Today is my oldest grandson's birthday. Happy birthday, Gideon!
And he shares that birthday with one of the greatest religious leaders of this era, the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart. Today he's 82 years young. Happy birthday, Reverend!
A few things to know about Rev. Jimmy in case you haven't seen the light:
He's the cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis (also a cousin of country singer Mickey Gilley.)
In the mid '80s he was a leading voice in condemning rock 'n' roll, even Christian rock, as "the voice of the Dragon," a tool of Satan.
In 1988 he made a tearful televised apology for his sins after a rival preacher who had staked out Swaggart's favorite No-Tell Motel and found him in the company of a prostitute who told investigators that Swaggart was a regular customer.
Then in 1991, a cop in Indio, Calif. pulled him over driving down the wrong side of the road. He was in an unregistered vehicle and (gasp!) not wearing a seat belt. And yes, with another prostitute.
Sunday, March. 2017 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Dizzy Miss Lizzy by The Beatles
Judgement Day by The Pretty Things
Baby Doll by The A-Bones
I Smoke Dope by The Gears
He's Making a Tape by Wild Billy Chyldish & The Musicians of the British Empire
Ded End Street by Urban Junior
Judy in Disguise by Jello Biafra & The Raunch & Soul All Stars
Pinon Lurker by The Gluey Brothers
The House of the Rising Sun by Nina Simone
You Can Count on Me by Deke Dickerson with Los Straitjackets
I Walk for Miles by Dinosaur Jr.
Teenage Thunder by The Chesterfield Kings
She Don't by Pussycat & The Dirty Johnsons
Fix That Broken Halo by The Ruiners
Go-Getter by KO & The Knockouts
Price Tag by Sleater-Kinney
Wowie Zowie by The Mothers of Invention
Arrington set Reog Doom by Arrington de Dionyso & Gal Lazer Shiloach
Witchcraft Rebellion by Old Time Relijun
Mani Malaikat by Arrington de Dionyso
Urge and Urge and Urge by Old Time Relijun
Manticore/Lion Tamer by Arrington de Dionyso & Old Time Relijun
I Create in a Broken System by Arrington de Dionyso'a Malaikat Dan Singa Arrington de Dionyso will be playing 7:30 pm Monday 7 p.m. Monday, March 13, at Fresh Santa Fe (2855-A Cooks Road; $10).
Ellegua by Dr. John
Papa Legba by Pops Staples with The Talking Heads
Legba by Malcolm McLaren
The Love We Got Ain't Worth Two Dead Flies by Swamp Dogg with Esther Phillips
Sexual Tension by Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears
Hey Hey by Pat Burns with Cynthia Becker CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Friday, March 10, 2017 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
I'm Home Gettin' Hammered While She's Out Gettin' Nailed by Jesse Dayton
Long Long Time by Guy Forsyth
Piss Up a Rope by Ween
Heal Me by Sarah Shook & The Disarmers
Bus Breakdown by Dale Watson & Ray Benson
Glendale Train by New Riders of the Purple Sage
I've Got the Railroad Blues by The Delmore Brothers
When You Lose Your Monry by The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band
A Certain Girl by Shinyribs
The Christian Thing by Jono Manson
Sold and Stolen by Stephanie Hatfield
Dog by The Bottle Rockets
Talk to Me Lonesome Heart by Miss Leslie & The Juke Jointers
Wild Side of Life by Charlie Feathers
Cajun Stripper by Doug Kershaw
Righteous Ways by Scott H. Biram
Hard Core Troubadour by Steve Earle
Chords of Fame by Neil Mooney
Sister Kate by Oh Lazarus
Honky Tonk Girl by Eilen Jewell
Lose That Woman Blues by Johnny Dilks
Mama Hated Diesels by Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen
Look at Us by John Prine & Morgane Stapleton
The Ballad of Jesse James by Van Morrison, Lonnie Donegan & Chris Barber
Big Iron by Marty Robbins
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence by Gene Pitney
Any Old Time by Steve Forbert
Wasteland of the Free by Iris Dement
West Texas Waltz by Butch Hancock & Jimme Dale Gilmore
Muddy Waters by Nikki Lane
What Does the Deep Sea Say by The Handsome Family
Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground by Willie Nelson
One Dyin' and a Buryin' by Roger Miller CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
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A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican March 10, 2017
Perhaps the most iconic images of folksinger Woody Guthrie are from the early 1940s, showing the celebrated Dust Bowl balladeer with a hand-painted message on his guitar: “This machine kills fascists.”
Avant-garde musician, visual artist, and all-around visionary Arrington de Dionyso doesn’t sound anything like Guthrie. But he’s channeling the spirit of the Okie bard for the current tour he’s dubbed “This Saxophone Kills Fascists.” And he’s bringing his show to New Mexico, including a Monday, March 13, performance at Fresh Santa Fe.
What kind of music does this Olympia, Washington, musician play? In a recent phone interview, de Dionyso told me he’ll be doing “protest music.” But it’s not going to sound like the music of Joan Baez or Pete Seeger or even Rage Against the Machine. Singing words that tell stories of injustice and strife in a linear, logical manner, de Dionyso said, is inadequate in a new era in which “the whole idea of objective truth can be manipulated.” Instead, he said the best way to counter this is “when you get into raw emotion connected to a spiritual place.”
He said his music on this tour is inspired by the “free jazz” movement — think Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman — of the late 1960s. It was a wild style of expressive discordant jazz that rose with the Black Liberation movement, a music that de Dionyso said became more focused on “politics and deep spiritual experiences. I’m finding that this is the most appropriate form of protest music,” he said. It’s his way to “confront the current fascist regime.”
On a personal level, part of what sparked “This Saxophone Kills Fascists” was de Dionyso’s own brush with followers of what is euphemistically known these days as the “alt-right,” which sounds so much more hip than an unpleasant label like “white nationalists.”
Late last year he was “implicated” in the so-called Pizzagate scandal because one of his murals had been on display at Comet Ping Pong in Washington, D.C. — which, according to the conspiracy clowns, is the epicenter of a child sex ring involving some of the most powerful people in the nation’s capital.
Even though that mural has long been painted over, the frothing conspiracy faithful claimed that de Dionyso’s colorful primitive art — inspired by dreams and mythology, and bursting with sexual energy — is full of symbols of pedophilia and Satanism. Some accused him of making “degenerate art” — a term the artist noted was used by the Nazi Party in Germany in its fight against modern art in the 1930s.
Arrington with the mural not loved by Pepe the Frog
“Pizzagate was a huge trigger for me,” he said. Some of the Pizzagate crusaders not only smeared him as a devil-worshipping pervert, but they also posted information about his family and pictures of his friends and in general did their best to make his life miserable.
At the height of that craziness late last year, de Dionyso posted on Facebook: “I know none of this is about me personally in even the slightest. Right now there are lines being drawn. There is a war being waged against EVERY form of free expression and I think you all know exactly what side of that line I will be standing on. Will you stand with me?”
Born in 1975 to parents who were both Methodist military chaplains, de Dionyso said his was a “100 percent non-musical” family. But it wasn’t an art-free family. His mother, he said, loved to paint and had a “folk-art style” that inspired him. Starting at the age of three or four, he began drawing pictures of dinosaurs, dragons, and wild animals his mom painted.
For de Dionyso, music came later. Beginning in junior high, when his parents moved to Spokane, he became interested in non-Western music from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. “I wanted to hear everything,” he said, which included traditional Japanese sounds, Indonesian gamelan music, and the Master Musicians of Joujouka from Morocco (who were “discovered” decades earlier by Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones).
Of course, most kids his age didn’t share this musical passion. But he found a musical community in the hardcore punk rock scene. Mosh pits seemed like an ecstatic tribal ritual to him.
After moving to Olympia in the early ’90s to attend Evergreen State College, he started a band called Old Time Relijun, which began releasing its music — frequently compared with Captain Beefheart, but less bluesy — on homemade cassette tapes. This group later released nine albums on the Olympia-based-label K Records, which was a leading light back when “alternative” rock truly was alternative. Old Time Relijun lasted well into the 21st century.
But de Dionyso took a different turn in 2009, releasing an album called Malaikat dan Singa (later the name of his backing band), on which he sang, in the Indonesian language, songs inspired by William Blake and the Zohar.
On his current tour he’ll be playing sax, bass clarinet, and an instrument of his own creation, the bromiophone, a contrabass clarinet made from PVC pipes. At most of his gigs he’ll be collaborating with local musicians. “I’ll have a drummer and maybe another saxophone player in Santa Fe,” he said.
“We have to change ourselves as artists and musicians. We have no choice. It’s a fascist takeover. But there are more of us than there are of them. We need to stop all the infighting as much as possible. All our energy needs to be put to stopping this regime,” he said.
Arrington de Dionyso in New Mexico: He's playing 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 11, in Albuquerque at CFA Downtown Studio (113 4th St., NW; $5 suggested donation); 4 p.m. Sunday, March 12, at Ennui Gallery in Taos (134 Bent St.; $5-$10 suggested donation), and 7 p.m. Monday, March 13, at Fresh Santa Fe (2855-A Cooks Road; $10).
You can find tons of de Dionyso’s music at www.arrington.bandcamp.com. Also, check his visual art at www.arringtondedionyso.bigcartel.com. Enjoy some videos. Here's Arrington rehearsing for the tour Here is Malaikat dan Singa live on the radio in 2011 Gimme dat Old Time Relijun And finally, here is a poem Arrington wrote for the tour
THIS SAXOPHONE KILLS FASCISTS
THIS SAXOPHONE GROWLS LIKE A PANTHER
THIS SAXOPHONE SCREAMS LIKE AN EAGLE
THIS SAXOPHONE CREATES IN THE FACE OF DESTRUCTION
THIS SAXOPHONE WAILS FOR THE FREEDOM OF ALL PEOPLE
THIS SAXOPHONE FLIPS THE MIDDLE FINGER
THIS SAXOPHONE IS POWERED BY THE SUN AND THE MOON
THIS SAXOPHONE REARRANGES ATOMS
THIS SAXOPHONE BRINGS DOWN THE WALLS OF JERICHO
THIS SAXOPHONE MARCHES ON WASHINGTON
THIS SAXOPHONE SOMETIMES WHISPERS
THIS SAXOPHONE SINGS WITH SEVEN VOICES
THIS SAXOPHONE SPITS FIRE IN SEVEN LANGUAGES
THIS SAXOPHONE NEUTRALIZES POISON
THIS SAXOPHONE TURNS SWORDS INTO OTHER SAXOPHONES
THIS SAXOPHONE IS A LION NOT A LAMB
THIS SAXOPHONE TURNS WATER INTO WINE
THIS SAXOPHONE TURNS OIL BACK INTO DINOSAURS
THIS SAXOPHONE IS TUNED IN TO ANTI-AUTHORITARIAN FREQUENCIES
THIS SAXOPHONE IS A COMPLETE AND TOTAL REPUDIATION OF ALL HIS LIES
THIS SAXOPHONE IS A WAR CRY FOR INDESTRUCTIBLE LIFE
THIS SAXOPHONE SEPARATES A SEA OF REEDS
THIS SAXOPHONE IS THE DARLING OF THE UNDERGROUND
THIS SAXOPHONE IS THE ESOPHAGUS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
THIS SAXOPHONE BLOWS SWEET DEFIANCE
THIS SAXOPHONE IS POSSESSED BY THUNDER
THIS SAXOPHONE FLIES LIKE A FALCON AND STINGS LIKE A SCORPION
THIS SAXOPHONE IS THE SOUND BETWEEN SOUNDS
THIS SAXOPHONE FLIPS THE SWITCH
THIS SAXOPHONE IS TOTALLY LIT
THIS SAXOPHONE CURSES AND SPITS
THIS SAXOPHONE IS THE TINCTURE OF RESISTANCE
THIS SAXOPHONE IS AN EARTHQUAKE AND A MONSOON
THIS SAXOPHONE FLOWERS IN THE CRACKED PAVEMENT OF CORRUPTION
THIS SAXOPHONE'S OTHER SAXOPHONE IS A BROOMSTICK
THIS SAXOPHONE IS AN ENERGY, NOT AN INSTRUMENT
Bruce Channel, third from right, with some band he met in England in 1962
Fifty five years ago this month, when I was in third grade, I got the measles. That's not a painful memory, I fact the main things I remember about it is the fact that I got to miss a week of school and that I became obsessed with my little transistor radio, which I believe I'd received as a Christmas gift a couple of months before.
No, it wasn't the radio itself, which was about the size of an iPhone, but thicker. It was the strange wild sounds that came out of it at night.
I wanted to know more about these singers who promised a mysterious, magical -- and sometimes a little dangerous world. I wanted to hear what other songs they'd sung and the musicians who'd inspired them, to find out where they came from. I might have been sick in bed with the lights out, but every night there was a party in my head coming in through that little ear plug attached to my radio
That was the week I became obsessed by rock 'n' roll.
And, as anyone familiar with this blog knows, that's an obsession that has lasted a lifetime. Well after the measles left me, the rock 'n' roll fever persisted.
A decade later when I first heard The Velvet Underground's "Rock n' Roll," about a little girl named Jenny who discovered a New York station and her life was saved by rock 'n' roll, I completely identified with her -- though I would have been eight years old and mine was an Oklahoma City station, WKY.
I don't know the exact date of my measles bout, but I remember the song that was number one on WKY at the time. It was "Hey Baby" by Bruce Channel, who was backed up by a harmonica player named Delbert McClinton. I can't find any WKY Top 50 (yes, 50, not 40!) lists, but according to Billboard, that song was number one nationally for three weeks beginning March 10, 1962.
Here's that song, followed by a handful of others that shaped the soul of a young, measles-stricken rocker in March of 1962.
Here's another tune that was popular in March, 1962, "Let Me In" by The Sensations. I could identify with what the singer, Yvonne Baker, was saying. I could hear the music, I could hear the party. And I demanded to be let in!
Sue Thompson was already pushing 40 when she had this hit, but she still sounded cool and sexy beyond words to my young ears
Speaking of Lou Reed, this song still is my favorite "Walk on the Wild Side."
Back then I thought the Peppermint Lounge in New York had to be the coolest place in the world thanks to Joey Dee.
I still get chills when I hear this song late at night, just like the first time I heard it on my transistor radio that week in 1962. The organ solo is downright other-dimensional!
Finally, don't you be a good neighbor to her. Or I'll send you a love letter. Straight from my heart
