THE NAME GAME

This press release just came in from the Governor's Office:

Prison Reform Task Force Recommends New Name, New Focus for Corrections System

SANTA FE – A prison reform task force created by Governor Bill Richardson has recommended changing the name of the Department of Corrections to the Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections.

The name change, which the Governor will consider as part of a comprehensive approach to reform, is meant to reflect an emphasis on increasing public safety, controlling the prison population and decreasing recidivism rates.

Yep, changing the name of the Corrections Department is bound to solve a big chunk of the problems in our prisons.

They probably got the idea from the federal government, which put an end to world strife when they changed the name of the Department of War to the Department of Defense.

SENATE RACE ETC.

My profiles on the U.S. Senate GOP primary were published today. Here's the links:

* Intro story (with Kate Nash)
* Steve Pearce profile
* Heather Wilson profile

Also, here's some links to other stories I wrote or co-wrote last week:

* CD 3 campaign finance reports (For Benny Shendo and Harry Montoya, published Saturday)
* CD 3 and Senate campaign finance reports (For everyone else, published Friday)
* Follow-up to Shendo "lifestyle" remarks (with Kate Nash).

R.I.P. UTAH PHILLIPS

My pall Kell Robertson called tonight to let me know that Utah Phillips died.

Phillips -- singer, songwriter, storyteller, Korean War vet, hobo and champion of the working class -- died Friday of a heart attack in Nevada City, Calif, where he lived. Here's a story from the Salt Lake Tribune. And here's a 2003 interview in The Progressive.I met him at the Folk Alliance Conference in Albuquerque back in 1999. That's where I snapped this picture of him with Luther the Jet, King of the Hobos.

I'll do a proper tribute to him on The Santa Fe Opry next week (10 pm Friday at KSFR, 101.1 FM)

LITTLE STEVEN vs. BIG STEPHEN?

I was happy to learn that a Santa Fe radio station has started to carry the syndicated Little Steven's Underground Garage. Hosted by Steve Van Zandt, it's a fine show that I've often listened to online.

I was happy, until that is, I learned when the show plays in Santa Fe -- Sundays, 10 p.m. until midnight. I'm always busy every week during that time, ON THE AIR WITH MY OWN DAMN SHOW ON KSFR, TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD, which, as faithful listeners know, is grounded in garage, psychedelic and punk rock.

I'd like to flatter myself and think that the programming geniuses at KVSF think my show is so important that they had to bring the big guns in to compete, creating a McDonald's vs. Bert's Burger situation in the battlefield of garage-rock radio. But something tells me they probably aren't even aware of my show -- even though I've been doing this at the same time slot for more than 12 years.

So my biased advice, if you want to listen to Little Steven, click the above link. (And for even cooler, edgier online garage sounds, check out the GaragePunk.com podcast jukebox.) But on Sunday nights listen to my show, the sonic equivalent of a Burt's chile cheese burger and a taco on the side.

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, May 23, 2008
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
Ring of Fire by Dick Dale
Drinkin' & Cheatin' & Death by The Waco Brothers
Summer Wages by David Bromberg
Bowlegged Charlie by Otis Taylor
Sixteen Tons by Leon Russell
Coal Tattoo by Kathy Mattea
You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive by Patty Loveless

Drinkin' Wine by Gene Simmons
Too Much Monkey Business by Sleepy LaBeef
My Pretty Quadroon by Jerry Lee Lewis
Boo Boo the Cat by Hasil Adlins
Wildcat Tamer by Dale Hawkins
Junkyard in the Sun by Butch Hancock
Buckskin Stallion Blues by Jimmie Dale Gilmore & Mudhoney
Irish Rockabilly Blues by Ronny Elliott

Long Black Veil by Simon Stokes
What Am I Worth by Dave Alvin with Syd Straw
The Drivers Are Out Tonight by Porter Wagoner
You Win Again by Mother Earth
The Wreck of the Edmund Fitgerald by Laura Cantrell
Dancing with the Ghost of William Bonney by Bone Orchard
Don't Get Above Your Raisin' by Ricky Skaggs with Elvis Costello

Hobo Rockstar by The Deadly Gentlemen
My True Love by Mama Rosin
Never Sang the Blues by The Dead Brothers
She's Not For You by Willie Nelson
Margie's at the Lincoln Park Inn by Bobby Bare
Willie and Laura Mae Jones by Tony Joe White
Moves Me Deeply by Peter Case
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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

UPDATE: Funny Typo Dept.
For several days I credited "Junkyard in the Sun" to "Botch Hancock." My friend Peter caught it. Sorry, Butch for botching your name!

THE ONLY POLL THAT MATTERS

Why vote in real life when you have Internet polls?

Kate Nash's Green Chile Chatter blog is doing a poll on the CD 3 Democratic race.

Go there and VOTE!

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: SWEET BLACK ANGELS

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
May 23, 2008

Thick, inspired psychedelic sludge that sometimes rumbles, sometimes screams.

That might be the best way to describe Directions to See a Ghost, the new album from Austin’s psychedelic hum masters, The Black Angels. In fact the band’s slogan is “Turn on, tune in, drone out.”

This record, released earlier this month, comes just a while after I became aware of The Black Angels. I saw them at Roky Erickson’s Ice Cream Social during the South by Southwest music festival in Austin in March. As I noted then, being that the Angels are on the same bill as “Zombie-walker” Roky, it’s tempting to call them the grandchildren of first-generation psychedelic rockers the 13th Floor Elevators.

But there are also weird echoes of The Jesus & Mary Chain, The Electric Prunes, and Spacemen 3 and odd psychic references to Bo Diddley. And don’t forget The Velvet Underground. After all, The BAs named themselves after “The Black Angel’s Death Song,” the Velvet’s faux folk tune that is most memorable for John Cale’s screechy viola.

It’s not a stretch to put The Black Angels in the same dark dimension as other contemporary psyche-space bands like The Warlocks or, to a lesser extent, the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Lenny Kaye (of Patti Smith Group) called The Black Angels’ sound “New Age apocalypso.”

The BAs, which formed in Austin earlier this decade, are true psychedelic rangers. Check their Web-site bio, written by Tommy Hall (The 13th Floor Elevators’ electric-jug man).

It starts off talking about Aristotle, goes into mankind organizing “his knowledge vertically in separate and unrelated groups,” and concludes with: “It is possible for Man to alter his mental state and thus alter his point of view (that is, his own basic relation with the outside world which determines how he stores his information). He then can restructure his thinking and change his language so that his thoughts bear more relation to his life and his problems, therefore approaching them more sanely. It is this quest for pure sanity that forms the basis of The Black Angels.”

Yeah, and they also play some bitchen fuzz-tone guitars.

Virtually every track on Directions to See a Ghost is a journey to the center of what’s left of your mind, culminating in the 16-minute “Snake in the Grass,” which features oooga boooga drums, layers of feedback, some snaky maracas, and recurring Mideastern or East Indian motifs. At the end, I can almost hear bagpipes, but it’s probably just distorted guitar.

There are also some much-shorter treats (although the shortest song is four and a half minutes). “Vikings” is an ominous tune that starts out with slow death-march drums and a weird organ. “Doves” is another slow burner with the drums out front.

“Deer-Ree-Shee” is one of the most fast-paced tunes here and features some crazy sitar by singer Alex Maas. “You in Color” starts out with a burst of feedback and a kind of Peter Gunn guitar riff and quickly builds up to a full-fledged rocker.

If I’ve got one complaint about this album it’s that there just aren’t enough of these hard stompers. Sometimes it’s cool to just space out and ponder whatever it is that Maas is singing (I’m never quite sure, but I bet a lot of it has to do with restructuring your thinking and questing for pure sanity). But after awhile you want to move.

But when you need to space out and let music guide you deep into the Forbidden Cavern, there’s not much better these days than The Black Angels.

Also recommended:
* Head by Simon Stokes. Stokes not only looks like the toughest man in show business, his music makes that case even more. And talk about psychedelic, this guy started out in the ’60s with bands like Heathen Angels, and in the ’90s he actually recorded a duet album with Timothy Leary. (Songs like “100 Naked Kangaroos in Blue Canoes” aren’t as silly as you might think.)

One of my very favorite albums of this wretched century so far is Honky, an undeservedly obscure, country-flavored, biker-rock masterpiece by Stokes with tasty guest appearances by Wayne Kramer, The BellRays’ Lisa Kekaula, and the incomparable Texas Terri (who came up with one of the greatest album titles of all time: Your Lips ... My Ass.)

By comparison, Head is a more homemade, more folksy kind of affair. The song “Tongue-Tied,” for instance, features an acoustic guitar and a Dylanish harmonica.

But there are some gritty rockers here too. “No One’s Goin’ Nowhere” is a threat put to music. Put this one on at night and you might be scared to leave the room.

The minor-key “Get Happy” starts out acoustically with guitar and later features some harmonica. But it’s also got a growling electric guitar and some sinister organ and chimes of doom. It doesn’t sound very happy.

Undoubtedly the weirdest song here — even more so than the 13-minute untitled sound-collage freakout hidden track — is the fuzzed out “Bob,” which could almost be about the creepy guy on Twin Peaks. (“I live in Bob’s head too/Friends call me Stew.”)

Stokes has a couple of cover tunes on Head. He sings a decent version of “Long Black Veil,” but it won’t make anyone want to throw away their copy of The Band’s Music From Big Pink. More impressive is his gruff take on Woody Guthrie’s “Hard Travelin’.” You’ll believe Stokes has gone every mile.

On the Radio: I’ll play some Simon Stokes on this week’s Santa Fe Opry, 10 p.m. to midnight on Friday on KSFR-FM 101.1. And then I’ll play some Stokes and Black Angels on Terrell’s Sound World, same time, same station on Sunday.

ROUNDHOUSE ROUND-UP: BIG LOANS TO CAMPAIGNS

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
May 22, 2008


Some have observed that the 3rd Congressional District primary is getting “personal.” One way it’s getting personal: The candidates are sinking personal funds into the race.

Developer Don Wiviott, according to a report filed Tuesday, just sunk another quarter-million dollars into his campaign. This brings Wiviott’s total of self-contributions to $1.34 million for his House campaign plus another quarter-million and change of his own money he spent on his aborted U.S. Senate campaign last year.

Meanwhile, Ben Ray Luján this week reported taking out a bank loan of $150,000 for his campaign. That’s on top of a $50,000 loan he took out earlier in the race.

Sneak preview: The next round of campaign finance reports for congressional and Senate candidates isn’t due until today. But the June 3 primary is so close that federal law requires reports of contributions of $1,000 or more within 48 hours of the contribution, so a few of those are popping up.

Luján reports getting $2,300 from Ohkay Owingeh; $2,300 from Margaret Moñoz of Gallup; and $1,000 from Yvette Dobie of Laguna Beach, Calif.

Wiviott reports $2,050 from Edmund Schenecker of San Antonio, Texas; $1,500 from Michael Wilson of Albuquerque; and $1,000 each from Jonathan Potts Wendell of Greenwich, Conn., and David Gold of Albuquerque.

Also, CD 3 contender Jon Adams filed his report a day early. He said he’s raised a total of $51,500 for his campaign so far, which includes $13,000 in loans.

The two Republican Senate candidates already reported their totals.

U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce says he has raised $357,000 since the beginning of April. He spent $964,784 and has $247,207 in the bank.

His rival, U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson, reports raising $291,106 for the same period. While that’s $66,000 less than Pearce, Wilson reports having $712,476 in the bank.

Brace yourself, Bridget. That’s going to pay for a lot of television ads in the last week and a half of the primary campaign.

Rescinding a non-endorsement? Earlier this month on an interview on KNME’s In Focus, U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici said he wasn’t going to make an endorsement in the Republican Senate primary.

But the retiring senator did leave the door slightly ajar: “Now, if something should happen untoward, where I think something was taken advantage of, I may change my mind, but that’s pretty remote at this time.”

Earlier this week, however, Domenici called upon candidate Pearce to demand The Club For Growth withdraw its new ad blasting Wilson for voting in the House for the State Child Insurance Program, or S-CHIP. Domenici voted in favor of the bill in the Senate. Pearce voted against it in the House. President Bush vetoed it.

The offending ad actually stopped running before Domenici called for it to be pulled. But that’s beside the point.

Could Domenici be thinking this ad is “untoward”?

Asked Wednesday whether Domenici might be reconsidering his non-endorsement decision, spokesman Chris Gallegos said, “We have no comment.”

Is there still some Richardson campaign we don’t know about? It seems our governor sure has been out of state a lot lately. On Tuesday, CNN reported, “Bill Richardson will campaign this week for Barack Obama in Puerto Rico, 10 days before the Commonwealth holds its Democratic primary, a Richardson aide tells CNN.” Apparently Richardson is visiting the island today.

Puerto Rico can’t vote in the general election. But in the Byzantine glass bead game of the Democratic nominating process, the island has 55 pledged delegates at stake in the primary.

Earlier this week, the governor was on the East Coast. He gave a commencement speech Sunday at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in Philadelphia, shortly after receiving a Titan of Technology award and delivering a keynote address for the Eastern Technology Council at Drexel University. That same day, he spoke to the World Council of Philadelphia and the William Hughes Center for Public Policy in Atlantic City.

SHENDO STATEMENT

CD 3 candidate Benny Shendo sent a statement about our story in the New Mexican. I'll post the whole thing:

There has been a lot of mischaracterization of the fact and intention of my question to Ben Ray Lujan on Monday night at the Farmington County Democratic Candidate Forum, the first and only forum or debate opportunity for candidates to ask questions of one another. In this day of "sound bite" politics, I appreciate your giving me this opportunity to set the record straight instead of letting this be spun by the Lujan and Wiviott campaigns to an inaccurate portrayal of my views and serve as a distraction from the real issue and the real point of my question, which is:

Does Ben Ray Lujan have the courage to stand up on the difficult issues that face us as a society?

First, I deeply respect the right of every individual to choose their own lifestyle. I was raised in my native culture, which has for generations been tolerant and inclusive of all people regardless of their personal lifestyle choices. And I hold the deepest commitment to working toward the day when every single person in our whole society can be accepted publicly and privately for who they are without fear or shame.

My question the other night was not about whether Ben Ray Lujan is gay or not. And if all the people who have known Ben Ray over the years at the state house, in the community and in his own extended family, and have for years known and accepted him as gay are wrong, that's perfectly fine. His sexuality is not the issue here.

My question was about his maturity and integrity in handling the issue and whether or not he is ready to be our representative in Congress. Being a leader means taking tough stands, and that takes courage—courage that starts in a person's heart, and that starts at home.

My question was about whether Ben Ray had the courage to stand up to his parents, who have been a very active presence in his public life and in his campaign. And many voters, especially including members of the GLBT community and members of Lujan's own family, have expressed concern to me that there may be a level of public deception going on in the way that Ben Ray and his parents have handled this matter by so actively promoting publicly that he has a girlfriend.

Let's be clear, if a private citizen chooses to keep their sexual orientation secret, that's their right. But Ben Ray Lujan, by his own choice, is not a private citizen, but a candidate for public office, and in this context, he is asking us to trust his decision-making, his judgment, his leadership capability, his maturity, and, frankly, his honesty.

Being a political leader isn't just about having a big office and fancy title. It's not even just about what you say your stance is or will be on the issues. A person who actively puts themselves forward as a public figure, an elected leader, by definition, is putting themselves forward to be a role model.

As such, they need to accept a higher level of responsibility for their actions. If they actively put forward a deception to hide their homosexuality, then they send a terrible and damaging message that there is something wrong with being gay. In a very real sense, they become a "gay basher" by their actions, which clearly say there is something shameful about being gay. And that does incalculable damage, especially to young GLBT people who are struggling with this issue.

I have spent the bulk of my professional career working with young people, helping them get into and succeed in college, I know first hand the damage that this kind of message sends, when leaders by their actions say that being gay is shameful and thus, by extension, that young people struggling with their own sexual identity should also be ashamed of who they are.

And that damage is especially grave when it is in the form of a person's own parents not accepting who they are, and pressuring them into living a lie. I have seen first-hand and experts agree, when parents do not accept their children for who they are, this creates a deep wound that forms an underlying cause of many of our worst social problems – alcohol and drug abuse, depression, domestic violence, hatred and intolerance.

Therefore, when a public figure and role model chooses to deceive on the issue of his lifestyle and sexual identity this is not just private or personal matter, but an issue of direct concern all of us, including the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender community, as well as to the general well-being of our whole society. Some of these may be difficult issues, certainly, but all the more reason we must talk about them, and not sweep them under the carpet, with an understandable, but misguided cry for personal privacy.

That being gay is shameful is not the right message for Ben Ray to be sending to the very people he claims he is mature enough and courageous enough to stand up for. Our representatives in Congress need to be an embodiment of the acceptance we seek in our society, acceptance both of others and of themselves. This means that if our public leaders allow themselves to be the victim of intolerance –by others or even by themselves to themselves—then they are not in a position to defend the rights of others. They become party to the intolerance, and our leaders, especially now, need to be stronger willed and more principled than that.

That is what my question was about. And that's what I will continue to fight for: that day when every child, including Ben Ray Lujan, can grow up proud of who they are, where they come from and what their place is in this world.

Benny J. Shendo, Jr

.

CD 3: TURNING DOWNRIGHT NASTY

Yes, the Third Congressional race suddenly has taken a severe turn for the ugly.

No, it's not just the attack ads between Ben Ray Lujan and Don Wiviott. That stuff, despite cries of "Swift boat attacks," is to be expected.

Let's talk about the unexpected.

Things turned bizarre Monday night at a candidate forum in Farmington. And it came from -- of all people -- candidate Benny Shendo, who previously seemed like a soft-spoken, well-informed voice of reason.

But in Farmington, Shendo let loose with a strange innuendo about Ben Ray Lujan's "lifestyle."

"You say that you stand up for the people of New Mexico," Shendo said, "and I want to know how you can stand up for the people of New Mexico if you can't stand up to your mom and dad about your lifestyle."

And in an interview with Kate Nash of the New Mexican today, Shendo went on to say, that while he has no evidence about Lujan's sexual orientation:

"If he is gay, and he's deceiving people, that's wrong. The voters have a right to be concerned about the deception — not whether one is gay or not. The issue is deception. That's relevant."

It is?

The Lujan campaign calls the attack "despicable." And Linda Siegle, a lobbyist for Equality New Mexico, said, "Whether he's gay or not shouldn't be an issue. Whether he has a girlfriend or not shouldn't be an issue. The issue should be the issues. Why would another Democrat be bringing this up?"

No, it doesn't get much stranger than this. Read the whole story by Kate and me HERE.