Here's to you, Uncle Sam!

I'm so excited that someone did a mini-bio on my uncle, Sam Hinton. He's so amazing.


Here's the link:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2669329089073228615&q=sam+hinton

My new record

I've got to get rolling on this. The response from those who have heard it has been utterly overwhelming!

Barbara from Get Hip loves it and wants to do something with me. I can hardly believe it. Hooray! But of course, this album is El Toro's (Mario's) so there won't be much they can do for this project. But then, I will soon have my new band together, and can always work up something for the future. The fact that any comparison to Gram Parsons was made thrills me to the core. Wow.

And then, last night I had dinner with my friend Laurie Gallardo who works at KUT. She asked me if I want to maybe play KUT live sometime, if she can get Jeff to agree to it. Ummm....YES???? Good lord.

Later this year, according to Laurie, I'll be on a "Before the Break" and probably another "Austin Music Minute" since she took it over. What a great friend! Hehe. If she ever runs for President, I will be her campaign slave, no doubt.

As for the record, I need to:

1) Talk to Mario and make sure El Toro is paying for extra recording sessions.
2) Get the music to D.B. Harris so he can listen.
3) Get together with Brennen Leigh so we can learn out "Daddy's Girl" and she can play her mandolin.
4) Get someone to write a good bio for the press packet.
5) Get some new photos done.
6) Make a list of "Thanks" to include at least Steve, Al Urban, Laurie, Rachel, DB Harris, Brennen Leigh, Beth Harrington, El Toro, etc.
7) Create my story--liner notes, etc.
8) Get a designer to create the cover.
9) Register my stuff with BMI.
10) Finish all my production notes.
11) Think of a good title.

12) About ten zillion other things that I am forgetting.

Something to be proud of! Woowoo!

Crackpot musical theories...hooray!

So today, I have a theory.

My theory is that this band:

Was heavily influenced by THIS band:

I also learned that Dave Edmunds, in the mid to late 60s, had a band called "The Human Beans"...not to be confused with this U.S. band at the exact same time.

TWISTED MISTER: My Delta’s Done Spilled Over With Them Copulatin’ Blues

This month’s “Twisted Misters” column is devoted to not one particular person, but rather scores of songs from the early 1900s to the 1960s (at which point the sexual revolution rendered them virtually obsolete). I am one among many roots music enthusiasts who find they have become avid lovers of the “dirty blues.” These are the X-rated, ribald, licentious, salacious, sordid, and perverted “tell-it-like-it-is” odes to life from the first half of the 20th century. They’re not “Twisted Misters” from a psychological standpoint, but instead the often shocking and sometimes humorous day-to-day chronicles of men (and women--our dear “Twisted Sisters”) who grew up deprived of personal expression in damned near every aspect of their lives.

Allusions to sex in songs began well before the twentieth century. Once Edison’s inventions took hold, a genuine “popular culture” began. The latter half of the nineteenth century showed America experiencing intense struggles with social classes, slavery and race issues, and growing pains with industrial revolution. The growth of modern transportation rode alongside these issues and made it possible to broaden popular entertainment’s horizons in both content and geographic area. Vaudeville, circuses, and minstrel acts (particularly “blackface” by blacks and whites alike) rose to national prominence. It was here that the difficulties of the average black man or woman were truly made aware to the rest of the world.

What was life for most black men in the early 20th century? We all know that it was generally poor, oppressed, backbreaking, and filled with strife. But that strife is where freedom begins to flower amidst the rubble of man’s psyche. Music was the most common form of relief. 1920s vaudeville pianist Tom Delaney, for instance, gave us “Georgia Stockade Blues,” which tells us of one life more common than not:

Days are weary
Night seems long
Down in Georgia Stockade town
Doing time for a crime
They found me guilty without one dime
Guards all around with their guns
Shootin’ me down like a rabbit
If I start to run.

Alan Lomax (a well-known folk-life historian) sums it up in his book “Land Where the Blues Began:”
“Blues is the only song form in English that allows us (anyone) to pose problems, raise issues, make complaints, and then provide a cynical or satirical response.” When these songs started to come out of the Delta and other rural and downtrodden urban locations (often via minstrel shows), the white man stopped and listened.

Prison life. Street life. Homeless life. None was a life any white man could envy. But a sex life? Now there’s something no white man could control. Because of the “lower-class” association, he might shake his head with an (often false) air of righteousness, but it was also with awe and envy. White folks have been obsessed ever since.

These songs were adopted and adapted into white culture as the years passed, with some interesting results. As children, many of us learned kids’ songs with seemingly nonsensical words. We often sung the phrase “ta-ra-ra-ra-boom-de-ay”, for instance. What we (and I assume our delightfully clueless parents) didn’t know was that while this phrase seems simply one line in a children’s folk song, it actually originated in song around the late nineteenth century as a euphemism for, well—fucking. It’s good to know that my mother the nun taught me a sweet little “fucking ditty” as a wee one. Ammo’s always good to have.

As the blues movement progressed, these phrases got more direct—“doin’ the jelly roll,” “ringin’ my bell,” “blowin’ my horn,” “trucking” “ rocking” (who doesn’t like to rock?), and “salty dog”…but even so, the euphemisms were still pretty coy. You’d get that little “hand to mouth” gesture, the raised eyebrow and the “tut-tut”; the nervous giggle. But if I wanted the Playboy channel I think I’d just subscribe to it and give up my sojourns to the AAA Newsstand (I am only there for the articles, by the way). And I know that these days, merely the word “fucking” does the trick, does it not?

But when I slip that disc on the player and it’s Lucille Bogan’s 1936 special, “Shave ‘Em Dry,” I find it more loads more titillating than, say…Paris Hilton’s night-vision sex video with her choad-y boyfriend. Well, on second thought…who doesn’t? Did you see that video? Paris Hilton + sack= B-O-R-I-N-G. Maybe I should play her John Oscar’s “New Rubbin’ on the Darned Old Thing” from 1936.

“Aural porn” is what I call the dirtiest of the dirty blues; these are the songs that never really made it into the public spotlight. Perhaps the only exceptions to this would be Bull Moose Jackson’s “Big 10-Inch (Record)”, covered by Aerosmith, or the Dominoes’ “60-Minute Man.” However, most of the brown-wrapper verse of which I speak rolls like the following (an old blues song accredited to, tada! No one? What a surprise):

Ole’ Aunt Milly from Salt Lake City
The way she’d do it was really a pity
She starts with tectish and ends with gas
She’s got a Cadillac pussy and a Packard ass.

Just stop for a second and let that mental picture sink in. Or perhaps, a verse from a song called “Tight Like That”:

Old Uncle Jack with his wooden leg
I’ll hold his head while you set the peg
Cause it feel so good, tight like that
Baby don’t you hear me, tight like that

And sometimes, just sometimes, we are given the folk story of the song’s inspiration. This is one for a song called “Drive Them Cows,” that Alan Lomax collected in the Delta many years ago.

You might not believe this, but there was a woman once who never had had no man. This woman lived away out in the woods, you know, by herself. And she never did ‘low no mens in her house. Couldn’t nobody; see, nobody be there. So there was a man in town one evening about three o’clock you know, he was a cow buyer and he was talking to the people at the market and they told him about this here woman, name Annie. Man say:

“Didn’t nobody go around and see Annie?”
“No, I never did hear nobody goin over and seeing her.”
“I wonder who go with her?”
“I don’t know. Nobody there at all.”
“Tain’t?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m goin over there tonight and I’m gonna get on her.”

He went and bought up a lot of cows and he drove ‘em past this woman’s house. He says, “Hello.”
She says, “Hello.”
He says, “Now lady, can I stay here all night?”
She says, “Why mister, I don’t ‘low no man to stay here.”
Says, “Well, I ain’t no man, I’m a woman-hater.”
“Woman-hater?”
“Yeah.”
“All right. Bein you is a woman hater, you can stay here all night.”
So when he got down, he went on into the house. She says, “I ain’t got but one bed.”
He says, “Why, I can sleep with you then. I’m a woman hater.”
It’s hot, in summer, so him and her laying in the bed, you know, laying there with his shirt up and prick near hard as a brick. Directly she looked over there and seen that thing, she said, “What is that?”
“Them my cows.”
She felt down a little lower and she said, “What is that?”
“Them my oxen.”
So he lays on across her and he feels her and he says, ”What is that?”
She said, “That’s my hole of water.”
He lay there awhile. He say, “Well lady, can I water my cows in your pond?”
She say, “Yeah.”
So he gets on her, commence getting it from her. And it got kinda good to her, she thought he could go in deeper. She said, “Listen, drive your cows on in.” So he left it right there. It get so good to her, she said, “Listen, drive the cows and oxen all into the clear water. Damn hole ain’t boggy!”

I’m not going to hide behind a crooked brow or “tsk, tsk” myself into a corner. So I’m a big fan of aural porn. I like to hear what’s going on. It could be called a sort of mutual “masturbation”—the record player turns me on, and all I have to do is I turn it on. I slip that “Big 10-Inch” record in, get that needle into the tiny groove and listen until a big smile spreads right across my face.

--Caroline Gnagy

I'm just not a one-man woman, I guess....

I'm such a cheater.

The "practice space" (read: eensy weensy, well-graffitied storage unit in East Austin with a run-down ice cream truck parked directly in front of the door) apparently didn't work out so well, Shannon told me. So, I must wait until we get the proper equipment to rehearse and then we'll hit up the old Music Lab. After I get back from Spain.


Speaking of, I need to hit up Music Lab twice a week or so until I leave. These songs ain't gonna learn theyselves. Where will I find the time and energy? I'll never know.



Today I found out (hooray!) that my hotel stay in Spain is taken care of, which leaves me free to put together a decent album and play a good show...and relax...and meander...and smell foreign breezes, hike on foreign lands, hear foreign tongues. One of those days I'm going to take a trip to see the Roman ruins. Other options are the Monastery of Montserrat, the La Sangrada Familia by Gaudi (although that may be altogether TOO Gaudi)...and maybe, just maybe, I will stand and finally be able to breathe deeply atop this mountain pass (The Bonaigua Pass):











But anyway, back to the way I cheat....


I knew this was going to happen. I'm all of a sudden full speed ahead on trying to get some more country shows around town for later in the summer. So much for my new "garagey" boyfriend. Although the sex is better...louder, meaner, more distorted, harder on my body...you get the point.


Tomorrow I'm going to to to Patsy's Cowgirl Cafe, although Monica, in her own stern little Monica way, strongly advises against ordering any food (JJ and his girlfriend got food poisoning from food that was already, apparently, distinctly unappetizing). But, the Stepsiders are playing and I'd like to see them do "I'm Not a Wino, I'm a Whiskey-O" one more time.



For better or worse, part of getting new gigs is going out to untried places and seeing shows--especially more venue-ally adventurous friends who let you "sit in." So that's my tomorrow night, and so far, I'm going alone.


Not that I have a problem with that.


The way I see it, I'm cheatin' on my new musical boyfriend while he's out of town, sure...but my old stand-by musical boyfriend will always be there to get me drunk, comfort me, and allow me to write more songs about how bad I'm cheatin'.

There's something to be said for that.

My fingers feel all pulpy after recording yesterday and practicing with Shannon and Emily tonight. We got one and 3/4 songs into some semblance of an order. Still no lyrics for the first--but then it's a basic 12-bar blues in E that I taught them.

Eventually if this (or any rock and roll project I have) happens, I will need:

To learn power chords
To learn all the good minor chords
A decent guitar
A decent amp
Pedals! And learn how to use them.
Mic and boom stand
Digital 4-track recording system.

I've still got to re-record the songs I did yesterday, but my fingers feel too sore right now and we're practicing again at 7:30pm tomorrow. Hopefully between now and then I can get that down. I've also got to research that pesky second chord in the doo-wop progression. If a song's in the key of A, it's something like a G-minor or A-minor before it goes to the D and then to the E. I used to know it (!), but for some reason it escaped me tonight. I annoy me sometimes.

Satan rules a 4-track

I was so happy with the demo songs I recorded today--until I popped the cassette into my stereo and hit 'play.'

I've never heard my own songs backwards before. Seriously creeped.


Greg from Get Hip exhibited a certain amount of interest in my musical endeavors this evening, both past and present. They seem like great people to be involved with. Hmmm...!!!

I danced my patootie off to the Ugly Beats. Got their new record, too.

I'm not getting out of my bed until at least 1pm tomorrow.

And when I do, it'll be to try again with the demonic 4-track and try to get my crap together for a rehearsal with Shannon and Emily in the evening.

Curiously, I have felt for years that I couldn't get a garage band off the ground. All of a sudden there seems to be a multitude of possibilities. This is very good indeed.

Record Party

Having woken up way too early--but for a good cause, I now sit inside on this cold, rainy day perusing, puttering, and playing with a portion of my own dusty, yet satisfying, belongings.

This morning after I got home, I pulled out my 78s and went through them. I knew I'd amassed a quite a few 78s from the King Records catalogue, but it's almost ridiculous when I go through them one by one.

I had to bid goodbye to one of my Cats and the Fiddle 78s; also a Chet Atkins one and a Johnny Maddox one. I refuse to face the fact that my Curt Barrett "Hey Bartender" has a hairline inner crac--especially as it's a great version and one of the older, cooler King Records label designs.


Today's 78 playlist:
Jack Cardwell on King Records
Jimmie Rodgers on Victor
Davis Sisters on RCA Victor
Roy Acuff on Columbia
Julia Lee on Capitol
Lucky Millinder on Decca
Joe Franklin on M-G-M
Slim Gaillard Trio on Cadet
Darrell Glenn & the Rhythm Riders on Valley
Joe Turner on Atlantic
Gene O'Quinn on Capitol (Promo of Boogie Woogie Fever and billed as Gene "O'Quin"!)
Little Jimmy Dickens on Columbia
Tommy Duncan on Intro
Lonnie Donegan on Mercury
the Melody Boys on Dixie
Cliffie, Merle, & Tennessee Ernie covering Delmore Brothers (on Capitol, of course)
Dinah Washington on Mercury
Johnny Bond on Columbia
Lefty Frizzell on Columbia
Curky Fox & Texas Ruby on King (Red Label)
Floyd Robinson on King (Red)
Little Willie John on King (Blue, of course)
Boyd Bennett & His Rockets on King (Blue Label)
York Brothers on King (Red Label)
Delmore Brothers on King (Red Label)

Today's 45 playlist:
Bennie Hess on Spade
Horton Brothers (for a giggle)
Umpteen European 45s given to me over the years that I haven't listened to yet
Skellett Trio on S-Bar-S
George Jones on Epic (HA! I love it)
Wanda Jackson (ummm, Capitol? heh)
Jack Scott on Carlton
Richie Valens on Del-Fi
Bernda Lee (Little Jonah) on Decca
Dave Dudley on Golden Wing
Barbara Lynn on Jamie
Charline Arthur on RCA Victor
The Cheers on Capitol
Nervous Norvus on Dot
Frankie Miller on Starday
Bonnie Guitar on Radio
Big Sandy & Los Straitjackets
The Hearts on Chess
George Riddle (Promo) on Starday
Don Cavalli on White Heat ('China Coast'/'Last Record Hop')
Link Wray (autographed by him AND his insane wife, Olive!)

Today I revel in rifling through my very own sneeze-inducing memorabilia that includes but is not limited to playing the above-mentioned records, reading my newly purchased copies of Punk, New York Rocker, and other 'zines from the 1970s and 80s. I will then start in on Ugly Things magazine (thanks, Steve!), and culminate appropritately with fuzzy slippers, hot tea and Banvard's Folly (again, thanks Steve!). I also found my "Parkside Varsity Cheerleaders" jacket that has "Caroline" embroidered on the front.

At some point today I will go over to Steve's and do all of this again, albeit in a slightly different capacity, such as with his sparkly company and partaking (in a ladylike manner) copious amounts of liquor.


Yay life!

Låtlista

I heretofore shall endeavor to learn the following on guitar, vocals, and possibly harmonica (just to annoy myself and everyone around me):


1) Just Like Me--Paul Revere & the Raiders
2) 99th Floor--Moving Sidewalks
3) In the Night Time--Strangeloves
4) I Can Only Give You Everything (MC5 and so on)
5) Rendevous--The Barracudas
6) The Sonics--Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
7) The Eccentrics--What You Got
8) Julie Driscoll--Don't Do It No More
9) The Coasters--I Must Be Dreaming

Hah. The majority of these will soooo never happen.

Dear Edwinn Starr and Otis Redding,

I think the world of you. You're both great singers. I appreciate all you have done for music over the years. How I would love to be able to sing "I've Been Loving You Too Long" and "War" with the intensity that you command.

However, I just don't think it's going to work out.


It's not you, it's me.

PS....I still love you, baby. I'll see you both on Friday.

Y'all havin' a good time tonight?

Little Richard asked that question on an average of every 117 seconds during the course of his "show" the other night. I have to say I wasn't expecting much,but he gave even less than that. Josh said they paid him like $50,000 to play.

Whatwas reinforced to me is that he's a 75-year-old eccentric whose primary concerns seem to be:

1) His glitter boots, from which KISS stole their look.
2) His songs, which were all stolen by other people. Apparently the fact that these were used without his permission entitled him not to play them. I'll bet Pat Boone would sing "Tutti Frutti" if he played a big show like that....
3) His sciatica.
4) Whether or not he was "pretty".
5) That his son's bass playing be shown to the world...so that the world may know that he plays lightning-quick riffs that bear more than a passing resemblance to the "Seinfeld" theme.
6) If people were video-taping him, because they so often end up on "You-Tube" without his permission. Apparently he lost thousands of dollars over the years from unauthorized videos, which is a sad thing. And of course that must be why he has to make up for it by earning $50,000.00 a pop, sitting in front of a piano and bitching about it in front of thousands of college kids, gleaming floodlights upon his besequined, oddly corpselike countenance.
7) The shiny grand piano in the middle of the stage piano wasn't to his liking, so he asked for another one and ended up on a wee electric piano. Hmm.

Now don't get me wrong, I love to hear me some Little Richard. I'm just going to make sure I never have to see him "in concert" again.

Poor guy--I sure hope the hoardes of $50,000.00 performance engagements make up for some of the pain he suffered while Pat Boone sang "Tutti Frutti."

Musicologizin'

Musicologizin': (v., adj.) A social situation that often occurs when people who love and/or make music develop a tendency toward apologizin', theorizin', guilty-pleasurin', disguisin', and often despisin'. Discussion of this topic frequently breeds hatred or indifference in non-musical individuals (who of course, hate...or are indifferent).

Note: The term "musically challenged" does not apply here. Anyone who likes music enough to read about it isn't musically challenged, no matter how crappy a pan flute player they may be.

Welcome to my music blog, where I shall pontificate.

Warning: I frequently pontificate needlessly, peevishly, or gushingly to the point where I use way more adjectives and adverbs than is healthy. I may talk about Rosemary Clooney, Mitch Miller, the Dixie Chicks, the Who, Wesley Willis, Dead Moon, Toots and the Maytals, or Bad Religion. I'll talk trash about Ike Turner's doity girfriend from Jersey, and about how ridiculously overrated John Brickman or John Mayer is (among scads of others).

I'll talk about stealing Dwight Yoakam's phone number or making dirty sex toys with the Pietasters, out of a carving knife and a common household potato. I'll kvetch about how annoying it is to write for music magazines and berate myself for not doing enough of it. I'll whine, scoff, or bitch about promoters and the industry, or my constant ebb and flow of efforts to make music a permanent (and money-making) part of my life.


Lucky you.