The Heart Of California (For Lowell George) / Whatever Happened To Jesus (And Maybellene)? / Helena Montana / Texas Tears / Feelin Easy / The Night Cafe / Roll Truck Roll / Red Bird / The Lubbock Tornado (I Don't Know) / Bloodlines / Gimme A Ride To Heaven, Boy! / Cantina Carlotta / Ourland / Oh Hally Lou / Oh What A Dangerous Life / Manhattan Bluebird / There Oughtta Be A Law Against Sunny Southern California / Bloodlines (II)
This is a compilation of two LPs that came out during the early 1980's on the now defunct Fate label. Even in his natal state of Texas, Terry Allen hasn't exactly been a household word while he has been holding forth (and perhaps, fifth) as an elder statesman for the Lubbock Mafia and bein' employable as an art professor specializing in sculpture in such locales as Fresno, Califas and New Mexico. I would be plumb tickled if he took over the "sculpture-garden" at VeeCeeEwe. Could be that some a' them local sculptor-musicians would take to bein' a tad more countrified and rustical than imbued with the neo-aesthetic fervor of "Ort" and their peculiar predisposition to the wearing of black leather costume throughout the year as in Nuevajorque y LonGuylandia
These tunes range from tributes to the fallen (the adrenaline-laced "The Heart of California" is a "moving" tribute to Lowell George), to "families and paramours", and to major irreverencies and folk blasphemies ("Whatever Happened to Jesus (& Maybelline)?... a wistful gospel number that musically drives into East St Louis and picks up Chuck Berry as a mojo navigator and "Gimme a Ride to Heaven, Boy!", wherein a lone driver with a six-pack of cowboy-cold cerveza on a desolate stretch of the two-lane stops to pick up a hippie-boy hitchiker who turns out to be Jesus Christ and pulls a pistol on the driver, highjacking his car and leaving the highjackee with these words,
The Lord moves in mysterious ways
and tonight, my son...he's gonna use your car!
Allen's western landscape is not that of a Frederick Remington nor of a John Ford. These wild and wooly badlands are populated with psycho truckers with ratchet-jaws and their randily spiritual lady-friends with a whole passel of gospel stations beaming in from other dimensions on the AM radidio dial flogging an official Brother Curtis Springer gen-yew-wine prayer cloth to tastefully drape over the superhetrodyne console in the parlor, recalling the days of the Border Blasters, like XERF, Del Rio, TX/Cd. Acuña, Coahuila, Mejico..... (Cuña, to the initiates...), XEG (El Regiomontaño), Monterrey, Nuevo Leon.
Lloyd Maines engineered and played pedal steel on these recordings; the rest of the Maines Brothers and a goodly contingent of the Lubbock Mafia (Joe Ely, Ponty Bone, etc.), appear as well. Can't recall anything he's ever done that could even be considered mediocre.
--Ted Samsel
Copyright 1997 Ted Samsel
Boone, a guitar-picker-turned-academic from the band we were in back in the early '70's sent me e-mail the other day from New Mexico asking if I had any recordings of Bobby Charles' tune Tennessee Blues. He couldn't recall which version and in what style we used to do it in back in Texas. I answered back after finding a couple of killer web sites on Mr. Charles (actually Robert Charles Guidry, Jr.) from Japan. Which is so often the case. Seems that furriners, especially Brits and Japanese, know more about real American music than our own people often do. Hell, one of the best collections of honky tonk country western I know of is in Sheffield, Yorkshire at my pal Iain's. He's got some stuff there that'll knock yer hat in the creek. But not to worry, I’ve been noticing that some labels have the sense and good taste to re- release recordings and Sugar Hill is one of ‘em. Gatemouth Brown’s Texas/Louisiana music from 1977 BLACKJACK (SHCD-3891) is out on CD and the under-exposed Jimmy Murphy, a dynamically tasteful flatpicker, who brought gospel and the beer joint together in the ‘70s has also been released on the CD ELECTRICITY (SHCD-3890). But here’s something new just out of the chute that more cognoscent PRA readers should be plumb tickled with, Terry Allen’s newest recording on Sugar Hill, SALIVATION (SHCD-1061). Combining the profane and the sanctified from a High Plains perspective, as is his wont, Allen (art professor, monumental bronze sculptor and Godfather of the Lubbock Musical Mafia) picks apart the carcase of ‘Merkin Culture and leaves the bones for the adepts to gnaw on. And these bones are plumb tasty with a master of the mixing board, Lloyd Maines, in full control of an entourage of world-class musicians and family members on a jacked-up hemispheric toot. Picture this, if you will, Jesus Christ getting duded up for his Second Coming where He’s setting out to kick some righteous ass in style for such transgressions as love of things and of filthy lucre:With the beat of his heartOr this little tropical ditty which may be a Christmas carol for Parrotheads on a CIA expense account:
And the radio on
Got the fire in his blood
Snake on his tongue
Knows the BIG BOY’s a commin
Better bust em up and run.Spaceships and Monkeys
Evolution and Booze
Bar Maids and Pistols
Salivation and Fools
Highways and Tent Shows
Cities and Towns
Love’s Just a Crapshoot
Lay Your Money Down
Yeah Everything’s Over
Like It All Just Begun
That BIG BOY’S a commin
Better Bust em Up and Run
It’s X-mas on the IsthmusY’all get the picture, I reckon.
Of Panama
We’re shiftless, we’re giftless
No Santa Claus
No wise men, no angels
No mistletoe trucks
No reindeer, no shepherds
We’re shit out of luck
Bethlehem.. Bethle her.. Bethle you
Bethle me…
Mucho….
Allen also wrote a cajun styled song (REDLEG BOY) about his dad, Sled Allen, a pro beisbol player in an earlier career. Sled’s grandson, Bukka, provides button accordion for this fine two-step that literally reeks of swampish ways and the fais-do-do. On another song called AIN’T NO TOP 40 SONG, a pair of tales about murderously fated love that would broadcast well on COURT TV, Marcia Ball adds her exquisite voice to this side-of-the-head-with-a-wrench modern Gothic parable. And THE SHOW provides a paint-blistering sermonette by Terry’s wife (performance artist Jo Harvey) that will scare the peewaddley out of any New Ager within a half-mile radius in this retelling of millennial treachery. Now that’s real family in my book.
"Geezerpalooza" January 23, 1999 The Birchmere, Alexandria, VA
Well, I finally made it to the Birchmere. I'd never been to the old site, but the new one is one of the more comfortable music halls I've been to. To some, this may be a drawback in that the place is so nice. I know folks who insist on a certain frisson of danger when they go out on the town; personally, I try to avoid either ass-kickin' or having my ass kicked. Call me a wuss if you like, but that's the way it is. Nonetheless, it was a trifle disorienting to have such pristine restrooms in a place where denizens of roadhouses and honkytonks as Guy Clark and Terry Allen were playing. I'd heard Guy live before back in Austin, probably at the Armadillo beer garden or maybe at Soap Creek Saloon in another life. My Samoan abogada (also a displaced Texan) and I took in this show after visiting a Peruvian restaurant across the road (they were out of guinea pig, so we had some excellent ceviche instead). Primed with the Birchmere's excellent red ale, we took our table and waited for the show to begin. Guy and Terry came on stage, introducing themselves as The Rockin Tacos and commenced to fill the next three hours with songs, wit, lies, eternal truisms and damn lies. Guy Clark is a world class song writer whose songs are never mawkish or insincere; they have an edge to them that speaks of his innate craftsmanship, a theme which has resonated throughout his career. Terry Allen, on the other hand (and a bronze sculptor by trade, by the way), juxtaposes the sacred and the profane (a common theme in West Texas) with a dark humor worthy of a jazzed-up Ambrose Bierce, seldom belittling the subjects of his songs. They traded songs, played backup for each other at times, and sang of various bad-asses, characters, honky-tonk scenes and loved ones. It seemed that we were nowhere near the Beltway and back in our home state of Texas during this performance. Guy's song OUT IN THE PARKING LOT (where the real honky-tonk action is, watching "neon light shining on the gravel") and many of their other songs made this seem quite real. In fact, a couple of jokes were made about the current broujaja, which shall remain unmentioned, but Guy caught himself and said, "We best stop this. This is like bringing coals to Newcastle." Guy also mentioned that they played in Houston earlier in the tour and some shaven headed young feller with 30 piercings in each visible orifice and tattoos on his arms, body, face and who knows where else was awed by the show and came up to 'em and said:"Wow, this is like, GEEZERPALOOZA.!"
GC: We weren't sure what to say so we let him rattle on.
TA: He said we must be older than his Dad.
GC: We weren't sure how to take this.
TA: So we had to kill him. (Peals of laughter)
It was quite the night.
Copyright 1997-1999: Ted Samsel