Sunday, February 10, 2019 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
Don't Try It by The Devil Dogs
One the One by Lonesome Shack
Love Handle by Jon Spencer
Cut Me Down by The Ar-Kaics
Last Peace by The Oh Sees
Pero te Amo (But I Love You) by Reverend Beat-Man with Izobel Garcia
Don't Run, We're Your Friends by The Scaners
Barrelhouse Queen by J.D. Hangover
Greasy Moves by Oh! Gunquit
Into the Sun / The Galaxy Explodes by The Mekons
Healy Wavin' by Mekons 77
The Great Escape by Full Speed Veronica
Who Controls the Weather by Alien Space Kitchen
Sharkey's Night by Laurie Anderson
All Men Are Liars by Nick Lowe
Love for Higher by Dirty Fences
Rhesus Christ by The Fezz
Old n Cold by A Pony Named Olga
Hide & Seek by St. Louis & The Walking Dead
Walk in the Light (Straight Mix) by King Shark
Beer, Broads and Brats by The Polkaholics
Punk Rock Girl by Philly Boy Roy
It's All Right / Sentimental Reasons by Sam Cooke
All I Wanna Do by The War & Treaty
Last Train to Sanesville by Martha Fields
Deerslayer by DBUK
Sand by OP8 CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Last week in Terrell's Tune-Up I reviewed the new punk-rock tribute to Dr. Demento, which contains not one, but versions of the Demento classic "Shaving Cream" by the late, great Benny Bell. East Coast kiddy-show host Uncle Floyd Vivino does both versions -- one with "punk rock lyrics," the other with original lyrics.
In case you are not aware of this masterpiece, here's the 1946 original:
But Bell and Uncle Floyd aren't the only ones to ever sing "Shaving Cream." And I'm not talking about Phil Winston aka Paul Wynn, who actually supplied the vocals on Bell's original. This song's been around the world.
It popped up in The Netherlands in 1969 by a band called The Cats.
The song gained a following in Jamaica, where in the '70s it was recorded by a group called The Fabulous Five. Then, in the late '80s, a band called The Jollys put the mento in Demento with this version.
American folk monster Dave Van Ronk did a funny take on this funny song. (You gotta listen til the very end)
Taking Van Ronk's interpretation a few levels beyond, a few years ago The Melvin grabbed the shaving cream and blew it to Smithereens.
Sunday, February 3, 2019 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
Fishheads by Osaka Popstar
Do Yourself In by Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears
Louie Louie by Iggy Pop
Haunted by The Sloths
Down i Flames by Alien Space Kitchen
Snake Drive by R.L. Burnside & The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Ain't Gonna Take No Mess by Cedric Burnside
Past the Ditch by Lonesome Shack
Telephone Man by Quintron & Miss Pussycat
10 Years Gone: R.I.P. Lux
Bend Over, I'll Drive by The Cramps
Garbage Man by William Shatner
Bikini Girls With Machine Guns by The Cramps
The Wedding Dice by The Flesh Eaters
The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle by Lolita No. 18
Biff Bang Pow by Jake Starr & The Delicious Fullness
The Swamp by Slocks
Buddy, Bopper and Ritchie: 60 Years Gone
(Winter Dance Party Commercial)
Reminiscing by Buddy Holly
Monkey Song (You Made a Monkey Out of Me) by The Big Bopper
We Belong Together by Ritchie Valens
Chantilly Lace by Jerry Lee Lewis
Changing All Those Changes by Buddy Holly
Framed by Los Lobos
La Bamba by Freddy Fender
Framed by Los Lobos
Hi-Tone by Ritchie Valens
True Love Ways by The Mavericks
White Lightning by The Waco Brothers
Peggy Sue by Lou Reed
Peggy Sue Got Married by Buddy Holly
Big Bopper's Wedding by The Big Bopper
Words of Love by The Beatles
Midnight Shift by Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen
Oooh! My Head by Ritchie Valens
Crazy Blues by The Big Bopper
Learning the Game by Waylon Jennings & Mark Knopfler
La Bamba by The Plugz CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican Feb. 1, 2018
I’m a longtime fan of Barret Hansen, aka Dr. Demento, even though I never figured out what the difference between a “dementoid” and a “dementite” is, or which one applies to me.
So it’s probably not a huge surprise to learn that I’m also a fan of Dr. Demento Covered in Punk, a new tribute album featuring many of the oddball ditties as well as many of the artists who graced — or disgraced — his wacky weekly radio show.
Hansen is not a practicing physician. And he’s not a Ph.D., though he does have a master’s degree in ethnomusicology from the University of California, Los Angeles. He’s written serious pieces about music for serious publications, including Downbeat and Rolling Stone — and no, not about the history of fart jokes in 20th-century song. Despite his goofball persona, the guy knows his stuff when it comes to music.
According to song and legend, Dr. Demento earned his nickname back in the early ’70s when another DJ called him “demented” for playing the black-humor rockabilly classic “Transfusion” by Nervous Norvus on his show.
Embracing his inner weirdness — and frequently his inner corniness — the young doctor created a unique format that included novelty records old and new, song parodies, spoken-word comedy, outsider music, and, by the mid-’70s, a good smattering of punk rock.
On an October 1976 show that also included tracks by Spike Jones, Bobby “Boris” Pickett (but not The Monster Mash), The Mothers of Invention, Fats Waller, and Captain Beefheart, Demento played “Beat on the Brat” by The Ramones for the first time. He soon began playing the likes of The Sex Pistols, Devo, The Misfits, The Cramps, The Dead Kennedys, The Dead Milkmen, and others.
Demento’s syndicated show was one of the few national broadcast outlets that would play anything by many of these acts, one of the few safe harbors for punks in the putrid sea of commercial radio.
“It’s often been said that punk rock began as a reaction to the bloated corporate rock scene that had taken hold in the 1970s,” Hansen says between songs on Covered in Punk. “And you could say the same about the Dr. Demento Show as well. The Ramones wanted to bring back the youthful spirit of fun that had gone missing from the airwaves. And so did I.”
Covered in Punk is like an extended Dr. Demento radio show, with versions of his familiar opening and closing themes, celebrity promos — “Hi, I’m Tom Lehrer and you’re lucky enough to be listening to The Dr. Demento Show” — and Demento himself doing intros and outros after every couple of songs or so.
Some of the best songs here include “Surfin’ Bird,” covered by that “wascally wabbit” Nobunny (who also does a decent cover of “Monster,” originally performed by B-52s strongman Fred Schneider); Roky Erickson’s “Creature With the Atom Brain,” sung here by Quintron & Miss Pussycat; Balzac, a Japanese band, covering “Rat Fink,” an Allan Sherman tune; Los Straitjackets covering the definitive Alfred E. Newman instrumental “It’s a Gas” (which originally was available on a flexi-disc insert in an issue of Mad magazine); and The Meatmen doing Frank Zappa’s “My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama.”
I am not a huge fan of Weird Al Yankovic, the song parodist who is Dr. Demento’s most famous discovery. But I have to admit that I totally love his faithful, joyful cover of The Ramones’ “Beat on the Brat.” I’m glad he didn’t turn the song into some crappy parody. Eat on the Bratwurst? Build a Wall with Slats?
And three songs that I consider the holy trinity of Dementoland are represented here. The Bizarro World anthem “Fish Heads” — originally by a group called Barnes and Barnes (Billy Mumy, who played Will Robinson in TV’s Lost in Space was one of the Barneses, but I’m not sure which) — gets punked up by the band Osaka Popstar. (Guitarist John Cafiero also produced this tribute album.) The comically overwrought “Dead Puppies” also gets a punk-rock makeover by James Kochalka Superstar, a band led by comic-book artist Kochalka.
And “Shaving Cream,” Borscht-belter Benny Bell’s 1946 masterpiece, gets not one but two versions on this collection, both by East Coast kiddy-show host Uncle Floyd Vivino. The first has updated, punk-related lyrics (the singer steps in a pile of ... shaving cream in a mosh pit, etc.) while the reprise has the original Bell lyrics. Both are done as a thunderous waltz, featuring Vivino’s straight-outta-Shakey’s Pizza rinky-tinky piano.
But the greatest track on Covered in Punk is “Garbage Man,” sung by the grand master of the Golden Throats, Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner. Shatner bellows, growls, and over-emotes the lyrics over a fuzzy Peter Gunn guitar. “Do you understand? I’m the garbage man!!” It’s true that Shatner’s “musical career” was funnier back when he didn’t understand that people were laughing at his versions of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.” But even though he’s in on the joke these days, he’s still Shatner. It’s so crazy, it’s magical.
It would be a huge exaggeration to call Dr. Demento a major figure in the punk-rock history. But show me a punk rocker who doesn’t like “Shaving Cream” or “Fish Heads” or “Dead Puppies,” and I’ll show you a humorless stiff who shouldn’t be allowed around other people.
Here are a buncha the songs from Covered in Punk
Here's Roky Erickson's "Creature With the Atom Brain."
There's a monster in Nobunny's rabbit mask
Weird Al does The Ramones
In the port of Amsterdam, where the sailors all meet, there's a sailor who eats only fish heads and tails ...
But there is not, nor will there ever be a singer as spectacular as Shatner!
Once again, it's the birthday of Alan Lomax, the great ethnomusicologist whose field recordings, especially those he did in the American South, helped change our understanding of American music. He was born on this day in Austin, Texas in 1915.
Lomax, following in the footsteps of his father, John Lomax, was a musicologist who, beginning in the 1930s, traveled through the South -- to plantations, prisons, backwood churches, Louisana fai do-dos -- recording thousands of wild, raw songs and stories of the people that you didn't hear on the radio. John and Alan Lomax helped establish the Library of Congress’ Archive of American Folk Song. Through the years Alan Lomax would cross paths with some of the most revered names in folk, blues, jazz and hillbilly music. He recorded McKinley Morganfield -- later to become known as Muddy Waters -- recording him playing acoustic blues while he was still living on Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi. He was the first to record Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie. He also did sessions with Jelly Roll Morton, Reverend Gary Davis, Big Bill Broonzy and Missisippi Fred McDowell.
So here's another smattering of Lomax recordings that help remind us of the richness of American folk music -- as performed by the folks.
Here's some Dock Boggs, recorded in 1966
Here's Jelly Roll Morton discussing and demonstrating the music of Mardi Gras Indians in 1938.
A gospel tune from Mississippi Fred McDowell
A man called Muddy ...
And here's some Cajun fiddling from the great Dennis McGee with Sady Courville
I may be going out on a limb here, but I do believe this spruced-up weirdness could turn out to be one of my most poplar Big Enchilada episodes ever. We'll get down to the roots of rock 'n' roll with a little rockabilly from Andy Anderson (a former New Mexico resident!) and branch out into some crazy garage-rock sounds and a few nutty novelty tunes. So no more acorny jokes, let's get on with the music!
And remember, The Big Enchilada is officially listed in the iTunes store. So go subscribe, if you haven't already (and gimme a good rating and review if you're so inclined.) Thanks.
Sunday, January 27, 2019 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
Diddy Wah Diddy by Ty Segal Band
Monster by Nobunny
She's Obsessed With Herself by The Ar-Kaics
Valium Queen by The Vagoos
I'll Take Care of You by Reverend Beat-Man & Izobel Garcia
Angel Baby by Rosie & The Originals
House Amid the Thickets by The Flesh Eaters
Don't Freak Me Out by The Darts
Acid Books by The Callas with Lee Ranaldo
Ride That Train by The Oblivians
Archive from 1959 by The Buff Medways
Don't Want You Either by The Mal Thursday Quintet
Garbagehead by Eric Ambel
Baby Please Don't Go by Them
We're All Water by Yoko Ono & Elephant's Memory
Duck for the Oyster by Malcolm McLaren
Touch and Go by The Fleshtones
Night and Fog by Mudhoney
My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama by The Meatmen
Orange County Lumber Truck by Frank Zappa
Thomas Dorsey by Johnny Dowd
Hillbilly Bop by Martha Fields
Der Stampfer by Dirk Geil
What Makes You Think You're the One by Twilight Singers
Keep Movin' by Freddie Cannon & The Gears
Dirty Water Land by Salty Pajamas
Headstrong by Phil Hayes & The Trees
The Man from Another Time by Seasick Steve
Deerslayer by DBUK
(Out on the Street) Junk is Still King by Gary Heffern CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
