THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, November 13, 2009
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell@ksfr.org

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Jesus is God's Atomic Bomb by The Swan Silvertones
Boogie Woogie Country Girl by Sleepy La Beef
Shake Shake by The Bluetones
I'll Be There by John Fogerty
Wrecking Ball by Quarter Mile Combo
This Little Girl's Gone Rockin' by Rosie Flores & The Pine Valley Cosmonauts
Big Ol' White Boys by Terry Allen
I'm Here To Collect by Nancy Apple
People Are Sleeping Dreaming of Cheese by Cornell Hur Band featuring Blackie White

June Bugs by The Handsome Family
Liquor Store by The Meat Purveyors
Sinner by Young Edward
Out Behind the Barn by Little Jimmie Dickens
The Deal by Loudon Wainwright III
Cold Hard Facts of Life by Porter Wagoner
Daddy's Moonshine by Dolly Parton
Ghost Riders in the Sky by Lorne Green

Stupid Cupid by Patsy Cline
I Chickened Out by The Breakers
Teen Queen by Ferris Coffey
Peggy by Eric Hisaw
Lonesome, Ornery & Mean by Shannon McNally
Change Game by Dale Hawkins
The Edge of Night by Gary Gorrence
Nighttime Ramblin' Man by Hank Williams III

We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You by Kinky Friedman & His Texas Jewboys
Tramp on Your Street by Billy Joe Shaver
Underneath the Stars by Peter Case with Carlos Guitarlos
Floating Bridge by Sleepy John Estes
Is This My Happy Home by Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks
Move Along Train by Levon Helm
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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

SCOTT H. BIRAM LIVE IN ST. LOUIS

Here's a little weekend entertainment I'm stealing from Mike at Thumbin' Sleazoid Cinema Blog, who got it from Lo-Fi Saint Louis -- which has several live Biram videos plus performances from the likes of King Khan & BBQ, Bob Logg III, Davila 666 and even Blowfly!

Watch this and read my review of Biram's latest album Something's Wrong/Lost Forever from a few months ago.

Enjoy!

P.S. Don't forget, Sleazoid Cinema's Mike Ashcraft and I appear on the latest RadiOblivion podcast.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: GOGOL a GO-GO

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
November 13, 2009

Here's the perfect introduction to Gogol Bordello for those who have not been initiated to the wild joys of this international troupe — our impoverished state is one of the few places in the world in which Gogol has never played, and that's a whole lot of people. (In recent weeks the band has played Colorado, Arizona, and Texas. I swear to God, sometimes it seems like New Mexico is just a giant hole in the rock 'n' roll map.)

Live From Axis Mundi is a CD/DVD set that pretty much sums up this nine-member New York-based band. The 11-song CD consists mainly of live performances of Gogol classics, plus a couple of outtakes from previous studio albums, a few demos, and a dubby instrumental version of "Immigrant Punk." The DVD is a concert video culled from two New York shows on consecutive nights in July 2007, around the time of the release of the band's last studio album, Super Taranta!.

A little history: this band is fronted by singer/guitarist/songwriter Eugene Hütz, a Ukrainian whose family fled that land after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. Gogol fans just assume that Hütz, like Dr. Bruce Banner, was mutated and transformed by radiation. Whatever the case, The Incredible Hütz landed in New York City in the early '90s, where he fell in with like-minded musicians, many of them immigrants like himself. In an early incarnation of Gogol, the band reportedly played straight guitar/accordion-driven Gypsy music for Russian weddings. But Hütz is a rocker at heart and before the end of the decade, he crafted a sound he calls "Gypsy punk."

I find that phrase, like I do so many neat tags, a little too cute and glib. "Gypsy punk" doesn't come close to doing justice to the sound of the band, which includes musicians from Russia, Israel, Ethiopia, and Scotland. True, there are elements of Gypsy music in the mix. Sometimes there are even acoustic guitar parts suggesting flamenco. As for the "punk" elements, you won't hear much Ramones or Sex Pistols in the Gogol sound. But there are certain similarities with some of the latter-day Clash experiments. If Joe Strummer were still alive, I bet he would have produced at least one Gogol Bordello by now.

The Axis Mundi CD is not quite a greatest-hits affair or even a good survey of the four previous Gogol albums. It's weighted toward Super Taranta! (four songs from that album, plus an outtake) and, to a lesser extent, its predecessor, Gypsy Punk: Underdog World Strike.

But it does contain some of Gogol's finest tunes. Perhaps my personal favorite Hütz song of all time is "American Wedding" ("Have you ever been to American wedding? Where's the vodka; where's the marinated herring?"). The BBC version here is all fired up, even when Hütz fakes snoring in a quiet instrumental bridge. By the end of it, you're craving marinated herring.

"Stivali E Colbacco," an outtake from the Super Taranta! sessions, has an instrumental section featuring a guest banjoist playing off Moscow-born Sergey Rjabtzev's fiddle. For a minute or so, it's like a Slavic hoedown. A new treat is "You Gave Up," a multisegmented odyssey that takes a few minutes to heat up. In this tune you can hear the influence of one of Hütz's musical heroes, Nick Cave. I'm not sure why Hütz shouts "Cumbia!" at the end of the tune. (The electric guitar solo in "Mishto" sounds a lot closer to cumbia than it does in "You Gave Up.")

Gogol Bordello is one of those bands whose true disciples insist that you have to see the group live before you can really claim you're a fan. I tend to dismiss talk like that, but the DVD part of this package shows that the band's live performance is a wondrous thing.

Of course, watching the DVD in the comfort of your living room, even with the volume cranked loud enough to frighten your neighbors, isn't the same as being in the same room with the band and thousands of sweating, bouncing devotees. But seeing the stage show — Hütz's intense singing and wild antics (at a couple of points he pops up, as if by magic, in the balcony, surrounded by fans); Rjabtzev playing his fiddle like some subversive shaman and looking like a crazy Russian version of Mick Fleetwood; dancers Elizabeth Sun and Pam Racine playing cymbals and a big bass drum as if they've just escaped from some bizarre marching band — you realize that, besides being crafty musicians, the band's members are ace entertainers.

The song selection on the DVD includes most of the essential Gogol repertoire: "Start Wearing Purple," "Dogs Were Barking," and "Not a Crime" — my favorite besides "American Wedding" — complete with obnoxious sirens. The DVD also contains four promotional videos (Did MTV ever play these?), an enjoyable little bio doc called Creative People Must Be Stopped, and stray Gogol performance footage.

My only complaint about the whole package is that I wish there were audio versions of the concert songs so we could stick them in our computers and iPods. That way Gogol fans would never have to leave the show.

HEY MISTER, THAT'S ME ON RADIOBLIVION!

It's the third anniversary of Michael Kaiser's groundbreaking, earth-shaking RadiOblivion podcast over at GaragePunk.com. I was honored to be part of a panel of rock 'n' roll cronies on the show, which you can find HERE.

Others on that esteemed gaggle were The Hydes, a band from Brooklyn, filmmaker Mike Ashcraft of Thumbin' Sleazoid Cinema and Los Angeles musician/promoter Jorge Ojeda of The Jixes and Real Boss Hoss Productions Productions.

Go get yourself to RadiOblivion. Download it 0r listen on your computer. But whatever you do, don't really blow your radio up, baby!, like Kaiser says or you won't be able to hear me on KSFR Friday and Sunday nights.

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, November 8, 2009
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell@ksfr.org

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
C.C.C.P. by The Hydes
Odessa by The Red Elvises
American Wedding by Gogol Bordello
Hey Clown by Firewater
Nitro by Dick Dale
Some Other Guy by Terry Dee & The Roadrunners
Bad Blood by The Sons of Hercules
Hang on Sloopy by Lolita #18
Ain't That Lovin' You by Link Wray

Gee I Really Love You by Heavy Trash
She Came Before Me by The Almighty Defenders
Fake Skinheads in Love by King Automatic
Six Long Weeks by The A-Bones
El Tren de la Costa by The Del Moroccos
Buzz Buzz Buzz by The Blasters
Amazons and Coyotes by Simon Stokes
Hey Little Girl by The Dead Boys
My Mumblin' Baby by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages

Blues Blues Blues by The Cramps
(The Welfare) Turns Its Back on You by Freddy King
Fox Hunt by Little Freddie King
Can't Read Can't Write Blues by Big Joe Turner
Wish I Was a Catfish by T. Model Ford
Mama Long Legs by Charlie Muselwhite
Bang Your Thing at The Ball by Bob Log III

Lucky Luck Luck by Carla Bozulich & Evangelista
Redhead Walking by Beat Happening
Good Cheer by Mission of Burma
True Believers by Half Japanese
Undertaker by Thinking Fellers Union Local 282
Murder in My Heart for the Judge by Moby Grape
Cocaine Lil by The Mekons
Late Night Scurry by Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis