Sunday, July 30, 2023 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Mop Mop by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
Muck Muck by Yochanan
Dark and Swirling World by City of My Death
After Party by Alien Space Kitchen
It Should've Been Me by Ray Charles
Golden Shower Of Hits (Jerks On 45) by Circle Jerks
Sinead on stage at Lollapalooza, July 1995, Denver Photo by
Steve Terrell
I'm still pretty shook about the death of Sinead O'Connor.
As I wrote on social media yesterday, I got to see her in person twice --
once at Lollapalooza 1995 in Denver and ten a few years later when she opened
for The Chieftains at Red Rocks. Both shows fantastic.
I'd like to share a couple of things I've written about the lady back in the
1990s.
Let's start with an excerpt from an old music column published not long after
her infamous final appearance on Saturday Night Live and subsequent experience
being booed off the stage at a star-studded Bob Dylan 30th
Anniversary Concert Celebration in October 1992.
From Terrell’s Tune-up, Santa Fe New Mexican, 10-30-92
O'Connor recently tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night
Live , causing one of the biggest public backlashes against a rock singer
since John Lennon declared The Beatles bigger than Jesus.
... Public reaction was swift and predictable. Even Madonna got in on the
act, saying O'Comnnor's action was tasteless ...
… But the supreme irony was when O’Connor was booed at the recent Bob Dylan
tribute concert.
Those self-righteous Dylan fans apparently don’t remember their hero
getting booed at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival by prissy folkies who didn’t
like the fact that Dylan had taken up the electric guitar.
Kris Kristofferson showed what he was made of when he comforted O’Connor on
stage.
My question is why didn’t Dylan himself say anything to the crowd?
Did the great one not want to offend his pay-per-view television
audience?
[concerning her Saturday Night Live controversy}] a…one thing you’ve got to
admit, is that O’Connor illustrated the long dormant potential for
excitement in live television.
She illustrated that point better than anyone since Jack Ruby. …
And yes, after reading about Kristofferson coming out on stage to comfort
Sinead, my regard for Kris, which already was tremendous, tripled.
Just a few years later I saw Sinead in person at Lollapalooza 1995 in Denver.
I was there mostlyb for Sonic Youth and Beck, but Sinead's performance was the
biggest surprise for me:
From "No Love Lost for Courtney," Santa Fe New Mexican, 7-30-95
One of the most intriguing aspects of this Lollapalooza traveling rock
festival line-up was that it featured two women who each have been considered
The Wicked Witch of Rock ‘n’ Roll: Courtney Love and Sinead O’Connor. …
You know the attributes of Wicked Witch. Her evil spells cause the morals of
the nation’s youth to decline. Sometimes they lead male rockers to stray. They
cause crops to fail and cattle to die.
The position of Wicked Witch was first assumed by Yoko Ono in the late 1960s,
though I suppose some could argue that the concept had its origins with
Marianne Faith (the naked girl at The Rolling Stones’ drug bust!)
At the beginning of this decade, the witch’s proverbial broom had been passed
to O’Connor.
When her record company wanted to market her sexuality, she angrily shaved her
head – just like one of them Manson girls! She refused to have “The Star
Spangled Banner” played before one of her shows. She tore up a picture of the
pope right there on national TV.
After that, Sinead seemed to play fade away, while a new witch – who was even
more wicked arose – Courtney Love …
[I go on to bash Courtney’s predictable shtick at Lollapalooza before
getting back to Sinead]
… In her long white dress and her newly grown hair, the diminutive singer
looked more like a Celtic goddess than an angry, unsmiling being she once had
been. And she sang as beautifully as she looked.
No, O’Connor hasn’t become Little Mary Sunshine. Some of her rage remains, as
apparent in her rap song that compares her native Ireland with an abused
child. [“Famine” from her then-latest album Universal Mother]
And she’s still got guts. It took courage to do a pretty a capella song for a
crowd more attune with The Jesus Lizard and Sonic Youth. But she pulled it
off. [I can’t swear to this, but that song might have been "Tiny Grief Song,"
which is on Universal Mother.]
In short, a listener felt uplifted after O’Connor’s performance. One can only
hope Courtney caught a couple of O’Connor’s sets [on the tour]. She could
learn a lot
Here is my favorite song that Sinead performed on Lollapalooza that day. This is a more recent version:
Thank YOU, Sinead!
This is a photo of a mural in Dublin I saw a few years ago.
On this day, July 26 in 1951, Walt Disney's Alice in Wonderland, Walt's feature
length animated adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
and Through the Looking Glass, premiered in London.
The film would open in New York two days later and start playing in theaters
around the rest of the country in September. So, unless you're British, I
guess today would be Alice in Wonderland's UN-birthday.
Let's celebrate by going down the rabbit hole and playing some Alice-related songs, starting with this sappy little 1963 schlock-rock hit from Neil Sedaka:
Of course, I prefer this 1954 R&B ode to one of the most beloved characters in Alice, "Tweedle Dee." (The song mentions his brother "Tweedle Dum," as well as another Disney character, Jimminy Cricket:
Five decades later, Bob Dylan would honor both brothers with "Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum." Here we learn the sad and bitter fate of the two ("Tweedle-Dee Dee is a lowdown, sorry old man / Tweedle-Dee Dum, he'll stab you where you stand") Here's the song from Dylan's 2001 album Love & Theft:
Of course if you want to know the best-known Alice song you'll have to go ask Grace, Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane, that is. Here's a worthy cover version of that from another San Francisco-area band, Shannon & The Clams, who recorded it in 2012.
So happy (un)birthday, Alice. You're always welcome on this blog, because, as they say, we're all mad here!
Sunday, July 23, 2023 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Bigger and Better by The Fleshtones
Cherry Bomb by L7 & Joan Jett
Motorbike by The Minks
Loco by The Wheels
Psychedelic Used Car Lot Blues by Southbound Freeway
Last week, on July 14, 2023, Roosevelt "Rosey" Grier -- former NFL star,
preacher, actor, author, RFK bodyguard and needlepoint master -- turned 91
years old.
Happy belated birthday Rosey!
And, oh yeah, this is a music blog, so I should also add "soul singer" to
Rosey's resume. In fact, being far more into rock 'n' roll than sports, I
first became aware of this giant of a man when I saw him on Shindig and other
TV shows in the mid 60s.
Grier was born in Cuthbert, Georgia in 1932. Right after that fact, Wikipedia
lists his height at 6'5" and his weight at 284. I assume that wasn't his
height and weight at birth.
After playing track and football at Penn State University, Grier was drafted
to play defensive tackle for the New York Giants. After eight seasons he was
traded to the Los Angeles Rams. Grier and other members of the Rams' defensive
line -- Lamar Lundy, Merlin Olsen and Deacon Jones -- became known as "The
Fearsome Foursome."
But this wasn't Grier's first splash in the world of music. In fact, he'd been
recording singles since 1959 and cut his first album in 1964. This is his
first single, a cover of a doo-wop classic made famous a few years earlier by
The Moonglows:
I also remember seeing Rosey do this song, which is better known by its
version by Johnny Cash
Finally, I'll leave you with this soul classic, originally recorded by Ben E. King (and written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, based on an Italian pop song, "Uno dei Tanti"). This also is from that famous Shindig episode.
