INTERMISSION: Songs Even the Wild Taters Probably Never Heard
Some weird, obscure tunes I wrote or co-wrote on a weird, obscure website
This a brief intermission for Songs the Wild Taters Sang.
Last week in this Substack, I posted my final chapter, concerning the final song on my first album, Picnic Time for Potatoheads.
Next week, I’ll start blabbing about the songs on my follow-up to that album, the lo-fi, cassette-only (at least originally) Pandemonium Jukebox.
But for a quick breather this week I’m going to post about a bunch of songs that I recorded in the 1990s and early 2000s and posted on a website called Soundclick. Not “SoundCloud,” SoundCLICK!
It’s been around so long, originally the music posted there were played on Real Audio, because MP3s weren’t yet really a thing for average consumers. (I think that was before my time on Soundclick though.)
You can listen to and/or download these songs there. And when you click on a song in the player there you’ll get the lyrics and other info.
Let’s start with what a Bizarro World country gospel tune I co-wrote my my brother Jack Clift. “God’s Gold Ring” in the mid 1990s.
Here’s how I described it on the site: “ A bluegrass apocalypse. Dangerous visions? True salvation? A cruel con game? It's not for me to understand.”
It features an informal band (we never actually played in public) called The Grizzley Souvenirs: Jack and me on vocals and guitars, My fellow KSFR DJ Tom Adler on banjo and Al Faaet on percussion. Tom and Al probably deserve songwriting credits too. (What’s 25 percent of zero?) Also I think Alec Walling might have been there the night we wrote it.
God is great and God is good and I have God’s gold ring. And matching cufflinks.
Click the sound below:
Here’s another Grizzley Souvenirs number I think we recorded the same night at Jack’s swingin’ pad. It written in 1981 by me, Jack and Alec. “Maggot Rags” is about a girl I knew in the mid 1960s.
As I noted on the Soundclick page, the song was “motivated undoubtedly by guilt about tormenting this poor girl when I was in junior high. My brother Jack felt guilty too. Alec Walling just felt guilty just for knowing us.”
Hear “Maggot Rags” below:
This next song “Parallel World” is a hillbilly weeper, written in 1995 inspired by the old Marvel Comics concept of 'parallel worlds,' which are exactly the same as this world. Only different.
I explained on the Soundclick page: “I really was eating microwave hotdogs and listening to Faith No More right before I wrote this.” I’d been stood up on a date and was feeling sad and lonesome.
My old good-time buddy, the late Erik Ness convinced me to record this song — just me and my guitar — in the basement of the old Farm and Livestock Bureau building (is that country enough for you?) in Las Cruces, N.M. where he worked. We did it late one drunken night in August of 1998 when nobody else was there.
Erik later hired a real country band he knew, The Desperados, to complete the song. The group included Ted Scanlon, bass, Mike Matthews, drums and Jim Tomlinson, pedal steel.
Erik burned the final result on a CD he sent me. He even made a cover for it:
In 2006, Mark Weber, founder, president and CEO of Zerx Records in Albuquerque, included “Parallel World” on Volume 22 of his Zerx Records series, Albuzerxque. I was proud to be there with the likes of Weber’s group The Bubbadinos, Bayou Seco and others.
Below is the recording of “Parallel World”:
There you have it. Those are the only songs on my own Soundclick page.
But now let me introduce you to The Winking Tikis.
“We play happy, positive music to make the kids want to dance. All three of us sing. We're the Winking Tikis!”
Three brothers from Moscow, Idaho -- Big Jerry, Dickie, and Michael "The Motherfucker" Covelle -- join together for some hot sonic action.
Band/artist history
The Winking Tikis were formed after Michael got us all kicked out of the church choir. We're making it happen.
Have you performed in front of an audience?
We don't play live. We hate our fans.
Your musical influences
Bobby Vinton, The Go-Gos, Sons of the Pioneers, Bootsy Collins, Song Lads of Sharon, Bone Pilgrim
Anything else?
We hope you like us. We were just kidding about hating our fans. We're just rocking and rolling and "playing the game."
xxx
Uhhhh…. yeah …
Actually this “band,” if you didn’t already suspect, was just Jack and me. Except for my vocal contributions, Jack basically did all the music for these tunes. The two of us co-wrote the lyrics. and recorded these between 2005 and 2008.
So yes, we were just rocking and rolling and "playing the game."
The very first Winking Tikis masterpiece was “Running from the Baron,”
“We believe you can start over. But only if you outrun the Baron,” the description on its Soundclick page says.
When listening, see if you recognize what we lifted from Jesus Christ Superstar.
And always: Watch out for flaming patio furniture!:
Here’s an intense little tune with distraught chipmunk vocals. It’s called “Payday Loans”
Back when we wrote this warped protest song, there were no caps on interest rates at storefront loan joints. The average interest rate back then was more than 300 percent, but there were some cases in which customers were paying more than twice that.
Finally, in 2022, the Legislature passed and the governor signed new Legislation to cap the interest rate at 35 percent. Right before that legislative session began, New Mexico Ethics Watch published this report on the issue, which I helped write.
So consider this song a historical document:
The final Winking Tikis song (so far!) was “Where Are You?”
I seriously don’t recall how this weird drone of a song came about. I think we’d just had a heavy meal at Jack’s house.
xxxx
Next Tuesday we start on the songs of Pandemonium Jukebox. Be there!