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| LET'S LEARN ABOUT MUSIC: NORTEñO |  | Category: Music
Saturday, December 31st, 2005 @ 10:53 am
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I've been meaning to file some reports about how life is different here in the big D for awhile and I just couldn't figure out where to start. Thankfully, my neighbors just helped out.
See, the part of town I live in is like ten years into some urban renewal process. That means that ten years ago, the very place where I am sitting was probably filled with a few crackheads and gunslingers and stone-cold can collectors. Now it means that my neighborhood is a cheery mix of socio-economic and ethnic groups that mutually enrich one anothers lives. Or something. I feel like I'm still living in the UPT, and that's the main thing for me.
The big D (or at least my part of it) is (contrary to what a map might tell you) located in Mexico. It didn't take long for me to find a portrait of one of the guys in my neighborhood, so you can see what I'm talking about.
See, the longstanding stereotypes of what Mexicans look like are dead. Speedy Gonzales wasn't protested because he enforced an offensive stereotype, he was protested because he was outdated. Nobody dresses like that anymore.
Unless they're in a norteño band.
 See, when you move around my part of town, you'll see these hardcore cowboy looking guys. Except they're Mexicans. Which I guess is okay. I mean, when you're a kid you play Cowboys and Indians, not Cowboys and Mexicans. So it's not like the two are fundamentally opposed or anything. Anyway, sometimes these Cowboys will listen to regular country music like Garth Brooks or Toby Keith or something. And then sometimes they listen to something else. Something that reminds them a little more of home. Something that sounds like... polka.
See, I'm a regular white kid. I saw Selena, marvelled at Jennifer Lopez's ass, and figured I knew about Mexican music in America- also known as Tejano. So when I heard this accordion and tuba music coming from my neighbor's house, I was like, "Oh, those cute little Mexicans and their Tejano listening ways! When will they ever understand?" But then I found out that Tejano is something different. Tejano can have an accordion. Hell, it can have a tuba. But it's not supposed to sound like el oom-pa-pa.
None of this made sense to me when I first checked up on it at Wikipedia. How did music that's so very German end up in so popular in Mexico? And how was it decided that the people who like this music and the people who make this music should all dress up like movie cowboys? Those are two pretty good questions. Two questions that will be answered by someone with a scholarly interest. My interest lies mostly in the pointing and laughing and then maybe feeling a little white liberal guilt about it so maybe just resolving at a rumpled eyebrow with a quizzical sidelong glance.
I mean, Mexican cowboys listening to polka! What the fuck?
Actually, I don't care. It's not that crazy. Because while finding those other images, I also found these. And any genre of music that has room for these two suave motherfuckers is fine by me.
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| A WORMY CHRISTMAS | | Category: Music
Sunday, December 25th, 2005 @ 06:39 pm
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At last, the new Worms song can be heard. (Well, at least the instrumental demo version. Gotta string this stuff out a little.) The Artist says that this is somewhere between Revenge of the Nerds and The Breakfast Club. I've got to say he's right.
Worms- Carpet Man
(Related: The Worms)
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| THE WORMS | | Category: Music
Monday, December 12th, 2005 @ 05:02 pm
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 Pete recently said that he has a new Worms song out, so once he gets it over to me I'll toss it up here for the public to paruse.
For the uninitiated, The Worms was a band circa roughly 1998 that was made up of Pete and Patrick. From what I can remember, it was mostly Pete doing everything while Pat would pace around drinking and giving his thumbs up or down on what Pete was doing. This of course doesn't mean Patrick never played anything, I'm sure he laid quite a few bass tracks on a number of their songs.
A few years later, Pete burned me a CD of the songs he still had in his 8-track from the Worms days, songs that I don't think Pete even has anymore. Well, Katrina took care of the CD for me, but luckily I had ripped it to mp3 mere months before the catashrophe, so the music has survived in one form or another. It may not be the same without the CD cover Pete made for it, a picture of me drunkenly trying to tackle Pete in my living room while wearing an orange ski mask, or the liner notes, "The CD is so good it will make you shit yourself," with a wet wipe taped to the inlay right underneath it, but at least it still exists.
Anyway, as a celebration of this newly released, but as of yet unheard, new Worms song, I am making freely available, without artist's consent, the entire Worms debut album: "The CD I Gave To Brent." It didn't have a name, so I made due.
PS. None of the songs had names on the CD I received, and I could only recall a scant few. The rest I made up myself using key lyrics from the songs themselves. Also, knowing one day I would loose or damage the CD, I ripped them at an extremely high bitrate to get the best quality possible in order to make more CDs. The one exeption to this is "The Sky Will Wash Us Together," due to the fact that I apparently deleted my ripped version of it and was luckily able to find an mp3 I made of it to send to Scott five years ago. It's ripped at a lowly 56kbs @ 22khz to speed up the interweb transfer to him back in those dark days of dialup. If anyone has a copy of this song, please rip it for me at the bitrate and freq the others are.
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