Program #117. That’s two years and running for this gringo on Mexican radio. You can’t keep a good man down! At least not when he’s got so much fine material on hand. And what he doesn’t already have, he’s gonna find. There’s a sinuous curved line of segues running through today’s playlist as every musical theme finds it partners fore and aft. We travel far afield from Ike Turner’s rock ‘n roll to end up on the streets of Oaxaca…and a final flourish recorded out the back door of our home here in the quiet village of Tequisquiapan. That’s the local tamale vendor’s cry with able assistance from neighboring dogs and roosters. Did I say quiet? - J.H. Run list for Sinuous curved potpourri of segues First broadcast  2-29-24   01 Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm - Box Top (USA) 02 Dale Hawkins - Susie Q (USA) 03 Sonny Burgess - Feel So Good (USA) 04 Rolling Stones - Not Fade Away (England) 05 T-Bone Walker - I'm In an Awful Mood (USA) 06 The Black Keys - No Trus...

Japanese goddess Benzaiten says 'Honor me...within reason.' - Yet another “greatest hits” program – so easy…I have the best songs. “Greatest hits” probably should lose the quotation marks, though. It’s not as if the concept is backed up by record sales (cassettes, reel-to-reel recordings, digital downloads…NFTs), or whatever they’re peddling to tell us who and what to listen to. Instead, I get to ascend the throne of my little fiefdom and proclaim some music superior to other music. Actually, that’s not quite right either. The tunes on this list and other similar efforts just happen to be personal favorites or just good segue material based on whatever theme seems to be evolving as I use the most inscrutable logic to compile an hour’s worth of reverie. If you don’t like it – don’t listen (my sponsors will be pissed – there goes a lifetime supply of free Doritos!) And if you do like it, write to your congressperson: Al compas del mundo should be piped into every classroom and w...

  Wikipedia informs me that Bartolomeo Cristofori, an Italian maker of string instruments, is credited with the invention of the piano in the 1720’s. So, a piano today has 88 keys, far more than the original model. In those seven octaves+ there’s a world of music waiting to come out that Cristofori could never have envisioned. I imagine a creative pianist staring at the keyboard and visualizing a sculptural block with inherent musicality anticipating release. Carve a little here; emphasize some there; craft the tune to their desire though within the structure of what the instrument allows for. And that allowance is ample. I’ve heard that playing the piano is like having an entire orchestra at your command. Thinking of what emotions come to play, I expect truly every emotion can be expressed: light and lilting, heavy and percussive, inspirational, or just a ton of fun. There’s a little of all this and a lot more in this week’s Al compas del mundo. Old standards like On the Sunny Sid...

  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...

  What to say about this wildly diverse batch of music from peoples all over the globe? I’m going to pick out just a few random offerings to elaborate upon, though of course, every artist represented here has a history worth noting. Johnny Guitar from Thailand, along with several other recording artists/bands there, played what was called “shadow music” back in the 60’s. Influenced by a widely popular British band, The Shadows, Mr. Guitar and friends introduced electrified surf and go-go to traditional Thai sounds to create a new genre of folk-pop music.   Nelcy Sedibe, a South African of Zulu origin recorded in the early 80’s and contributed to a collection of music promoted as The Indestructible Beat of Soweto, named after the impoverished black township near Johannesburg. As happened in Thailand and, seemingly, everywhere else on the planet, multi-media sources introduced Western music and the electric instruments played to create that contemporary with-it sound. Once again...