIAL

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Plenty Tuff, Union Made by The Waco Brothers
The Union Fights the Battle of Freedom/The Memorial Day Massacre by Bucky Halker
There Is Power in The Union by The Solidarity Singers
The Death of Mother Jones by Gene Autry
Red Neck, Blue Collar by James Luther Dickinson

De Colores/We Were There by Brooklyn Women's Chorus
Sweetheart on the Barricades by Richard Thompson & Danny Thompson
Big Boss Man by Jimmy Reed
Weave Room Blues/Babies in the Mill by Dorsey Dixon
Links in the Chain by Phil Ochs

Armies of the Working Class Poor by Mike Stout
Ballad for Americans/Joe Hill by Paul Robeson
Red Wine by Woody Guthrie
Pie in the Sky by Utah Phillips & Ani DiFranco
Waist Deep in the Big Muddy by Pete Seeger

Ballad of the Triangle Fire by The Jewish Labor Bund
Ludlow Massacre by Howard Zinn
Talking Union Blues/Study War No More by Pete Seeger
Working Man's Blues by Merle Haggard
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, September 8, 2006
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Ashgrove by Dave Alvin
American Music by The Blasters
Life's Little Ups and Downs by The Hacienda Brothers
The Inca Princess by Richard Buckner & Jon Langford
Big Kiss by Carrie Rodriguez
Will You Let Me Stay With You by Chipper Thompson

I Met Jesus in a Bar/Don't Blame the Wrong Guy by Jim Lauderdale
The Buzzard Was Their Friend by Dan Hicks & His Hotlicks
Three Legged Man by Steve Goodman
All of the Monkeys Ain't in the Zoo by Tommy Collins
Blue Bonnet Lane by Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys
I've Always Been Crazy by Waylon Jennings
Summer is Over by Fred Eaglesmith
Mike the Can Man by Joe West
Old Cat Died by The Carolina Chocolate Drops

Whiter Shade of Pale by Dan Reeder
Sticky Chemical by Bobby Bare Jr.
Tom Mix & Lucille Mulhall by Mary Minton
The Beast and The Burden by Hundred Year Flood
Redneck, Blue Collar by James Luther Dickinson
Like the 309 by Johnny Cash
Eternal Vacation by Buck Owens
Your Cheatin' Heart by Ray Charles

I Saw the Buildings by James Talley
No Way Sure by Loudon Wainwright III
Treat Each Other Right by Greg Brown
I Wish I Knew How it Will Feel to Be Free by Irma Thomas
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

VIVA LA FIESTAS!

It was the wettest Zozobra I remember -- at least in the past 10 years. It started right as we got to Ft. marcy Park and stopped, as if by magic right when the lights went out for the burn.

As usual, it was spectacular!

Viva la Fiestas!

See my Zozobra pictures HERE

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: FLOGGING THROUGHT THE FOG

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
September 8, 2006


One of the most glorious blasts of music from the 1980s was The Pogues. I’m talking, of course, of the Shane McGowan era. After the periodontal poster boy singer left, The Pogues were just another folk-rock band. But with McGowan full throttle with an Old Bushmills bottle, The Pogues were an unholy union of The Clash and The Clancy Brothers, ridden by voodoo gods and dancing obscene jigs at the very gates of hell.

Although the Pogues faded away — McGowan pursuing a half-ass solo career, releasing a few albums in the last dozen years or so —their wild, drunken spirit lives on in at least a couple of American bands.


There’s the Dropkick Murphys from Boston, a punk band with bagpipes and mandolin.
And then there’s the Murphys’ natural opponent in your ultimate imaginary Celt-rock battle of the bands, Flogging Molly, a Los Angeles-based band (with a Dublin-born singer) that has just released a DVD/CD set called Whiskey on a Sunday.

Both of these groups have the basic fire of The Pogues and have the basic crazy Irish punk-trad sound down. Neither, though, has quite captured McGowan’s possessed poetic aura.

But what amazes me is that while the Dropkicks have acknowledged, tacitly at least, their debt to The Pogues — they recorded the appropriately titled song “Wild Rover,” with McGowan a few years ago — Flogging Molly just did a feature-length documentary, the aforementioned DVD, without once mentioning The Pogues.

It’s especially ironic because of two songs included on the Whiskey CD. “The Wanderlust” has a melody similar to “The Sick Bed of Cuchulain,” while the Mideastern-sounding “Another Bag of Bricks” will remind Pogue fans of “Turkish Song of the Damned.”

So it rings pretty hollow when Flogging Molly frontman Dave King boldly declares at the end of the DVD, “As humble of a band as we are, in the sense of our heritage and where we come from … I would not be sitting here if I didn’t think we were the greatest rock ’n’ roll band in the world.”

Even when The Rolling Stones really were the greatest rock ’n’ roll band in the world, you rarely heard or read an interview with Mick Jagger or Keith Richards where they didn’t praise their forebears, like Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, etc.

But with this verbal flogging out of the way, there’s a lot to like about the music found on Whiskey on a Sunday, which I recently bought on impulse after hearing a few songs being played at a Denver record store. It’s basically my introduction to Flogging Molly.

The CD has 10 songs, some but not all featured in the documentary. There are some acoustic — but not necessarily mellow — versions of Flogging favorites like “Drunken Lullabies” and “Tomorrow Comes a Day Too Soon.”

And even better are the live tracks, “The Likes of You Again” and the anthemic “What’s Left of the Flag.”

As far as the DVD goes, this film by Jim Dziura is basically a promo piece that will best be enjoyed by established Flogging Molly fans.

All seven Floggers have their own little segments in which they tell their life stories and bandmates give kiss-up testimonials (“Dennis is one of the greatest people I’ve ever met in my life.”). Admirably democratic, I guess. Trouble is, most of them haven’t had lives that are all that interesting.

Like most rock-doc projects, my main criticism is that there should have been less yack and more music. The live sequences are, for the most part, thrilling. But then a perfectly good performance is interrupted by some band member whining about how tough touring life is or some inarticulate fan talking about how Flogging Molly rules. (Then again, there’s a pretty cool little scene where a band member is berating a fan for showing his genitals to a bandmate’s wife.)

Even if it isn’t the greatest rock ’n’ roll band in the world, and even if it doesn’t pay proper tribute to St. Shane, Flogging Molly upholds and defends the marriage of punk rock and traditional Irish music. Till death do it part.

Also recommended:

* The Twenty-Seven Points by The Fall. Twenty-five years ago, when I interviewed a young British singer I’d never heard of from a young British band I’d never heard of over beers at Evangelo’s, I never figured that I’d still be writing about them six years into the 21st century.
The singer was Mark E. Smith, and the band was The Fall. The Gold Bar, the venue where the band played, is long gone. But Smith is still a Fall guy, cranking out riff-driven-guitar mutant garage rock overlaid with Smith’s hypnotic if not always decipherable half-spoken, half-sung lyrics that hint of a dark mythos that lies somewhere between William Blake and H.P. Lovecraft.

In recent years, Smith seems to be slowing down, releasing mainly archival stuff (though last October, The Fall had a fun little new album called Heads Roll, which, somehow in this era of terrorist beheadings, wasn’t a huge pop hit.)

The recently rereleased The Twenty-Seven Points is, believe it or not, a double live album (Holy Peter Frampton, Batman!) Well, mostly live. There are a couple of studio tracks here: “Cloud of Black,” with a percolating electronic-blip bleepy beat, and the lengthy, slow-burning “Noel’s Chemical Effluence.”

But most of it was recorded in various cities in 1995, spliced together like a collage with all of its varying audio qualities.

There are several tunes — “Lady Bird (“Green Grass”), “Middle Class Revolt” — from the mid-’90s. There are incomprehensible spoken-word segments, including some dumb jokes. There’s one of my favorite Fall tunes, “Big New Prinz,” in which Smith shouts repeatedly, “Check the record check the record ... He is nuts!”

He is. But I’d still buy him a beer at Evangelo’s.

SOLIDARITY FOR THE DEAN

The only connection I have with Robert Christgau -- the dean of American rock critics, recently fired by the new kids running the Village Voice -- is the fact that about 15 years ago he invited me (and hundreds of other music writers across this great nation) to participate in the Voice's annual Pazz & Jop music poll. I've filed my ballot every year since and always appreciated the fact that he reached out to writers from smaller papers out here in flyover country to get a fuller representation of American criticdom.

Well, no more. I realize it's a symbolic gesture, but I won't participate in any poll for a paper that treats a senior writer this way. (They also previously canned music writer Chuck Eddy, which is an atrocity in itself.) And I'm urging other past P&J participants to do the same.

Grant Alden writes more eloquently about this on his blog on the No Depression site. (He credits me, but actually it was my KSFR colleague Sean Conlon who put the bug in my ear.)

Perhaps new management won't bother with this annual tradition, or
(more likely) they'll be delighted to see another middle aged critic leave the field of battle. But if enough of us decline to participate, perhaps it will mean something. At least to Mr. Christgau and Mr. Eddy.

Let's show some solidarity for the Dean.

ROUNDHOUSE ROUNDUP: TALES OF THE BIZARRO WORLD

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
September 1, 2006

New Mexico politics is usually a little crazy, but this week, one state race turned downright surreal.

I’m talking, of course, about the state auditor’s race, which suddenly has turned into Tales of the Bizarro World.

Last week, the harsh spotlight of media attention was on Democratic auditor candidate Jeff Armijo after the news broke that two women — one in 2003, one in August — had reported to police that he had made unwanted sexual advances. In the most recent case, the complaint says he pinned the woman on the floor and took off some of her clothing.

One day after insisting he would not drop out of the race, he met with Gov. Bill Richardson, who persuaded him otherwise.

But on Tuesday, the deadline for withdrawing from the race, Armijo held a news conference in Albuquerque announcing he’d been “a victim of a horrible political scheme” (I’m often heard muttering similar things during the last week of a legislative session), and he wouldn’t be withdrawing after all.

“I have faith in our political and legal systems that will expose the individuals in this scheme,” Armijo said Tuesday. Who are the evil schemers? Richardson? Republican auditor candidate Lorenzo Garcia? Professor Plum? Miss Scarlet?

To add to the dreamlike quality of all this, the news conference apparently was held just a few minutes after the state Democratic Party e-mailed a “statement in reaction to Jeff Armijo’s press conference,” which lambasted the decision.

About this time, I called the Secretary of State’s Office to see whether Armijo had withdrawn. Hoyt Clifton, a consultant for the office and a 26-year director of the state Election Bureau said, “I think I’m being faxed his withdrawal statement in a few minutes.”

I rushed over to the office only to find what had been faxed was not from Armijo, but from the governor’s office. And it wasn’t anything official. Just the news release Armijo had issued last week when he was withdrawing.

And soon, the governor, the secretary of state and the attorney general were saying this news release was good enough.

Take note campaign flacks: Your news releases apparently have more legal power than you ever imagined.

In fairness, state election law is rather vague when it comes to candidates withdrawing from the general election. “No candidate shall withdraw from a general election unless he withdraws at least 63 days prior to that election,” is about all the law says on the matter. Nothing on procedures on how to withdraw. Nothing about news releases.

J.R. Damron, who in June withdrew as the Republican gubernatorial candidate, said Wednesday that when he dropped out, he sent the secretary of state a notarized, certified letter. He said he couldn’t remember whether the Secretary of State’s Office advised him to do it that way or party officials.

The state Democratic Central Committee is meeting Saturday to try to sort this out. But everyone’s saying the whole mess is bound to end up in court.

And if Armijo comes out on top in this skirmish, perhaps we can attribute to psychic powers the statement state Dem Chairman John Wertheim made a couple of weeks ago when rumors of Armijo’s troubles were starting to swirl:

“We affirm what we know to be true: That Jeff Armijo will be the next auditor of the state of New Mexico.”

What happened to all the ‘Ethical Politicians’?: A couple of weeks ago, this column featured a new Web site by conservative Republican blogger Mario Burgos on which candidates of any party could post — voluntarily — their campaign contributions and expenditures.

Burgos set up http://www.ethicalreporting.com partly because under current law there are no campaign finance reports due between July and October.

The good news: The number of participating candidates grew 100 percent since I wrote about the site.

The bad news: The number grew from one to two.

State Rep. Brian Moore, R-Clayton, joined Rep. Kathy McCoy, R-Cedar Crest, on the site.

There was a nibble from a Democrat. Land Commission candidate Jim Baca said he’d post his reports on Burgos’ site if his opponent incumbent Pat Lyons posted his. Lyons didn’t respond and Baca never posted, prompting a blog chide from Burgos, who noted that McCoy posted her information despite the fact her opponent hasn’t participated.

“There is some concern in many of the tight races that leading by example could be used against them,” Burgos told me last week. “I believe in some of the statewide campaigns, they’re running as fast as they can, and taking on another task, albeit simple, is just more than they can contemplate.”

Burgos also said he’d heard from some Democrats that there’s concern that “a site run by a Republican couldn’t possible be nonpartisan.” He said he’s offered to “partner” with a Democrat, giving his counterpart full administrative rights to the site.

But so far, no takers.

AUDITOR'S RACE TURNS TOTALLY CRAZY

Looks like some weirdness is coming down in the state auditor's race.

Apparently Jeff Armijo is jumping back into the race, one week after stepping down over allegations of sexual misconduct.

I haven't been able to reach Armijo, but the state Democratic Party just released this statement:

Albuquerque -- Today, Chairman of the Democratic Party of New Mexico John Wertheim issued the following statement in reaction to Jeff Armijo’s press conference:

"No matter what Jeff Armijo says or does today, he already officially withdrew his name from the General Election ballot for State
Auditor a week ago, on August 29, 2006. His actions on that day created a vacancy on the General Election ballot.

“Although I am personally disappointed that Jeff has gone back on his word, officially, he is welcome to go before our State Central Committee on September 9th just like the other candidates vying to fill this vacancy, and attempt to get his name back on the ballot.”

By the way, state Rep. Hector Balderas announced today he's going to try to get the nomination.

UPDATE: I told you it was getting nuts. I just talked to Hoyt Clifton of the state Bureau of Elections who says he understands that Armijo is faxing astatement of withdrawal. In other words, the above message might be a false alarm.

Meanwhile, the governor's office just issued this statement:

“The Governor is very disappointed that Mr. Armijo is attempting to
go back on his word and selfishly put himself before the Democratic Party,” said Gilbert Gallegos, a spokesman for Gov. Bill Richardson.

“The governor agrees with the legal position of the Democratic Party Chairman, who is moving forward and asking the State Central Committee to select a replacement candidate who is responsible and committed to running a campaign based on the highest ethical standards.”

UPDATE TO UPDATE: Hoyt got a fax alright, but it wasn't from Armijo. It was from the governor's legal team. The "document" was Armijo's press release from last week announcing his withdrawal.

Looks like this one's going to the lawyers.

Stay tuned and watch tomorrow's New Mexican.