Welcome to the latest summertime episode of the Big Enchilada Podcast. We're going to have a rocking time with selections from Barrence Whitfield, The Sonics, Thee Oh Sees, T-Model Ford, G.G. Allin, The Angry Samoans, The Grannies, Frontier Circus, Crankshaft & The Geargrinders, The Routes, Butch Hancock (with the song that inspired the name of this episode) and many more. As Butch says, "For every graveyard in the moonlight, there's a junkyard in the sun!"
Friday, July 24, 2015 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM Email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens
Hot Dang by Dale Watson
Gone to Texas by Terry Allen
Guitar Man by Junior Brown
TJ by The Hickoids
Slide Off Of Your Satin Sheets DM Bob & The Deficits
Rehab Girl by Joe West & The Sinners
Que Wow by Joe "King" Carrasco y Los Crowns
Swinging Doors by Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard
Wives and Girlfriends by Willie Nelson
Slow Death by Webb Wilder
Artifical Flowers by Cornell Hurd
Prairie Road by Reverse Cowgirls
Wild Wild Women by Lynn Anderson
Can't Get Away by Banditos
Lovin' on Back Streets by Mel Street
Knot Hole by Robbie Fulks
If You Take Drugs (You're Gonna Die) by The Beaumonts
Carrasco and the band seemed to come out of nowhere right about the time New Wave was starting to fade. Elvis Costello had repopularized the Farfisa/Vox organ sound a few years before (on his album This Year’s Model), but Carrasco, keyboardist Chris Cummings, and the others took it further, creating spirited music that sounded like a joyful blend of The B-52s and Question Mark & The Mysterians. Carrasco was just a gringo loco (born Joseph Teutsch in Dumas, Texas), but his love for Tex-Mex music and Chicano rock in general propelled his Nuevo Wavo sound. Carrasco and The Crowns seemed to be everywhere for a brief moment. They played “Don’t Bug Me Baby” on Saturday Night Live. Later, “Party Weekend” became a staple on MTV. Carrasco was interviewed in Rolling Stone. After a chance meeting at a recording studio, he did a duet with (pre-Thriller) Michael Jackson. And for a few years it seemed he was at Club West in Santa Fe at least every few months. He was the one of the first national acts, if not the very first, to play there, treating local folks to his crazed, high-energy, hopped-up, crowd-surfing, wall-crawling antics in a stage show that was part James Brown, part Sam the Sham, and part Spider-Man. Truth is, Carrasco and The Crowns became more of a regional phenomenon. Here in the Southwest, we still loved them long after the trendies and the mainstream forgot about them.
IU've seen Carrasco the last couple of times he played Plaza Bandstand. And while he's gotten a little too old for some his his '80s acrobatics, he still gives a powerful performance.
He'll be playing with a band called Los Side FX. I haven't heard them, but if they're with Joe, they're bound to be good.
Santa Fe's own Alex Maryol opens the show. According to the AMP Concerts website, the doors open at 6 pm (which is weird, because there are no doors at Railyard Plaza) and the show starts at 7.
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican July 24, 2015
In Dec. 2013, John Dwyer — the lead singer, guitarist, songwriter, and resident visionary of Thee Oh Sees — said the band was taking a break from the music biz. Some fans, including me, thought perhaps Dwyer was ending the group while it was at its peak.
But since then, the group has released two albums: last year’s Dropand now Mutilator Defeated at Last — a rockin’ masterpiece that will please and delight old fans and is bound to win new ones.
During the band’s brief timeout, Dwyer moved to Los Angeles and got a new bunch of Oh Sees to take the place of the bandmates he’d worked with for the past few years. Mutilator is the first to feature Dwyer’s current touring version of the group — with Tim Hellman on bass and drummer Nick Murray. The sound is unmistakably Oh Sees: rubbery post-psychedelic guitar-based excursions into the unknown with distorted echoes of garage rock, punk, and noise-rock.
While Drop is a decent album, it is marred by too many mellow and airy-fairy tracks. In reviewing it last year, I accused Dwyer of trying to channel the Electric Light Orchestra on some songs.
Fortunately, Mutilator is much closer in sound to my favorite Oh Sees album, 2013’s Floating Coffin. Though the new album isn’t without its quieter moments, for the most part it’s way more frantic and raw than Drop. Opening with a bouncy tune called “Web,” which gets denser and louder as the song progresses, Dwyer and his new gang make it obvious that this time around, they are here to rock.
The most ferocious song here is the crazed “Lupine Ossuary,” which features downright nasty guitars and relentless drums, over which Dwyer’s trademark falsetto vocals drift in and out. As much as I love it, it’s so intense that it’s probably a good thing it’s only a little longer than four minutes. This is the second song by Thee Oh Sees to have the word “Lupine” in the title. Back in 2012, one of the high-water marks on their album Putrifiers II was a fierce little tune called “Lupine Dominus.” (What can I say? This is music you’ll want to wolf down.)
Dwyer with Thee Oh Sees in Albuquerque, 2013
Another favorite on Mutilator is a crunching stomp called “Turned Out Light,” which starts off with a guitar hook right out of some Southern rock boogie. No, nobody’s going to mistake Thee Oh Sees for the Allman Brothers or Wet Willie, but it’s a refreshing touch.
“Withered Hand” deceptively starts off slow, with eerie effects that sound as if you’re standing at the mouth of some wind cavern for the first 40 seconds or so. But that changes quickly, and the next three minutes turn into a screaming demolition derby of a song.
And the hopped up “Poor Queen” sounds like it could be the national anthem of some insect nation.
Yes, I did say there are some quieter moments on Mutilator Defeated at Last. “Holy Smoke,” featuring an acoustic guitar and a mellotron, and the keyboard-heavy “Sticky Hulks” both remind me of mellow Dinosaur Jr. tunes such as “Thumb.”
And speaking of bands of that era, Jane’s Addiction could easily cover “Palace Doctor,” which closes the album. All three of these start off nice and mellow, but none of them stay that way for the whole song.
It’s good to know that Thee Oh Sees haven’t drifted away as so many feared might happen back in late 2013. They truly are one of the finest rock ’n’ roll bands walking the Earth — and maybe other planets — today. If you’re not familiar with them, wise up. They’re just a few clicks away on the internet music service of your choice. And if you’re wondering which album to start with, Mutilator Defeated at Last is as good a place as any.
Good news for New Mexico Oh Sees devotees. The group is scheduled to play at the Launchpad in Albuquerque on Thursday, Sept. 24. Tickets are only $12. Check them out before they go on hiatus again!
Also recommended:
* Motobunny by Motobunny. This is one of the more fun-filled CDs to cross my desk in recent weeks. Motobunny is a hard-rocking foursome fronted by two women: Christa Collins and Nicole Laurrene.
In their music I hear Joan Jett, a little Sleater-Kinney, some Donnas, and in some songs (here’s the surprise) the B-52s. In fact, Collins and Laurrene sound so much like Kate and Cindy on “Spider & Fly” and “You’re Killing Me” that you easily can imagine either song being played in a medley with “Rock Lobster.” Like the 52s ladies, Collins and Laurrene tend to sing in unison rather than harmony.
“Spider” is my favorite on this debut album, but there are other good ones. “Apocalypse Twist” lives up to its name. “You’re Killing Me” is a raging stomp.
The group has its own “Hey, hey we’re The Monkees”-like theme song in “Motobunny,” which features a souped-up Peter Gunn guitar riff. And the final song, “I Warned You,” is downright pretty. The melody sounds like some long-lost Shangri-Las B-side that should have been an A-side.
My one complaint about this album is that it’s a little too slick-sounding — which is surprising, considering Detroit’s Jim Diamond recorded and mastered it. Next time out, I hope Motobunny keeps it a little rougher and rawer.
Last week I was catching up on Portlandia, when a haunting song played at the end of a skit caught my ear.
As fate would have it, I easily found that very skit on YouTube. Watch the whole thing. It's worth it.
The song is called "Going Home," and it's sung by Rosalie Folger-Vent, who I'd never heard of before.
But I'd heard that melody. And even though it's well known in high cultural circles, the first place I'd ever heard it was on country radio in 1981. It was performed by one of my favorite country artists of that era, Don Williams. But the song he sang was called "Miracles."
The lyrics aren't deep, but they're sweet. I don't have the original record, but all the online sources credit the song to Roger Cook. And he's a story in himself.
He's a British songwriter who wrote or co-wrote other Don Williams hots including "I Believe in You" and "Love is on a Roll," (co-written by none other than John Prine.)
Cook had a hand in writing radio hits include The Fortunes' "You've Got Your Troubles," "Long cool Woman in a Black Dress" by The Hollies and "Talking in Your Sleep" by Crystal Gayle. But his best known song probably is "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)," which became famous as an ad jingle for Coca Cola. (And you thought Don Draper wrote that, admit it!)
Though Roger Cook may have written the lyrics to "Miracles," he certainly didn't write the melody.
Credit for that goes to a Czechoslovakian composer, AntonÃn Dvořák (1841-1904). It comes from Dvořák's "Largo" theme from his Symphony No. 9 (From the New World), Op. 95. According to American Music Preservation.com, "His symphony was composed while he was in America and was first performed by the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall on December 16, 1893."
According to that website, "It has been said that Dvořák's themes in his symphony were inspired by American folk melodies, especially Afro-American or American Indian. But his themes are just as similar to Bohemian folk music."
One of Dvořák's students, William Arms Fisher (1861-1948), created a song out of the Largo theme and added his own lyrics. He called it "Going Home."
Said Fisher in 1922: The Largo, with its haunting English horn solo, is the outpouring of Dvorak's own home-longing, with something of the loneliness of far-off prairie horizons, the faint memory of the red-man's bygone days, and a sense of the tragedy of the black-man as it sings in his "spirituals." Deeper still it is a moving expression of that nostalgia of the soul all human beings feel. That the lyric opening theme of the Largo should spontaneously suggest the words 'Goin' home, goin' home' is natural enough, and that the lines that follow the melody should take the form of a negro spiritual accords with the genesis of the symphony.
"Going Home" has been performed by boys' choirs, bagpipers and Old Man River himself, the great Paul Robeson. Here is a version of Robeson singing it in 1958.
And here is the Dvořák piece from which it came. This is the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan.
All quite lovely. But I'm still a fan of Don Williams' "Miracles."
