2015

Desfile de Éxitos 11/28/15

A couple weeks ago Billboard reported that Ariel Camacho‘s “Hablemos” had debuted at #44 on its Hot Latin chart. This is the same “Hablemos” whose yearning, lovey-dovey video dropped in March of 2014, almost a year before Camacho died; it now has 48 million views. This week the song moves up to #14 Hot Latin and #9 on the airplay chart, and it’s also the title track of a new Camacho album. Hablemos (DEL) contains some previously released songs and some apparently unreleased ones that I wanna call “unearthed,” or “liberated from the vaults,” or maybe “scraped from the studio dustbin.”

Not that Hablemos is a bad album. As Sierreño offshoots go, it’s better than the latest by Los Cuates, because Camacho’s guitar chops and his interplay with Omar Burgos’s tuba elevate his music to its own league. But aside from “Entre Pláticas Y Dudas,” a killer two-year-old corrido that’s this week’s Pick to Click, the whole thing feels a bit lethargic.

Continue reading →

November 18, 2015 0

Lo Mejor de 2015: Maquinaria Norteña and Laura Denisse

Back in September, NorteñoBlog gave short shrift to the eighth (I think) album by La Maquinaria Norteña, Ya Dime Adiós (Azteca/Fonovisa). I thought they were energetic but generic, low on hooks, just one damn sax-and-accordion polka after another. How short was my shrift? My shrift was short enough that it could have been any random Maquinaria song, which tend to run out of steam after about two and a half minutes — with the notable exception of “No Sé Cómo Hacerlo,” which beefs its running time to three and a half minutes by throwing in a snippet of Super Mario Brothers music at the end.

And right there, amid Koji Kondo’s well-known arpeggios, lies everything I got wrong about Maquinaria in the first place. These guys know their subgenre — the puro sax music of Zacatecas and Chihuahua — is a little ridiculous. They know that when a sax and an accordion harmonize over polka beats, the results sound like skippy video game music. To counter this, they wink at their Super Mario-loving audience but, more importantly, they never let up. Maquinaria might not be the hardest working band in the puro sax game, but they sure sound like they are. They’re wilder and grittier than most of their peers. The lead instruments tug against the beat more and leave fewer empty spaces, and at the end of those 150 seconds of pleasure, everyone sounds spent.

Maquinaria Norteña: Su saxo está breve, pero es VALE LA PENA. Continue reading “Lo Mejor de 2015: Maquinaria Norteña and Laura Denisse” →

November 13, 2015 2

Who’s On the Mexican Radio? (ft. La Séptima Banda & Hasty Cartel Googling)

Down at #20 this week we find La Séptima Banda, evidently so emboldened by their recent hit love songs they think they can skirt any Mexican bans on radio corridos. “El Hijo del Ingeniero” (Fonovisa) is a song the banda picked up from their corridero labelmates Los Hijos de Hernández, although NorteñoBlog should note that Sr. Hernández is not the Ingeniero in question. But who is the Ingeniero? This song calls for a new edition of HASTY CARTEL GOOGLING: Continue reading “Who’s On the Mexican Radio? (ft. La Séptima Banda & Hasty Cartel Googling)” →

November 9, 2015 2

¡Nuevo! (starring Chacaloza, Vicente Fernández, y más)

It is the longstanding position of NorteñoBlog that the puro sax styles of Chihuahua and Zacatecas would improve with the addition of more terrible “sax” puns in the titles. Nestled in the middle of Billboard‘s Latin Albums chart is the newest album from La Energia Norteña, El Rompecabezas (Azteca) (alternate title: Dolor de Cabeza Saxual), a dance saxtet from Dallas, Texas. Puzzlingly, La Energia doesn’t have ties to one of the usual sax hotbeds; rather, they’re originally from the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosí, also home to singer Ana Bárbara and Mount Wirikuta. (The latter is sacred to a group of indigenous Mexican people and currently under threat of rape by a Canadian silver mining company.) El Rompecabezas is energetic and poppy and I had to double check the first two songs to make sure they weren’t exactly the same. One of them was “Malditos Sentimientos” (alternate title: “Sentimientos, Saxo, y MALDICIóN”). Continue reading “¡Nuevo! (starring Chacaloza, Vicente Fernández, y más)” →

November 4, 2015 1

Desfile de Éxitos 11/7/15

Since Billboard‘s Latin charts tend to turn over slower than car engines during Chicago winters, the scene doesn’t look much different than it did two weeks ago. All titles in the Top 10 remain the same, with more than half of them occupying the exact same positions. The ~~presidential primary campaign~~ chart tenure of King Romeo’s indecent proposal has reached 118 weeks, and there are only six new songs, four on the big chart and two on the Regional Mexican airplay chart. Plus — and this makes NorteñoBlog howl hot tears of pain — both of Pitbull’s songs, “El Taxi” and “Baddest Girl In Town,” have left the Top 25. Beep beep, sir; beep beep.

But! As you know, NorteñoBlog has a bit of a thing for the late Ariel Camacho, whose “Te Metiste” is still sitting pretty at #7 Hot Latin without placing on the Regional Mexican chart, meaning people continue streaming and/or downloading the heck out of it. (Probably streaming.) Other songs in this predicament: Arrolladora’s “Confesión” and Recodos’ “Mi Vicio Más Grande,” both of which boast expensive-looking novela-lite videos.

In what is possibly an elaborate Day of the Dead scheme, there’s more Camacho chart action bubbling debajo. Continue reading “Desfile de Éxitos 11/7/15” →

October 30, 2015 6

Los Horóscopos En La Jukebox

Seis de los siete Singles Jukebox críticos les gustaba “Estoy Con Otro En La Cama,” el nuevo sencillo de Los Horóscopos de ~~Chicago~~ Durango. (Hometown!) “Seriously, someone give this song to Rihanna,” escribió Andy Hutchins; es una idea muy seductora. Es posiblemente más seductora de “Estoy Con Otro En La Cama,” implicaba Megan Harrington, quien sin embargo le gustaba la canción.

Escribí:

In pop music, real-time sex narratives are fairly easy to come by, but fewer singers have the cuernos to recount their infidelity while it happens, making “Cama” an unexpectedly nasty delight. When songwriter Espinoza Paz debuted the song last year, it seemed a tossed-off joke, like one of Toby Keith’s bus songs. Paz is hyper-prolific and usually maudlin, the driving force behind many drippy ballads about corazones. Vicky Terrazas (the brunette Horóscopo) said in a recent interview that “Paz es un Shakespeare,” which makes sense if we’re comparing their use of horns metaphors, but otherwise not so much. In “Cama,” though, he gives the Terrazas sisters a stately framework to exact diabolical revenge on their lovers, baptizing their anonymous new lays with the name of “amante” and hurling small-dick insults. Speaking of which — and notwithstanding the trenchant realism of the video — which fucking hotel hands out fruit baskets containing not just giant zucchinis, but eggplants? Are they conducting this tryst at the county fair?

October 29, 2015 1

¡Bandononona! ¡En la Jukebox!

No lo siento por mi “dis” de unas “indie bands” en The Singles Jukebox la semana pasada, cuando escribimos sobre Bandononona Clave Nueva y “Cuál Adiós.” Tal vez era un golpe bajo, pero mi argumento era específico: bandas son grandes, indie rock bands son pequeños, y sus ironías estarán diferentes. (¿Defensivo? ¿Yo?)

Escribí:

I’m impressed: this banda-pop cover of Fato’s mariachi-pop “Ya No Vives En Mi” manages more lushness and luxury than the original (or Yuri’s straight-up pop version, or Samuray’s cumbia, or whatever this future-Tarantino-title-music horror is), while still sounding like the band’s making fun of it. Blame the flutter-tonguer in the back row, or Max Peraza’s bewildered double takes in the video. Not only are bandas perfectly suitable delivery vehicles for pop songs; when they put their minds to it, they can achieve shades of irony your little indie band can only dream of.

October 26, 2015 0

Who’s On the Mexican Radio? 10/23/15

Hay mucha intriga on one of the Mexican charts this week, the secondary one that measures radio spins rather than total audience. It seems La Trakalosa de Monterrey, given to illustrating their humdrum power ballads with dramatic eight-minute videos starring the expressive face of frontman Edwin Luna, have undergone a dramatic name change: they’re now Edwin Luna y La Trakalosa de Monterrey. Wham!

The principles of detection and/or YouTube rabbit holes tell me this revolution began a month ago, with Trakalosa’s humdrum “Pa’ Quitarle Las Ganas.” You’d could easily have missed the name change, which only appeared in the opening credits. With the new humdrum chart single “Pregúntale,” though, the situation comes to a head. As the video starts, the words “Edwin Luna” seem to flash across that expressive face every few seconds: not only is Luna gradually extricating his name from his group’s, he cowrote the song and stars in the video, and receives credit for each task.

As you’d expect from the guys who used their single “La Revancha” to film a mini-novela about crime, fate, and revenge, “Pregúntale” is no ordinary video. This otherwise simple, “Break Up With Him”-style song transforms into a Very Important Message about Not Mistreating Women — can’t argue with that — through the Magic Of Acting. Throughout the video, Edwin Luna points his pained and uncomfortable face at the woman for whom he pines as she gets pushed around by her boyfriend, Luna’s boss. The woman in question, sobbing, flashes back to their schooldays when Luna used to wear attractive red-framed glasses, but she keeps coming back to the abusive boss. Edwin Luna then points his pained and uncomfortable face at us. I, for one, felt pained and uncomfortable.
Continue reading “Who’s On the Mexican Radio? 10/23/15” →

October 23, 2015 3

Major Corrideros: Enigma Norteño, Lenin Ramírez, & El Komander (AGAIN)

Every once in a while, it’s good for a fanboy like me to get some perspective. I ask myself the tough questions: Is Julión Álvarez really the best singer on the continent, or has Chuy Lizárraga taken his crown? If a dance band from Chihuahua marketed itself as “puro Zacatecas sax,” would any listener be able to tell the difference? And most importantly, how many fans does it take to reach #2 on Billboard‘s Top Latin Albums chart?

The answer according to Billboard: a grand oughta do it. That worked in the case of the corrido quartet Enigma Norteño, whose I-dunno-10th? album La Vida del Rey (Fonovisa) just scraped up to #2 with 1,000 albums sold. Such a low sales tally is nothing new, and it certainly doesn’t reflect on Enigma’s quality — they’re a good little band — but it does remind us that, outside Gerardo Ortiz and a couple others, even the most popular norteño music remains unknown to most of the U.S. music-buying public.
Continue reading “Major Corrideros: Enigma Norteño, Lenin Ramírez, & El Komander (AGAIN)” →