Peter Holslin snaked the Silver Surfer
Like most freelance music writers, I spend a lot of time hurtling through the Internet with no direction or goals in mind. The laptop is my rocketship, the wifi is my fuel, and the only thing stopping me from having 50,000 tabs open on my Firefox is my own sanity. I can’t say this is a particularly healthy way to live, but it gets the job done, and occasionally I’ll land on something really interesting. Like, say, this epic list of obscure Mexican rock albums , which I stumbled across the other day. I don’t remember what it was that led me to this “black hole of Mexican rock,” but looking at it gave me the same giddy feeling an investigative journalist probably gets when he obtains a huge stack of government documents.
The list was put together by a rateyourmusic user named El Ritual (not coincidentally, also the name of a classic Mexican Satanic rock band), and it features 42 albums of varying legend and obscurity. Much of it comes from a period during the late-’60s/early-’70s in Mexico called La Onda, which was basically that country’s own version of the hippie/counter-culture movement. (Only in Mexico they were called “jipitecas,” the ‘j’ pronounced as an ‘h.’) As was the case with the U.S.’s counter-culture movement, La Onda crested during a rich, volatile and violent time in Mexico’s history, when rapid modernization and government repression stoked the fires of student uprisings and rock ‘n’ roll rebellion.
Naturally, this surge of political and cultural tension created the conditions for potent music, and aficionados of Mexican rock will recognize many of the bands on El Ritual’s list. Among the more legendary names is Kaleidoscope, whose self-titled 1969 album is described as an “icon for collectors all over the world”; La Revolución de Emiliano Zapata, who reached the European pop charts in 1971 with their hit song “Nasty Sex” (later followed by the hit “Shit City”); and Los Dug Dug’s, whose nasty riffs, gripping flute runs and quieter acoustic moments make their album Smog a kick-ass rock ‘n’ roll document in Mexico and beyond.
There’s some intriguing, lesser-known bands on the list, too. I’m fascinated by a brassy jazz-rock fusion combo called 39.4. El Ritual notes that horn section bands from this period are “ignominiously forgotten,” and says 39.4’s self-titled album is one of the “best and most representative” of the sound. I did some online sleuthing and downloaded the album, and was pleased by the first track, “Fe” (i.e. “Faith”), which crosses moody flute and organ with intricate, Fela Kuti-style horn hooks. Things get pretty cheesy later in the album, when their frontman attempts Tom Jones-style croons, but there’s still some cool moments.
I know plenty of people who, if provided with a working time machine, would gladly go back to the hippie days in America to see groundbreaking rockers like Jimi Hendrix in the flesh (and, yeah, to go to a few marches and maybe join the 1968 student occupation at Columbia University as well). But with this comprehensive list, El Ritual makes a pretty good case for adding a few extra days to the time-travel vacation for a detour south of the border.
