VOL III, Issue 4, February 24, 2016 New Mexico’s best alternative newspaper City Hall’s Pain in the Ass PAGE 9 Ethics Reform Dies Yet Again PAGE 5 Kill The Koch Brothers? PAGE 15 Metric’s Emily Haines On DIY, Cassette Culture PAGE 27 Getaways: How to Fight Cabin Fever PAGES 18-21 EDITor’s A&E PICK ABQ FREE PRESS • February 24, 2016 • 3 Big Sandy’s Top Four BY CAPTAIN AMERICA Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite www.ruizdelatorre.com Boys with Cowboys (505) 544-5400 and Indian Tuesday, Have you been seriously injured? March 1, 9 p.m. Are you being charged with a crime? Low Spirits, Have you been wrongfully convicted? 2823 Second Street NW Tickets: $10, 21+ LACEphotography bigsandy.net WE HELP LAW MAKE SENSE Big Sandy Personal Injury Criminal Defense obert Williams — that’s Big Sandy to you — possesses four things you don’t: Civil Rights Appeals R Foreclosure Habeas Corpus Class This quality is best illustrated by anecdote. The last time Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Estate Planning Extraordinary Writs Boys graced Low Spirits’ stage, I arrived early enough to find Williams at the bar. This is Divorce Drug Possession his show, right? Man of the hour and all that? And he buys me a drink. The man is my Entertainment Law Murder role model. Family Law DWI Style Sandy is fastidious about his appearance — never a stray thread or follicle out of place — but he’s not persnickety. He simply has sartorial values that have mostly (and sadly) Se Habla Español fallen by the wayside. My best clothes are what he’d wear to paint the living room. Grace You don’t hear this word much these days except in evangelical company. Besides being an elegant performer, Sandy is light on his feet in the style of eminent big men like Jackie Gleason. He carries himself with refined deportment. Talent Besides his sincere, cunning lyricism, Sandy’s croon is as smooth as a sip of 15-year-old Irish whiskey. Think Johnny Burnette tempered with Marty Robbins. His is a voice that has matured into a soft yet commanding sweetness. This was only hinted at 25 years ago when the band formed; back then, Sandy’s vocals were closer to the standard rockabilly baritone with requisite hiccups. In those days, rockabilly was being updated — not always successfully — to either a radio-friendly, stylistically static Stray Cats sound or the wails of Crampsian psychobilly. Unlike contemporary revivalists, Sandy and company aimed for the purity of the original rockabilly sound, as evidenced by their debut on garage-punk oriented Dionysus Records. As unlikely as that pairing might seem, it illustrates what punk stood for at the time: not a genre but a stripping away of excess. To his credit, Sandy didn’t view a return to roots as tedious reproduction but as a starting point for enriched style and, most importantly, sophistication. The key to his professional and artistic success is embracing pedigree without neglecting heart. Witness the sincere balladry of numbers like “Catalina” or “Spanish Dagger.” This sincerity didn’t preclude rocking out, as evidenced by lead guitarist and 20-year Fly-Rite veteran Ashley Kingman; he can play as baby smooth as Roland Janes or rip it up like Cliff Gallup. Although they’ll forever wear the tag, Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys are much more than merely rockabilly. On stages as diverse as the Grand Ole Opry and “The Conan O’ Brien Show,” Sandy makes a point of acknowledging his equally important country & western, R&B and doo-wop influences with self-assurance and poise. Low Spirits is the perfect local spot to see the band. The dance floor isadequate, and the band loves to see the crowd swinging each other around out there. The place is also intimate, with the sound quality to satisfy clubfoots like me — ones who stand near the stage to appreciate the music and lift their glasses to Big Sandy. But this time, I’m buying him a drink. Captain America is a longtime nuevomexicano music journalist and zinester, editor of “Wig Wam Bam: Albuquerque’s Zine of Music and Nepotism.” 4 • February 24, 2016 • ABQ FREE PRESS www.freeabq.com ABQ FREE PRESS • February 24, 2016 • 5 NEWS www.abqarts.com NEWS Editor: [email protected] Arts: [email protected] ABQ Free Press Pulp News News: [email protected] New Mexico Senate to Public: We Can Police Ourselves Advertising: [email protected] COMPILED BY ABQ FREE PRESS STAFF BY DAN VUKELICH On Twitter: @FreeABQ Fighting for Zika pants will do the trick. Wearable but privacy advocates worry that n attempt to bring an independent ethics Experiments, an Australian wireless health monitoring rep- Editor enforcer to New Mexico state government died Airlines flying to some destina- A company, has developed its Nadi resents “unparalleled new forms Dan Vukelich during the 2016 session through a variation of a tions are requiring insecticide brand of smart Yoga pants that of surveillance.” (505) 345-4080. Ext. 800 legislative maneuver used for more than two decades disinfection of airliner cabins, have sensors built in at the ankles, to defeat ethics reform. sometimes while passengers are Associate Editor, News knees and hips. The sensors deter- Flying to Cuba Late in the session, a Senate committee amended still in their seats. All in-bound Dennis Domrzalski mine whether the wearer’s body a proposed constitutional amendment to create an flights to Cuba, Jamaica, India, American, Delta, Jet Blue, South- (505) 306-3260 is in the correct position. If not, independent ethics commission so as to make it a Australia, India and New Zealand west and United Airlines are the pants send a slight vibration Managing Editor/Arts Editor “toothless tiger,” according to its sponsor, Rep. Jim are sprayed, using a procedure expected to apply for authority to the proper area to inform the Samantha Anne Carrillo Dines, an Albuquerque Republican. stipulated by the World Health to fly to Havana and as many exerciser to shift the position of (505) 345-4080 ext. 804 Rather than have his name on a meaningless mea- Organization. The U.S. Depart- as 10 other cities in Cuba from that body part. The Nadi Yoga Online Editor sure, Dines said he chose to abandon it. ment of Transportation’s “Aircraft the United States. If the U.S. and pants go on sale in mid-May. The Juani Hopwood “What went down is, I proposed the constitutional Disinfection Requirements” Cuban approval processes go company plans other products for (505) 345-4080 ext. 816, [email protected] amendment to give an ethics commission provisions mentions the Zika virus by name. smoothly, flights could begin as boxers, cyclists and weight lifters. for transparency and give it exclusive authority to The United Kingdom has ex- early as this fall, Vox Media re- Circulation Manager adjudicate civil complaints, and the response to that panded its traditional spraying of ported. NPR reports that as many Steve Cabiedes Edible tech on the morning of the hearing was such that trans- flights from malarial countries to as 110 Cuba-bound flights could (505) 345-4080 ext. 815 parency and adjudicative authority were removed,” those also including “confirmed New technology is allowing your operate each day. Design Dines said. transmission of Zika.” doctor to be notified if you miss a Terry Kocon, C.S. Tiefa day taking your meds. A Silicon Grander canyon “We would have been left with an investigative- Valley company, Proteus Digital Photography type committee and with no authority,” Dines said. Guns R Us Satellite radio imagery reveals “It was more than a disappointment,” he said. “I Health, makes a smart pill that that Antarctica has an ice-covered Mark Bralley, Mark Holm, Juan Antonio Labreche, Liz Lopez, Maybe all that airport security Ka- Adria Malcolm thought this was a very good piece of legislation,” he uses “digestible sensors” made of canyon that is 680 miles long and buki isn’t just theater after all. The said. copper and magnesium that inter- 3,280 feet deep — almost twice the Contributors this issue TSA seized 2,653 guns from airline Dines’ proposal would have covered non-criminal act with stomach acid to generate length of the Grand Canyon and Ty Bannerman, Captain America, Abby Feldman, Barry Gaines, passengers’ carry-on luggage last campaign finance violations by political candidates, an electrical signal that is received just as deep. The canyon lies be- Gary Glasgow, Juani Hopwood, Bill Hume, Ariane Jarocki, year, a 20 percent increase from officeholders and lobbyists; non-criminal ethics by a Band-Aid like patch on your neath the ice of East Princess Eliz- Susan E. Katz, Dan Klein, Danny Lyon, Joe Monahan, Mark Bralley 2014 and a record. Eighty percent violations by state employees; and failures by state skin. According to Buzz Feed, abeth Island, an area that is bigger Sayrah Namasté, Jeff Proctor, Robert Reich, of those weapons were loaded, contractors and would-be contractors to disclose Late in the 30-day 2016 legislative session that ended Feb. 18, Rep. Jim Dines presents a proposal for an independent ethics commission the receiver communicates with than the United Kingdom. The M. Brianna Stallings, Richard Stevens, Tom Tomorrow NBC News reported. ethical conflicts. Jurisdiction over criminal violations to the Senate Rules Committee, which gutted it sufficiently to lead Dines to abandon it as a “toothless tiger.” a smartphone app that informs little-explored region “is less well Copy Editors would have remained with prosecutors. your doctor whether the pill has known than the surface of Mars,” Wendy Fox Dial Members of the commission would have been Smarty pants been consumed or whether the scientist Stewart Jamieson told served from 1981 to 1990, attempted to tighten lobby- years here, very ethically and very fairly,” Ingle said.