Friday, February 18, 2011
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
Help Me From My Brain by Legendary Shack Shakers
Honey You Had Me Fooled by The Defibulators
Rockin' Bandit by Ray Smith
You Might Get Hurt by Suzette & The Neon Angels
Switch Blade Sam by Jeff Daniels
New Delhi Freight Train by Terry Allen
Fraulein by Bobby Helms How Mountain Girls Can Love by Peter Stampfel & The Worm All-Stars Whispering Shifting Sands by Johnny Cash & Lorne Green
You Asked Me To by Waylon Jennings Hair of the Dog by Shooter Jennings
Movin' In by Morty Shann & The Morticians
I Need A Manby Barbara Pittman Dancin' Ricky by Drive-By Truckers Goodbye Booze by Loudon Wainwright III Caffeine, Nicotine and Gasoline by Bill Royal
Slide Off Of Your Satin Sheetsby DM Bob And The Deficits The Ballad of Lightnin' Bill Jasper by The Imperial Rooster 99 Chicks by Ron Haydock & The Boppers
Journey to the Old Weird America
The Devil's Dream by Sid Hemphill & Lucius Smith I Got Drunk for Jesus/Train Is Moving On by The Rev. Johnny L. Jones Queen of the South Sea Isles by Hawaiian Beach Combers It's a Shame to Beat Your Wife on a Sunday by Fiddlin' John Carson & His Virginia Reelers
Black Woman (Wild Ox) by Vera Ward Hall Pussy by Harry Roy & His Bat Club Boys Did You Ever See the Devil, Uncle Joe, by Wade Ward & Charlie Higgins Don't Leave Me Here by Henry "Texas Ragtime" Thomas
Where The Soul of a Man Never Dies by Luther Dickinson & The Sons of Mudboy Someday We'll Look Back by Merle Haggard
The Vigilante by Judee Sill Ruby Ridge by Peter Rowan
Hidin' In The Hills by Butch Hancock Federal Pen by Jaime Michaels
Blow The Man Down by Roger McGuinn Pie In The Skyby Utah Philips & Ani DiFranco
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
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A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
February 18, 2011
The ragged old flag of Old Weird America has been waving high in recent months. There have been a rash of new compilations of old recordings of tobacco-spitting hillbillies, roughneck bluesmen, gospel shouters, jug bands, and chain-gang chanters.
You might even say that the past is so bright, you gotta wear shades.
I’m referring to recent releases from two fine companies — the Georgia-based Dust-to-Digital, founded by music collector Lance Ledbetter, and the Global Jukebox, a new label of the Alan Lomax Archive.
Here’s a look at some of this music.
* The Hurricane That Hit Atlanta by Rev. Johnny L. Jones. This double-disc Dust-to-Digital compilation is one of the most intense, most powerful, and most satisfying gospel collections I’ve ever heard. It’s a collection of church and radio performances, going back to 1957, by Jones, a 70-something preacher/singer who’s still preaching and singing every second Sunday at Second Mount Olive Baptist Church in Atlanta. It’s mostly music, though it also has a little preaching, some conversation with a radio caller, and even a couple of radio ads.
Thankfully someone, perhaps Jones himself, thought of taping his services. The sound quality isn’t exactly professional. But it doesn’t take long to forget that — the spirit comes through loud and clear. Jones sings most of the material, although a few others — Lula Pearl Jones and Valerie Mathis, among them — are featured on some tracks.
Many of the songs aren’t the typical verse-chorus-verse structures. Some sound improvised, as if Jones is moaning when the spirit says “moan,” shouting when the spirit says “shout.” The track “Devil Don’t Understand Moaning,” for instance, is part of a sermon — a traditional black sermon in which you don’t realize when the music subtly takes over from the preaching. At one point, Jones’ guttural shouts sound as if he’s in the midst of a struggle deep inside his soul.
The screams of a female parishioner whose soul is obviously on fire give a real edge to “Sometimes I Feel Like I’m Almost Gone.” Obviously, the word “almost” wasn’t necessary for some of those who felt the spirit while this was being recorded.
* Baby, How Can It Be? Songs of Love, Lust, and Contempt From the 1920s and 1930s. While the other discs I’m reviewing this week are field recordings (with some tracks recorded in actual fields), this three-disc set from Dust-to-Digital consists of commercial 78-rpm records.
The themes of love, lust, and contempt each get their own disc. The 66 songs are taken from the collection of old-timey musician John Heneghan (he has a band in New York called Eden & John’s East River String Band). The songs include hillbilly, blues, jazz, jug band, string band, and even a few Hawaiian tunes. The collection spills over with sex and humor.
There are some famous people in this compilation — Cab Calloway, Mississippi John Hurt, and Blind Lemon Jefferson. But some of the obscure artists steal the show, like screechy-voiced Mississippi Matilda, George “Shortbuckle” Roark (who is “I Ain’t a Bit Drunk”), and Laura Smith, who kicks off the Contempt disc with a funny ditty called “I’m Gonna Kill Myself.”
Grateful Deadheads will recognize “Don’t Leave Me Here” by Henry Thomas. The Dead turned it into “Don’t Ease Me In” — coffee, tea, and jailhouse key included. R. Crumb’s Cheap Suit Serenaders covered “Pussy,” a song about a special feline by Harry Roy and His Bat Club Boys on the Lust disc.
Meanwhile, Tiny Tim fans will be happy to find the original “Tiptoe Through the Tulips With Me” by Eddie Peabody.
* Wave The Ocean, Wave The Sea; * Worried Now, Won’t Be Worried Long; *I’ll Meet You On That Other Shore; * I’ll Be So Glad When the Sun Goes Down * I’m Gonna Live Anyhow Until I Die. These five albums feature selections from Alan Lomax’s Southern Journey, which he recorded on trips in 1959 and 1960 to the rural South.
Lomax captured performances on front porches and in living rooms, town squares, churches, and prisons. Some of the locales were those he visited on similar trips with his father, John Lomax, decades before, and some of the musicians were those he met on those previous trips. The original Southern Journey, albums released in the early ’60s, were the first field recordings of American roots material presented in stereo. Periodically, these recordings reemerge in various configurations. In the late 1990s, for instance, Rounder rereleased 13 CDs worth of Southern Journey recordings.
I’m not really an audiophile, but I have to comment on how crisp and clear these newly remastered tracks sound. I’m ignorant of what kind of electronic voodoo went into this process, but the results are remarkable.
Many of Lomax’s usual suspects are scattered about the albums — Mississippi Fred McDowell, Bessie Jones, Hobart Smith, the Georgia Sea Island Singers, Vera Ward Hall, Sid Hemphill, and Almeda Riddle, among others.
Various styles of traditional Southern music can be found on each of the five albums including sacred harp, Cajun, gospel quartet, some proto-bluegrass, and the sound of the men working on the chain gang. The title song of I’ll Be So Glad When the Sun Goes Down is by Ed Lewis and other prisoners at the infamous Parchman Farm prison in Mississippi. It’s an a cappella call-and-response accompanied only by the clanging of the men’s axes and hoes.
Probably the most surreal, Captain Beefheartean recording here is “Devil’s Dream” by Hemphill and Lucias Smith (on I’m Gonna Live). It’s a fife-and-drum tune with incomprehensible lyrics.
“Dark Day,” a spiritual by the Silver Leaf Quartet (on Wave the Ocean), is apocalyptic and spooky. And speaking of songs of contempt, “Levee Camp Holler” by Johnny Lee Moore (on Worried Now) is an a cappella put-down of a “downtown money-waster” whom Moore threatens with physical violence.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell Webcasting! 101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell@ksfr.org
OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Valentine by Concrete Blonde
Steppin' Out by Paul Revere & The Radiers
The Trip by Donovan
Nasty Women by Andre Williams
Wogs Will Walk by Cornershop
So What!! by The Lyrics
Mannish Boy by Jimi Hendrix
Isan Klab Tin by Thapporn Petchubon, Noknoi Uraiporn, & Thongthai Tin Isan
Ghostified by Persian Claws
Here Come The Mushroom People by The Molting Vultures
Monkey Song (You Made a Monkey Out of Me) by The Big Bopper
Justine by The Mummies
Hearse With A Curse by Mr. Gasser & The Weirdos Bo Diddley is Crazy by Bo Diddley
Jack Of Diamonds by The Daily Flash Valentine by The Replacements Ukulele Lady by Jim Kweskin's Jug Band
Make it Funky by James Brown (with Rev. Al Sharpton)
Sugarfoot by Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears Look at Granny Run by Howard Tate
Ma Juju Girl by King Salami & the Cumberland 3 Truck Turner by Isaac Hayes
Whiskey Wagon by Barrence Whitfield & the Savages Rockin' on a Sunday Night by The Treniers
Packed by Gotham City Mashers
Manticore/Lion Tamer by Old Time Relijun
Crane's Cafe by TAD
Visitation by Manby's Head
She's My Moonglow by The Qualities
That Ain't My Wife by Swamp Dogg
Ride Captain Ride by The Blues Image
Blue Valentines by Tom Waits
Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Friday, February 11, 2011
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
Go-go Boots by Drive-By Truckers
Too Sweet To Die by The Waco Brothers L:eave That Junk Alone by Johnny Cash
Rednecks, White Socks And Blue Ribbon Beer by Johnny Russell Ain't Got a Clue by Josie Kreuzer
Lone Star Blues by Delbert McClinton
She Likes to Boogie Real Low by Ray Condo & The Ricochets
Dixie Fried by Carl Perkins
There's More Pretty Girls Than One by Rutherford & Foster
Never Cold Again by The Imperial Rooster
Scratch Said by Angry Johnny
Wolverton Mountain by Claude King
Let's Do Wrong Tonight by Simon Stokes & Annette Zilinskas,
From This Outlaw To You by Simon Stokes & Texas Terri
Like a Baby by Wanda Jackson
The Iliad by Ed Sanders and the Hemptones
Hippie in a Blunder by Johnny Buckett
Jug Band Set That Good Ol' Mountain Dew by Gamala Beat
Patent Medicine by Dr. West's Medicine Show & Junk Band Spasm by Daddy Stovepipe & Mississippi Sara
Beedle Um Bum byJim Kweskin Jug Band Tanner's Boarding House by Gid Tanner & Riley Puckett Viola Lee Blues by Cannon's Jug Stompers Insane Crazy Blues by Charlie Burse with The Memhis Jug Band
Deep Fried Gators by Sloppy Joe
Casey Bill by Earl McDonald's Original Louisville Jug Band
I Got Drunk for the Lord/Train is Moving On by The Rev. Johnny Jones
Matty Groves by ThaMuseMeant
Fan It by The Great Recession Orchesta
A Mighty Wind by A Mighty Wind cast
Danny Boy by Shane MacGowan & The Popes
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
February 11, 2011
One of the lonely things about being a music critic and a lover of off-the-beaten-wall music is that you tend to get very excited about songs and albums and artists that nobody you know, not even your hipper friends, not even most of your hipper online friends, has ever heard of. You’re the one person in the forest when the tree falls and you scream, “Yes! There was a sound!” But even those who believe you don’t really care.
That’s basically how I felt when the self-titled new album by Simon Stokes and The Heathen Angelscame out. It made my day when I got a review/airplay copy in the mail (in an envelope I suspect was addressed by Stokes himself with actual Kate Smith postage stamps. God bless America!). But the few people with whom I shared my excitement only seemed puzzled.
I don’t care. This album is everything I like about Stokes — boozy biker rock, some credible honky-tonk, even some mad folk-inspired ballads that would make your typical folkie wet his pants in fear. I might just crank up my iPod and blast it in my car when I stop at red lights and inflict it upon other drivers and hapless pedestrians. Those with ears to hear will know the weird joy that is Simon Stokes.
What you should know about Simon Stokes: He was born in Michigan, the grandson of a big-band leader, and moved to Los Angeles in the mid-’60s to dive into the rock ’n’ roll biz. He had a band called The Flower Children — though it’s hard to imagine that this tough old bird was ever a flower child. The group had a song called “Miniskirt Blues.” However, I never heard this song until the ’90s when it appeared on The Cramps’ album Look Ma, No Head, with guest vocals by Iggy Pop. (There’s a powerful new version on Heathen Angels.)
In the late ’60s, Stokes formed another band called The Nighthawks, which reportedly signed to Elektra Records on the same day as The Stooges and The MC5. In 1973, he released The Incredible Simon Stokes & The Black Whip Thrill Band, which unfortunately became more notorious for its S/M themes than for its bruising blues rock (and a pretty outlaw-country tune called “The Devil Just Called My Name”).
Stokes seemed to disappear after his 1977 album Buzzard of Love, resurfacing in the ’90s to team up with Dr. Timothy Leary on an album, Right to Fly — also known as LSD (Leary Stokes Duets); the best song from that collaboration is “100 Naked Kangaroos in Blue Canoes.” Stokes also helped produce The Radical, a cool album by American Indian Movement leader Russell Means.
My favorite Stokes work of all time is his 2002 album Honky. There were guest spots by Wayne Kramer and The Bell-Rays’ Lisa Kekaula, but this definitely was Stokes’ show. Songs like “Amazons and Coyotes,” “Johnny Gillette,” “Ride on, Angel” (a Black Whip remake that’s even better than the original version), and “No Confidence” represent Stokes at his rough-riding strongest.
Look Homeward, Heathen Angels: The new album is definitely Stokes’ greatest since Honky, but that just means I like it better than the one album between the two, Head, which was a good record with some great tunes, though more homemade and lo-fi. Most of the songs on Heathen Angels feature a full band — a solid group of rockers who perfectly complement the old master.
The opening song, “Hey You,” is an instant Stokes classic. With the Heathen Angels playing a thumping beat behind him, Stokes sings about a confrontation between a man on edge who basically is irate with the world and someone who looks at him wrong. “Don’t need no lawyer tryin’ to steal my dough/Don’t need that crap they’re playin’ on the radio. ... Hey you, are you looking at me/Hey you, I don’t like what I see.”
Brantley Kearns’ fiddle is out front on the song “Infected,” a minor-key rocker with the refrain, “Everybody’s infected, ’fected ... everybody’s gonna die!”
Another happy little tune here is “Down For Death.” This almost-seven-minute dirge is what Fairport Convention would have sounded like had Fairport Convention been fronted by a homicidal biker. Actually might be “The Black Angel’s Death Song” by The Velvet Underground. A man’s wife and children have been slaughtered by evildoers. It never says exactly why; there’s just the understatement, “a deal gone bad.”
But that’s the last understatement here. As Kearns goes nuts on his fiddle and Michael Starr’s guitar snarls menacingly, Stokes describes in bloody detail how the bad guys get theirs.
It’s definitely not for the squeamish. But that’s OK. The squeamish have their own music.
Besides “Miniskirt Blues,” another old Stokes tune revived here is “A Boa Constrictor Ate My Wife Last Night.” Originally appearing on Black Whip Thrill Band, it’s a dumb ditty, but it’s a fun little tune with a melody similar to that of “Honky Tonk Women.”
Stokes proves he’s got country in his soul on the song “Let’s Do Wrong Tonight.” It’s a duet with Annette Zilinskas, former bassist for The Bangles who also sang with the country-rock group Blood on the Saddle. This is a 100-proof honky-tonker that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on country radio in the ’70s.
There are a couple of cover tunes here including a wild take on “One Night of Sin.” Stokes doesn’t have the vocal talent of Elvis (who did the best-known version of this Smiley Lewis song). But it’s a spirited rendition that works on its own rag-tag terms.
Then there’s “Moth and the Flame,” an obscure song written by the late Sky Saxon of The Seeds.
Whenever you get discouraged and start to believe that most so-called rock music has become too artsy, too foo-foo, too slick, too poppy, too politically correct ... seek out Simon Stokes. He’ll restore your faith.
Who else would play Simon Stokes on Santa Fe radio? Hear songs from The Heathen Angels on The Santa Fe Opry on Friday night and Terrell’s Sound World on Sunday. Both shows start at 10 p.m. on KSFR-FM 101.1
