A little more than four years ago, I did a Wacky Wednesday post of music videos by actual cults -- including music from The Children of God, Scientology, the Hare Krishnas and The Christ Family -- a group I'd encountered before in Santa Fe in the early '80s. (However, within a few months of that post, The Christ Family pulled all their videos off YouTube, apparently forever.)
Here's the sequel to that post.
Let's start with something from a 1973 album by Rev. Jimmy Jones' Peoples Temple Choir. This was four years before they drank the not-proverbial Kool-Aid,
Here's a happy little tune called "Gloomy Sunday" from Church of Satan Founder Anton LaVey
California in the '70s must have been a magical place. The Source Family, led by a Sunset Strip health-food restaurant owner called Father Yod (James E. Baker), was the subject of a fascinating 2012 documentary. This guru had his own sanctified psychedelic band called Ya Ho Wha 13. They sounded like this:
Anyone remember Synanon? This was a group founded by Charles E. Dederich in Santa Monica in the late '50s as a drug rehab clinic. But it grew into a cult that became known for violent retribution against critics.
In 1979 Mr. Dederich pleaded no contest to a charge of conspiracy to murder a Los Angeles lawyer by placing a rattlesnake in his mailbox, after the lawyer won a $300,000 suit against Synanon.
(That lawyer, Paul Morantz, was representing former Synanon members and relatives of members who said they were being held in Synanon against their will. The snake bit Morantz, who was hospitalized for six days.)
But in 1962, years before that unpleasantness with the snake, etc., jazz guitarist Joe Pass recorded an album featuring fellow musician patients at Synanon being treated for heroin addiction. Here's a track from that album, Sounds of Synanon.
Sunday, April 14, 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
Back from the Shadows Again by Firesign Theatre
Devil Dance by The A-Bones
I'm So Tired (Of Living in the City) by Mystery Lights
Garbageman by William Shatner
All Women are Bad by The Cramps
Mad Man Blues by John Lee Hooker & George Thorogood
She's a Snake by Deadbolt
Joe Strummer's Grave by Wild Billy Childish & The Musicians of the British Empire
I'm Out of Control by The Milkshakes
My Baby Knows by The Cavemen
Silhouettes by Andy Griffith
Typical Day by Cedric Burnside
Night and Fog by Mudhoney
I Walked All Night by The Embers
Weimer Vending Machine / Priest? by The Mekons
Spaced by The Polkaholics
Ballad of The Unknown Instructors by The Unknown Instructors
They're Red Hot (Hot Tamales) by Johnny Shines
Earn Your Heaven / Forgiveness Through Pain by The Yawpers
Black Temptation / Digging My Grave by The Flesh Eaters
Bloodsucking Freaks by The Bulemics
Have You Ever Spent the Night in Jail by T. Tex Edwards & The Saddletramps
Sacrifice/Let There Be Peace by Bob Mould
The Old Dope Peddler by Tom Lehrer
Dirty Mother For You (Don't You Know) by Henry Townsend & Roosevelt Sykes
I Want to Be at The Meeting by Leo "Bud" Welch
Three Feet Under by Eric Ambel & Roscoe's Game
Dying Breed by Lonesome Bob
Rio by Mike Nesmith CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Sunday, April 14, 2019 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 8 am to 10 am Sundays Mountain Time Substitute Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org Here's the playlist :
Gospel Train by Silver Leaf Quartet
Memphis Yodel by Jimmie Rodgers
Up Above My Head by Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Pretty Polly by The Dead Brothers
High Water Everywhere by Taj Mahal
Philadelphia Lawyer by The Maddox Brothers & Rose
I'm Just an Ordinary Man by Henry Townsend
Jesus is on the Mainline by Leo "Bud" Welch
The Indian Tom Tom by Big Chief Henry's Indian String Band
LSD by T. Tex Edwards & Out on Parole
Canned Heat Blues by Sloppy Henry
Atlanta Bound by Gene Autry
On the Way Downtown by Peter Case
Fixin' to Die Blues by Bukka White
Sissy Man Blues by Kokomo Arnold
With Her Head Tucked Underneath Her Arm by Jim Kweskin
My Rose Marie (A Soldier's Tale) by Stan Ridgway
Pigfork Jamboree by The Imperial Rooster RUINATION DAY SET
April the 14th by Gillian Welch
Booth Killed Lincoln by Cisco Houston
God Moves on the Water by Blind Willie Johnson
Ruination Day Part 2 by Gillian Welch
The Great Dust Storm by Woody Guthrie
That's My Rabbit, My Dog Caught It by The Walters Famiy
Moanin' the Blues by Allen Shaw
Snake Farm by Ray Wylie Hubbard
Bloody Mary Morning by Willie Nelson
The Ballad of Thunder Road by Robert Mitchum
Last Train to Sanesville by Martha Fields
Hobo Bill's Last Ride by Jason Ringenberg
Who Needs This Man by Dale Watson
Tell the King the Killer's Here by Ronny Elliott
Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
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A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican April 12, 2018
One of my surprise favorite albums of the past few years was Boy in the Well by a trio of Colorado roots rockers called The Yawpers. I’d heard this group’s music several times, even saw them do a live set at the annual Bloodshot Records party at the Yard Dog Gallery in Austin a year or two before the album came out. I’d considered their music OK — tolerable, interesting in spots, but nothing that really knocked my socks off.
But then sometime in the late summer of 2017, I heard a couple of cuts from Boy in the Well, and something clicked. I went back and listened to the whole album, a collection of songs that told a strange story of the bastard son of an American soldier and French farm girl in World War I.
As I wrote in this column back then, I found traces of the Legendary Shack Shakers, the Gun Club, and ZZ Top. (I could list more possible audible ingredients: Mudhoney? Wilco? The James Gang?) In any case, I never did find those socks I’d been wearing that day.
So when the new Yawpers album, Human Question, sprang forth, I was looking forward to it, and just a little afraid I would be disappointed. That fear was unjustified. If anything, I like the new one even more than Boy in the Well.
Unlike their previous album, this is no concept album with a storyline to stick to, though at least a couple of cuts seem to be dealing with singer and chief Yawpers songwriter Nate Cook’s divorce. It’s just good, raw, blues-infused music. It grabbed me and refused to let go in the opening seconds of the locomotive onslaught of “Child of Mercy,” which deals with the putrid pangs of romantic collapse. “… a child of mercy, all the shades are drawn/Flies on the wall and all the furniture’s gone,” Cook sings.
This is followed by an even more brutal romp, “Dancing on My Knees,” which sounds like it came from the border of proto-metal and garage rock. Cook spits, “In the struggle since the altar/the world has taken shape/I’ve found the words I’m looking for but they came a little late .../I’m on to greener pastures/but my neck is in the weeds/I’ve taken all the medicine, but I’ve still got your disease.”
Things get weird in the playful, psychedelic-leaning “Earn Your Heaven.” Here, at the end of a crazed, funky wah-wah guitar solo, Cook shouts — for reasons that escape me — “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the crucifixion Harry Connick Jr.!” I’m not sure whether poor Harry is the one being crucified or if he’s just providing a musical backdrop for the spectacle.
While I mostly like the Yawper’s rowdier tunes, there are a handful of slower ones that are hard-hitting. One is the soul-soaked “Carry Me,” the type of song you could imagine being covered by Solomon Burke. It starts off quietly and builds to thunder. Somewhere toward the end of that road, there’s a heartbreaking sax solo as Cook screams in the background.
This song is followed by one of the craziest rockers on the record, “Forgiveness Through Pain,” featuring Cook’s rapid-fire vocals, distorted guitar noise from lead guitarist Jesse Parmet, and Alex Koshak’s bloodthirsty drums.
Between Human Question, the Flesh Eaters’ reunion (keep reading), and the latest Mekons record (yes, I’m still slobbering over Deserted), I’d have to say rock ’n’ roll is off to a great start this year.
Now I think I’d better go buy some new socks. Also recommended:
* I Used to Be Pretty by The Flesh Eaters. Here’s a band that rose up during the pioneer days of the great LA punk rock explosion of the early 1980s, a supergroup, really, that in some incarnations would include a who’s who of Southern California punk and roots rock.
The Flesh Eaters had a revolving door of a lineup through the years, but now frontman Chris Desjardins (known as “Chris D,” no relation to Chuck) is back with the same basic band that recorded the critically acclaimed, but still relatively obscure A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die, the group’s second album, released in the year of our Lord, 1981. Players include members of X (the band, not the brand) John Doe (bass) and D.J. Bonebrake (playing marimbas here); Dave Alvin (guitar) and Bill Bateman (drums) of The Blasters, and Steve Berlin of both Los Lobos and The Blasters (sax). Desjardins’ ex-wife and longtime Flesh Eater Julie Christensen also lends some vocals here.
So, yes, it’s a supergroup. And fittingly, the album is downright super. Desjardins — whose voice sounds as if he’s just woken up from a nightmare — and his cronies capture the spirit of the unique bluesy, noirish sounds they were making back at the dawn of the Reagan years. It’s a little more polished than A Minute to Pray, but still powerful and a little bit frightening.
There are some cover songs, including tunes we’ve previously heard by the likes of the Gun Club (another LA band frequently compared to The Flesh Eaters), The Sonics, and Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac. And there are re-recordings of a few old Flesh Eaters songs, including “Miss Muerte” and “Pony Dress.”
The best songs here are the ones where Desjardins and band get spooky and slinky like they do on “House Amid the Thickets,” where the combination of Alvin’s hard-knuckle blues guitar and Bonebrake’s marimba brings back memories of Frank Zappa’s Ruth Underwood period, and “The Youngest Profession,” on which Desjardins commands “Go crazy!” and both Alvin and Berlin do just that.
And speaking of spooky, the 13-minute “Ghost Cave Lament” is a grand finale and an instant epic. You will believe that flesh has been eaten in that cave.
Forty years ago today, His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular -- aka, the uncrowned king of Scotland -- was forced to flee from his native Uganda and give up the power he enjoyed and abused for nearly a decade.
Encyclopedia Britannica said of Amin, "He was noted for his abrupt changes of mood, from buffoonery to shrewdness, from gentleness to tyranny. He was often extreme in his nationalism."
Good thing that could never happen here ...
Encyclopedia Britannica also says, "Amin came to be known as the “Butcher of Uganda” for his brutality, and it is believed that some 300,000 people were killed and countless others tortured during his presidency."
By late 1978, the Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas etc. had made the stupid mistake of invading neighboring Tanzania. That country launched a counter attack that eventually drove him out of the country. Amin escaped first to Libya, then eventually he settled in Saudi Arabia.
He died and went to Hell in 2003.
At least he left behind some fine songs in his "honor."
