Track 5: "The Green Weenie"

What's a dude to do?

Jimmy Carl Black and me, that time in 2000 when my brother Jack and I opened for his German blues group, The Farrell & Black Band at the Paramount in Santa Fe

Chorus

What's a dude to do when his lover's been untrue?

I was such a tough guy, ‘til my baby made me cry

The green weenie, the green weenie, was all she left for me

xxx

I scored some beer at Apple's

Then we went out on a cruise

It was Friday night in Santa Fe, Yucca Drive-in and some booze

In the back seat of my Falcon we were as cozy as could be

And though you knocked over my ashtray, you proved your love for me (twice!)

(Repeat Chorus)

After the movie was over you said, "I tell you what we should do.,

I ripped off my sister Rosie's fake I.D and I got some good news for you.

My cousin Benny is the bouncer at the Senate Lounge tonight

I make sure that he don't card you," I said, "Bitchen, that sounds allright!"

(Repeat Chorus)

BRIDGE: (spoken)

The band was taking their 15 minute break as we sat down at our booth

You got up to go to the restroom you said, but then I found out the truth

You went to the parking lot with the saxophone player

Left me feeling like a clown

Had there been water in the Santa Fe River that night

I'd have jumped right in and drowned

I hear you're going steady, well that don't bother me

You can hang around the Senate Lounge and drink your drinks for free

But that pinche joto has to pay for stealing my pretty young lass

So me and Gilbert and Little Leonard and the Hyenas are gonna shove that saxophone -

Straight up his .......

(Repeat Chorus)

copyright Sidhe Gorm Music (BMI)

(written 1976)

Throughout my life, local radio has been very important to me. I’ve babbled before how WKY in Oklahoma City played a huge role in shaping my eclectic musical taste.

But when my family would vacation in Santa Fe – and after 1968, when we moved to Santa Fe – I got my rock ‘n’ kicks from KVSF, another Top 40 AM station.

I’ll never forget that night in the summer of 1966 when I went to sleep with KVSF playing from my trusty transistor radio right by my hear.

In the Dreamland haze I heard what was announced as a new song by The Beatles, which featured a fragment of a ragtag marching band, weird oscillator noises and a pseudo nursery-rhyme chorus that went “We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine …”

Waking up the next day I told my brother about dreaming about this strange Beatles song I dreamed about. It was later that day, someone on KVSF played the song again, making me realize it wasn’t a dream after all.

One of my favorite shows on KVSF, on Thursday nights, I’m pretty sure, was their live broadcast from the Senate Lounge, a popular bar at the time in downtown Santa Fe. It was hosted by a popular KVSF DJ, Ernie Rivera, who was known as “Ernie the Bear.”

Ernie would go interview nightclub patrons, plug Senate drink specials and sometimes give away prizes.

During my live performances at The Forge in the ‘80s I’d sometimes joke about this onstage while introducing “The Green Weenie,” claiming Ernie would give bottles of pink champagne to “the girl with the shortest miniskirt,” though to be honest, I don’t think that particular contest actually ever happened.

Hope any old Forge regulars out there aren’t too disappointed.

But the coolest part of those broadcasts was the band, which usually was a local group called The Rocking Aces, who ended every set with “Night Train.”

They always sounded snazzy beyond compare, performing the hits of the day and, I’m pretty sure local favorites like “La Bamba” and “Brown-Eyed Girl.” (Wasn’t there a local ordinance that required all Santa Fe bands to play those?)

I’ve searched years without luck for any trace of The Rocking Aces on YouTube and elsewhere online. But here’s a song I remember them performing at the Senate Lounge.

I’ve never met any members of the Aces, but I wish they’d have lasted at least long enough to have covered “The Green Weenie.”

As for the song itself, I started writing it after one sad night in the spring of 1976 after a bad date.

I’d taken some lucky young woman who was in one of my classes to my favorite Albuquerque bar at the time: Okie’s, a dive near the University of New Mexico.

Okies was around for decades. In fact, according to my mom, both she and my father used to go there back when they were at UNM back in the 1940s.

I love family traditions!

My photographer friend Miguel Gandert and writer Orlando Medina organized a show honoring Okie’s in 1980, not long after it shuttered. The guy in the photo was an Okie’s employee known as “Phil the Foul,” who actually was a pretty nice guy, as long as you didn’t argue with him at last call when he told you it was time to leave.

So I went to Okie’s with this woman and the “date” was pretty much a dud. We just weren’t hitting it off.

And to make matters, there was a band that night and she basically made a beeline for the bass player (I don’t remember them having any saxophone player), during their 15-minute break, seemingly forgetting about the guy who brung her.

And at the end of their show, she went running back to the stage to flirt more with the bassist.

Fucking bass players …

I was sad but not “jump in the river” sad. Had I not decided to use that night as a springboard for this silly song I probably would have forgotten all about it.

But instead I decided to use it in a song to honor the town where I went to high school, and to which I’d return to in just a few years, even though I didn’t know it at the time.

So I chose a doo-wop style chord progression and stuffed the lyrics full of Santa Fe references.

There was Apple liquors, the first place I ever illegally purchased alcohol as a teenager. The location of that little store was what’s part of the Whole Foods parking lot on Cerrillos Road – many of which are gone now.

There was the Yucca Drive-In, where I drank the booze I bought at Apple’s that night – and other nights as well. The Yucca was one of two drive-in theaters in Santa Fe back during the ‘60s and ‘70s, the other being the Pueblo, which closed in 1980 and is now occupied by a Walmart. The Yucca didn’t close until 1994.

Photo borrowed from Cinema Treasures. That long blue thing is a yucca plant, no matter what your sick and filthy mind imagined it was!

Of course, there’s the Senate Lounge. That’s where The Rocking Aces romped. And that’s where the narrator’s heartbreak begins.

By the time I was playing this song live in Santa Fe, the Senate had become a gay bar. No more Rocking Aces but still a rocking joint.

In the last verse, I used the Santa Fe River, a tributary of the Rio Grande that runs through the city, as the butt of a private joke for locals.

People here often sarcastically refer to “the raging currents of the Santa River” or other such wry hyperbole, because often there is little if any water in this mighty river.

I took this snapshot of the majestic Santa Fe River, just a few weeks ago, from the trail beneath the Camino Alire crossing. Technically, I guess, there was enough water to drown in.

So “The Green Weenie” would be my love song to the Santa Fe, but not the tourism-industry version of Santa Fe. There were no adobe walls, no turquoise-laden tourists in $300 cowboy hats, no gorgeous sunsets, no overpriced bistros in which the only Chicanos were the busboys and dishwashers.

No, this was the Santa Fe of the Yucca Drive-in, of Ernie the Bear and Apple Liquors and the Senate Lounge – not to mention the river that rarely seemed much like a river.

This one was for my fellow locals.

I guess that’s why the locals liked it enough to tolerate my bad imitation of a Chicano accent.

About a year before we started the Potatoheads project, my old crony, the late great Erik Ness (I mentioned him a few times in Snazzy Life, the best time being this) introduced me to an acquaintance of his: Jimmy Carl Black, one of Frank Zappa’s drummers in the original Mothers of Invention. (Check out Erik’s tribute to Jimmy, who died in 2008, HERE)

Jimmy at the time, was living in his hometown of Anthony, N.M., right on the Texas state line just south of Las Cruces. He was playing with a group called Big Sonny & The Lo Boys. So one weekend when he was up in Santa Fe, I interviewed him for the Santa Fe Reporter.

Jimmy Carl Black being videotaped at The Outpost in Albiuquerque in 2007 while playing with Dr. Eugene Chadbourne as The Jimn & Jack Show.

So when we started planning the album the next year, I started thinking: “Maybe we can’t get anyone from The Rocking Aces, but I know someone from Ruben & The Jets …”

I called Jimmy and he immediately agreed without hesitation to drum on “The Green Weenie” – despite the piddly pay I was offering. He showed up promptly to Wagner Studios the night of that session and drummed like the pro he was, nailing it in a single take.

Just a word about the title. This is one aspect of the song that doesn’t actually have roots in Santa Fe culture. It’s an expression that I picked up from a friend of a friend from Chicago.

And, no, you pervs, it has nothing to do with venereal disease.

Necessarily.

This guy used it to describe himself or others who’d been dumped by a woman, i.e. “Man, we were getting along great, but then she gave me THE GREEN WEENIE!”

So, that’s all I’ll leave for you.

Now enjoy my song:

Credits:

Steve Terrell, lead vocals, acoustic rhythm guitar

Jack Clift: lead guitar, producer

Mike Roybal: bass

Jimmy Carl Black: drums

Jimmy Carl Black with my son Anton, at The Outpost in Albuquerque in 2007. This was the last time I would ever see Jimmy.

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