THROWBACK THURSDAY: The Glory of Doo Wop

About a week ago I got in a discussion on Facebook with my friend Max about the magic of doo wop. I sent him a link to an old piece I wrote in 1994 about meeting Gaynel Hodge in Phoenix the night before that year's Lollapalooza (re-published on this blog a mere 17 years ago). 

Afterwards I remembered that just a few months before encountering Gaynel, I'd written a Terrell's Tune-up column about a wonderful Rhino Records box set that collected four CDs worth worth of doo wop classics.

So what the heck? Here's that column, which hasn't been published since its original appearance in the Santa Fe New Mexican's Pasatiempo. I'll insert a few videos and links.

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
May 27, 1994

Like most folks my age, I first became cognizant of doo wop music in the late 1960s through such comedy groups as Sha Na Na and Frank Zappa's Ruben and The Jets.

In other words, for years, doo wop seemed like a quaint joke. Ram a lama ding dong. You, know, stuff like that.

But one night last winter I was driving alone on a rainy night, listening, for reasons I don't remember, to an oldies station, which happened to play “I Only Have Eyes for You” by The Flamingos.

There's a strumming of three guitar chords, followed by the steady beat of a piano. Singer Tommy Hunt comes in singing effortlessly,  My love must be a kind of blind love/I can't see anyone but you , as if he's got to justify what he has to say.

Then the group responds with unintelligible, almost discordant syllables, like some kind of eerie voodoo chant. All this before Hunt starts the first verse, invoking celestial bodies.

By the end of the song, all five Flamingos are gushing the beautiful melody, the falsetto going nuts as if possessed by the loa  of high register. It almost seems that the group is having the aural equivalent of a simultaneous orgasm, right there in the echo chamber.

But way before the song got to this point on that rainy Santa Fe night, I was transported into the past, reliving a buried memory of being a 5-year-old kid, listening to a radio late at night to a sound that was alluring and forbidding at the same time, just like Lou Reed's Jenny.

Or just like Paul Simon's “Rene and Georgette Magritte”:

The Penguins, The Moonglows, The Orioles, The Five Satins/The deep, forbidden music they'd be longing for ...

And, as if by magic, just a couple of weeks later Rhino Records announced its new four-disc Doo Wop Box.  

In recent years, with all-oldies radio, recurring '50s revivals and all, much of the mystery and power has been sapped out of this strange and wonderful music.

Therefore, it is best to look at Rhino's Doo Wop Box with the eyes of Rene and Georgette, wide-eyed immigrants entering a new world, where almost every song is an adventure. Even overly familiar tunes,  “16 Candles,” “Only You,” “Earth Angel,” regain some of their magic if listened to in this spirit.

Listening to the four hours-plus of music in this collection, one realizes there are definite traits of the doo wop Universe.

Sometime it seems like a world in which every utterance, every movement is painstakingly planned, every harmony in place. But, then, before your very ears, it will seem to break down into near anarchy, a falsetto screaming like a banshee, the bass man grunting noises that seem to come from deep within the earth.  

There's an underlying religious atmosphere. Although God is rarely mentioned after The Orioles' “Crying in the Chapel.”

But there's all sorts of holy imagery here, “Earth Angel,” “The Book of Love,” “The 10 Commandments of Love,” “Devil or Angel.”

There's also evidence of nature worship. For instance, Dion asks the stars up above why it hurts to be a teen-ager in love.

Doo wop singers tend to give themselves mythic powers. They always are willing to climb the highest mountain and swim the deepest sea.

And sometimes a group almost will prove itself to be superhuman with songs that are downright transcendental.

There's  “My True Story” by a Brooklyn group called The Jive Five. The sad little love story of Earl and Sue might seem lethally corny under any other context. But, when Eugene Pitts wails,  “And you will cry cryyyyyyy cryyyyyyyyy ...” any listener who ever has had his heart ripped out will know this is the real thing.

Then there's “Since I Don't Have You” by The Skyliners, a white group from Pittsburgh. Forget about Axl Rose's limp cover. He's outgunned by Jimmy Beaumont who by the end of the song shouts “You-ooh! You-oooh! You-oooooh!”  like a wounded accuser while Janet Vogel sings a near aria like a siren of the cosmos in the background. [Note from 2021: I'm not sure why The Skyliners, in this 1959 TV appearance are dressed up like they're serenading Marshal Dillon and Miss Kitty at the Longbranch Saloon!]

Despite some self-conscious goofery here and there, the most appealing thing about doo wop is its sincerity. When Johnny Maestro (now there's a rock 'n' roll moniker!) of The Crests sings, “You are the prettiest, loveliest girl I've ever seen,” to his 16-year-old birthday girl, you know he means every word. And because of the forceful way he sings it, a listener will believe Maestro will feel that way about his sweetie for the rest of his life.  

Sometimes simple sincerity seems magical in a jaded world.

xxx

Here's Johnny Maestro & The Crests with their big hit. No Matt Gaetz jokes, please.

Don't worry, Ruben. I still love you

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: Top Eight of 2019 (so far)

The clocks have caught up with me, folks, it’s really time to go. This is my last Terrell’s Tune-up. After more than 32 years at The New Mexican, I’m officially retiring as of Nov. 22.

No, this column isn’t going to be a self-congratulatory walk down Memory Lane, recounting more than 30 years of writing this golden column.

Besides, I don’t want to write a tearful “farewell” column when I’ll probably resume writing music commentary in some form for Pasatiempo in a few months, and I don’t want to have to write a “How Can You Miss Me When I Won’t Go Away” column in the near future. (Those who like my weird tastes in music can still listen to Terrell’s Sound World, 10 p.m. Sundays on KSFR and my monthly Big Enchilada podcast at bigenchiladapodcast.com.)

But I’ve got some unfinished business here. I’m not going to be around at the end of the year, so I won’t be around to do my annual Top 10 album list. Even knowing I was retiring, I’d compulsively been compiling my favorite albums of this year. I hadn’t quite finished, so here are my Top 8 albums of (most of) 2019.

* Deserted by The Mekons (Bloodshot). This is the best album by this 40-plus-year-old band in more than a decade. It’s wild, somewhat cryptic, beautiful in spots — and it rocks like folks their age (or my age) aren’t supposed to rock. The first song, “Lawrence of California,” sounds like a lunatic’s call to arms, conjuring a last-gasp proclamation by a ragtag army of fanatics about to be mowed down. I’m also enthralled by the sweet, melodic, and pretty “How Many Stars?” which has deep roots in British folk music. The story is ancient, but the melody could haunt you forever.





* I Used to Be Pretty by The Flesh Eaters (Yep Roc). This band rose up during the pioneer days of the great Los Angeles punk rock explosion of the early 1980s. It’s a revolving door supergroup that in some incarnations included a who’s who of southern California punk and roots rock. The band that recorded this includes frontman Chris Desjardins, some vocals from his ex-wife and longtime Flesh Eater Julie Christensen, as well as various members of The Blasters, X, and Los Lobos. Desjardins also lends some vocals here. His 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. The band still is powerful and a little bit frightening.

* Human Question by The Yawpers (Bloodshot). This trio of Colorado roots rockers, whose album Boy in the Well became a serious obsession of mine a few years ago, continue their raw, blues-infused rock. This record 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. And the next song, an even more brutal romp called “Dancing on My Knees,” sealed the deal. While I mostly like their rowdier tunes, the soul-soaked “Carry Me,” the type of song you could imagine being covered by Solomon Burke, hits just as hard.











Country Squire by Tyler Childers (Hickman Holler). Childers plays country music, basic fiddle-and-steel country music, singing honest tales of life with a little sob in his voice and, I imagine, a little bourbon on his breath. Many of the themes in Childers’ lyrics traverse along well-trodden country themes. Yet when Childers sings, it never sounds corny.

* 3 by Nots (Goner Records). This is an all-woman punk, or maybe post-punk, band from Memphis that I discovered back in 2016 with their second album Cosmetic. Though the new album didn’t take me by surprise like their last one, the sound is no less urgent, painting a bleak, paranoid picture of 21st-century life.








* Too Much Tension! by The Mystery Lights (Wick). A budtender in Durango and fellow public-radio DJ first alerted me to this wailing, psychedelia-touched, garage-fueled band. The Lights are fronted by singer Mike Brandon and guitarist Luis Alfonso Solano, who, inspired by the first-wave garage-rock madness of the old Nuggets compilations, as well as groups like The Velvet Underground and Suicide, started playing together as teenagers. This album is just as good if not better than the group’s self-titled debut.

* Gypsy by Eilen Jewell (Signature Sounds). In recent years, this former St. John’s College student has become one of my favorite lady roots rockers. This, her latest album, is packed with many fine songs, from the swampy rocker “Crawl” to hardcore honky-tonkers like “You Cared Enough to Lie” and “These Blues,” as well as lovely acoustic numbers like “Miles to Go” (which reminds me of Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic”) and even a funny protest song, “79 Cents (The Meow Song),” which deals with sexism and economic disparity and has a catty reference to the current commander in chief.




* Gastwerk Saboteurs by Imperial Wax (Saustex). After Mark E. Smith — founder, frontman, and frothing prophet of The Fall — died last year, surviving members of his band decided to go on together. I was prepared to be cynical about this project, but I was pleasantly surprised. In fact, I’m pretty sure that if someone had played me these songs without mentioning anything about The Fall, I still would have liked them. It’s just good, aggressive, guitar-driven, punk-painted rock.




So long, gentle readers. And watch out for flying chairs!

Updated Nov. 30, 2019 AD

Here's a Spotify playlist with selections from all these albums:

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: Punk Rock 101

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
November 8, 2019

Gregg Turner and Sam Minner, courtesy Gregg Turner

I’ve found punk rock in dingy bars, at big music festivals, blasting out of beat-up old cars. I’ve found punk rock on the radio and on vinyl records, cassette tapes, CDs, iPods, and music streaming services. I’ve found punk rock on left-of-the dial radio, on music videos, and in the movies.

But one place I’ve never seen punk rock is on a university syllabus.

Until now.

Professor Gregg Turner has gotten the green light to teach an actual college class for New Mexico Highlands University called A History of Punk Rock, in the spring semester. It’s a bona fide class, with papers, tests, projects, and three college credits if you don’t flunk out like some stupid punk.

Turner is a founding member of the Southern California band the Angry Samoans, a math professor at Highlands — and a certified Terrell crony. (Full disclosure: Turner and I have been pals for about 25 years. I portrayed the groom in the video for his song “Satan’s Bride.” I’ve frequently done gigs with him at Whoo’s Donuts, where I never made any money, but I’ve been paid with untold numbers of pastries.)

When Turner first mentioned this idea to me a few months ago, I told him it sounded like a great one. But deep down I was thinking, “Yeah, wait until the administration finds out …”

So I was surprised — and more than a little impressed — when I got a written statement from Highlands President Sam Minner.

“Like other music genres, punk rock exploded onto the scene to directly challenge the status quo,” Minner wrote. “Early punk rockers like Gregg Turner and his bandmates in the Angry Samoans said — I would say yelled — ‘We’re going a different way and not accepting that music or culture has to be static.’ ”

Minner continued: “I really think that The Angry Samoans were incredibly influential in the punk movement of the ’70s. I listen to the Stones most every morning as I drive to work, but sometimes, depending on my mood, I play the Samoans and get to work ready to take on the world.”

Turner told me that he, too, was surprised when he went to talk to Minner and learned that the NMHU president had a copy of the Samoans’ classic first LP, Back From Samoa. “He’d bought it in 1983,” Turner says. “He pulled it from his shelves with all his academic books. My jaw just dropped.” Minner told him he’d played in a punk band in Missouri around the same time.

Gregg Turner with Blood-Drained Cows,
Live at CK's 2007

Samoan primer: The Angry Samoans didn’t get as big as other L.A. punk groups like X or Black Flag, or as notorious as The Germs or Fear. In fact, Turner and Samoans frontman “Metal’’ Mike Saunders, along with the rest of the band, basically were outsiders among outsiders. Starting out in Van Nuys in the late ’70s, the group soon gained a high place on the enemy list of influential Los Angeles disc jockey Rodney Bingenheimer. It seems the Angry Samoans gave Rodney no respect in their song “Get Off the Air.”

The group broke up in 1991. By this time Turner was becoming more serious about his career in academia. Turner earned his Ph.D. in math and moved to New Mexico a couple of years later to teach at the College of Santa Fe.

Back to the present: It was an appointment with Turner’s urologist, Eric Anderson, earlier this year that inspired the punk history class. Anderson told Turner he was a major fan of The Dead Kennedys and Black Flag. That started the gears turning.

The official class description notes that punk rock was a reaction to “the corporate mass-produced, self-aggrandized pop music offerings that had become standard fare by the late ’60s and the early and mid-’70s.”

The music that Turner will teach (to “explore the anger and rebellion that instigated and fueled the genre at that point in time”) isn’t going to start with The Ramones or the Sex Pistols. According to the course description, the class also will explore “incipient manifestations early on in the ’50s (Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard) and brash counter-cultural outcroppings in the ’60’s (Kinks, Sonics, Seeds, Standells, Iggy and the Stooges, MC5, etc.).”

Also, Turner says the class will “pick apart the historical, sociological, and political contexts that provided the impetus for the outrage and the vitriol indigenous to these different time periods. The evolution of ’70s punk rock to ’80s hardcore and Nirvana will also be discussed.”

And, if he can get a travel budget, Turner hopes to be able to bring in some of his old punk-rock pals from California, who include some well-known musicians he says have expressed an interest.

Turner says — and I don’t think he’s joking — that he’s thinking of requiring students to listen to lengthy sets of recordings by some of the more loathsome prog rock of that era, such as Yes and Genesis, to give the students an idea of what made punk rock necessary.

I don’t know, though. I assume Highlands has strict policies forbidding torture.

Turner’s class will be held at 1 p.m. to 3:50 p.m. Saturdays at the Santa Fe Higher Education Center, 1950 Siringo Road, starting Jan. 18. Sign up through Highlands’ Office of the Registrar (nmhu.edu/office-of-the-registrar). 
(NOTE: The time and day of the class changed after this was originally published. What you see here has been corrected.)

College ain’t cheap. In-state tuition for undergrads is $771 for three credit hours. But for elderly rockers like me, 65 or older, the senior citizen rate is $5 per credit hour, or $15. And no, you won’t need a note from your urologist. 

Video Time!
Turner still performs this Angry Samoans song



Angry Samoans meet The Chambers Brothers




The legendary "Satan's Bride" video, starring the beautiful Kristina Pardue

Anyone remember The Hatchet-Wielding Jews?

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: Serious Country from Tyler

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
October 25, 2019

Right up there with Sturgill Simpson and Margo Price, Tyler Childers is at the top of my list of favorite country music discoveries in recent years. I became an unapologetic zealot about three-quarters through my first listen of his landmark 2017 album Purgatory. And the good news is that his new album, Country Squire (Hickman Holler) is even better.

Unfortunately, lots of folks who might like him probably haven’t heard of Tyler Childers. Here’s what you need to know:

He’s just a youngster, in his late 20s. He comes from Kentucky, which is also the case with Sturgill (who co-produced both this album as well as Purgatory) and Chris Stapleton — not to mention Bill Monroe, Loretta Lynn, John Prine, Dwight Yoakam, Ricky Skaggs, and many others.

And he plays country music. Basic, fiddle-and-steel country music, singing honest tales of life with a little sob in his voice and (I imagine) a little bourbon on his breath. The man can sing. He can pick that guitar. And he can write. Many of the themes in Childers’ lyrics traverse along well-trodden country themes — love of home and family; love and hate of life on the road as a touring troubadour; a working man’s sympathy for those toiling on the farms and in the mines; love for, and sometimes regret over, the sweet release of the metaphorical Saturday night; and sometimes, fear of sin’s cruel wages. Yet when Childers sings, it never sounds corny.

The title song, which kicks off the album, is about a hard-working guy who’s not only a musician, but also a dedicated family man trapping varmints to make a winter coat for the woman he loves.

Well tomorrow, we hit the country music highway/On our way to Circleville/We’re off to do some weekend warring/While we sing and drink our fill/And when I ain’t out playing on my six-string/With the nickels I acquire/I’m trying to fix her up a castle/It’s called the Country Squire.

That “castle” is an old “53-year-old camper” that he’s planning to refurbish for the missus. So much is packed into this song — the hard work, the hell-raising, the love, and the hope.

“Country Squire” is followed by “Bus Route,” a song of vivid childhood memories, in which we meet “the prettiest little girl,” who’s the object of Childers’ childhood crush.

Tried to kiss her once in the aisle of the bus/And she walked right over me/Face-down in the gum on the floor/I was hopin’ that she’d change her mind …

(Spoiler alert: Years later she does.)

And we also meet Ray Dixon, the grouchy old bus driver who refused to take any lip from the unruly country kids he’s responsible for. ("All he needed was a glare in the mirror/And a paddle that he carved from pine …")

Moving away from straight country is “All Your’n,” which veers into Stax-era soul sounds — a nice reminder of the natural intersections between white and black Southern music. It sounds almost like some long-lost Dan Penn song.

One of my very favorites is the final track, “Matthew,” a fiddle-driven ode to Childers’ brother-in-law, an Iraq war veteran who now works the night shift, guarding “rusty missiles” at the Blue Grass Army Depot near Richmond, Kentucky. It’s also about Matthew’s dad, who raised his young ’uns right “on a little bit of scripture and an acreage of paradise.” The old man’s also a musician, and Childers compares his guitar picking to that of the late bluegrass great (and one-time member of The Byrds), Clarence White.

Not much really happens here. Despite the allusions to missiles and war (and a terrible logging accident that cost Matthew’s father a leg years ago), nobody gets killed or hurt during the course of the song. We hear of the family fishing, swapping tales, and telling lies. It’s just a sweet portrait of people Childers obviously loves.

Mister, this is country music!

Also noted:

* Sound & Fury (Elektra) by Sturgill Simpson. I can’t decide whether I hate this album or kind of like it. But I can honestly say, mister, this ain’t country music.

In one of the later episodes of Ken Burns’ Country Music documentary series, someone — I forget who — makes the point that since early in the history of the genre there’s been a tension among artists who try to stretch the boundaries of country. Be it Jimmie Rodgers recording with Louis Armstrong, Bob Wills incorporating swing jazz, Chet Atkins and Billy Sherrill creating a smooth “countrypolitan” sound, or John Denver and Olivia Newton-John crashing the country charts in the 1970s — the tension has always been there.

Now Simpson, an adventurous artist whom I highly respect, would be the first to say that this new album (actually a soundtrack to an anime film) is not hillbilly music. It’s a loud sort of rock with screaming guitars and obnoxious synthesizers that sounds closer to prog rock.

I’m certainly not opposed to country artists testing the boundaries and trying weird stuff. Heck, I remember seeing a Crystal Gayle concert a few decades ago where her keyboardist played a crazy synthesizer on the classic hillbilly hit “Rocky Top,” and it sounded cool. And yes, there are a few catchy tunes here that perhaps I could learn to appreciate.

And I believe there are some good songs buried deep in some of the tunes. I just hope Simpson gets back to the country.

Here are some videos 

First, the title song


The official "All Your'n" video



And here's what Sturgill's up to ..

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: Fresh From the Kitchen

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Octber 11, 2019

Besides their music, one thing I like about the “garage-punk space-pop” trio from Albuquerque known as Alien Space Kitchen is that they have a better record of keeping promises than most politicians.

Early this year, they self-released The Golden Age of Climate Change: The ASK EP Project, Volume 1, a 7-song burst of joy concerning the pending last gasp of human history. I enjoyed that EP but took the group’s plan to release a new CD every three months with a grain — no, actually a pillar — of salt.

But my skepticism was for naught. By early summer Alien Space Kitchen — which consists of singer/guitarists Dru Vaughter, drummer/vocalist Noelle Graney and bassist Terry “Mess” Messal — released Give Punk a Chance: The ASK EP Project, Volume 2. Then just a few weeks ago they added Return of the Muckrakers: The ASK EP Project, Volume 3 to their discography. So they’re pretty much on schedule.

As the title might imply, most of the eight tunes on Give Punk a Chance are slightly faster, slightly harder-edged and slightly punkier than most of ASK’s music (though their fans shouldn’t have any trouble recognizing the band).

“It’s so easy you will see/It’s not rocket surgery,” Vaughter sings on the title song, before launching into an unexplained refrain of “God is dead, don’t ask me if I care.”

Another highlight of this EP is the urgent-sounding “505,” a salute, if backhandedly so, to the band’s homeland. “I’ve done my time in the 505,” goes the chorus.

The EP exits with “Enter the Void,” at just over four minutes, the longest song on the record. It starts out with some uncharacteristic acoustic guitar strumming. The electricity soon comes back on, though, and the tempo quickens. By the chorus, it sounds like full-fledged punk rock.

The lyrics deal with “lessons” learned at school: “Today at school they learned me how/to disavow the here and now.” Such observations are intertwined with sly references to classic advertising slogans. “Maybe I should give it up/’cause I’m not feelin’ 7-Up,” Vaughter sings, (reminding me of one of my favorite scenes in Repo Man.)

Like the other ASK EPs, Muckrakers is short but packed with musical goodies.

The first track that really grabbed me here is “This Will Take Time,” one of the group’s trademark cheerful doomsday ditties. This one features the refrain, “The world is in denial/We’re in a downward spiral/We’re dancin’ with the Devil every day …”

While several songs have underlying political messages, “Police Brutality” is a bonafide protest song. “Police brutality every day/What the hell’s going on in the USA?”

Alien Space Kitchen conjures the ghost of a major 20th-century religious thought leader in the song “Jimmy Jones.”

The warning here, in an age where the president is looking more and more like a cult leader, is to not drink the Flavor Aid. (And yes, Vaughter got the correct brand name of the last-call-at-Jonestown drink.) “We’ve got to take a crazy stand before they kill us all/Jim Jones is still among us, his writing’s on the wall,” he sings.

Here’s a quibble: I know what he’s trying to say, but wasn’t “They’re going to kill us! … We’ve got to make a stand” basically what Jim Jones was babbling about as his followers were collapsing around him?

I’m not sure why Alien Space Kitchen chose to do a series of EPs instead of a regular-length album. But having listened to three of them so far, I believe the format works.

I remember the Golden Age of CDs (which preceded The Golden Age of Climate Change by a few decades) when many artists felt obligated to practically fill up each compact disc so it seemed like every album was at least an hour long. Few albums warranted that.

In contrast, the ASK EPs range from 18 to 26 minutes each and, to borrow the title of an old Jerry Lee Lewis box set, they’re all killer, no filler.

In a recent radio interview, Vaughter and Graney said they actually have two more EPs in the can, and Volume 4, which they say will have a completely different sound, will be unleashed late this year or early next. I’m already looking forward.

Also recommended:

* Ride the Tusk by Sex Hogs II. Here’s another EP (five songs, just under 13 minutes) by another garagey/punky trio with roots in this enchanted land. Drummer Nate Daly — I guess you’d call him the boss Hog — played in an Albuquerque band called The Scrams until a few years ago when he scrammed off to Chico, California.

The music is tight, punchy, and pretty melodic. There is plenty of acoustic guitar, played by “Guitar Hog” ( Johnny Meehan).

The finest moment on the whole album has to be Meehan’s crazy, shredding guitar solo on the song “No Blame.” But coming close to that is the crazy, shredding — and all-too-brief — harmonica solo (by I don’t know which Hog) on the final song, “Bricks.”

Both Sex Hogs II and Alien Space Kitchen sell their music, including all the titles mentioned here, through Bandcamp.com. Go buy their stuff.

Video Time!

I couldn't find any videos for Sex Hogs II, but here's Alien Space Kitchen performing "Give Punk a Chance" at a recent Santa Fe show



Here's one of my favorites from Return of the Muckrakers

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: Intense Deliberation and Heavy Sadness

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
September 27, 2019

Faithful readers of my music screeds should certainly realize that probably 99 percent of my record reviews are favorable. Ripping into bad music by chirpy little pop stars or stinky old classic rockers years beyond their prime doesn’t bring me much joy. But more importantly, I’d much rather tell people about great music they might not be familiar with.

But there’s one big exception. That’s when some singer or band who I absolutely love releases a record that disappoints me — music that’s so unworthy of musicians who are capable of so much more. That’s when I dip my proverbial pen into the metaphorical poison ink.

You only hurt the ones you love.

So after intense deliberation and heavy sadness, I have decided to blast The Center Won’t Hold, the new album by one of my top favorite bands of the past couple of decades, Sleater-Kinney.

In case the above verbiage seems somewhat familiar to fans of this group, that’s because I was riffing on the announcement in July by longtime Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss that she was leaving the trio. “The band is heading in a new direction and it is time for me to move on,” she wrote on social media soon after S-K had finished recording The Center Won’t Hold.

A “new direction.” That’s an understatement for the ages.

Quick historical note: Sleater-Kinney first rose from the smoldering ashes of the great Riot Grrrl scare in Olympia, Washington, in the early 1990s. But there was something special about them. It didn’t take long for S-K to slip the surly bonds of the basic girl-punk sound.

Besides Weiss’ mighty drums, there was the scorching two-guitar attack of Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein (also of Portlandia fame). There was Tucker’s hopped-up banshee wail (the group’s greatest weapon). And they only seemed to get better with every new album.

One of the best shows I've ever seen ...

They took a hiatus that lasted a decade or so shortly after releasing their 2005 album The Woods. I missed them dearly in their absence but their 2015 comeback album, No Cities to Love, was nothing short of amazing. (And their concert in Albuquerque in the spring of that year was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.)

That’s one of the main things that saddens me so about the gloopy mess that is this latest record.

For reasons best known to Corin, Carrie, and Janet (if indeed the latter was part of this decision), they called in Annie Clark, better known among indie-rock circles (whatever that means these days) as St. Vincent. A lot of people, including many whose musical tastes I respect (my own beloved children among them), like her music. But I find it overly precious and boring and much of it soaked in synthy uselessness.

That’s fine. St. Annie can do what she wants. I just wish she hadn’t brought those dubious qualities to Sleater-Kinney’s new album. (Some may call me a stodgy old dinosaur, but I don’t give a flying darn.)

The dearly departed Weiss does play on the new album, but her normal power is diluted severely by synthesized beats. Also, the wild guitars of Tucker and Brownstein take a backseat to the electronic gizmos.

Seriously, had you played me this album without telling me who it was, I would not have guessed it was Sleater-Kinney.

The title song, which starts the album, is cruelly deceptive. It starts out slowly with clanking percussion and a synthesized bass line. The vocals — I think it’s Tucker — seem detached to the rest of the musical backdrop. Then about two-thirds of the way into the song, the old Sleater-Kinney seems to come back to life for the final minute of the track.

But it’s just a tease. By the next number, “Hurry on Home,” the new, artsy, synth-pop S-K is back and, for the most part, here to stay.

I have to admit there are a couple of tunes I actually like. “Bad Dance” comes dangerously close to rock ‘n’ roll. “And if the world is ending now/then let’s dance, the bad dance/we’ve been rehearsing our whole lives,” Brownstein sings. It’s definitely the sexiest song on the album. “Come over here and show me/that you crave a little more/Let me defang you/and defile you on the floor …”

And despite the fact that it’s just as synthy as the worst songs on the album and doesn’t really sound like the Sleater-Kinney I revere, the upbeat “Love” is so catchy it’s addictive. It sounds almost faux-’80s New Wave, maybe The Go-Gos high on pep pills and hair spray. And, somewhat ironically, it’s about S-K’s early history, even dropping the names of some of their early albums.

“Heard you in my headphones/Slipped you my address/Call the doctor/Dig me out of this mess/Tuned it down to C/Turned the amp to ten/A basement of our own/A mission to begin ...”

I’m glad the brave women of Sleater-Kinney no longer have to sleep in their van, as they sing about in “Love.” But I sure hope they turn the amp back to 10 and return to the basic sound that brought us to them in the first place.

Video time:

Here's the best song from this sub-par album



And here's a live video of "Step Aside" from 2006

Come back, Sleater-Kinney!

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: What I Did on My Summer Vacation

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
September 13, 2019

It was a leisurely Thursday morning in the French Quarter of New Orleans. I’d just finished my breakfast, a crawfish omelet, and had planted myself on a park bench in Jackson Square to catch up on some reading. I was enjoying the sidewalk jazz set up by Café Du Monde across Decatur Street from the park. The band was right in the middle of “(Won’t You Come Home) Bill Bailey” when all of a sudden they were drowned out by a loud, almost surreal calliope playing Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer.”

This was the second day in a row that I heard mysterious calliope music filling the air on Decatur. I’d heard it the day before, some spooky-sounding tune I didn’t recognize, in the late afternoon upon leaving my hotel. I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from.

A local friend, who lives right across the Mississippi River at Algiers Point, later explained to me that it was coming from one of the riverboats parked nearby.

Depending on the calliope player, she said, it can actually sound great.

The Mother-in-Law Lounge

But that morning on Jackson Square, I just found it annoying as it interrupted a band I’d been digging on. So I decided to cross the park and walk around some. There, on the street facing St. Louis Cathedral, was another brass band, this one made up of younger guys, and they were even better than the group over by Café Du Monde. And by this time the calliope had subsided.

I wanted to give them a tip but had no small bills, so I went one street over to find a place to break a 20. And, lo and behold, there was yet another sidewalk band — this one with a guy playing a jazzy electric guitar along with the horn blowers and drummer — and they were nearly as good as the kids over by the cathedral.

Just another Thursday morning in August in New Orleans.

Man, I love this town! Great food, voodoo — and music is everywhere. Even the airport is named after Louis Armstrong. Music seems to permeate the streets.

Hoofing it from the French Quarter to Treme, for instance, traffic islands have little shrines featuring brightly colored murals of local music heroes. The walls on some businesses and even some houses feature musical murals.

Bruce Daigrepont and his crawfish squeeze box

My absolute favorite was Kermit’s Treme Mother-in-Law Lounge on Claiborne Avenue.

Part of the building features current owner and jazzman Kermit Ruffins playing his trumpet as well as beloved local weirdo rock group Quintron & Miss Pussycat. That’s right next to a larger mural featuring former owner, the late R&B star Ernie K-Doe, hyphen and all (his big hit was “Mother-in-Law” back in 1961) and his wife Antoinette in full royal-highness regalia.

The first night I was in town, I found a little bar on Bourbon Street called Tropical Isle’s Bayou Club, where an accordion-and-fiddle-driven group called The Cajun Drifters was playing. Led by singer Bruce Daigrepont, who plays a red accordion with a painted-on crawfish, they’ve got a good stompin’ sound that doesn’t drift far from traditional Cajun music.

I liked the Cajun Drifters so much I decided to go back to the Bayou Club my last night in town. Alas, they weren’t playing there the second time around, but another band, T’Canaille, was there.

Led by another singer/accordionist, Lance Caruso, this Cajun group also veers into “swamp pop” (basically R&B-infused Cajun music.)

Weeks after booking this trip, I was excited to learn that my Texas friends and cow-punk pioneers the Hickoids were playing NOLA while I was there. (Guitarist Tom Trusnovic is a Santa Fe boy.) They were at d.b.a., a club on Frenchmen Street, a district full of music clubs.

I’ve seen their show — always rocking, always hilarious, always filthy — a dozen times or more. But
this show was special. Only days before their New Orleans gig, while the band was touring Spain, head Jeff Smith, learned that his older brother Barry had died. Barry’s memorial service was the day before the gig.

So Jeff was the essence of “the show must go on.” It wasn’t easy, but he pulled it off with raunchy grace. (Here’s a little plug: The Hix just released a live album, All the World’s a Dressing Room on Saustex Media that’s a fine representation of their live show.)


Though the Hickoids isn’t a New Orleans band, their opening act, DiNOLA is. Fronted by singer Sue Ford (her husband Jimmy Ford is the drummer) DiNOLA has a hard-edged, sludgy sound has a pre-metal ’70s feel.

I was back on Frenchmen Street the next night to see Kevin Ruffins & The Barbecue Swingers at a club called Blue Nile.

Louis Armstrong’s gone, Professor Longhair’s gone, Allen Toussaint’s gone, Fats Domino’s gone, Dr. John’s gone … Now Kermit with his trumpet and raspy voice is arguably New Orleans’ greatest living showman.

Kermit invoked Armstrong on his snazzy version of “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” then did a fantastic version of the ever-goose-bump-inducing “St. James Infirmary” (his arrangement had more Cab Calloway than Satch) and made the classic “Jock-A-Mo (Iko Iko)” his own.

As the show progressed, Kermit shared the stage with some of his friends, the most memorable being Judy Hill, daughter of Jessie Hill, best known for his 1960 R&B hit “Ooh Poo Pah Doo.” (Unfortunately, Judy didn’t play that song that night.)


I didn’t learn this until later, but Kermit, now in his 50s, started out his career playing for tips with friends in Jackson Square.

That means that one of the young players I saw there could grow up to become the next Kermit Ruffins.

Now for some videos:

Here's the Cajun Drifters at the same place I saw them.



Ladies and gentlemen, the fabulous Hickoids



I'm glad DiNOLA didn't die when I was in New Orleans



And here's the mighty Kermit

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: A Buncha Recent Albums

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Aug. 30, 2019

So you kids like the rock ’n’ roll? I sure do. Here are several albums that have been making me happy in recent weeks.

* Lost Weekend by Jack Oblivian & The Dream Killers (Black & Wyatt): The man born Jack Yarber was a member of the iconic 1990s garage-punk trio out of Memphis known as The Oblivians. They split up about 20 years ago (though they reunite every so often, and in 2013, released a fantastic album called Desperation).

This album is a collection of tracks that, according to the record company, are mainstays in Jack’s live shows. Most of the songs were recorded in his home studio, which means the sound lacks a polished sheen but is rich in immediacy.

My favorites are the sweaty, urgent minor-key rockers like “Lone Ranger of Love” and “Scarla,” the latter driven by a slithering slide guitar. Then there’s “Boy in a Bubble,” (no, not the Paul Simon song), which starts out, “I was born on the 15th floor/New Year’s Eve in the Psycho Ward …”

I also like the sleazo, jazzy “Guido Goes to Memphis.” Starting out with a soulful electric piano part (which reminds me of the old Hugh Masekela hit “Grazing in the Grass”), the tune just screams “Memphis!”

* First Taste by Ty Segall (Drag City): It seems like only yesterday — actually it was early June — Fudge Sandwich, which consisted of wild covers of songs by the likes of John Lennon, Neil Young, Funkadelic, The Grateful Dead, War, and various obscure punk groups.
when I wrote about the prolific Segall’s album.

The ink was barely dry when he released this new one. (And actually, I recently learned that he released a live record, Deforming Lobes, sometime between Fudge City and this one). The kid’s barely over 30, and he’s driven.

Like Segall’s best work, most the songs on First Taste are fuzzed-out guitar attacks. But he also embellishes his sound with tasteful electronics that never overwhelm the rock, a horn section on the five-minute “Self Esteem,” and on at least a couple of songs, mandolin.

Standouts here include the frantic-paced tune called “The Fall” — funny, The Fall never recorded a song called “Ty Segall” — that includes an actual drum solo; the upbeat “I Sing Them,” where you hear that mandolin as well as what sounds like a crazy flute (though I suspect might actually be some electronically altered sound); and the hard-edged “I Worship the Dog,” a profound statement of religious faith.

* Surrealistic Feast by Weird Omen (Dirty Water): I was trying to figure out what made this hopped-up psychedelic French trio sound so unique. Then I learned that instead of a bass, Weird Omen has a baritone sax player — Fred Rollercoaster — who used to play with King Khan & The Shrines. Along with guitarist-singer Sister Ray (thank you, Lou Reed) and drummer Remi Pablo, Weird O is an aural treat.

The accurately titled “Earworm” is a 100-mile-an-hour blast, as is the hypnotic but muscular “Trouble in My Head.” But the fast-and-loud aesthetic isn’t the only trick Weird Omen knows. “The Goat” starts out slinky and bluesy but soon transmutates into some kind of audio Godzilla stomping on your city.

And in the last song, “I Will Write You Poetry,” the band mines the rich vein of doo-wop in their own peculiar way. I take that as an omen for more weirdness to come from this inventive band.

* Lowdown Ways by Daddy Long Legs (Yep Roc): Here’s a blues-stomping trio who rose from the The Vampire, the one they did with R&B maniac T. Valentine) before moving to their current label.
swamps of backwoods Brooklyn, New York, to create an addictive kind-of-rootsy, kind-of punky sound. Led by a long, tall, full-throated singer, guitarist, and harmonica honker named Brian Hurd (originally from St. Louis), DLL recorded three albums on the venerated Norton Records (four if you include

I was afraid that leaving Norton might detract from Daddy Long Legs’ magic.

Naw. They sound as strong as ever.

Like the best lowdown blues, nothing on this album will make you feel low down. Just about every track here is a delight. I never thought I’d hear a blues tune called “Pink Lemonade,” but there’s one on Lowdown Blues, made especially memorable by Murat Aktürk’s tremolo-heavy guitar licks. Other favorites include “Glad Rag Ball” (in which Hurd invites someone “to meet me in the bathroom stall”); and “Célaphine,” in which Hurd’s harmonica sounds like a zydeco accordion.

* Night Beats Play The Sonics’ ‘Boom’ by Night Beats (Heavenly): I was happy to see this new album by this garage/psychedelic band from Seattle — mainly because they released an album earlier this year called Myth of a Man that was disappointing. It probably was Dan Auerbach’s pop-heavy production, or maybe it was the fact that two of the three members of the band had quit, leaving singer Danny Lee Blackwell alone with a bunch of studio musicians.

So this tribute to the fabled Washington State band from the ’60s was a nice step back to the Night Beats’ roots.

Blackwell succeeded in taking the older group’s sound and giving it his own twist. This especially is obvious on “Don’t You Just Know It.” This is a funky old New Orleans R&B classic originally recorded by Huey “Piano” Smith & The Clowns in 1958. Night Beats mutates it into a mysterioso, minor-key slow-burner.

I’m not claiming this record puts Night Beats in the same stratosphere as The Sonics — who played what I consider to be the greatest rock ‘n’ roll show I’ve ever seen at the Ponderosa Stomp a few years ago. But I have to admire Blackwell for even attempting this.

Video Time!

Hi-Ho it's Jack O



One from Mr. Segall;



Weird Omen gets your goat



Pink Lemonade never tasted better



Night Beats let some good times roll

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: EiIen Jewell and Xoe Fitzgerald

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Aug 16, 2019

I’d been aware of Eilen Jewell for a few years before I realized I actually liked her. She’d struck me as a decent, sweet-voiced songbird. You know the type: a waifish coffeehouse queen. I didn’t mind what I’d heard from her, but I didn’t pay her much mind.

But then I heard her version of “Shakin’ All Over” from her 2009 album Sea of Tears. Yes, that “Shakin’ All Over”! This cute little singer-songwriter from Idaho was setting herself up for brutal comparisons with OG rockabillies Johnny Kidd & The Pirates, not to mention The Who.

And she pulled it off in her own earthy, understated way. It didn’t have the bombast of The Who, but it was obvious the lady had rock ’n’ roll down in her soul. It was then when I started listening seriously to her material, especially her original songs on that album and others, and found it alluring. And I began looking forward to Jewell’s new releases.

And this was before I even realized that she’s a former St. John’s College student who used to busk for tips at the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market.

Jewell’s impressive previous album, Down Hearted Blues, which consisted of old blues and hillbilly covers, made my 2017 Top 10 list. But her just-released, Gypsy (Signature Sounds) is even better.

The record starts out with a swampy rocker called “Crawl,” that surely makes the ghost of Tony Joe White smile. That’s followed by “Miles to Go,” one of the prettiest songs Jewell has ever done (which is saying a lot). The lilting intro to “Miles to Go” might remind you of Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic.” It’s a sweet, yearning song of surviving life’s blows, even borrowing a line from Jesse Fuller’s “San Francisco Bay Blues”: “Ain’t got a nickel, ain’t got a lousy dime ...”

This theme is explored further in a subsequent harsher, bluesier song, “Hard Times” (“Hard times come no more/Hard times get away from my door/Don’t want to be mad no more/Don’t want to be scared no more … Don’t want to be disgusted no more.”)

A couple of the finest moments on Gypsy are “You Cared Enough to Lie” (written by Idaho country singer Pinto Bennett and the only cover on the album) and her own “These Blues.” Both are credible hardcore honky-tonk shuffles, complete with fiddle by Katrina Nicolayeff and lap steel by Dave Manion, both Potato State pickers. Though Jewell’s never pretended to be an actual country singer, it’s obvious since she did a tasty Loretta Lynn tribute album, Butcher Holler, a few years ago that she truly loves the hillbilly music.

Jewell even tries her hand at protest songs with “79 Cents (The Meow Song),” a funny tune with singalong choruses that deals with sexism and economic disparity, in which she sings, “Don’t complain or they’ll call you insane/People call me left-wing swine.” And there’s a reference to the current commander-in-chief, who’s “grabbin’ us right in the meow.”

This whole album grabs me by the meow,

And I don’t even have a meow.

Also recommended:


* Xoe Live in Madrid by Joe West (Frogville Records). Come, take a seat in my time machine, and let’s travel back to the forgotten time of 2010, when a young (well, he’s younger than me) Santa Fe singer named West released a concept album or rock opera — Xoe Fitzgerald: Time-Traveling Transvestite — telling the incredible story of an androgynous alien time-traveler who claimed to be the love child of David Bowie, conceived in New Mexico during the filming of The Man Who Fell to Earth.

In the summer of 1975, a bright light was seen falling into the hills south of Santa Fe, NM. Some claim it was a meteor. Others say that later they found a strange unearthly substance that appeared to be the remains of a flying vehicle. Shortly thereafter, a child was born to a young hippie girl who made her home in the old mining town.

After this spoken-word intro, West moved beyond the country rock in which he’s always excelled to a more glam-rock sound.

But even before West released Time-Traveling Transvestite, he and his band had been telling Xoe’s story in live performances. One of those, recorded in 2007 at the Mine Shaft Tavern in Madrid, New Mexico, has now emerged on CD for the world to rediscover Xoe.

Except for West, the band on the live album is completely different than the one on the first Xoe album. But most of the songs are the same, including “Frank’s Time-Travel Experiment,” the rip-roaring “Xoe’s Favorite Honky Tonk,” “I Got It All” (probably the hardest rocker West has ever done), and the sweet reincarnation tale “Butterfly.”

And both the cover songs from the 2010 album are here: “Laura,” which originally was recorded by The Scissor Sisters, an early-21st-century New York glam-rock band and, best of all, Bowie’s “Heroes.”

Some of the songs, such as “I Wanna Party (Like It’s 1985)” and “The Good-Time Kids,” are missing. I’m assuming they hadn’t been written yet in 2010, although if Xoe were truly a time traveler, that wouldn’t have been a problem.

And there are some recordings on the live album that didn’t make it on the 2010 cut, the best of which is “Black Car,” a tale of paranoia. And there’s “Robots of Rayleen,” which would appear on West’s 2008 children’s album, If the World Was Upside Down.

All in all, I have to say this music is timeless. And that’s how Xoe would have wanted it.

Here are some videos:



Here's the song that made me a fan



And here's the official video of "I Got It All" by Xoe

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: I Don't Care What They Say, I Won't Stay In a World Without Beatles

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Aug.2, 2019

TThirty-some years ago a woman broke up with me. In her attempt to explain, she said something to the effect of “I’m a Beatles person, and you’re an Elvis person.”

She was half right.

It’s true I believed then, as I do now, in the Holy Scripture that says, “Thou shalt not have any kings before thee except Elvis.” (I forget whether that’s in the Bible or the Constitution.)

But it was totally unfair to question my devotion to the Fab Moptops, whose cosmic significance I was convinced of since about halfway through their performance of “All My Loving” on The Ed Sullivan Show that February night in 1964.

So, even though I normally look down upon sappy nostalgia, I wanted to see the movie Yesterday (directed by Danny Boyle). It has an unusual, if implausible, premise. Basically, some kind of trans-dimensional space warp — or something — strikes the Earth and changes history, leaving a world where certain things no longer exist, including Coca-Cola, cigarettes (gee, that’s too bad), and The Beatles. 

The only person who remembers the band is a young singer/songwriter/guitar picker named Jack Malik (played by Himesh Patel). He apparently was spared the shared cultural amnesia by the fact that he was hit by a bus while riding his bike at the exact moment a worldwide power outage occurred.

I hate when that happens.

Jack learns of this weird predicament when, after he gets out of the hospital, he tries to sing the song “Yesterday” to a group of friends. They like the song but think it’s a Malik original. They've never heard the song and never heard of The Beatles.

And this leads our hero to a glorious scam. If The Beatles don’t exist and nobody’s heard their songs — and if Apple Corps isn’t around to send cease-and-desist letters — he can record them himself and pass them off as originals.

What could possibly go wrong?

Imagine had Ed Sheeran never existed

Basically, the con job works — at least, at first. Jack cuts some demos that start getting internet buzz. He gets a visit from Ed Sheeran. (He’s apparently a real guy! I Googled him and he’s some kind of musician. Who knew?) 

Jack becomes Ed’s opening act, and Ed, nice guy that he is, sets him up with a big-deal recording contract and a comically cold-blooded, cutthroat manager, Debra Hammer (Saturday Night Live’s Kate McKinnon), who immediately became my favorite character. She’s everything that’s wrong with the music industry boiled down into one horrible individual.

But as Malikmania grows to Beatles-like levels, Jack’s feeling guiltier and guiltier. At one point, after performing the song “Help!” in a rooftop concert (reminiscent of the scene in the Beatles documentary Let It Be), he suffers a mini-breakdown, screaming, “Please help me!”

John Lennon would appreciate this particular song being used for this troubling moment. He wrote it during the early days of The Beatles’ superstar status. “The Beatles thing had just gone beyond comprehension,” Lennon told Playboy in 1980. “I was fat and depressed and I was crying out for help.”

The friend who saw Yesterday with me noted that the songs used in the movie overwhelmingly were Paul McCartney tunes. That’s true, and it’s one of my quibbles with the movie. I’m an Elvis person, but I’m also a Lennon person. In general, I prefer John’s songs to Paul’s.

Case in point: When Jack and Ed are having their little backstage songwriting contest — which makes Ed realize what a mighty genius Jack is — which song does Jack choose? “The Long and Winding Road,” which has to be the worst dud The Beatles ever recorded. Producer/murderer Phil Spector, who The Beatles hired to complete Let It Be (the group’s final album), turned a kinda pretty if inconsequential ballad into overwrought orchestral fluff. 

Why wouldn’t Jack choose something magical and crazy like “Strawberry Fields Forever,” or even something simple but devastatingly raw, like “No Reply”? Or something to warp everyone’s head, like “Helter Skelter”?

Some critics have made a valid point that the film’s assumption that Beatles songs would conquer the world and make girls scream in 2019 the way they did in 1964 doesn’t hold water.

Even if Jack did have a cold-eyed, soulless manager like Debra Hammer and a big-time rock star like Ed Sheeran behind him, would today’s youth actually like and buy his music, or would they dismiss it as “dad rock”? The movie itself hints at this problem in an early scene when, after Jack sings “Yesterday,” a friend tells him it’s good, but not as good as Coldplay.

But that line of thinking didn’t distract me much while watching Yesterday, any more than the likelihood of a power outage altering history was a deal-breaker.

One reason I can overlook these flaws is because I saw the story as a metaphor for how younger generations seem to forget fairly recent cultural touchstones that were so important to us oldsters.

How many times have I babbled about some old band — or song, or movie, or TV show, or politician — and a younger friend or colleague just stared blankly? That’s as frustrating for me as it is for Jack Malik when his friends don’t know who Ringo Starr is.

Bonus: Had The Beatles Never Existed We'd Have Never Heard These Covers 

Headcoatees sing "Run For Your Life."

The Breeders play "Happiness Is a Warm Gun"



Junior Parker IS the "Taxman."

I’m funny how? I mean funny like I’m a clown? I amuse you?

Also these videos never would have existed.