Hot Fun In The Summertime (Viva La Musica Latina)

Look at that mug. It's a face that only a mother could love. That was me, roughly 30 years ago when I still had a glimmer of faith in mankind. The days before life dealt me a few bad hands, before several sure bets turned into certain busts, and before I eventually packed it in to become the misanthropic crank I am today. If I lived in a small town with only a handful of neighbors, I'd likely be trying to get rid of them. "Hit your ball into my backyard, and you'll never see it again, Sonny!" That's what happens when you get shat on one too many times. But honestly, I'm not really that cantankerous, although it's safe to say that you'd never find me skipping down the sidewalk whistling, 'Up With People!’ It's a funny paradox. I mean, for someone who’s not too big on hanging out with humanity, here I am, week after week sharing myself in the pages of this blog, which is read worldwide. Funny too, that I've nearly always made my living in something that is called, ‘Communications.’ Considering this, it's then a contradiction that as a whole, I reserve more respect for those in the animal kingdom than I do for those of humankind. I do however enjoy watching people. No, not to ridicule and scoff at, as you might be thinking, but rather as a way of learning something about them as individuals, or about ourselves as culture. Education through observation. I could be a great reporter by way of casual bystander, or maybe even a cop, if I actually had an interest in upholding the law. I mean, I see it this way, I can't entirely avoid interacting with society. After all, I am a member of that organization, and a responsible one at that. So I mix, but only as long as I can hold most individuals at arms length. For the most part, I prefer to learn about people, customs, and lifestyles through astute examination, ideally with as little actual physical contact as possible. Kind of like Jimmy Stewart in 'Rear Window.' That's me, except without the broken leg, the telephoto lens, or Grace Kelly as a girlfriend. Minimum face time, maximum supposition. It's not a perfect form of research, I know, but more often that not, what I take away is relatively sound. Combine a bit of fact-finding with educated guesswork and analysis, blend with the scrutiny of my eye for detail, and I usually end up drawing conclusions that are pretty close to absolute truth. It's always been that way. In fact, I consider myself as knowing a little bit about a lot of things, from shipyards and mercury poisoning, to epicurean and make-up tips. Enough at least to get started. The things I don't know much about, I make up as I learn. Meanwhile, I cautiously mingle. But don't get me wrong, I'm not ready to disappear into the desert landscape of Baja to live in an Airstream trailer, or anything. Not yet anyway. Besides, there are still several people who owe me money, and I'd like to collect on those debts first.

When that picture above was taken, I was working at KRE, the station you've heard me wax about in previous posts. Man, I loved that station! Not only was it a great learning experience for me, but I also got to work alongside (oddly enough) a talented crew of people who for the most part, kept their egos checked at the door when entering the building. And there, much like my way of observing people, I educated myself, again through attention to detail, a bit of formal research, a dash of luck, and the ability to become a quick study. I mean, before I encountered Thelonious Monk at the age of 10, my childhood idea of jazz was Boots Randolph and The Anita Kerr Singers, the latter who did that stuff like, "Scooby-dooby-dooby-doo, Scoobity-wa-wa-waaaa!" Later in my post-Monk teen years, I poked around the jazz section in the record aisle at the local Department store and found some other things I liked. But when I got to KRE as a young adult, I got exposed to it all, and all at once! What jazz I already knew was enough to get me through initially, but while there, I picked up as much as I could absorb until I became versed enough to consider myself a connoisseur. And again, it was through scrutiny and studied consideration. A friend in a similar circumstance once told me that when auditioning for an on-air position, she was asked by the Program Director to pick out what she thought were the two-dozen strongest titles in the stations library. Cleverly, she perused the collection methodically, and the titles she selected were the L.P.'s whose jacket spines were the most well worn! From there, like me, she simply absorbed and learned as she went along, making up the other bits along the way. A very smart girl! It's almost like, if you talk as though you were an authority on something, as long as your line of bullshit isn't too far out, most people will initially accept your word on it. Then over time, you truly do educate yourself and it's no longer B.S., but fact.

I mention this because while at KRE (as with most any radio station), staff members would fill in for a colleague if they were ill, vacationing, or otherwise predisposed. Every so often, I would get tapped to cover for Talaya Trigueros who now works at KTWV-FM in Los Angeles. The young and beautiful Talaya hosted a salsa music program that was extremely popular, largely due to her winning personality, her silky voice, her excellent taste in music, and of course because of the large Latino community that resides in the Bay Area. Well, who was I to substitute host a salsa program? I'll tell you. I was a dopey gringo who didn't know salsa from shinola. Similar to my take on jazz before first hearing Thelonious Monk, anything that featured timbales and was sung in Spanish potentially qualified as salsa music to my unenlightened ears. However, I wasn't that completely naive. I made it a point to inform myself in the only way I knew how --- I listened to her show, took note of what she played that appealed to my own sensibilities, checked out what was selling at 'Discolandia' in San Francisco's Latino Mission district --- and then I undertook the task as though I actually knew what I were doing. Meanwhile, I'd audition other recordings I was less familiar with (or completely unfamiliar with) while airing one that I felt confident in. That, combined with listener requests, always got me through in spite of my relative lack of exposure to the genre. Of course, I didn't produce anything that vaguely resembled a 'salsa' program in the strictest sense, it was rather a 'Musica Latina' program that featured Latin rock, Latin jazz, Afro-Cuban jazz, the requisite salsa, and even 'old school' soul (although it wasn't old school at the time). The music featured below is an example of the sort of mix I'd do (except then I had a much larger library to choose from), and the selections are mostly from that period as well. As it was then, it today remains more than quite suitable for summer listening. In fact it's actually great for summer listening! Looking back, it obviously wasn't Talaya's salsa show, no way! But all things considered, I didn't do too bad of a job with it. I mean, I would get calls from Mission low riders, some of the brothers in Oakland, and even the random cholo from East San Jose! I figured that kind of response was pretty good for a honky/gringo who was learning on the fly, and making up the rules as he went along. Man, what was that thing that Honest Abe said? "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." It's kinda' like that.

Viva La Musica Latina

1) El Chicano/El Cayuco

2) The Santana Band/Incident At Neshabur
3) Celia Cruz/Usted Abusó
4) Rubén Blades/Buscando Guayaba
5) Kool & The Gang/Summer Madness
6) Cal Tjader/Guarabe
7) Sapo/Been Had
8) The Harvey Averne Barrio Band/Cayaco
9) Herbie Hancock/Butterfly
10) The Santana Band/Treat
11) Willie Colón/Dime
12) The Alex Cuba Band/Muevete
13) Cruisin' With Pedro
14) El Chicano/Viva Tirado


Bonus Tracks
(Because I'm really not such a crank after all)

14) Jerry Gonzalez/Bye-Ya
15) Pedro's Request
16) Tower Of Power/You're Still A Young Man
17) The Chico O'Farrill Orchestra/Freezelandia
18) Donny Hathaway/The Ghetto
19) Cal Tjader/This Is Always
20) Malo/Nana
21) Las Siete Potencias/No Volvere
22) Celia Cruz/La Guaga
23) Pedro, Red Freak, And 'La Bamba'
24) War/All Day Music

To download, click here. For the bonus tracks, click here.