BAD ALBUM COVER ART: 2007 EDITION

For you bad-album-cover-art fans, Pitchfork has compiled a list of the worst of 2007. And yes, Swamp Dogg is there.

Nothing here quite matches Devastatin' Dave or Julie's 16th Birthday . (You can find the classics HERE)

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, December 15, 2007
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

Now Simulcasting 90.7 FM, and our new, stronger signal, 101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell@ksfr.org

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Long Legged Guitar Pickin' Man by Jesse Dayton & Brennen Leigh
Amos Moses by Jerry Reed
The Ballad of Thunder Road by Robert Mitchum
Make Things Happen by The Waco Brothers
I Was a Champion by James Luther Dickinson
Who Were You Thinking Of by The Sir Douglas Quintet
Why Do You Bob Your Hair, Girls? by Ann Magnuson
Western Union Wire by Kinky Friedman
Do You Call That a Buddy by Martin, Bogan & Armstrong

It Gets Like This Every Christmas by Cornell Hurd
False Hearted Lover Blues by Levon Helm
Rag Mama Rag by The Band
The Only Trouble With Me by Merle Haggard
You Win Again by The Flying Burrito Brothers
Living With the Animals by Mother Earth
Ashes of Love by Rose Maddox
Uncle Bud by Boozoo Chavis & The Magic Sounds

Secrets of Success/Born at Night by Ronny Elliott
Long Dark Night by John Fogerty
The Thunderer by Dion
The Disappearance of Ray Norton by Richmond Fontaine
Kill the Mockingbird by House of Freaks
El UFO Man by Jonathan Richman
Trotsky's Blues by Joe West

Bob (the Song) by The Cerrillos Islanders
Friday, Sunday's Coming by John Lilly
Gypsy's Curse by Calexico
I Can't Stop Loving You by Don Gibson
I Guess I've Come to Live Here in Your Eyes by Willie Nelson
You Make It Look Easy by The Flatlanders
Wings in His Eyes by Eleni Mandell
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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

SOME POLITCIAL STORIES

My analysis of Bill Richardson's debate performance in Iowa Thursday is HERE. I mainly look at his answer to the question about lab security and Wen Ho Lee during his years as energy secretary.

My profile of Ben Ray Lujan, who's announcing his run for Congress today is HERE.

And my profile of Harry Montoya, also running for the Third Congressional District seat, which was published Wednesday, is HERE.

And, going back in time a couple of months, my portrait of Don Wiviott can be found HERE. He was running for Senate at the time, but right after Tom Udall said he was running for Senate, Wiviott switched to the CD 3 race.

SOME YULETIDE TACKINESS

I didn't do a Terrell's Tune-Up this week, but I did review a couple of Christmas albums. So here's slightly different versions of those. At least one will be in Pasa Tempos in today's New Mexican . (Pasatiempo of course) The other one might not be in until next week, but I'll give you blog readers an early Christmas treat.

But before we get to those, I just want to say I'm real happy, in fact GLAD ALL OVER, that The Dave Clark Five finally made it to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. They've virtually been written out of most official versions of rock history, but I think they're the most seriously underrated of the British Invasion bands.

I never saw The Beatles but I saw the DC5 twice in Oklahoma City as a kid. I believe The Shangri-las were part of the package show for one of these concerts.

And back in 1964 or so I had this cheesy magazine titled something like "The Beatles vs. The Dave Clark 5." The premise was that The Beatles were threatened because "Glad All Over" had displaced "I Want to Hold Your Hand" as number one in England or something. There were these phony quotes under the photos of all the musicians. One of The Beatles , John I think, supposedly was saying "Five against four is no fair!"

Eat it, rock snobs, this is long overdue.

Here's those Christmas album reviews:

CONWAY TWITTY
A Twismas Story with Twitty Bird & Their Little Friends
(Conway Twitty United / INgrooves)

You find them in the bargain bins at supermarkets, drug stores, truckstops discount stores everywhere this time of year — Christmas albums by Nashville stars, available now at humiliatingly low prices. Some of the greatest names in country music are among them, each offering disturbingly similar over-produced, under-inspired twangy takes on the same 20 or so holiday chestnuts.

Granted, there have been some great country Christmas tunes: Merle Haggard’s “If We Make It Through December,” Dwight Yoakam’s “Santa Can’t Stay,” Buck Owens’ “Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy” and Roger Miller’s “Old Toy Trains” are timeless masterpieces. But most of the rest of the country Christmas universe consists of useless nasally versions of “Silver Bells” and drawling renditions of “Frosty the Snowman.”

However, this album by the late great Twitty so tacky, so cheesy, so overstuffed and over-the-top with Christmas corn, it’s a perverse classic. First released in 1983, it’s been re-issued this year to shock a new generation. Twitty Bird — who was Conway’s Tweetie-like cartoon mascot (How did he not get sued by Loony Tunes?) — is portrayed here by the singer’s granddaughter. The “Little Friends” are sped-up “Chipmunk” voices. They all chatter insanely and sing about Santa, Frost, Rudolph and new holiday characters like Happy the Christmas Clown and Ding-A-Ling the Christmas Bell. Some of these are weird enough to be included on a future volume of A John Waters Christmas.

Just remember: Friends don’t let friends take hallucinogenic drugs and listen to A Twistmas Story at the same time.

LARRY THE CABLE GUY
Christmas in Larryland
(Warner Brothers)

The War on Christmas rages — or so Fox News would have you believe — and Larry the Cable Guy is fighting back valiantly. In true compassionate holiday spirit, Larry’s new Christmas album takes square aim at liberals, Moslems, the American Civil Liberties Union, environmentalists, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and people who don’t think fart jokes are all that hilarious.

Sometimes I wonder if Larry — in real life a guy named Dan Whitney, a Nebraska native who doesn’t have a Southern accent and never worked for a cable company — is actually trying to make conservatives look bad by playing them as dimwits. But that’s too Machiavellian. There’s probably less than meets the eye here.

On this album there’s not one but two parodies of “The Night Before Christmas.” There’s “Liberal Commie Environmental Poem” is full of hybrid sleighs, non-toxic toys, a Santa with a nose like “pesticide-free cherries” and other enlightened jabs at “political correctness.” Then in “Patriotic Poem” we don’t get Santa but the ghost of Ronald Reagan, who comes back because Christmas has been banned. But all Ronnie does really is complain about Michael Moore, John Kerry and Rosie O’Donnell. I’m just disappointed that the Gipper never says “get ‘er done.”

There’s a lengthy skit in which Larry and some friends are in a living nativity scene in front of their church just to rile the ACLU. (Apparently someone forgot to tell the Cable Guy that the ACLU doesn’t have any beef with religious displays at churches.)

The album kicks off with Larry fantasizing about hosting an “old-time radio Larry the Cable Guy Christmas spectacular” with guests including “Santa, Rudolph, the prophet Mohammed, the June Taylor Dancers ...” I’m fantasizing about Larry taking this show on a world tour. They’d love him in Sudan.

ROUNDHOUSE ROUNDUP: DODGING VOTE SMART

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
December 13, 2007

Gov. Bill Richardson got a bum rap on The Huffington Post this week.

“Mum’s the Word: Bill Richardson Opts Out Of Taking The Political Courage Test,” the headline said. It was accompanied by an unflattering photo of a consternated Richardson holding a hand to his head. (I stole the photo to the right from Huffington, which apparently lifted it fro the Associated Press. God bless the Interwebs!)

Wow. Seems kind of bad for a governor who rarely issues a news release without using the word “bold” to describe himself, one of his programs or positions to be afraid to take a “courage test” — actually a questionnaire from a nonpartisan organization called Project Vote Smart.

But it’s not until the bottom of the post that we learn that “out of 17 presidential candidates in the Democratic and Republican parties receiving serious media attention, only John Edwards, Chris Dodd and Mike Gravel took the test.”

So it could be said that Richardson boldly placed himself in the mainstream by ignoring the Political Courage Test.

Richardson apparently was singled out because the post originally was published as an article in The Weekly Alibi in Albuquerque.

Courage! Actually, Project Vote Smart runs a handy little Web site on which you can look up voting records, rankings from interest groups and other information about officeholders and candidates on the federal and state levels.

And it even asks legislators and other state officials to take the Political Courage Test.

Here in New Mexico, it looks as if our legislators might be presidential quality — that is, by and large, they also declined to take the test. In 2006, only 11 New Mexico House members participated.

Among Santa Fe-area lawmakers, only Democrats Sen. John Grubesic (who isn’t seeking re-election) and Rep. Peter Wirth (who’s leaving the House to run for state Senate) took the test. State senators were last questioned in 2004, when they were last up for election.

But in this respect, our state legislators actually are better than our congressional delegation. No U.S. House member from New Mexico returned a Project Vote Smart questionnaire last year, and neither senator participated before his last election.

Political connections: Santa Fe County Commissioner Harry Montoya, who is running for the Democratic nomination for the House District 3 seat, is founder and chief executive officer of a nonprofit drug-education organization called Hands Across Cultures Corp.

According to federal tax documents filed this year, the corporation’s board of directors includes one Ben R. Luján.

Montoya confirmed Wednesday that this indeed is Public Regulation Commissioner Ben Ray Luján — who plans to formally announce Friday that he’s running in the CD 3 Democratic primary as well.

However, Montoya said, Luján has resigned from the board. “He told me he was resigning about two years ago, but I didn’t get a letter until last month,” Montoya said.

Raising funds: Democrat U.S. Rep. Tom Udall — who is leaving the seat Luján and Montoya are vying for to run for Republican Pete Domenici’s Senate seat — doesn’t have Albuquerque Mayor Marty Chávez to worry about anymore, but he’s still preparing for what’s bound to be an expensive general election race.

Udall is having a fundraiser Friday night at the east-side Santa Fe home of lawyer Stephen Durkovich. It’s an invitation-only affair, a campaign aide said Wednesday, with a $2,300 “suggested donation.”

A lump of coal for state employees: Late last month, Arcy Baca, president of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 477, wrote a nice letter to state legislators asking for a study of the impact of the high cost of living in Santa Fe on state employees.

“A number of my members had moved to the surrounding areas seeking the opportunity to purchase a home and try to make ends meet,” Baca wrote. “… State employees working in Santa Fe are struggling to pay for just the basic necessities. A significant number of employees, me included, have had to resort to taking a second job.”

He’s not kidding about that. In fact, for the past year, Baca has been working weekends for this newspaper’s circulation department.

“Many of the state employees who work in Santa Fe but cannot afford to live in Santa Fe are burdened with burdensome costs of commuting,” Baca’s letter continued. “I am concerned about how the cost of living is going to impact keeping state jobs in Santa Fe and keeping our locals employed.

As I said, it was a nice letter. The copy I saw was on a holiday letterhead with red Christmas ornaments. Or maybe they’re holly berries. Whatever, it was nice.

However, it apparently wasn’t nice enough to sway the Legislature.

“The budget came out today, and there is not even an extra dime to conduct a study to help state employees with the high cost of living in Santa Fe,” Baca said Wednesday. He said he hadn’t heard a word — not even a single “Bah humbug” — from any lawmaker.

THE CONTINUING CONGRESSIONAL SAGA

Here is the latest on the 3rd Congressional race.

Basically Sheriff Greg Solano is out, Benny Shendo is working his last week as secretary of Indian Affairs and next week will formally announce his entry into the Demo primary, harry Montoya is formally announcing this week and Republican Marco Gonzales -- former staffer of Sen. Pete Domenici and lifelong cousin of former County Commissioner Javier Gonzales, a Democrat who was considering running for CD 3 -- will run in the Republican CD 3 primary.

Solano has some interesting thoughts on the race -- mainly that it all could be decided by a few hundred people at the pre-primary convention in March before voters can even cast a ballot.

Referring to the convention, Solano wrote last week in his campaign blog:

"The majority are your county and local elected officials, those that are not elected officials are those who work to get those elected officials in office. All of these people go to the legislature at some point and time to get things passed or obtain capital funds for their local jurisdictions.

"In no way am I alleging arm twisting or back room deals, however, how many are likely to donate money, outwardly support a candidate, or give their very important delegate vote to anyone who opposes the son of the speaker of the house (?)"

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, December 9, 2007
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell
email me during the show! terrell@ksfr.org

Now Simulcasting 90.7 FM, and our new, stronger signal, 101.1 FM

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
I Want the Answers by The Fleshtones
Firecracker by Half Japanese
Parade by Pretty Girls Make Graves
High Tension Line by The Fall
Your Love Belongs Under a Rock by The Dirtbombs
Firefly Child by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Jackrabbit by Goshen
Roly Poly by Joey Dee & The Starliters
Real Live Doll by The Trashmen

The Blimp (Mousetrapreplica) by Captain Beefheart
Backstreet Girl by Social Distortion
Puppet on a String by The Hives
Stop it Baby by Roy Loney & The A-Bones
I Hear Voices by Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Too Far Gone by Dead Moon
Young Miles in the Basement by Pere Ubu
Harlem Shuffle by 5.6.7.8's
Jinglecide by The Rockin' Guys

Pull My Daisy by David Amram
Fat Angel by Jefferson Airplane
The Trip by Donovan
Honest James by Thurston Moore
Vamos by The Pixies
You Don't Know Me At All by Bettye LaVette

Movement in the Light by Fishbone
Sloppy Seconds by George Clinton
The Collection Song by Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
Western Plains by Van Morrison
Hard to Handle by Otis Redding
The Hope and the Anchor by The Mekons
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis