Princess Ramona: "Lover For A Night" b/w "I Need All The Help I Can Get" (Buddy K Records, #K-5001, 1960s)

Princess Ramona, AKA The Cherokee Princess, is Ramona Kemp, and she was born February 9, 1925. Her Facebook page was last updated March 7, 2014. I've tried to contact her and a few of her contacts via Facebook, but I've come up short on replies.

This 45 is, as the label sez, "A Little Bit of Royalty." Both of these songs are great. "Lover For A Night" is a sultry, seductive slow jam, and "I Need All The Help I Can Get" is a fun B-side with some interesting guitar flourishes. I don't know if that's Princess Ramona on guitar also or a studio musician.

Before we hear the songs, here's all the information I could find on Princess Ramona:

Per her Internet bio I found on a couple of different sites, Princess Ramona has traveled the globe singing, yodeling, and spreading the gospel for more than 50 years. She is the daughter of Chief Frank Buckshot Standing Horse. Princess Ramona was the wife of producer and fellow musician Buddy Kemp. I couldn't find much else about Buddy Kemp other than the work he did with his wife.

As far as the Internet is concerned, she has one full-length secular LP, "On the Wings of a Dove," and two seven inches, one from 1963, "Yesterday's Memories" b/w "I Wouldn't Let Myself Believe," and the one I'm presenting here tonight. I'm not sure of the year on this, and can only safely assume it was put out by Kemp (on Buddy K Records) sometime in the 1960s.

As a Christian singer/yodeler, Ramona has put out at least three LPs, all, I believe, released during the '70s - "Talk About Jesus," "Wait A Little Longer Please, Jesus," and "Yodeling Praises Unto the Lord."

Back in September of this year I did a post featuring Sammy Masters' "Say Yes Or No" b/w "When Fools Get Together" from 1966. Sammy Masters' song, "Say Yes Or No," was written by B. Kemp-R. Dale-S. Masters. I picked up both the Sammy Masters 45 and this Princess Ramona from the same place - The Record Parlour in Los Angeles. I'm not a hundred percent sure but I'm going to venture to guess that this B. Kemp was Buddy Kemp, Princess Ramona's husband, producer, and co-performer, and that the Ramona Dale who helped write "Say Yes Or No" and sang back up on both of the Sammy Masters tracks was, in fact, Princess Ramona.

As far as I can tell, the two songs on this 45 have not been shared with the Internet before. "Lover For A Night" was written by Oklahoma-born country songwriter Eddie Miller, who also wrote "Release Me," and, per his Wikipedia entry, "was the founder of the Country and Western Music Academy in Hollywood, as well as a co-founder of the Nashville Songwriters Association International (of which he served as the first president and also another term in the presidency)."

"I Need All The Help I Can Get" was written by Glen Garrison, a country singer-songwriter born in Arkansas.

On a final note, Princess Ramona's father, Chief Frank Buckshot Standing Horse, became a preacher late in his life and apparently had a keen interest in UFOs. He had his own contactee experience in 1959, in which he claimed to have been taken on a space ride across the solar system. He also founded the First Indian Spacecraft Convention in Sulpee, Oklahoma. Click here for the details on that.

Listen and download:

Lover For A Night:

I Need All The Help I Can Get:

If the embedded players above don't work for you, try clicking these links for listening and downloading:

Lover For A Night

I Need All The Help I Can Get

Here's Princess Ramona playing to a church congregation up in Oregon, back in 2011:

I wish Princess Ramona and her family the best this holiday season.

New Adam Holtz

CNQ fave Adam Holtz has been a busy man since the last time I featured a handful of his songs from Volume 18 of his copyrighted catalog back in September. Of the 35 songs he's written since I received his last CD, the majority of them were written in October. Volume 19 features 23 of these new tunes. As always, you can contact Adam via traditional mail at:

1616 Abbey Loop
Foley , Alabama 36535

Here's some highlights of the new volume. "Let Love In" is a Christian song and while I'm not religious myself, I think it's a good, honest song and I appreciate the sentiment. "What's This World Coming To" is a Nobama jam and while I don't agree with some of Adam's politics, I do agree that the status quo needs a shake up.

Listen and download:

Shannon Won't Reply
Let's Party
Down That Lonesome Road
Let Love In
What's This World Coming To

#Hashtag Ferguson

The Ferguson thing is weighing heavy on our minds. Our thoughts are with the Brown family.

You've probably seen this already, but here's my hero Killer Mike speaking about it and getting choked up, hours after the verdict was announced. Run the Jewels happened to be playing in Saint Louis last night.

Here's a Noisey interview with Killer Mike about that speech, Ferguson, and the state of affairs in general. As I said, Killer Mike is my hero. I'm so proud and excited that a guy my age is speaking out about the stuff I believe, being rational and responsible about it, and getting positive media attention.

In the wake of the grand jury decision last night, A-F Records is now donating all proceeds from their new protest compilation, This Concerns Everyone, to the Ferguson Defense Fund. You can buy the album on bandcamp for a buck. Go do it.

The Ferguson Public Library could use your help as well.

Because Killer Mike and El-P are besties, here's a new song about besties from Portland, courtesy Dirtnap Records:

Run the Jewels are running my life

My husband has been begging me to contribute to CNQ for a while so here we go!

The Run the Jewels show we saw a few weeks back was amazing but it's more than that, I have listened to Run the Jewels 2 multiple times every day since, watched any interview I can find with Killer Mike and El-P, and have started digging deep into their back catalogs.  I'm in DEEP.

I have always liked hip-hop but my tastes have always leaned more towards fun stuff, clever braggadocious lyrics, preferably filthy, with a beat to dance to.  I wanted to like conscious rap but it was always boring, heavy handed, or both.  I enjoy conscious commentary couched within a banger but that just doesn't happen as much.  My husband doesn't quite appreciate Kanye West as much as I do but I think he's excellent at this- his politics are often muddled but he is often talking about something more than sex and money (although there's plenty of that as well) with humor in a sly way that doesn't bring the whole song down.  All Falls Down was one of his first singles and as long as you aren't distracted by Stacy Dash from Clueless' nipples (or the fact that she's become a very outspoken Republican recently) you'll hear some interesting racial commentary without being didactic. I won't even go into my theories that Kanye is a genius and that much of his persona is an elaborate put-on (perhaps even his marriage to Kim Kardashian.)



I knew of El-P from his old label Definitive Jux and just seeing his albums out there in the music media being well-reviewed but I never sought him out.  Honestly, I wasn't in the market for another super verbose white, male rapper.  The Beastie Boys did a perfectly fine job of playing that role so I didn't really have room for Eminem, Aesop Rock, Atmosphere, or the like. On the flip, I really didn't know anything about Killer Mike until last year when we saw him at Fun Fun Fun Fest and were astonished by his performance and his overall attitude, he exudes good vibes while also being rightfully pissed about a lot of things in the world.  He had been affiliated with Outkast but he never quite got the attention he deserved and really I was never that into Outkast.  His most recent solo album R.A.P Music is clearly excellent (and produced by El-P and he raps on one track) but it still wasn't something that I listened to constantly; liked it but didn't love it. But the mixture of their bromantic chemistry, El-P's production that is just weird enough to be interesting but also bangs and has great hooks, their different-but-complimentary flows, their balance of seriousness and goofiness, just coalesced into the perfect album. It's fun without being stupid like most radio rap, it's conscious without being dull, and it's aggressive like street rap while being welcoming to people from all walks of life (during the show they both shouted out gay rights and called for us all to be kind to each other, discouraging the guys trying to get bout it in the pit from flailing into women who are just trying to enjoy the show.)   And for an album recorded pre-Ferguson it certainly sounds like it's a direct response. Add to all of this the fact that these two guys are almost 40, from 2 totally difference scenes, and both never quite broke through despite their immense talent...it's an underdog story, to boot!  It's deeply inspiring. I haven't felt so affected by an album or band in years, probably not since I got into Sleater-Kinney's Dig Me Out (they are my all time favorite band, and coincidentally you can here them shout out Run the Jewels in this interview about their reunion tour and album.)  Embarrassingly,  I had not listened to Run the Jewels' first album at all because it wasn't on Spotify, how lazy?  We'd watched the videos for a couple of the songs, 36" Chain and A Christmas F*cking Miracle, both of which are great but I am incredibly stoked they've released the first video for RTJ 2.




I am a librarian, and my first impulse when I get into something is to dig around and find everything I can online about it. And "it" in this case is El-P because I have developed a weirdly intense crush on the man.  Never been into gingers before, but his talent, his white boy swag, and chipped front tooth  give me the vapors. Killer Mike also has a beautiful smile and loads of charisma but he's married so that's why El-P gets the brunt of my affections. It's interesting to me how girls are expected to find the male musicians they enjoy attractive; it starts early with boy bands and Bieber-types but there's plenty of it in grown womanhood with the likes of Drake for the hip-hop crowd or Dierks Bentley for the country lovin' ladies. The opposite is true for men- sure they can find a woman hot in her videos but they have to insist they mute the music. Overall, men aren't encouraged to like music by women; a group like the Pussycat Dolls were marketed very sexily but not to sell albums to pubescent boys but rather to sell a male-approved sexuality to girls who could listen to Don't Cha with abandon (we all know guys enjoy pop trifles like this or Taylor Swift or the Spice Girls in their day but it wouldn't be considered masculine to admit it.) I'm sure there are many a women studies thesis that addresses this phenomenon but all I can really say is that I've been taking the bait since the jump; while the Monkees were very much before my time, they reunited when I was in middle school so they were re-airing the show. I was in love with Michael Nesmith in the same way millions of girls were in 1967 but also developed quite an appreciation for his country-tinged rock (which lead me to Son Volt which lead to a deep attraction to Jay Farrar, it's a cycle.)  Through some deep Googling, I read who El-P's girlfriend is, read her Twitter (she's pretty funny) for way too long, and found this silly little song she wrote on the fly about him. When he says "very nice, sweetie" at the end, I die. Based on the oral focus of his more sensual lyrics, she is definitely getting hers, good for them!

This song has a particularly notable El-P verse and something about his creepy mustache does it for me.



It really cannot be overstated how engaging El-P and Killer Mike's chemistry is. I have gotten misty just reading about their developing friendship.  There is a strange dearth of good quality videos of them performing together but this is a nice live studio session where you get to see them chat and be adorable together and then kill it on the track (Sea Legs has become one of my favorites.)

New Punk From Bandcamp

I'm going thru the little collection of 45s I've amassed in the last couple of years. Cleaning, cataloging, organizing. It's fun. Here soon I'll post some more cool stuff from that collection.

Got some new Adam Holtz coming up too.

Not limited to format tonight, here's some cool new sounds from Bandcamp.

Simo Soo, Sydney's own no-rave partiste (that's a party artiste, and I just made that up, I think), has a new EP out, Sootopia, and will have a new full-length early next year, sez he.

From Michigan's East Grand Record Co.:

The A-F Records This Concerns Everyone comp is out. Great stuff.

From Artificial Head Records in Houston, these guys from Houston have a 7" for sale, limited to 400 on "splattered vinyl":

Courtesy CNQ darlings Grave Mistake Records outta Richmond, VA:

New HC Punk Vinyl From Bandcamp

I enjoy the primacy of hardcore punk rock. This first blast is courtesy my new favorite Australian hc label, Lethal Dose Records. You can pre-order Muzzled's new 7" in hot pink or black. Fellow Aussie hc act Manhunt's self-titled LP is already sold out on the Lethal Dose bandcamp site.

From Germany's Erste Theke Tontraeger label, here's some cool German action:

New Motörhead-inspired punk from Denmark:

East Coast label Negative Fun Records has this new 7" for your consideration -- Richmond, VA's Hot Dolphin:

Czech Phobia Records, new to CNQ, has only 50 copies of a limited mail order edition of this Swedish crustcore 7" (there's also 500 of the regular black vinyl):

From Newcastle, Australia, I saved the best for last:

Scene Report: Parade of Flesh presents Triathalon, Future War, Roomrunner, and Dope Body at the Double Wide Tavern in Dallas

I meant to do a piece on the Run the Jewels show last Thursday but I didn't. Luckily my lovely wife-time companion has a lot to say about Run the Jewels. Stay tuned!

Man, what a good line-up tonight at the Double Wide. Thanks, Parade of Flesh, for doing what you do to get bands like this to Dallas. This was our first visit to the Double Wide Tavern, located in 'the deepest of Ellum," as a guy I work with put it earlier today. Or yesterday. It's late, we got back from the show a little while ago. I am jazzed.

Triathlon came on at 9:20 and the room was full, but it was odd because it was mostly normal looking, older people and not the type you usually see at rock'n'roll shows. Turns out the guys in Triathalon, who hail from Georgia, have family and friends here in the D and they came out tonight Texas style to support their boys. Triathalon has a low-key surf rock thing goin' on and the lead singer, Adam Intrator, has a great falsetto. The wife objectified Adam and felt guilty after realizing his folks were standing behind us. What's wrong with her? Their set was super-tight. The wife thinks they could be the next Maroon-5. I dunno if anybody wants to be that, but she meant it as a compliment for sure. This is my fave song:

Seeing it live, it came on like Paradise Cove by the Lively Ones, which I love:

Next up was Future Death from Austin. The room cleared out and man they played like champs to maybe fifteen or so people. It was one of the loudest things I've heard in a while -- manic and ambitious and great noisy rock'n'roll. Bill the guitarist for Future Death played his instrument like the Flash, his hand was a total blur. Their new album is called Special Victim and they have a song called Speedweed. My wife put the two together, that the band is Law and Order: SVU fans. Bill confirmed this for me. He chatted with us about SVU and Seinfeld, two of my favorite subjects. He was a super cool dude, and a crazy guitar player. I objectified the lead singer, Angie Kang, and felt guilty. What's wrong with me?

Roomrunner was up next and the room I think got a little bigger for them but not by much. They're from Maryland like Dope Body. It was lead singer Denny Bowen's birthday. For his birthday, he and his band put on a top notch show.

The last band was Dope Body, also from Maryland, and man I've been listening to them so much the past week, in anticipation of this show. I was a little bummed I couldn't hear Andrew Laumann's vocals as much as I wanted to; I had the same problem with Future Death's Angie Kang. The other two bands seemed equalized, vox to music. Anyway, Andrew Laumann is worth seeing perform, as he's got his Mick Jagger swagger thing and the band happens to be moving rock music forward, like Jesus Lizard or Protomartyr, IMO.

There were maybe ten or fifteen people to catch this show but the band played like they had to impress one hundred angels. They played a request from a dude, a song they hadn't played in a while. They played their hearts out. It seemed to me that each band did. And there's three words for that:

Rad. Ass. Shit.

New Vinyl from Bandcamp

All of these artists have new records available thru bandcamp:

From Germany:

Heck yeah, from Brisbane and Lethal Dose Records:

From Mexico/Melbourne:

Until November 16, Grave Mistake has a sale on all Grave Mistake and Vinyl Conflict releases from 2013. If you use discount code: GM2013 when you checkout, you'll get 25% off any of their 2013 releases, including a few packages/bundles that qualify for 25% off as well. Per their release, "Included in the list are LPs from NIGHT BIRDS, COKE BUST, BIG EYES, SICKOIDS, SECTARIAN VIOLENCE, and THE SHIRKS, plus 7"s from KREMLIN, BARGE, HARD STRIPES, RED DONS, and DEVIL'S HAND! That's around $9.00 for the LPs, less than $4.00 for 7"s, and even cheaper records if you grab one of the package deals."

From Fort Wayne, Indiana:

Gonna see these guys on Friday:

New Tunes

I've received a couple of e-mails from a PR and plugging company in Manchester called Blue Soap Music. That's cool. I guess if the bands can afford it, it saves them some legwork of getting the word out. Here's some cool stuff Blue Soap is promoting. From New York state:

From London:

From Canada:

Korla Pandit: Selections from "The Universal Language of Music Volume 3" (India Records, 1979)

I had a request over on my Google Plus page to re-up some selections from my Korla Pandit album, "The Universal Language of Music," Volume 3. Tone Power was the song I featured in my original post, back in May '13. Spanish Eyes is the first song on the B side of the album and per the label on the record, Pandit performs this track "simultaneously on piano and organ." As far as I can tell, neither song are available anywhere else on the internet. Enjoy!

Listen and download Tone Power:

If the embedded player above doesn't work for you, try this: Tone Power

Listen and download Spanish Eyes:

Download Spanish Eyes

If the embedded player above doesn't work for you, try this: Spanish Eyes

John Stuckey & the Magic Cowboy Band: "Seeds and Stems" b/w "Scares The Hell Out of Me" (Good Ole Uncle Bob, 1974)

Some rad-ass Texas outlaw country/novelty jawnz tonight.

John Stuckey, who wrote both these tracks, had a radio show on KPFT in Houston in the 70s, and also was into demolition derbys. Awesome. The B-side to this 45, "Scares the Hell Out of Me," has been featured on the Dr. Demento Show a couple of times, once in 1975 and once in 2009. As near as I can tell, neither of these tracks are previously available on the Internet, so this is the type of real deal cool stuff CNQ breathes for. Stuckey's son got in contact with me tonight and said his dad was 6'8", and went on to become a renowned tattoo artist, and both Stuckey and Uncle Bob (the label is called Good Ole Uncle Bob) were tattooed dudes. That's pretty cool. Sadly, John Stuckey is no longer with us, having passed away in 2003.

Good Ole Uncle Bob also put out Stuckey and the Magic Cowboy's Grandma's Love/Moonlight Mailman 45, and sponsored Stuckey's 6,000 lb. '65 Lincoln in a demolition derby in January of 1975.

So this is UB-2020, copyright Crazy Cajun Music BMI. It was recorded at the famous Sugar Hill Studios in Houston. Stuckey's son thinks both were produced by the Crazy Cajun himself, Huey P. Meaux. Seems reasonable to me that they would be.

These songs are great. Topical, timeless. The A side, Seeds & Stems:

Download Seeds & Stems

If the embedded player above doesn't work for you, try this: Seeds & Stems

Scares the Hell Out of Me:

Download Seeds & Stems

If the embedded player above doesn't work for you, try this: Scares the Hell Out of Me