Playlist for
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
March 21, 2008

Hosted by Greg Lyon on FRIDAYS at 2-4 pm
on WPVM Asheville (103.5 FM and www.wpvm.org)

This show is available for listening as an archive for one week after its airing at WPVM’s Archive Page (click on the STREAM button for this show–under the letter ‘G’)

Notes:

– We had two themed sets of music today. First came the acoustic guitar set, with Francis Bebey starting things off from 1965 and the "Concert for an Old Mask"–a true masterpiece begging for reissue on CD. Here’s the description from the LP: "A poem in music about an old mask endowed with magical powers. It describes, in its own way, the mask’s long journey from central Africa to Brazil. When it arrives, it is surprised and overjoyed to find something of its native Africa and dances at the carnival of Bahia, just as it used to on the other side of the Atlantic. One day however its owner forgets that in Africa he had been strictly forbidden to sell or give away the mask, and offers it to a museum. Needless to say the ‘curio’ is immediately imprisoned in a show-case. The mask spends only one night there. The next morning, it is found dead, split in two: mad with rage it had committed suicide during the night."

– The second theme was slightly off-kilter country music, and in addition to the lovely moog version of "Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town" (the Mel Tillis song, made famous by Kenny Rogers), we heard something from the comedic (and also unreissued) Johnny Cash album Everybody Loves a Nut, the coyly erotic (or is my mind in the gutter?) "Suckin’ Cider Through a Straw" as sung by Carl Sandburg, and the downright ridiculous "Woman Hungry" by Porter Wagoner (and it’s not even close to the zaniest on that compilation, The Rubber Room: The Haunting, Poetic Songs of Porter Wagoner). Because I can’t find the lyrics anywhere on the old internet, I’ll transcribe them here for posterity:

Lately I’ve been dining out
When my hungry lips need fed.
You no longer serve me love
And a heart could starve to death.
You push me from the table
It’s no longer spread with care
And when a man gets woman hungry
He will find a meal somewhere.

Chorus:
When a man gets woman hungry
And he’s got no food at home
There’s a gnawing down inside his heart
That will cause a man to roam.
He’ll play around forbidden fruit
Reach out and take his share.
When a man gets woman hungry
He will find a meal somwhere.

Malnutrition of the heart’s
One disease that I can’t fight.
It demands that I find love
And keeps me prowling through the night
Searching for the table
You’ve been failing to prepare
And when a man gets woman hungry
He’ll find a meal somewhere.

[Repeat Chorus]

– Also in that set was a gorgeous Lee Hazlewood track, "Since You’re Gone,"from his 1965 LP Friday’s Child, which has finally been reissued on CD as part of the new collection on Rhino Handmade: Strung Out on Something New: The Reprise Recordings. I had a hard time determining whether this was in fact a collection of ALL the tracks from Hazlewood’s 3 Reprise LPs, as the Rhino Handmade website has an incomplete track listing (and poorly describes the compilation as having "selections from" Friday’s Child), but I rolled the dice, and it turns out that it is complete. Asheville-based music writer Fred Mills has it right in his really nice review of the collection in Harp Magazine.

– Shaina brought in some really nice wax today: the Hungarian pop record (we think it was from the 1960s), the Devil’s Anvil, and the aforementioned (and pictured) Switched-On-Country moog record.

Background Music: Henry Mancini - The Pink Panther (RCA 1964)

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