BUT DID YOU FIND ANY PIC-A-NIC BASKETS, BOO BOO?

It's still early, but I'm betting this is the funniest press release I'm going to receive from the New Mexico state government all day. It's from my old pal and DeMolay brother Dan Williams at Game & Fish

Department of Game and Fish officers tranquilized and removed a young black bear from inside Presbyterian Hospital in Rio Rancho about 7:30 a.m. Friday.

Conservation Officer Darrell Cole described the incident as a "typical bear call" with a remarkably happy ending, especially considering it happened during rush hour. The bear, a 125-pound male estimated to be two to three years old, was transported and released in the Manzano Mountains later Friday morning.

"What was great about it was that at 7:30 a.m. when everybody was on the way to work or to school, the bear went into a building. He was contained," Cole said. "We were able to dart him and easily move him out of harm's way. If it had been outside, he could have run off and got hit by a car."

Cole said the bear could have made its way into Rio Rancho from the Jemez Mountains or the Manzano Mountains after it was displaced by its mother or a more dominant bear. It appeared to be in good health, although somewhat underweight, which is typical of a young bear in the springtime.

The bear apparently was able to enter the hospital by hitting an automatic door opener. A few witnesses inside said the bear did not threaten anyone or damage anything. Once inside, it retreated into a side room while Rio Rancho Police and Animal Control officers evacuated the immediate area. The bear retreated further into a restroom and was sedated within about a minute after it was darted by Game and Fish officers Cole and John Martsh.

"I guess if you're going to be darted with tranquilizer you might as well get it done in a hospital," Cole said.

BO DIDDLEY RECOVERING FROM STROKE

Rock 'n' roll founding father and former New Mexico resident Bo Diddley is recovering in Omaha, Nebraska from a stroke. Here's a news story about it: CLICK HERE This photo was taken back in 1985 in the lobby of the mayor's office in Santa Fe. I interviewed Bo for the Albuquerque Journal to preview a show at Club West. We talked about his years in the state during the 1970s. For awhile he was a member of the Valencia County Sheriff's Reserves and actually arrested a drunk driver, who he said had mouthed off to him. You'd have to be drunk to give Deputy Diddley any lip! Bo said he left New Mexico because "money got funny," but he came back in the late '80s to live south of Albuquerque for a few years. At my goading, back in '85 , Mayor Louie Montano made Bo an honorary citizen of Santa Fe. Get well Bo!

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: NOT THE SAME OLD GRIND

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
May 18, 2007

Rock ’n’ roll supposedly is a young man’s game — traditionally, some of the best of it is created by horny, sexually frustrated young guys. But with Grinderman, Aussie rocker Nick Cave proves that horny, sexually frustrated middle-aged men can rock, too.

After all, young-stud rock is propelled by the anxiety that you might not score tonight (or, for real young guys, that you might never score). The overriding anxiety throughout Grinderman is that Cave might never score again. And this fear can be even more intense than all that minor-league teenage angst.

It’s all laid out, so to speak, in the song “No Pussy Blues,” in which Cave begins with a spoken verse that begins, “My face is finished, my body’s gone.” He then relates a sadly humorous tale of picking up a young woman in his audience.

“I bought her a dozen snow-white doves/ I did her dishes in rubber
gloves/ I called her ‘Honey Bee,’ I called her ‘Love,’/ But still she didn’t
want to,” he snarls. “I sent her every type of flower/I played her guitar by the hour/I patted her revolting little chihuahua/But still she just didn’t want to.”

But even more desperate than the lyrics is the furious, spastic burst of electric-guitar squall that Cave unleashes as a solo. That’s one of the main differences between this album and previous Cave works. Nick is playing electric guitar instead of just piano. He’s no virtuoso, but his attack on the instrument adds to the crazy energy of this record.

Grinderman — which also is the name of Cave’s new band (actually a compact version of his old band The Bad Seeds) — shows Cave rocking harder than he has since he was a young man. I’m not the first voice in criticdom comparing Grinderman with Cave’s old ’80s band The Birthday Party. But the middle-aged Cave of Grinderman seems even more dangerous than the bellowing junkie of The Birthday Party.

The new album is full of memorable tunes. The opening number, “Get It On” is, in Cave’s words, “a lament for the messianic rock ’n’ roll hero.” It starts out with an incomprehensible spoken (actually shouted) tirade about baboons, white mice, and black dogs. Over a fuzz-tone backdrop and a crashing rhythm, Cave recites,

“He crawled out of the ooze/He defied evolution/He had green
flippers and sang the blues/He caused a revolution ... I call out from the storm/For those who gave their lives/So we could get it on.”

“Honey Bee (Let’s Fly to Mars)” features that strangled guitar playing beneath a Steppenwolf-like organ and apocalyptic drums. A couple of tunes remind me of John Cale. The grating but somehow beautiful “Electric Alice” (supposedly a tribute to jazz harpist Alice Coltrane) is slow, screechy, and surreal (there’s bouzouki and violin crunched up in the mix), while the title song is a slow burner that builds up to some nice guitar chaos.

(Historical note: The name of the band, album, and song comes from bluesman Memphis Slim, who had a song called “Grinder Man Blues.” But unlike the narrator of many of the songs on this album, Slim’s Grinder Man is a tireless gigolo who has “got so many customers, it takes me a week to get around.”)

Not every tune here is abrasive or thunderous. “Man in the Moon” is slow and pretty and wouldn’t have been out of place on some of Cave’s more subdued efforts like The Boatman’s Call. It does seem out of place on Grinderman, though. Thankfully, it’s the shortest song on the album.

For the past couple of Cave albums there have been hints that a rock ’n’ roll werewolf has been struggling to break out of Cave’s brooding theologian persona. Back in 2003, on his album Nocturama, there was a 14-minute celebration of raw lust called “Babe, I’m on Fire.” A year or so later Cave’s double-disc set, Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus, also featured several tough and gritty rockers such as “Hiding All Away” and “Get Ready For Love.”

Grinderman fulfills the promise of those works. It’s also a welcome affirmation to all us dirty old men who love to rock.

Also noted:
* Rock en Español Vol. 1 by Los Straitjackets. These masked Tennessee surfers have made me rethink my general rule of hating “guest star” albums. I loved their Sing Along with Los Straitjackets (2001), in which this instrumental band was joined by a bevy of guest singers (especially Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere and the Raiders, who did a muy bitchen cover of Roy Head’s “Treat Her Right”).

And now comes this collection of Spanish-language renditions of ’60s rock and soul hits (and even a stray Marty Robbins song) featuring vocals by Big Sandy, Los Lobos’ Cesar Rosas (who produced the record), and Little Willie G of the East L.A. rockers Thee Midnighters.

This is how I imagine a Tijuana rock club sounding in 1965. My favorite here probably is the stinging guitar cry of “El Microscopico Bikini,” sung by Rosas. The melody actually is “Dizzy Miss Lizzie,” written by Larry Williams and popularized by The Beatles. Other early Beatles numbers represented here are Williams’ “Slow Down” (retitled “Calor” and sung by Big Sandy), and the Arthur Alexander ballad “Anna” (now called “Ana” and sung by Little Willie).

While there’s nothing earthshakingly innovative here, it’s good basic rock that underscores the contributions of Hispanics to American music.

Songs from the Cave: Yes, it’s time again for a good, long Nick Cave set on Terrell’s Sound World. Hear Grinderman, The Bad Seeds, and The Birthday Party Sunday night on KSFR-FM 90.7. Santa Fe’s finest freeform weirdo radio show starts at 10 p.m., while the Cave set will start right after the 11th hour.

RICHARDSON: MORE THAN A BLIP

Bill Richardson finally is out of single digits in an important primary state, according to a new poll by the Zogby organization.

The latest Zogby poll of New Hampshire shows Richardson in fourth place. But he's jumped from 2 percent to 10 percent since early April.

The poll shows Hillary Clinton barely leading Barak Obama 28 percent to 26 percent. John Edwards is in third place with 15 percent.

Commenting on the Democratic race in New Hampshire, pollster John Zogby said, "Of greatest significance is the move of Bill Richardson into double-digits from merely a blip on the screen. He is now a player in all this.”

On the Republican side, Mitt Romney has jumped ahead of both John McCain and Rudy Giuliani.

The poll was conducted May 15 and 16, 2007, included 500 likely New Hampshire Republican primary voters and 503 likely New Hampshire Democratic primary voters. The margin of error for each survey is +/- 4.5 percentage points.

jj sez

Reporter Jackie Jadrnak, currently on leave from The Albuquerque Journal has been spending some of her off time starting a new blog called jj sez.

She talks about about health, the environment, politics, sexism and lot of issues. Check it out.

ROUNDHOUSE ROUNDUP: AND THEN THERE WERE TWO

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
May 17, 2007

Last week, I named the Richardson cabinet officials who have contributed to his presidential campaign and the four who did not.

To refresh your memory, those not on Richardson’s first-quarter campaign finance report were Higher Education Secretary Beverlee McClure, Health Secretary Michelle Lujan-Grisham, Tax and Revenue Secretary Jan Goodwin and National Guard Adjutant Gen. Kenny Montoya.

One week later, Richardson’s office has announced two of those four will be leaving the administration.

Coincidence? Probably.

But as Jimmy Olsen used to say, “Jeepers, Mr. Kent!”

McClure was the first to go. The governor’s office announced her departure Friday. She’ll be leaving in June to become president and chief executive officer of the state Association of Commerce and Industry.

Then on Monday, the governor’s office announced the health secretary is out.

Unlike McClure, Richardson isn’t going to appoint a search committee to find Lujan-Grisham’s replacement. She’s being replaced by Dr. Alfredo Vigil, chief executive officer of El Centro Family Health in Española.

The fact that the new health secretary was already chosen would seem to indicate that Lujan-Grisham’s departure has been in the works for some time.

She told reporters she’s planning to run for a political office, as yet to be named. Maybe that’s why she didn’t contribute to Richardson’s White House fund. She’s saving up for her own race.

The governor’s people of course deny there’s any requirement to donate to Richardson’s campaign. “They can contribute to whoever they want,” spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said last week. “We don’t know who’s contributed to the campaign.”

One possibility, at least in the cases of the two outgoing secretaries, is they might have known their time in the administration wasn’t long, so they didn’t bother donating to the presidential run.

So what about the two who haven’t contributed who remain? Last week Goodwin told me nobody had pressured her for a contribution.

On Wednesday, Montoya said the same. “Since I’ve worked for the governor, he’s never even asked me what political party I belong to,” the general said. “He’s done a good job of keeping the National Guard out of politics. We’re the guys who represent everybody.”

Close but no cigar: A potential Republican presidential candidate might have picked up on our governor’s funny campaign ads, which have received loads of national attention.

In case you’ve been living in a political fallout shelter for the past week or so, Richardson unleashed a couple of spots in which he’s a nervous job applicant sitting across a desk from a potential employer obviously unimpressed by Richardson’s résumé.

Fred Thompson who plays a down-home district attorney on Law and Order, made a funny — but pointed — video as a response to left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore.

In challenging the ex-senator from Tennessee to a debate over national health care policy, Moore brought up Thompson’s love of Cuban cigars. He refers to a description of Thompson’s office in a recent article in The Weekly Standard — “box upon box of cigars — Montecristos from Havana.”

“While I will leave it up to the conservatives to debate your hypocrisy and the Treasury Department to determine whether the ‘box upon box of cigars’ violates the trade embargo, I hereby challenge you to a health care debate,” Moore wrote on his Web site.

Thompson’s video reply has been on cable news shows as well as the Internet.

“You know, the next time you’re down in Cuba visiting your buddy Castro, you might ask him about another documentary filmmaker,” Thompson said, big cigar in mouth. “His name is Nicolás Guillén (Landrián). He did something Castro didn’t like, and they put him in a mental institution for several years, giving him devastating electroshock treatments. Mental institution, Michael. Might be something you ought to think about.”

Thompson makes a good point about freedom of expression under Castro. But he sidesteps the issue of breaking the embargo, not to mention that Cuba’s cigar revenues indirectly help fund those mental institutions and jails.

Could Cuban cigars replace John Edwards’ haircuts as the next weird little issue to pop up in the presidential race?

If so, our cigar-loving governor might already have his answer prepared. In 2004, he was smoking a Havana during an interview with a Salt Lake City Tribune reporter. “Since you’re smoking a Cohiba, what would you do with Cuba?” reporter Brent Israelsen asked.

“I would continue pressing Castro on human rights,” Richardson said. “I think his record is abominable. But I believe the best way to change Cuba is to consider some openings, perhaps some economic openings, rather than isolating it.” Richardson also said he’d lift the travel ban for people wanting to visit Cuba.

NIGHTMUSIC!

No, I'm not turning this blog into a YouTube satellite, but I just realized that Youtube is crawling with clips from the coolest music show to ever grace the nation's television airwaves, Nightmusic. Here's a link to lots of 'em.

You can find Pharoah Sanders, Nick Cave, The Pixies, Richard Thompson, Graham Parker, NRBQ ... and so many more. I've been complaining for years that this show isn't available on DVD. But at least we have YouTube.

Below is one of the most infamous Nightmusic performances of all time. Conway Twitty singing the blues with dancing by The Residents.

A PLEA ... FOR THE CHILDREN

I just realized that Dean Martin is smoking a cigarette in the YouTube video I posted just a moment ago ("My Rifle, Pony and Me.") That might earn a R-Rating for the movie Rio Bravo in the near future. (See news item HERE)

So please, PLEASE! Keep this away from the children!

MY RIFLE, PONY & ME

Thanks to Jim Terr for showing me the way to this YouTube (on a page with lots of old Ricky Nelson videos, most of them featuring James Burton.)

About a year ago, my brother gave me this song on a disc full of weird stuff. I've played it on The Santa Fe Opry, (and I will again.) I also went out and bought the DVD to Rio Bravo, the John Wayne movie from whence it came.

And speaking of YouTube, thanks to Margot Paisley for turning me on to Luis & The Wildfires. I'd never heard of them before.

CONGRESSMAN STANDS UP FOR INDEPENDENT MUSIC AND LOTS OF OTHER GOOD STUFF

I wish we had more politicians who believe in the things that Congressman Mike Doyle was saying last week at a Future of Music Coalition event.

From the FMC blog:
As you well know, a number of issues currently before Congress and the FCC could have a big impact on that process – like media consolidation, net neutrality, and Internet royalty rates.

One disturbing product of the Telecom Act of 1996 has been the rapid consolidation of the ownership of television and radio stations across the country.

This is disturbing on a number of levels.

There’s obvious concern that a radio stationed programmed out of Denver won’t provide much timely local news for residents of, say, Pittsburgh.

That can, at worst, have serious public safety implications, as many have pointed out.

But even on a more mundane level, this process squeezes out all but the most mainstream voices in communities large and small.

I ask you: Could WKRP’s commitment to local news and (Johnny) Fever’s musical vision have survived in today’s consolidated media market?

On a more commercial and artistic level, there’s real concern – which I share – about the homogenization of the content that these broadcasters provide.

It’s clear that the media consolidation we’ve experienced over the last 10 years has reduced the diversity and independence of TV and radio broadcasts dramatically.

A Congressman who thinks radio should be more like WKRP in Cincinnati! That's nothing short of bitchen!

Later in the speech Doyle talks about the possibility of the federal government establishing programs to "encourage the creation of new and different music" similar to the way the National Endowment for the Arts promotes classical music and jazz.

I'm not sure I completely agree with the idea of government-sanctioned rock 'n' roll. But I sure wish a few presidential candidates would pick up on Doyle's basic attitude about the music-industrial complex.

Maybe one has. Apparently Republican Sen. Sam Brownback wants to take that recent ruling that could cripple internet radio behind the barn and kill it with a dull ax.

Again from the FMC blog:

After having a near-death experience a few weeks ago, webcasters got another dose of good news. Sens. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., introduced a bill that would vacate a recent ruling by the Copyright Royalty Board. The ruling would have increased royalty rates for webcasters by 300 to 1200 percent (according to Savenetradio.org).