Thursday, August 25, 2016
TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: Nots, Gøggs, Pierre & San Antonio Kid
Aug. 26, 2016
Indulge me in belaboring the obvious for a moment: Memphis, Tennessee, is an important city in rock ’n’roll. But that didn’t stop with Elvis, Sun Records, B.B. King, Rufus Thomas, Al Green, Stax Records, or Chuck Berry’s uncle writing messages on the wall.
Memphis is still an important city for rock. For years it’s been home to a vibrant “underground” rock scene, thanks largely to Goner Records (the store and the label), an associated festival called Gonerfest (coming up in late September), and bands including The Reatards, The Oblivians, and all of their offshoots.
My favorite group to emerge from this Memphis stew in recent months is Nots, an all-female punk band whose screaming new album Cosmetic is a wild delight.
Fronted by singer Natalie Hoffman, this is basically a guitar group — except they’ve got a keyboard player, Alexandra Eastburn, whose fearsome synthesized blips, bloops, wiggles, and squiggles remind me of Allen Ravenstine, the keyboard maniac of early Pere Ubu.
This is the most urgent-sounding music I’ve heard in a long time. Though it’s not always easy to understand the lyrics, it’s impossible to escape the intensity of the sound. Drummer Charlotte Watson deserves much of the credit for this. For the first few seconds of “Rat King” and “Cold Line,” she almost sounds like a hopped-up surf-band drummer ready to explode.
Nots really stretch out on a couple of tracks on Cosmetic. The five-and-a-half-minute title song begins with what might be described as a distorted blues riff. It starts off slow, but about three minutes in, the pace suddenly takes off and becomes a frenzied race to the finish.
Even better is the seven-minute closing song “Entertain Me.” In a recent interview with Stereogum, Hoffman said the lyrics deal with “the grotesque horror show going on in American politics and how they are portrayed — the rise of Trump, the reality-TV-like nature of American news, the almost-forced compliance of the viewer. ...” Indeed, this is entertainment!
Cosmetic will be available September 9.
Gøggs by Gøggs. A lot of people are referring to this as Ty Segall’s latest band, but actually it’s a collaboration among Segall, Chris Shaw of Ex-Cult — a Memphis band of which Nots’ Hoffman was a member — and Charles Moothart from Fuzz, another Segall group. Shaw handles lead vocals — he’s a shouter more than a singer — while Segall concentrates on guitar, though he and drummer Moothart switch instruments on a few tracks.
It’s hard to tell what you’re going to get with each new release from the prolific, restless Segall — the Stooges-like craziness of Slaughterhouse, mellow introspection like Sleeper, or the soul-tinged, almost-poppy fare like Manipulator. Gøggs is closer to Slaughterhouse, or whatever Segall was up to when he raged at High Mayhem in Santa Fe a few years ago. It’s loud, rough, raw, and noisy. And yet it’s a friendly-sounding assault — it’s the sheer fun Segall, Shaw, and Moothart seem to be having as they pound out these 10 tunes.
Highlights here include the harsh, hard-hitting “Assassinate the Doctor” (perhaps inspired by “Fearless Doctor Killers,” Mudhoney’s protest against “pro-life” violence); the riff-heavy garage-punker “Smoke the Wurm”; and “Final Notice,” which features insane screaming and, like the Nots’ record, is driven by crazy keyboards.
You can stream all the songs from this album HERE
* Swing Cremona by Pierre Omer’s Swing Review. Omer used to be in a Swiss group called The Dead Brothers, who billed themselves as a “funeral band.” And indeed, there was something spooky and a little morbid about that group. But Omer’s latest band is much more upbeat.
This music is closer in sound to groups like the Squirrel Nut Zippers. They play a little hot jazz, a little vaudeville, a hint of calypso, a whiff of klezmer, and more than a touch of Weimar Republic decadence. It’s a four-piece band (guitar, stand-up bass, drums, and trumpet). But it sounds much bigger than it is.
Probably my favorite song here is “International Man of Mystery,” which makes me wish that Cab Calloway would return from the dead to sing in it and that Max Fleischer would come back and do a cartoon for it. Omer’s music spans the globe. He plays a “Russian Lullaby,” goes tropical with “Coconut Island” — try to listen to this all the way through without hearing Leon Redbone singing along — and strips “Misirlou” of any trace of surf music, taking the song back to its Middle Eastern roots (the way Dick Dale discovered it).
And speaking of Max Fleischer, the famed animator did a Betty Boop cartoon of “Mysterious Mose,” which is a variation of another song on Omer’s album, “Ol’ Man Mose.” That song, attributed to Louis Armstrong, has a rich history. A 1938 version of the song by Patricia Norman with the Eddie Duchin Orchestra is notorious for featuring the repeated use of a certain dirty word — in the refrain that goes “Mose kicked the bucket ...” Omer resists the temptation to work blue, however, so you can safely play his version for the children.
* San Antonio Kid by San Antonio Kid. This is a German group that has a strange obsession with the American Southwest. SAK plays an alluring, moody, noirish spaghetti-Western style of country rock. (Maybe we should coin a new category: sauerkraut Western?) There’s lots of twang and reverb and dreamy melodies packed into this 34-minute, eight-song record.
The whistling that opens the song “Strangers” sounds straight out of Clint Eastwood’s A Fistful of Dollars. San Antonio Kid reminds me a little of Calexico — without the marimbas and trumpet. And the harmonica on “Same Old Sound II” has echoes of Call of the West-era Wall of Voodoo.
Hear all of San Antonio Kid’s songs HERE.
Some videos for you:
First some Nots
Here's Gøggs
Here's Pierre Omer (Reverend Beat-Man makes a cameo here)
Here's one from San Antonio Kid
And here's the 1938 Patricia Norman / Eddie Duchin version of "Old Man Mose."
THROWBACK THURSDAY: If Mommy is a Commie, Then Ya Gotta Turn Her In
John Birch |
We're not sure what he did but he's our hero just the same
from "The John Birch Society" by Michael Brown
Seventy one years ago today, just days after the end of World War II, a group of Chinese communists captured then killed a 27-year-old American Baptist missionary -- who also was working for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services -- named John Birch.
Birch, who spoke fluent Mandarin, had been sent, along with a group of Chinese Nationalist and American officers to accept the surrender of a Japanese base in eastern China.
According to a review in the Wall Street Journal review of the biography John Birch: A Life by Terry Lautz (2016, Oxford University Press) Richard Bernstein talked about Birch's career in China:
Birch bravely spent weeks and months at a time behind enemy lines helping to select targets for American bombers. After the Japanese surrender on Aug. 15, 1945, he was sent on a mission to scout territories in eastern China being evacuated by the Japanese. There, he and his men ran into a detachment of Communist guerrillas who, after a heated verbal exchange, shot and killed Birch. The date was Aug. 25, 1945.
He was a missionary. He was an officer in the OSS. But one thing John Birch never was: a member of The John Birch Society.
In this book review, Bernstein wrote about what happened to Birch's name after his death:
As a devout Christian, Birch would have found Communist values and practices deeply objectionable, but he didn’t live to witness Communist rule in China and was never an anti-communist fanatic. Yet in 1958, Robert H.W. Welch Jr., a wealthy candy manufacturer, founded the John Birch Society, seizing on the notion that the noble American war hero Birch was the first victim of a war declared against America and Christian civilization by the international Communist conspiracy. This was a war aided and abetted, in Welch’s post-McCarthyite view, by a coterie of highly placed American traitors. Dwight Eisenhower, he wrote, was “a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy
... his untimely death [was] followed by his involuntary enlistment in a paranoid club that reduced a cause that might otherwise have gained his sympathy to a jokey kind of historical footnote.
Indeed, in the world of popular music you only hear Birch's name in a couple of jokey songs -- jokey folkie songs -- from the early 1960s.
Those songs are below. But remember when listening to them that the John Birch Society is not John Birch.
First there's "The John Birch Society," as performed by The Chad Mitchell Trio.
Then there is Bob Dylan's "Talkin' John Birch Society Blues."
Ironically, this song proved that paranoia was not the exclusive property of the Birchers. Dylan was going to sing this on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1963,
According to Today in History:
Dylan had auditioned “John Birch” days earlier and had run through it for Ed Sullivan himself without any concern being raised. But during dress rehearsal on the day of the show, an executive from the CBS Standards and Practices department informed the show’s producers that they could not allow Dylan to go forward singing “John Birch.” While many of the song’s lyrics about hunting down “reds” were merely humorous ... others that equated the John Birch Society’s views with those of Adolf Hitler raised the fear of a defamation lawsuit in the minds of CBS’s lawyers.
Dylan refused to alter the lyrics or play another song. So he gave up his chance to appear on Ed Sullivan. Sullivan himself later denounced the idiotic decision by the CBS suits.
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
WACKY WEDNESDAY: You Think I'm Psycho, Don't You, Mama?
But neither of those are the Leon Payne song I want to talk about today. I want to talk about one that has always seemed to be somewhat out of character for Leon.
"Psycho"!
I first heard this tune at Cafe Oasis in the early '90s, the first time I saw ex-Angry Samoan Gregg Turner play. It's a perfect song for Turner, a pretty tune full of black humor and strange plot twists. I assumed he'd written it. But he told me it was the work of "some old country guy" and that Elvis Costello had recorded it.
Actually a couple of old country guys recorded it -- first Eddie Noack back in the late '60s. He was a friend of Payne's. Then a Michigan singer named Jack Kittell in the early '70s. Costello didn't get to it until the early 80s during his Almost Blue period. (It can be found as a bonus on at least one version of Almost Blue.)
Here's Noack's version, followed by Costello's:
And many others followed. As Randy Fox wrote in Nashville Scene in 2012, "Psycho" became "a favorite cover song for many alt-country bands that skew to the weirder and darker side of country. Thus proving a great country song will always find its audience, once the world gets weird enough."
In his "Psycho" article Fox interviewed Payne's daughter Myrtie Le Payne, who told how her dad came up with this macabre song.
"Jackie White was my daddy's steel guitar player," [ Myrtie Le] says. "He started working with him in 1968, and the song came out of a conversation they had one day."
Fans of "Psycho" should recognize that name:
I saw my ex again last night mama / She was at the dance at Miller's store / She was with that Jackie White mama / I killed them both and now they're buried under Jenkins' sycamore
Fox wrote, "According to the story related by White, in the spring of 1968, he and Leon Payne were discussing the Richard Speck murders. Speck murdered eight student nurses in Chicago in July 1966 and was convicted and sentenced to death the following year. Being a history buff, Payne was familiar with the cases of many notorious mass killers, and the discussion soon turned to other famous cases — Charles Whitman, Ed Gein, Mary Bell and Albert Fish. That conversation directly inspired the song."
According to this, the opening line, "Can Mary fry some fish, Mama?" is a sly reference to Mary Bell, a child killer who was a child herself. Her life story makes me wonder whether she's the inspiration for Nick Cave's "The Curse of Milhaven."
Indeed, "Psycho" was an unusual song for Leon Payne. But maybe the seeds of it came from an earlier song, one I mentioned above, "Selfishness in Man":
Little children painting pictures of the birds and apple trees / Oh, why can't the grown up people have the faith of one of these / And to think those tiny fingers might become a killer's hand ...
You think that's psycho, don't you ...
Any way, here are a couple of more versions of "Psycho," first by an Australian band called The Beasts of Bourbon
And here's a fairly recent one I like a lot by another Australian, Mojo Juju
And here are more, including covers by Jack Kittel, T. Tex Edwards, Andre William & The Sadies, and more. Sorry, I couldn't find a Gregg Turner version anywhere.
For more deep dives into songs, check out The Stephen W. Terrell Web Log Songbook
Once Again, The Big Enchilada Heads for the Honky Tonk!
(Background Music: Fatman's Twist by Southern Culture on the Skids)
John Wesley Hardin by Jimmie Skinner
Just Tell Her I Loved Her by Joe Swank & His Zen Pirates
Bashful Rascal by June Carter
Truckdrivin' Son of a Gun by Dave Dudley
Brenda by Rev. Billy C. Wirtz
Chatham Jack by Billy Childish & The Blackhands
Turn Off What Marijuana Turned On by Basil McLaughlin
(Background Music: Steel Guitar Stomp by Hank Penny)
The Toadlickers by Thomas Dolby with Imogen Heap
Ol' Town Drunk by Clark Bentley
Second Fiddle to an Old Guitar by Jean Shepard
Booze is Good by Dan Whitaker & The Shinebenders
Girl on the Billboard by Del Reeves
Buffalo Gals by J. Michael Combs & Friends
(Background Music: Oakville Twister by The Hoosier Hotshots)
Hard Times by Martha Fields
Down on Penny's Farm by Jim Kweskin & Geoff Muldaur
Invisible Stripes by Eddie Noack
There's No Right Way to Do Me Wrong by The Miller Sisters
It's Our Home by Joe West
(Background Music: Black Mountain Rag by Jerry Rivers & The Drifting Cowboys)
Sunday, August 21, 2016
TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST
Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016
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(at)ksfr.org
Here's the playlist
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Sinner Man by Esquerita
I'm Cryin' by The Animals
Final Notice by GØGGS
Welcome to Star 65 by Alien Space Kitchen
Frankie Baby by Mojo Juju
Still I Dream of It by Brian Wilson
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Friday, August 19, 2016
THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST
Friday, Aug. 19, 2016
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
John Wesley Hardin by Jimmie Skinner
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
Like the Santa Fe Opry Facebook page
Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list
Thursday, August 18, 2016
THROWBACK THURSDAY: Remembering John Wesley Hardin
Tomorrow marks the 121st anniversary of the killing of John Wesley Hardin, a true bad-ass Old West gunslinger. He was a cowboy, a fighter against reconstruction and an actual jailhouse lawyer who studied law while serving time for killing a sheriff's deputy in Brown County, Texas. He claimed to have backed down Wild Bill Hickok, who was sheriff of Abilene.
He was shot and killed in the Acme Saloon (no, this wasn't a Roadrunner cartoon) in El Paso on Aug. 19. 1895. Killed by a guy he'd previously hired to kill the husband of his girlfriend.
Hardin, the son of a Methodist preacher, claimed to have killed more than 40 people (though only 27 were confirmed.) One of his victims was a friend he killed for snoring.
But according to Frontier Times:
Hardin was an unusual type of killer, a handsome, gentlemanly man who considered himself a pillar of society, always maintaining that he never killed anyone who did not need killing and that he always shot to save his own life. Many people who knew him or his family regarded him as a man more sinned against than sinning.
Or as Bob Dylan might say, "he was never known to hurt an honest man."
Actually Dylan did say that in a song titled "John Wesley Harding." Dylan added a "g" to the outlaw's name and basically turned him into Robin Hood, a "friend to the poor" who "was always known to lend a helping hand." Though the hero of Dylan's 1967 song bore little resemblance to the real Hardin, it's still a fine little tune.
You can play it here:
But about eight years before Dylan's song, a hillbilly named Jimmie Skinner did a slightly more historically accurate account of Hardin's life. For example, the song correctly says Hardin "shot a man dead at the age of 15" and it does have him going to prison for killing a law enforcement officer (though in real life, Hardin was pardoned after serving 16 years of his 25 year sentence for kiling Deputy Charles Webb.)
If that melody sounds familiar, that's because Webb lifted it from another outlaw song, "John Hardy Was a Desperate Little Man," recorded in 1928 by The Carter Family (and a million others after them and a few before them). John Hardy was completed unrelated to John Wesley Hardin. Hardy was a black man who was hanged for murder in 1894 in West Virginia. He'd killed another guy in a craps game. (Holy Stag-o-lee, Batman!)
Finally, I'm not sure what this last song is about. Maybe the singer who called himself John Wesley Harding. On;y Wesley Willis knows for sure and he's not talking anymore.
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
WACKY WEDNESDAY: It's David Koresh's Birthday!
Exhibit inside Branch Davidian church, Mount Carmel, Texas. I took this in July 2007 |
So as a second installment to my "Cult Music by Real Cults" series, I'm going to present some songs by the man born Vernon Wayne Howell.
Yes, before he went into the messiah business, Howell wanted to be a rock star. However he sounded liked some souped-up, third-rate Dan Fogelberg.
I can overlook that though. After all, he inspired the names of one of my favorite bands.
Here are some of his tunes.
This first one is especially terrible. A crappy recording of a bad band. But at least the lyrics are crazy.
This one actually reminds me of some of Charlie Manson's songs
Here are a couple of songs about Koresh and the Waco tragedy.
The first is from a 2007 rock opera called David Koresh Superstar by a band called The Indelicates
And here's a song that's hard not to like whatever your political leanings. It's by the late Russell Means (and produced by the one and only Simon Stokes!)
What the Hell, here's the Waco Brothers!
Sunday, August 14, 2016
TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST
Sunday, Aug. 14, 2016
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(at)ksfr.org
Here's the playlist
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Live the Life by The Oblivians
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Like the Terrell's Sound World Facebook page
Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Friday, August 12, 2016
THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST
Friday, Aug. 12, 2016
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
Sweet Thang by Gene Watson & Rhonda Vincent
Night Train to Memphis by Sleepy LaBeef
Hot Dang by Dale Watson
Food Chain of Fools by Rev. Billy C. Wirtz
Pennsylvania Turnpike by Al Scorch
Girl on the Billboard by Eddie Spaghetti
Fast Train Down by The Waco Brothers
Devil Outside the Door by Angry Johnny & The Killbillies
Another Clown by Mose McCormack
Tupelo Mississippi Flash by Jerry Reed
Meanest Jukebox in Town by Whitey Morgan & The 78s
I Swear I Was Lying by Kim Lenz
Something Stupid by The Mavericks & Trish Yearwood
West Wind by Jayke Orvis & The Broken Band
Tear Up the Honkey Tonk by Suzette & The Neon Angels
I Think Hank Woulda Done it This Way by The Blue Chieftains
Dear Brother by Hank Williams
Grey Skies by Southern Culture on the Skids
Back in My Day by The Handsome Family
American Trash by Betty Dylan
Parchment Farm by Ray Condo & His Ricochets
The Middle of Nowhere by Tony Joe White
Sweetheart of Sigma Chi by Martin, Bogan & Armstrong
Sympathy for the Devil by Danny Barnes
Ruby Are You Mad at Your Man by Carolina Chocolate Drops
Larry Mota by Joe West
Making Believe by Wanda Jackson
The Storm by Sturgil Simpson
Broken Down Gambler by The Wilders
When Two Worlds Collide by Roger Miller
Opportunity to Cry by Willie Nelson
Smile by Dex Romweber
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
Like the Santa Fe Opry Facebook page
Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list
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