NorteñoBlog

La Buena, La Mala, y Las Feas

NorteñoBlog went on vacation at the worst possible time, because while I was gone, IT ALL WENT DOWN. Not with the music. Except for El Komander (¡VALE LA PENA!), very few notable albums came out in the past few weeks; we’ll catch up with albums and singles in the coming days. No, I’m talking about las personas en las noticias:

LA BUENA:

Joan Sebastian’s discography is a mile long. The singer, songwriter, and guitarist not only wrote over a thousand songs, from ranchera to synthpop, but he wrote and produced entire albums for other singers. This is how NorteñoBlog has encountered him in the past: as the man behind Vicente Fernandez’s irresistible “Estos Celos” and Graciela Beltrán’s “Robame Un Beso.” Sebastian was famously “el poeta del pueblo,” riding his horse on stage and representing for his gente, and that meant giving the people what they wanted, mixing up regional styles with pop sounds from El Norte and acting in the novela Tú y Yo. And then there’s this delightful factoid about the man born José Manuel Figueroa:

Mr. Sebastian’s Facebook page says that he changed his name to Juan Sebastian in 1977, and that he turned the “u” in “Juan” into an “o” on the advice of his sister, a numerologist.

Maybe a commenter can explain how that math works?

I’m still catching up with him, and probably will be for a long time. RIP

Also while we were gone, Banda El Recodo became the first banda to play on Spanish TV. If I’m surprised they hadn’t done so already, does that reveal my cultural chauvinism? This is just more evidence that the term “Latin music” makes absolutely no sense as a genre, because it tells us nothing useful about the music in question, what it sounds like, or who listens to it. Surely somewhere in the world, someone is lumping together Wiley and George Jones as “English music” — but that doesn’t make the idea any less nonsense.

LA MAL:

Put on your corrido-writing pants, it’s time for an update on El Chapo!

But the music production and distribution business has changed dramatically since El Chapo’s last escape [in 2001] — meaning times have changed on the narco-corrido front, as well. Forget six months; within six hours, bands and singers had rushed songs of El Chapo’s second escape onto YouTube and FaceBook. By Sunday afternoon, bands were recording their just-written Chapo tunes in the studio, playing the songs in front of enthusiastic live audiences and releasing elaborate videos with news coverage interspersed with dramatic reenactments of the tunnel escape.

Here are Los Alegres del Barranco:

These corridos are mostly gleeful, because El Chapo is now even LARGER than larger than life, and because of the Mexican government’s uncanny resemblance to Keystone Cops.

This musical expression points bluntly to collusion and to Mexico’s failure to run a government of law and order.

As many analysts have pointed out, the escape is a major embarrassment for President Enrique Peña Nieto, who in an interview with Univision after El Chapo was captured, said that allowing another escape would be “unforgivable.”

There’s also a Frontline documentary on El Chapo, if you’re so inclined, and Cartel Land, a documentary about the autodefensas and their less defensible U.S. counterparts, the border ~~yahoos~~ militias. NorteñoBlog has seen neither, but I’ll report back.

EL FEO:

July 22, 2015 1

NorteñoBlog’s Top Singles of 2015: Abril – Junio

This quarter’s list contains fewer radio hits than last quarter’s — only four out of 11 — but don’t worry! Both radio and Youtube continue to inundate us with all kinds of great music under the banner of “regional Mexican.” Below we’ve got cumbia from the underrepresented state of Nayarit, violin-driven dance music from the underrepresented state of Oaxaca, a brass banda from Jalisco who dresses in indigenous garb and doesn’t play corridos but sometimes plays piano pop, Linda Ronstadt-style pop country from Nuevo León, Chicago’s hometown heroines Los Horóscopos hitting Mexican radio and giving everybody cuernos, aaaaand (as usual) a whole lotta Sinaloa. NorteñoBlog has apparently been sleeping on the states of Chihuahua and Zacatecas, though, as I’ve dug up zero hot new singles to represent their puro sax styles. Better luck next quarter!

1. Banda Cohuich – “Son Kora Kau Te Te Kai Nie Ni (Dialecto Huichol)” (Pegasus)
Huichol is an indigenous Mexican language, and “Son Kora” is a relentless jerking propulsion machine with brass, gang vocals, and a slippery synth line (I think).
hasn’t charted

2. Laura Denisse – “Sigo Enamorada” (Fonovisa)
Denisse has a big clear voice in the vein of Linda Ronstadt, and she’s been singing a mix of banda and pop since she was a kid in the ’90s. The big brass riff here is simply a series of repeated notes, but the players articulate and syncopate like swaggering jazz cowboys.
hasn’t charted

3. Ariel Camacho y Los Plebes Del Rancho – “Te Metiste” (Del/Sony)
This gorgeous love song sounds just as strange and sparse as “El Karma” when it plays on the radio.
U.S. radio hit

4. Grupo El Reto ft. Alta Consigna – “La Parranda Va a Empezar” (Gerencia 360/Sony)
This quartet belongs to la corriente escuela of corridistas who sing about corruption while their corrosive tubists imitate machine gun fire. Corre! The quartet Alta Consigna also has a tuba in the band, so you’ve got two tubists and a requinto (I think?) playing furiously over everything.
hasn’t charted

5. Banda Cuisillos – “Cerveza” (Musart/Balboa)
This isn’t even my favorite Cuisillos song of 2015 — that’d be this swinging piano-driven non-single — but these Jaliscanos do indulge several of NorteñoBlog’s weaknesses: two different singers trying to outdo one another in the passion department, brass alternating with guitar, and deplorable sexism.
Mexican radio hit

6. Leandro Ríos ft. Pancho Uresti – “Debajo Del Sombrero” (Remex)
This not-so-humble ranchera ballad takes as much pleasure in the act of rhyming as any random song by Sondheim. Although, going through my Spanish rudiments, I’m disappointed the song doesn’t take place in enero, and why doesn’t our heroic caballero own a perro?
U.S. and Mexican radio hit

7. Banda Costado – “Pinotepa” (Talento)
This is a way different sound than we usually enjoy here: lots of percussion, tuba bassline, wild violin, and singers. Many independent lines and very little chordal harmony, in other words.
hasn’t charted

8. Banda Culiacancito – “Lastima de Cuerpo” (Del/Sony)
If you’ve read this blog long enough, you know one of my favorite musical effects is rapid fire barrages of syllables that never seem to end and make me feel totally inadequate about my grasp of español. Prolific songwriters Geovani Cabrera (Regulo Caro, Calibre 50) y Horacio Palencia (todos) deliver. Knock yourself out with a trombone slide!
hasn’t charted

9. Los Gfez – “Hasta Tu Dedo Gordito” (Remex)
I implore you not to google images of dedos gorditos unless you get off on toe injuries. No judging. I should mention that the quartet Los Gfez, last seen joining Diego Herrera on a likable Mexican hit, start their search for the mystery dedo fast and, through the magic of time changes, find a way to get faster.
hasn’t charted

10. Noel Torres – “No Andan Cazando Venados” (Gerencia 360/Sony)
Torres’s arrangement of “Venados” sounds like he’s adapting Ariel Camacho’s unusual instrumentation. He takes stripped down passages of requinto guitar solos over lurching tuba, the same dynamic you find in Camacho’s repertoire, and alternates them with full banda sections. Horns replace rhythm guitar. The result is both serious and silly (ay, esos clarinetes), a fitting tribute that also fits with Torres’s swagger.
hasn’t charted

11. Los Horóscopos de Durango – “Estoy Con Otro En La Cama”
Mexican radio hit

10 more good ones:

Miguel – “Coffee”
AB Soto – “Cha Cha Bitch”
Sam Hunt – “House Party”
Markus Feehily – “Love Is a Drug”
Honey Cocaine – “Sundae”
Chemical Brothers ft. Q-Tip – “Go”
Brandon Flowers – “Can’t Deny My Love”
Haley Georgia – “Ridiculous”
Bobby Brackins ft. Zendaya and Jeremih – “My Jam”
Vanbot – “Seven”

July 1, 2015 2

Who’s On the Mexican Radio? 6/26/15

This week’s Mexican radio roundup looks far different than it did last time, for two reasons: it’s been a month and I’m using a different chart. Inspired by the discovery that audience impressions matter more than total radio spins, NorteñoBlog has begun following the audience impression chart at radioNOTAS. So we say adios to a whopping 10 songs — half the chart — including winners from Leandro Ríos and Zacatecan dancing machine Marco A. Flores, losers from Banda Los Sebastianes and songwriter-to-the-stars Espinoza Paz, and startlingly hot motorcycle enthusiast Jovanko Ibarra.

That said, this week’s Pick to Click is cheating, in more ways than one. The new single by Chicago’s startlingly hot chicas malas Los Horóscopos de Durango, “Estoy Con Otro En La Cama,” is dramatic banda camp about cheating, and it comes from the “spins” chart, not the “audience impressions” chart. This study of hi infidelity uses “cuernos” imagery worthy of Shakespearean cuckoos, and it’s a welcome bit of smut from aforementioned songwriter Espinoza Paz, seen performing it here. (Los Horóscopos don’t have a video yet; that link above will get you to a stream that might disappear at any moment.) Paz’s stripped down version might be even better; his audience keeps laughing at key lines and it has the transgressive feel of a Toby Keith “bus song.”

Also noteworthy: Continue reading “Who’s On the Mexican Radio? 6/26/15” →

June 29, 2015 3

Archivos de 1994 (now with Submarine Tracking Technology)

One week in November of 1994, Billboard changed its method of charting the biggest Latin hits in the U.S. They’d been using “National Latin Radio Airplay Reports,” completed and submitted by radio programmers and presumably subject to unwelcome human error. For their November 12 issue, Billboard switched to a computerized service called Broadcast Data Systems, or BDS, which used supercool SUBMARINE TRACKING TECHNOLOGY to determine which songs got the most radio play:

The BDS system looks for an audio fingerprint — a characteristic that differentiates a song from all of the other ones that it tracks — using the same technology that was once used to track submarines.

BDS then weighs the songs differently, depending on how many people they reach:

Thus, a song that plays at 4:00 a.m. does not count as much as one played at 4:00 p.m., and a station with a large audience will influence the chart more than either a station in a smaller market or one with a specialized format that attracts less audience.

Just as when SoundScan began electronically tracking album sales, this new system of tracking led to eye-opening changes in what was hitting the charts. In Billboard‘s November 5 issue, only four songs on the Hot Latin top 10 would have been considered “regional Mexican” — on the list below, they’re the songs from Selena, Ana Gabriel, Industria Del Amor, and Banda Z. On November 12, the new improved Hot Latin chart contained 7 regional Mexican songs, and it would maintain this proportion for weeks to come. Of the regional bands propelled by BDS into the Top 10, four were nowhere to be found in the previous week’s issue: Tejano acts Los Rehenes, Sparx, and La Mafia, and norteño act Banda Machos. For whatever reason — a different balance of stations reporting, or maybe just human error — regional Mexican music had gone under-reported before BDS. The primary beneficiaries of the new submarine tracking technology were Tejano bands, but that may just be because Tejano music, led by Selena, had recently entered its boom period as the popular face of regional Mexican music.

In addition, Billboard starting running three breakout charts, based on the airplay of radio stations devoted to one particular style of Latin music: Pop, Tropical/Salsa, and Regional Mexican. Below is the (first?) Regional Mexican Top 10, from the November 12 issue of Billboard. I’ll be liberally quoting Jonathan Bogart, whose blog Bilbo’s Laptop tracks every Hot Latin #1 and explains several of these songs better than I’ve managed here.

Also, if anyone can tell me what a puchoncito is, I’d appreciate it. Continue reading “Archivos de 1994 (now with Submarine Tracking Technology)” →

June 25, 2015 6

¡Nuevo! (starring Mariachi Divas, Duelo, y más)

NorteñoBlog has never been confused about the popularity of Mariachi Divas de Cindy Shea among Grammy voters. They’re a talented group of women playing a style traditionally dominated by men — though not, let’s face it, as traditionally dominated as norteño or banda — making them a safe and progressive choice for voters with only a passing knowledge of the genre. That whiff of the “progressive” extends to their music, which boasts sophisticated arrangements that sometimes change tempos or cover non-mariachi songs. In other words, they’re progressive in the somewhat tortured sense of most genre progressives: “elevating” a style that doesn’t need elevating and appealing to people who don’t normally enjoy the style. Their Disney gig hasn’t hurt their profile, either. (“We particularly enjoy the Divas’ rendition of ‘It’s a Small World,'” says a travel site.) Their new album La Cima Del Cielo (East Side) sparkles and shines with the cheer of a sweaty theme park employee dressed up like a princess. They cover Linda Ronstadt’s “Lago Azul.”

No stranger to the “progressive” tag, the norteño-pop band Duelo is back, reliably charting high with their Intocablish new album Veneno (La Bonita). The title single levels insults at a heartless, icy, poisonous, murderous, dream-killing (SHALL WE GO ON?) mujer with unchecked midtempo momentum. Good riff, though I wish they sounded remotely venomous.

A tad more interesting is Margarita “La Diosa de la Cumbia,” who, along with the dude from Bacilos, sang the theme song for La Fea Más Bella, the novela remake that’d go on to become Ugly Betty in its U.S. incarnation. (This title sequence seems to take up an entire episode.) Her new album Sin Fronteras (Warner) is part cumbia, part feel-good pop/rock with nods to modern salsa, not unlike Bacilos. The single “Te Di Todo” could introduce a novela remake of Beverly Hills 90210.

Breaking Bad‘s favorite corridistas (and NorteñoBlog research project) Los Cuates de Sinaloa are back to their original trio format, guitar-guitar-bass, on Se Acabaron las Caricias (Los Cuates de Sinaloa), which unfortunately doesn’t seem to have any videos yet. It’s well worth streaming, though. Second song “Que Bonita Chica” sounds especially great, with effortless bounce and unadorned groove. Likely VALE LA PENA.

Former hyphy/not-hyphy scenesters Los Inquietos Del Norte are back with another super-serious country song, “Como Perro Amarrado” (Eagle). Though less twee than Tierra Cali’s song of the same name, it’s nowhere near as good as Jamey Johnson’s song of the same sentiment, which somehow made emasculation sound badass. Los Inquietos just sound defeated, though if Sr. Meza ever tires of singing norteño, some fine operatic roles await him — sad clowns and all that.

June 23, 2015 2

Desfile De Éxitos 6/27/15

Four new tunes from the NorteñoBlog milieu join this week’s charts. At the top of the heap, cracking the top 20 on the Hot Latin chart, is the latest mind numbing ballad from Banda MS, “A Lo Mejor.” You’re forgiven if you’ve forgotten “A Lo Mejor” since we last encountered it, because IT NUMBED YOUR MIND. But the video is entertaining twist-ending novela fare; you can tell it cost a lot, and that nobody shooting the video could remember the song they were supposedly depicting, either.

The other three new songs, all near the bottom of the Regional Mexican airplay chart, sound better to varying degrees. Arrolladora’s “Confesion” is faster and more minor-keyed than much of their recent output. Faint praise, but then, it’s been a while since these guys left an impression. Los Tucanes’ corrido “Suena La Banda” stomps along with guest stars Código FN. Several several members of Código are confined to standing around singing in their sparkly jackets without their instruments, but their tubist gets in some good licks, and both bands’ drummers find a way to coexist. Even better is the magic changes title track from Vete Acostumbrando, the latest album by psychedelic corridista and family man Larry Hernández. Lots of crammed-in words and snarling, which beats Larry attempting to croon.

It’d be this week’s Pick to Click if NorteñoBlog wasn’t a total sucker for Tito “El Bambino” and his attempts to sound like a more romantic Pet Shop Boys. Like the aforementioned Banda MS song, “Como Antes” enters the Hot Latin top 20. Unlike Banda MS, Tito plays majestic reggaeton synth pop with pounding drums and low voices comically interjecting things like “MAMACITA” every so often. Great vocal harmonies, too. The acerbic voice of Zion &/or Lennox appears midway through to scrape the plaque from your heart.

Continue reading “Desfile De Éxitos 6/27/15” →

June 19, 2015 0

Julión Álvarez y El Komander en La Jukebox

Desafortunadamente, manejé a St. Louis cuando mis colegas a The Singles Jukebox escribieron sobre el cantante favorito de NorteñoBlog, Julión Álvarez, y su canción “El Amor De Su Vida.” Lloré lágrimas amargas. Julión Álvarez lloró lágrimas amargas también, porque ese es su trabajo.

Brad Shoup:

You know, I gotta stop weighing the vocals against the intro. The brass arrives like waves of reinforcements before a defense is even established, and that’s enough. Álvarez passes off shakiness as emotion, but he’s rescued time and again by a sympathetic rhythm section and a boisterous set of horns.

Sr. Shoup, Julión Álvarez es auténtico en su emoción y su “shakiness,” su shakiness es muy hermoso, y tú, Sr. Shoup, deberias buscar pequeñas cantidades de emoción en tu corazón… SI ES QUE EXISTEN. :):)

(“El Amor De Su Vida” = NO VALE LA PENA, btw. Sin embargo…)

Fortunadamente volví a casa para escribir sobre El Komander y “Malditas Ganas”:

Sr. Ríos isn’t quite the last man standing from El Movimiento Alterado, the over-the-top genre of horror corridos milked dry by L.A.-based Twiins Enterprises. He is, however, the only Twiins artist who can reliably command a million quick Youtube hits, so that’s what he does: he’s released a single a month in 2015, none indulging in the old ultraviolence, each its own special variety of ramshackle. Komander can’t exactly sing, as you discover when you encounter one of his ballads, an uncomfortable experience like stumbling across a jalopy wheezing to its final resting place in a junkyard. But he excels at plaintive self-referential ramshacklery like this, his January single; the whirligig swing-your-partner-into-the-walls ramshacklery of “Fuga Pa’ Maza,” his March single, is even better. This is all an illusion; his band is deceptively tight, the aural equivalent of the old wobble-the-pencil-so-it-looks-rubbery trick. All this ramshactivity has been… accumulating up to the release of July’s album, sure to contain the most virtuosic collection of mouthpiece farts the world has ever heard.

¡VALE LA PENA!

June 18, 2015 1

¡Nuevo! (starring Banda El Recodo, Larry Hernández, y más)

Two years ago, the last time Banda El Recodo released an album, I wrote, “Like happy families and episodes of The Waltons, all Banda el Recodo albums are alike. When you play one, you’re assured 40 minutes or so of ace arrangements and pleasant tunes in a variety of styles.” I haven’t heard all of their new album, Mi Vicio Más Grande (Fonovisa), but I may have to go back on my word. For one thing, it’s only 30 minutes long! Possibly inspired by the rambunctious spirit of their title song, a previous Pick to Click, they’ve decided to dispense with this album quickly with only 11 songs, down from the 19-song high water mark of 2009’s Me Gusta Todo de Ti. But that’s OK, NorteñoBlog likes short albums. Worse news is that aside from “Vicio,” the songs I’ve heard suck. “Todo Tuyo” may have been a hit but it defines the idea of a nothing ballad, sucking brain cells into its void. Nor do the other two advance tracks seems designed to stick, whether it’s songwriter Freddy Osuna enjoying “La Miel de Su Saliva” or the sage songwriting team of Luciano Luna, Joss Favela, and Miguel Angel Romero skipping through “De Haber Sabido.” By now bandleader Alfonso Lizárraga has proven he can simply spin Recodo’s wheels, releasing an album with the requisite two hits (“Vicio” has gone top 20 on the Hot Latin chart) to keep the brand going.

NorteñoBlog has previously been bewildered by the prolific career scope of psychedelic corridista and family man Larry Hernández, whose new Vete Acostumbrando (Sodin/Fonovisa) dropped two weeks ago. In contrast to the somewhat unofficial “got purp” feel of his last album 16 Narco Corridos Vol. 2, Vete is an official hitmaking release full of romance and obsession and a Gerardo Ortiz duet. At only 10 songs (NorteñoBlog cheers!), most of which are good, none of which stand out, it’s less of a chore than either new album by Ortiz or Recodo. Hernández doesn’t innovate his genre like Ortiz, and he doesn’t even sing as well — listen to the fine quartet ballad “Ya Me Cansé” and you might think he’s coughing up his lyrics. But he zips through his music with unabashed and unpretentious pleasure. On my loosely ranked list of favorite albums of 2015, Hernández sits next to Kid Rock, which seems about right. Plus my awesome librarian Gloria likes him. I’ll confer Pick to Click status upon the banda firecracker “Aferrado Corazón,” which features Hernández not quite reaching his high notes in a very appealing way.

El Komander yadda yadda another single blah blah blah not really trying any more but that’s integral to his charm yak yak yak. But — what’s this? — Sr. Riós seems pretty invested in his sixth (?) official single in as many months. It’s called “El Elegante,” it’s fast banda and barely a song, but it does herald his forthcoming album for Twiins Enterprises, Detrás Del Miedo. Due July 7th! I’d say reserve yourself a copy, but let’s face it: such effort would hardly keep with the spirit of Komander’s recent loosey goosey output. Although to be fair, the guy’s released a single per month in 2015; what have I done?

That sort of existential uncertainty hangs heavy over “Wildfires,” the new Mariachi El Bronx single on ATO. Wait. No it doesn’t. Mariachi El Bronx sounds like fucking Fastball. Let’s be clear here: NorteñoBlog is not categorically opposed to U.S. pop appropriations of regional Mexican styles. More such appropriations might be welcome, because horns and strings sound great on the radio, and the people of El Norte need to learn these styles. The members of Mariachi El Bronx have doubtless studied more mariachi music than I have. Some of them are Latino. They play their instruments well. But let’s also be clear: they’re not playing mariachi music. They’re using mariachi as a gimmick to sell tickets to indie rock shows, same as Cake uses a trumpet. (Sometimes I like Cake.) If white hipsters go to Mariachi El Bronx shows to gawk at music that’s “cute” or “indigenous,” or if white hipsters leave Mariachi El Bronx shows thinking they suddenly know something about mariachi music, I suppose that’s the white hipsters’ problem, but I wish I had more confidence in Mariachi El Bronx to combat the problem. Ultimately though, I’m ragging on Mariachi El Bronx because of my longstanding disinterest in rote indie rock songs. (Plus, the lead Mariachi sings with a tenth the authority of George Strait; but then, don’t we all.)

June 16, 2015 2

Desfile de Éxitos 6/13/15

When Pitbull someday releases a career-spanning greatest hits album, it’ll be a monster. He’s got one hits album already: 2012’s Original Hits compiled his early stuff from TVT records and it looks good (I confess I haven’t heard all the songs), but since he released it in the midst of the Planet Pit/Voli Vodka world takeover, most of the world outside the 305 area code overlooked it. NorteñoBlog doesn’t often cover Pitbull because he has about as much to do with regional Mexican music as Rita Moreno does. (I confess I have even LESS of a connection to the format, but here we are.) But since he is possibly the most charming man on the planet — he needs to be loved slightly more than everybody else does — I will share my theory of Pitbull hits:

There are two tiers of Pitbull hits. The top tier includes such monster EDM smashes as “Timber,” “Give Me Everything,” and “Time of Our Lives,” and these songs are pretty good, just as the Planet Pit album was pretty good. That’s disc one of our hypothetical career spanning compilation. But the second tier, our hypothetical disc two of smaller hits… THAT’S where Pitbull hides his gold. I’m talking stuff like last year’s #23 hit “Fireball,” his astounding Ying Yang Twins feature “Shake” (included on Original Hits), 2010’s phenomenal, bilingual, featuring-Lil-Jon-and-everybody “Watagatapitusberry,” and the Pick to Click that climbs this week to #25 on Hot Latin, “El Taxi” featuring Sensato & Cuban oral sex freedom fighter Osmani Garcia. (“Chupi Chupi” was the too sexy song in question.) It’s really Garcia’s song — he originally received top billing and it’s more than a year old at this point, with 111 million Youtube views, but I assume it’ll appear on Pit’s forthcoming Spanish album Dale. “El Taxi” is lowdown and slinky. It features car horns beeping. I mean, come on.