Al compas del mundo - programa #86 - Hippie music and the San Francisco sound

Al compas del mundo is only too happy to present the 2,206,384^th musical commemoration of the Summer of Love and San Francisco’s claim to have invented all that was hip and groovy - quickly now – before it turned into a meth dealing rip-off scene. Blink your eyes and you’re 72 years old, hankering for some nostalgia and a just-turned 18, dew-eyed angelette looking to get down, you know, like a sex machine gal. POP! Goes the bubble and the smell of Acapulco gold – or is it ditch weed? – sends me back to Racine, Wisconsin cornfields, Milwaukee all-nighters at Cambridge Castle, and Madison madness…and they played this music! It was special then and maybe still is.

Hippie music and the San Francisco sound List - First broadcast 7-20-2023

01 Jimi Hendrix Experience - Purple Haze

02 Big Brother and the Holding Company, with Janis Joplin - I Need a Man to Love

03 The Great Society, with Grace Slick - Somebody to Love

04 Country Joe and the Fish - Flying High

05 Love - Seven and Seven Is

06 Moby Grape – Omaha

07 The Byrds - Eight Miles High

08 Quicksilver Messenger Service - Who Do You Love (Part 1)

09 Sir Douglas Quintet - She's About a Mover

10 Santana - Oye Como Va

11 Grateful Dead - Morning Dew

12 Jefferson Airplane - D.C.B.A.-25

13 The Chambers Brothers - Time Has Come Today

14 Beau Brummels - Just A Little

15 The Doors - Light My Fire

Comments

Al compás del mundo - programa #99 - Los Folkloristas

This week’s Al compás del mundo earns a pair of dedications. Primarily, to Las Folkloristas, a group of Mexican musicians who first came together in 1966 and who continue to the present day, delighting their public and educating them as to the breadth of folk music genres and instrumentation found in every corner of Latin America. The second dedication is to me and my sweetheart wife Claudia – we met at a concert of Los Folkloristas at the Sala Agora in Mexico City, in 1976. And yes, we too are still together. Get out your handkerchiefs and dry your eyes because there’s a story to be told as evidence that there’s a soulmate out there for everyone. You just have to make the effort to look, even if it takes you to a foreign land. And so it goes like this: I spent all of 1976 living in Mexico City, ostensibly to learn Spanish, but en realidad to loaf around, drink beer, practice my saxophone, and maybe, just maybe, look to meet a señorita. I lived in a pension (boardinghouse) owned by Jul...

Al compas del mundo, programa #92 - Japan

The Japanese historically have been a most creative people, excelling in aesthetic conventions like architecture, painting, culinary arts, theatre, music, and more. A craftsman’s care and an artist’s flair have come to define everyday household objects such as articles of clothing and kitchen ware, designed with a sensibility that imbues them with import and elevated status. After WWII in the United States however, an item inscribed “made in Japan” usually indicated a tchotchke of mediocre quality. A perfect example is the large number of Northwest Coast Native American-style bone totem poles made for the tourist shops in the Northwest. There is a distinctive difference in these “artifacts” from the real, home-made variety that illustrates someone from another culture tackling aesthetics they don’t fully comprehend. And that leads us to some of this week’s musical choices. Imitating Western pop, rock and jazz, Japanese artists have recorded many forgettable efforts – not unlike those o...

Al compas del mundo - programa #114 - potpourri of fun, fun, fun

Fun, Fun, Fun. And I do mean fun. Sometimes this summary of a weekly radio show veers off to a serious side, but not today. Not with this batch of winners. Not when we’re leading off with Los Xochimilcas. Like a mix of The Three Stooges and Spike Jones, they clamor for a round of “pulque for two!” with an eloquent danzón accompaniment. Then there’s Pigbag showing off some serious jazz chops…but is it jazz? Then again, who cares? Why fret over labels when we’re here to have fun?! So The Magnetic Fields’ tune isn’t exactly light-hearted glee and all, but fun comes in many packages. I had fun when I first heard I Die You Die. They sounded like the Velvet Underground had they hailed from West Virginia instead of New York. That’s not fun? Relatively speaking, there’s always room for Ennio Morricone. That lonesome whistle thrills me, along with the chorus of grunting injuns. A Spaghetti Western at its stereotypical best. Allen Toussaint, by the way, is one hell of a song writer, in cas...

Search This Blog