¿Qué Estamos Escuchando?

¿Qué Estamos Escuchando? (Grammys, Remmy Valenzuela, Natalia Jiménez)

NorteñoBlog would like to issue a correction: In the post entitled “Why Do the Grammys Hate Norteño Music?”, I mistakenly referred to Vicente Fernández’s Mano a Mano: Tangos a la Manera de Vicente Fernández as a “tribute album.” It’s not. Rather, the album is what it says it is: ranchera singer Fernández singing tangos in his own style, with lead bandoneon from Raul Vizzi. It’s a likable little album that peaked at #3 on Billboard‘s Regional Mexican Albums chart and #11 on Hot Latin Albums. Sunday it won the Grammy for Best Regional Mexican Music Album (including Tejano). Congratulations!

Of course, Mano a Mano represents the current state of regional Mexican music (including Tejano) somewhat less well than Beck’s Album of the Year-winning Morning Phase represents popular music overall. Never mind how Beck stacks up against Beyoncé — at least his album appeared on TV soundtracks and radio, shaping both music conversations and “the sound of 2014.” (Maybe there should be a Grammy category for “Best Soundtrack to a TV Character Having Epiphanies About Life.”) Compared to the list of overall Album of the Year winners, Fernández’s album is closer to Herbie Hancock’s River: The Joni Letters — an undeniably well-performed and polite museum piece that everyone can now safely ignore.

Not to be ignored is accordion hero Remmy Valenzuela, singing “Mi Princesa” to a young woman whose tipo just cheated on her at the Orpheum Theater. Remmy saw it all from the stage. We covered the song at The Singles Jukebox, where I wrote:

A dextrous accordion hero puts down his axe to sing a banda ballad with more authority than he’s ever sung before, enunciating to las estrellas. Noel Torres would farm this kind of thing out to the likes of Luciano Luna, norteño’s own Diane Warren figure, but Valenzuela wrote “Princesa” himself and he’s smart about it, intuiting how the brass will clobber the high points in his melody. (I don’t care how fleet his fingers are, this thing would sound thin with just his quartet.) Has any guitar hero ever done so well with a guitar-free power ballad?
[7]

More cheating in Natalia Jiménez’s “Quédate Con Ella,” which the Jukebox liked more. Abby Waysdorf heard schlager; John Seroff and I both heard ABBA, which some days is the same thing. I wrote:

Jiménez shoots for Mexican mariachi and, with the help of Venezuelan producer Motiff, winds up singing a marvelously square ABBA song. “Square,” that is, in its perky chorus beat and tune; devoid of anything resembling R&B, “Quédate” stands out on a Hot Latin chart full of bachata and reggaeton. And “square” in Jiménez’s insistence that the Other Woman play house in every sense of the phrase — iron her ex’s clothes, make his toast, etc. What’s not square is her singing: Jiménez inhabits the song with giggly triumph, just as “Jajaja” into “LOL” is a triumph of Google Translate. She’s having more fun breaking up than she did when they were together. She’s Chiquitita with Fernando’s swagger.
[7]

February 10, 2015 1

Los Maestros de CHOPS

Noel Torres – “Para Qué Tantos Besos”

You know the scene in Don’t Look Back where Donovan and Dylan are exchanging songs in a hotel room? And Donovan sings the perfectly innocuous “To Sing For You,” to which Dylan responds with a scathing rendition of “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue”? And he looks directly into the camera and sings with exaggerated diction the couplet, “Yonder stands your orphan with his gun/Crying like a fire in the sun“? And you don’t know whether he’s putting you on, reveling in the singularity of his word choices, sharing an inside joke with D.A. Pennebaker, or simply casting about for some way — any way — to sell a song? That’s the sense I get from Noel Torres when he over-enunciates his way through ballads these days. True, Luciano Luna doesn’t write with the colorful precision of “Baby Blue” — he’s more in the ballpark of “Make You Feel My Love” — but Torres is bringing that precision to singing Luna’s ballads, which may be even more important.
VALE LA PENA

(In the video for “Besos,” Torres fantasizes about making out with a hottie in a variety of scenarios, totally ruining her bowling and billiards games in the process. Turns out it was all a dream, she’s marrying somebody else, and Torres is stuck at her real-life wedding with a cheerful but far less bosomy woman. I’m certain this is a metaphor.)

Long-time readers will know that NorteñoBlog admires Torres for his accordion playing even more than his singing. He owns his sound; at PopMatters I wrote:

When playing his own songs, which is usually, [Torres] arranges them into short masterpieces of precision and control. He tosses off riff after riff, their notes connected by chromatic flurries, then hits startling passages of kickass mind-meldery with the rest of the band while he’s singing.

That is, he’s precise, controlled, and tossed-off, the sweet spot for much pop music, if not Western music in general. It’s stomp and swerve; or, as they used to teach us in classical piano lessons, technique and expression. This isn’t a dichotomy or a balance so much as a tug of war, and if you’re playing an instrument, the tug of war conveys the tight switchbacks of human thought better — that’s to say, with more convincing illusion — than either wind-up-toy virtuosity or lazy splats of rubato. And yes, it’s always an illusion. You’re not gleaning the innards of Torres’s mind directly from air moved through the folds of his squeezebox or voicebox, but heaven know he makes you believe you are.

(The rockist should note that electronic music, while using different techniques, can create the same virtuosic illusions — for instance, the hilarious timing effects in New Order’s “Blue Monday.” And sometimes “conveying human thought” isn’t the goal so much as “conveying utter alienation from human thought.” But I rarely go in for dystopian shit.)

In this spirit have I grappled with last year’s album by Remmy Valenzuela, De Alumno a Maestro (Fonovisa). Valenzuela is a corridista in Torres’ mold: he writes, sings, and leads the band, but mostly he plays his accordion like a beast. He’s got some good songs, too. His radio hit “Te Tocó Perder” switches tempos confidently, something you rarely hear on the radio; the breezy dance tune “El Borracho” sounds like something Kenny Chesney could adapt from his old blue chair. (Assuming he can get Google Translate on the beach.) If I were judging conjunto contests, Valenzuela would receive the one-plus rating his fingers so richly deserve.

In the comments of his ratings sheet, though, I would advise him to avoid turning into DragonForce. Valenzuela has yet to make his accordion and singing speak for themselves; right now all the accordion really says is, “I can play faster than whoever the DJ plays next.” That’s something. But it’s not the same as Torres’s trademark riffs — notes connected by chromatic flurries — that say, “Not only can I play faster than the next guy, but SOY NOEL TORRES; Y YO SOY EL AMO.” Valenzuela and his skilled, polite band sound like they want pats on the head; Torres and his bunch make you wanna cover your head.

Still, Valenzuela’s album is fun and merits a polite VALE LA PENA.

In the most recent issue of revista Triunfo, a third young turk named Alfredo Olivas shows that he grasps the issue, which I’ll shorthand “Should a Virtuoso Have a Personality?” He says, “A lo mejor no soy a mejor, pero sí tenemos un estilo ya muy marcado.” — roughly, “Maybe I’m not the best [accordion player], but we have a style all our own.” Listening to his 2011 album Así Es Esto (Fonovisa) and his new one Privilegio (Sahuaro/Sony), he may have a point. Granted, back in 2011 his style’s most distinctive technique was a sound many (read: “zero”) accordion experts call “sawing.” Since then he’s developed more finesse and his singing has gained authority, especially for a young guy. (Olivas is 20 but he sounds about twice that.) So far Privilegio is the year’s highest profile norteño release, but I still need more time with it.

January 26, 2015 0

Los Angeles Azules’ Entrega de Amor

Los Angeles Azules/Los Angeles de Charly – Gran Encuentro (Disa)

Amid all the polkas and waltzes, regional Mexican radio loves to throw in cumbias, though sometimes you get the sense that’s more because they’re useful tools or building materials, the caulk of the format. They often pop up as behind-the-DJ music, and because cumbia beats tend to flow easily into one another, they’re consistent grist for those hour-long DJ mixes that make me change the station after a couple songs. But certain sounds you don’t shake very easily, and the sound of Los Angeles Azules — a 13-or-15-piece Mexico City cumbia/vallenato group that was big around the turn of the millennium — can’t be forgotten once you’ve heard it.

The sound’s all there on their first big hit from 1996, “Cómo Te Voy a Olvidar,” which took cumbia’s trademark guacharaca shuffle (“the rhythm… has been compared to a horse trot,” writes Ramiro Burr) and layered it with yearning pop melodies. Mysterious accordion riffs in the dorian mode (think “Eleanor Rigby,” the part that goes “picks up the rice in a church“) trade off with even more mysterious trombone riffs that invariably come to rest on some low “blaaaaaah.” In 1999 Azules scored Billboard’s Regional Mexican Track of the Year with “El Listón De Tu Pelo.” Excellent trombone blaaaaaahs in that one, and a female singer, Mayra Torres, trading vocals with Carlos Montalvo. (“An oddity,” wrote Leila Cobo about the co-ed singing in the April 28, 2001 Billboard.) Cumbia remains a proven route for female singers to get played on regional Mexican radio; last year the dear departed El Patrón 95.5 was playing Azules’ duet with alt-rocker Ximena Sariñana enough that the song landed inside their station top 20.

Azules weren’t the first or the only Mexican band to play this music, not by a long shot. In the Oct. 6 ’01 Billboard, Burr wrote:

Vallenato is indigenous to Colombia’s Atlantic coast. Throughout that country, vallenato — like that other Colombian rhythm, cumbia — continues to be as much a part of the cultural and social fabric as blues, jazz and rock’n’roll are in the U.S. However, cumbia and vallenato* are also Colombia’s most popular and best-selling musical forms. Although folk-based, the genre received an international boost when Colombian accordionist Aniceto Molina, on Joey Records, helped popularize it in Mexico during the 1970s with his former group, La Luz Roja de San Marcos.

The music gained popularity in Mexican urban centers in the early 1980s, when other artists, such as Los Angeles Azules and Celso Pina, began emulating Molina… Thanks to Carlos Vives’ 1993 landmark CD, Clasicos de la Provincia, the vallenato movement was thrust into the mainstream as Vives’ single “La Gota Fria” cracked the Billboard charts.

You can hear the guacharaca in “La Gota Fria,” but it’s faster and fleshed out by kick drum and other rhythms, along with some Andes flute.

The core of Azules, writes Burr, is the Mejía family — three brothers who kept their white collar jobs until at least 1999, well after they became a hit band and started touring extensively. Inevitably, somebody went solo. But it wasn’t one of the brothers. Billboard‘s Leila Cobo explains, again from 2001:

The foundation of Los Angeles de Charly is the high tenor of Charly Becies, a former singer with established romantic grupo Los Angeles Azules, a band whose greatest-hits compilation also topped the Latin sales chart this season. In 1999, Becies decided to branch out on his own, because, he says, “I was just one element in the group, and I wanted to have my own identity.”

That identity centered on romantic material, and the band initially tried to register a name that reflected that kind of music. When [producer Ignacio] Rodriguez found that all their top name choices were already taken, they settled on Los Angeles de Charly — a fortuitous choice, because the Hollywood movie of Charlie’s Angels was released at about the same time. “It was essentially free publicity,” Rodriguez says.

Pretty sure Loverboy got the same bump.

Last year Disa released a bunch of these Gran Encuentro retrospectives, variations on a CD format that’s super-popular in regional Mexican music. These compilations alternate songs by two different Mexican groups, related to one another by varying degrees of tenuousness. (I’m currently soldiering through Mazz/La Mafia and wondering both “why?” and “why the fuss?”) The two tribes of Los Angeles are, as we’ve seen, pretty close. But there’s definitely a difference in sound. Charly is the more conventionally poppy angel of the two, with major keys and soaring heartfelt vocals. The Azules sometimes go there, but they’re also content to skulk around in their dorian darkness while playing pretty love songs. And everywhere — everywhere — is the guacharaca. But that’s not all there is. Both bands know to dress up their rhythms with fx and gimmicks, like the deep voiced men singing “tututu TUM bobo” along with Farfisa organ in “Mi Cantar.” It’s the kind of thing that pops out on radio, and it sounds pretty good in this context too.

VALE LA PENA

*About those genre IDs: Burr seems to use “cumbia” and “vallenato” interchangeably while alluding to some never-explained difference. In the record guide linked above, he describes Azules’ repertoire as “horn-powered boleros and vallenato-styled cumbias.” What? In this fascinating interview, Colombian music scholar and cumbia DJ Mario Galeano Toro clarifies, “[V]allenato is a close cousin of cumbia. It’s mostly major keys. In the ’90s there used to be cheesy commercial vallenato that played on all the buses in Bogotá…” He goes on, “Cumbia is composed of many different rhythms; I would say around 30. They’re all part of one big family called cumbia, but each has its own groove. The guacharaca with that ch-ch-CH rhythm is really the thing you notice first when you hear cumbia.”

But, but, but! IS NOT THE MUSIC OF LOS ANGELES AZULES IN MINOR KEYS? Or at least DORIAN keys, which sound minor except with one note out of place? But does not Ramiro Burr call their music “vallenato”? This is all wading into treacherous territory, where people’s eyes start to glaze over at all the jargon. I remember having the same problem when I started getting Decibel magazine a decade ago, wondering how to differentiate dark from black from tech from grind from doom from death from whatever other kinds of metal were out there. (“Power” was pretty easy because of all the dragons.) Now I want to learn all the cumbia and vallenata rhythms, even as I’m pretty sure you can enjoy this music without going to that much trouble.

January 20, 2015 1

El Karma Karma Karma Comes Back To You Hard

Ariel Camacho y Los Plebes Del Rancho – El Karma (Del/Sony Latin 2014)
This hypnotic trio album wants to trick you into thinking it’s traditional corrido music, when in fact it’s very modern. The 14 drumless songs follow a formula: Camacho and his guitarist, César Iván Sánchez, sing simple tunes in close harmony while tuba player Israel Meza plays basslines that double as leads. With the tuba hurling interjections around his vocal throughlines, Camacho calmly sets his requinto rippling. The results sound like dusty folklore, not at all like the shiny banda pop or driving corridos that currently occupy the regional Mexican zeitgeist. But is the combination of tuba with the higher-pitched requinto at all “traditional”? In Mexican bolero trios, requintos generally take on the virtuoso role, accompanied by two guitars, no bass instrument in sight. And as for norteño tubas — well, Gustavo Arellano doesn’t like em:

Time was when the accordion player was the papi chulo of the Mexican regional-music world, but tuba players have usurped the position in the past couple of years for banda music and that horrible-sounding banda-conjunto norteño pendejada.

[Emphasis mine.]

This isn’t that. But I mean, I like ’em both. Given the choice of a tuba or a bass, I’ll take the tuba 9 times out of 10. (As always, the 10th slot belongs to Noel Torres.) Though Camacho’s 14 songs are samey, their sound and melodies are indelible. And at a glance the songs all look new, mostly attributed to DEL Publishing. Written by a shadowy figure named El Diez, “El Karma” is an unlikely radio hit; though both Torres and Revolver Cannabis covered the song last year, Camacho’s stripped-down version sounds the most sinister. He and his Plebes also play the requisite Luna/Inzunza ballad — it’s pretty and not at all sinister, unless in Luciano Luna’s ubiquity you find a sign of the pending apocalypse.
VALE LA PENA

January 12, 2015 3

A Brief Timeline of Regional Mexican Radio in Chicago

Last night I had the jarring experience familiar to anyone who still listens to terrestrial radio: I turned to one of my favorite radio stations and… IT WASN’T THERE. Chicago’s regional Mexican station 95.5 “El Patrón” had turned without warning into “Big [but not Rich] 95.5,” a hit country station currently in its eerie “no-DJs-no-commercials-just-songs-and-cheery-promos” phase. It felt like regional Mexican music had been raptured, and some corporate overlord was scrambling to fill the gap with Jason Aldean, who hadn’t made the divine cut.

Or maybe:

iHeartMedia Chicago (formerly Channel Channel Meda and Entertainment) said today its 95.5 FM outlet in Chicago is shifting to an all-country music format effective immediately. The station previously was a Spanish music-formatted station branded as El Patron.

It’s fitting that the new station is DJ’d by robots, because iHeart’s president has a curiously android-like demeanor:

Noted Matt Scarano, president of iHeartMedia Chicago, of the format shift: “Big 95.5 is going to be a dynamic country music leader and a breath of fresh air for country radio in Chicago. The station will deliver the biggest hits, the biggest stars and the biggest results for our advertising partners.”

I’ve never trusted our other (very popular) country station, 99.5 “US 99,” whose idea of classic legacy cuts seems to be 10-year-old Tim & Faith duets. Competition is good. But based on my initial experience with Big 95, I have trouble seeing how they’re a “breath of fresh air.” “Hope You Get Lonely Tonight” (ug) into “The Perfect Storm” (blarg) into “Two Black Cadillacs” (better…) into “Drinking Class” (um…) is just the same old musty air. It’s not clear what they offer that US 99 doesn’t. (Somewhere I saw something about “legacy acts.” Hmmm…)

Mostly I’ll miss being able to say I live near a city with more regional Mexican stations than Top 40 stations. Even with El Patrón’s demise, Chicago is still home to 105.1 “La Que Buena” and 107.9 “La Ley,” so I can’t complain. El Patrón was a relative newcomer to the game, whose outline looks something like this:

1977: WOJO 105.1 launches, playing a Latino mix:

With its mix of news, community affairs and “international” music – ranging from the airy ballads of Julio Iglesias to the occasionally merry mariachi – WOJO projected an image of above-the-fray elegance and inclusion, a place where the city’s Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and other Latinos could meet to discuss events and enjoy their music.

Skip ahead two decades to…

1997: WLEY 107.9 launches, playing strictly regional Mexican music, including mariachi, banda, and an hourly show devoted to “forbidden corridos.” They start beating WOJO in the ratings, due to both Chicago’s demographics and the quality of regional Mexican music:

Ranked fifth in the U.S. with 932,806 Latinos as of a 1998 census estimate (behind Los Angeles, New York, Miami and the San Francisco Bay area), Chicago has been the third population hub in the country among Mexicans since 1970 (exceeded only by California and Texas), making the local Mexican community multigenerational, bilingual, and economically mixed.

“Numbers aside, we also realized music has changed in the last few years,” said WOJO’s Pagliai. “Two or three years, there were pop soloists with excellent material. Then the regional Mexican groups got much stronger and many of the pop artists chose to record in English and try to crossover. Still, the truth is that Spanish-language radio has never survived on pop or rock but on Vicente Fernandez and Juan Gabriel and those kinds artists. We are programming to people who live in a Spanish-language universe, speak Spanish at home, listen to Spanish CDs, watch Spanish-language TV. They may be bilingual, but Spanish is their language of choice. And the majority of those people in Chicago are Mexican.”

WLEY could skip along unimpeded for only so long, until…

2000: WOJO sees the light and goes regional Mexican. A minor pissing contest ensues:

“All we’re doing is reflecting the taste of most Latinos in Chicago,” said Jose Santos, WOJO program director.

Over at WLEY, local sales manager Raul Chavarria has a different take on it. “Their ratings weren’t going anywhere with their old format,” he said with a laugh. “We were No. 1 (in Spanish-language radio), they were No. 2. That was very stable for a long time, so it’s really a play to go to No. 1 status.”

Which, in fact, is what happened. By 2003, WOJO would surpass WLEY, and they’d both be among the 10 most-heard radio stations in the market. The whole Chicago radio market. English or Spanish. WOJO was #8, WLEY #9. The pissery continued:

But over at WLEY, station managers show signs of frustration. They allege that while WOJO has done well in the most recent ratings quarter, it is only because they have followed their own station’s path.

“What we did was we really brought regional Mexican to the high profile that it is today and made it into a format in this market,” said Mario Paez, WLEY’s general manager. “Whereas our competitor took a couple of years to realize that Mexicans are important and decided to copy us.”

Whoever zoomed who, you can’t blame WNUA 99.5 for wanting to get in on the action. Now, if the letters “WNUA” sound familiar, they should. They belonged for years to our smooth jazz station, which employed Ramsey Lewis and released annual compilations that were wildly popular, at least in Chicago. They sold out at local Borders stores faster than I could change the channel whenever WNUA came on.

In 2009, WNUA switched from smooth jazz to Spanish AC, “Mega 95.5.” (The alarm clock at a downtown Chicago hotel still had 95.5 programmed into its “jazz” wake-up preset, which, when you imagine boomer businessfolk hoping to wake up to the dulcet sounds of smooth Chicago jazz, is pretty funny.) Just three years later, 2012 was the dawn of El Patrón. By then, WLEY’s popularity had continued to slide:

The move places WNUA in direct competition with Univision’s “La Que Buena 105.1” WOJO and SBS’ “La Ley 107.9” WLEY in the Regional Mexican format. WOJO was 8th in the market last month with a 4.2 share. WLEY 20th with a 2.2.

And now with this move, just the two veterans remain. In December, WOJO was #11 in the market, but that’s just because Lite FM was playing Christmas music and pied pipering away with all Chicago’s children. WOJO was top 10 the months before, it’ll be top 10 this month, with ratings somewhere in the 4’s. WLEY is somewhere farther down the list with a 1.8 share, WNUA right above them. If anyone stands to benefit from this change, it’s probably WLEY. Though who knows, maybe WNUA will start broadcasting Rick Jackson’s Country Classics and I can stop resorting to a staticky Milwaukee station.

January 8, 2015 4

One of my formative critical influences is Richard Meyers’ book The Great Science Fiction Films (Carol Publishing Group). This mysterious book, which I bought at a theme park and have never seen elsewhere, covers sci-fi/fantasy/horror movies from 1975 to 1983. Its copyright date — no kidding — is 1962. As I write this, book on my lap, it occurs to me that the book might not actually exist; or maybe Meyers saw all the movies and then went back in time to write it; or possibly I’m Richard Meyers. Big old mindfuck, in other words.

In the intro, Meyers/Langhoff writes, “Although we malign many films in the coming pages, we really love all science-fiction films…” I could say much the same thing about norteño albums, as I bet most genre fans could say about their stomping grounds. Even the worst norteño album (I’ll nominate a certain live set by LOS! BuiTRES! without bothering to look up its specifics), the emptiest wasted hour of cartel crap or romantic sludge, tells you something about the good stuff. You can learn something from anything. Or at least glean a good sentence or two. Here’s Meyers on the 1977 Christopher Lee flick End of the World: “Nuns start turning back into clawed and tentacled monsters who attack innocent bystanders for a few minutes until a serene shot of the planet fills the movie screen. A second later it explodes in a torrent of plastic, dirt and water. Director John Hayes manages to stretch this inconsequential drivel over eighty minutes.”

In that spirit, let’s consider:

Various Artists – Radio Éxitos: El Disco Del Año 2014 (Fonovisa)

Epiphanies, such as they are, from the Disco of last Año:

1. Luciano Luna writes a lot of hit songs. Five of these 20 bear his name in the writing credits — two solo and three cowrites. The best, “Te Hubieras Ido Antes,” belongs to the continent’s best singer, Julión Álvarez, who knows how to push and pull rote melodic phrases into floating conversations — I mean, they’re anguished, but still floating with the illusion of life. Chuy Lizárraga’s “Nomás Faltó Que Me Quisieras” is also good. Luna’s other three songs — by Recodo, Recoditos, and Calibre 50 — are among the low points of their parent albums.

2. Unfortunately, they don’t stand out too much on this comp, because most of these songs are ballads. I get that these songs were hits, but why pick Calibre 50’s thin attempt at a power ballad when they had at least three other, more interesting, faster hit songs last year? Shouldn’t a curated hits compilation be better than any random week of the chart it’s compiling?

3. As Luna’s rival mushmonger Espinoza Paz focuses on his solo career, he may be scoring fewer hit writing credits. He contributes only one song here, El Bebeto’s ballad “Lo Más Interesante,” a misnomer.

4. There’s only one woman here, and she’s great! She’s also dead. I have no idea what Jenni Rivera’s “Resulta” is doing on this CD. Well, OK, I have some idea. Rivera’s an icon who was arguably the center of her genre when she died, and it’s not like any woman or man has commandeered the field to take her place. (Gerardo Ortiz is trying.) This track from her 2011 album appeared on 2014’s posthumous live album, and a Youtube video of the studio version — the version on this CD — has garnered four million views. So yeah, “Resulta” is a 2014 single. Was it a radio éxito? No. But did any Latina women have éxitos on regional Mexican radio in 2014? Um… (Not for lack of trying.)

5. I apologize for sleeping on Jorge Valenzuela’s wonderful “El Agüitado.” Mouthpiece squeal of the year! That said:

NO VALE LA PENA

January 5, 2015 0

¿Qué Estamos Escuchando?

La Poderosa Banda San Juan – El Antes Y El Después (Disa)
The latest moneymaking scheme from lawyer-turned-producer Fernando Camacho — he of La Arrolladora Banda El Limón and Banda MS — has so far failed to overpower radio like their older labelmates, but give ‘em time. Camacho’s got connections, so most of these 12 songs were written by established hitmakers, including three apiece by Espinoza Paz and Horacio Palencia. More importantly, Camacho seems to be lavishing these youngsters with his good taste. Yes, they get drippy, but not Arrolladora drippy, and their singles have been energetic minor key waltzes (“Sigue,” the title song), atypically fiery Paz numbers (“Claro,” “Tengo Novia”), and the OK-yes-drippy but swingin’ “Disculpa Corazón”. The token cumbia “Ponle De Eso” showcases rapid-fire muttering from one of the singers. “Tengo Novia,” previously performed by LOS BuiTRES!, is the best of the bunch, a wicked repeating melody offering up a wicked series of excuses for cheating on one’s novia. (Which is presumably why they also had to offer up the disculpa.)
VALE LA PENA

From the March 19, 2011 Billboard:

“[Camacho] has a very good ear in selecting the songs he records and produces,” Fonovisa/Disa VP of marketing Sergio Perez says. “A great deal of his success has to do with being on the street and seeing what’s happening, versus other officebound executives who aren’t up to speed. This may be because as a promoter he’s forced to be at shows, and he can see firsthand people’s reactions to new musical movements.”

When Camacho took over the running of Arrolladora, one of his main objectives was to make it appealing to a younger audience and to simply make it more popular. He pays special attention to lyrics, aiming for messages that are simple and easy to understand but also appeal to the Mexican sense of pride and honor.

“Songs about betrayal and rejection,” Camacho says. “It’s about talking to the person who did you wrong, who stabbed you in the back. This is very traditional in Mexican music, asking, ‘Why did you do this to me, woman?’ “

Nuance is overrated.

Pequeños Musical – Duele Todavia (Baktun 13/Warner Latina)
Speaking of drippiness, “La Banda Más Romántica de América” have some thoughts they would like to share. You have heard these thoughts before. You’ve probably heard their music, too, even if you’ve never actually heard Pequeños Musical proper: three of these songs start with the same brass riff, a descending melody line — the musical equivalent of broken hearts dripping bloody tears — over sad-eyed circle-of-fifths chord changes. Which might be OK, if they played any songs faster than midtempo, or if their singer didn’t have pitch issues, or if they had a tuba instead of an electric bass. Somehow they scored four Espinoza Paz ballads, which my mind has blocked as it must all traumas and/or moments of excruciating boredom.
NO VALE LA PENA

December 8, 2014 1

Lo Mejor De 2014: Gerardo Ortiz

Gerardo Ortiz released his excellent album Archivos de Mi Vida just over a year ago, and it’s fair to say he’s now the popular face of norteño and banda — i.e., of regional Mexican music in general. He occupies the center of radio station billboards, and award shows feature his performances as surely as they do Jenni Rivera tributes. This album didn’t do it alone; Ortiz was already a big deal a year ago when the album debuted at #1.

The editorial hands at Allmusic still haven’t taken down their Thom Jurek review calling this album a “hits collection” — maybe they’re just biding time. Ortiz’s third Archival hit is the pretty “Eres Una Niña,” which we just covered at The Singles Jukebox, giving him his third good score there. I said:

My Thanksgiving resolution is to ignore the patronizing opening line. (For further research: does “Niña” populate banda ballads as thoroughly as “Girl” does bro-country? It seems like “Mujer” shows up more often.) I will also ignore any possible ickiness involving Ortiz kissing JustAGirl’s extremities until she screams his name. (“HAY no más,” Gerardo soothed soothingly.) Starting… now! Because really this song is very romantic, and there’s little precedent for Sinaloan banda incorporating Dominican-via-Bronxian bachata guitar. Plus, Ortiz’s long-lined melody is beautiful, a way better tune than Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night,” speaking of songs about children letting their inhibitions run wild. Resolution starting NOW.
VALE LA PENA

December 1, 2014 0

El Cantar De Los Gallos

El Komander – Cazador (Twiins Music Group)
I’ve got some catching up to do with Alfredo Rios, whose single “Soy De Rancho” and at-least-fourth album Cazador are among the best of 2014. With his aviator shades, fealty to country living, and endorsement of la mota, Rios could almost be Eric Church, if Church had Brantley Gilbert’s vocal range and described gangland killings in gory detail. (Please note: my translation studies don’t yet reveal whether Rios’s latest traffics in the gore. Back in 2011 he was the focal point of one of those “explain corrido violence to gringos” articles. I found it helpful, anyway.) The music on Cazador is wonderfully loose and shaggy norteño, its nonstop guitars frequently augmented by a banda that sounds like it’ll fly apart any second. Overall, the music’s as obnoxious as the tuba fart that punctuates Rios’s voice the first time he sings “Sí Señor, yo soy de rancho.” Despite having about eight notes at his disposal, Rios has charisma to burn; he only fools himself into trying to sing pretty once, on the mariachi ballad “Descansa Mi Amor,” where his ideal of love is a whispering frog.
VALE LA PENA

Rios also appears on Calibre 50’s excellent “Qué Tiene De Malo,” a hit in México but not (so far) the U.S. We covered it over at The Singles Jukebox, where I said:

The artists are indignant. Both Calibre 50, a quartet named for a big-ass gun, and El Komander, who’s designed his “K” to look like a big-ass gun, have recently been fined and banned by certain state and local governments in Mexico. The reason? Their narcocorrido music “promotes violence.” Well, yeah. Wasn’t that the point of all the big-ass guns? The artists retaliate with this pro-freedom meta-corrido, “What’s Wrong With That?”, presenting themselves as working stiffs who’ll drink and party and spend hard-earned money on whatever kind of music they like. (They’re like two steps removed from Toby Keith in “That Don’t Make Me a Bad Guy.”) On their albums, Calibre venture into pop ballads and dangerously close to sea shanties; despite the broadest reach of any norteño band, their grasp sounds firmest when they return to corridos. That lurching waltz beat could trace the arc of a razor sharp pendulum, the tuba fluttering and blatting just out of its reach. During the spoken interlude they quote Komander’s 2012 Youtube hit “Cuernito Armani,” named for — you guessed it — a big-ass gun.
VALE LA PENA

Los Amos – 2014 (Michoacan Records)
Los Creadores del Corrido Hyphy return, and they are… not so hyphy. Not that “hyphy” was ever a guarantee of quality in the norteño field (watch for my hyphy norteño thinkpiece, coming soon to this blog, only four years past its sell-by date!), but in 2014 they’ve amped up the outside songwriters, the ballad count, and the amount of reverb on José Guajardo’s voice. When José lays on some thick accordion, they can be lively and raucous; but more often they sound like old pros politely trying to recapture the raucity of youth. They’re most energized by the songs of Marco Montana, who evidently knows a thing or two about chinga-ing your madre.
NO VALE LA PENA

Banda Tierra Sagrada – Así Te Quiero Yo (Remex)
Despite the minor key tunes “La Loca” and “Máxima Potencia” — have these guys been reading my email’s spam folder? — they never approach the desmadre of their most recent hit. The three different singers are modestly compelling, even if nobody sings as well as duet partner Marco Flores, but the band doesn’t offer much beyond one big brassy idea per song. Ballads like “Lucharé Por Ti” don’t even get that far.
NO VALE LA PENA

November 11, 2014 0