Más Ritmo Caliente

One more repost just to cover the holiday weekend. Enjoy.

Hot Fun In The Summertime
Friday, July 06, 2012


Look at that face. Earnest, hopeful, confident. That was me as a young man in his mid-20's, somewhere around 1974 or so when I still held more than a glimmer of faith in mankind. You know, 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. That's what happens when you get shat on one too many times. But honestly, I'm not really that cantankerous, although it's entirely safe to say that you'll 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; one which is read worldwide I might add. Funny too, is that I've almost always made my living in something called, ‘Communications.’ Considering this, it's then a bizarre contradiction that as a whole, I tend to hold more respect for members of the animal kingdom than I do for humankind. I do however enjoy watching people and no, not to ridicule and scoff at as you might be thinking. But I do it rather as a way of learning something about them as individuals, or maybe about ourselves as a culture. Education through observation. I could make for a great reporter by way of just being a casual bystander, or maybe even a cop if I actually held 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 wonders and make-up tips. Enough at least to get started. Then 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 no doubt heard me wax about in previous posts if you've been following this blog for any length of time. Man, I loved that station! Not only was it a great learning experience for me, but I also got to work alongside (ironically 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 made it a point to pick 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 LP'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 she was (and still is). It's almost like, if you talk as though you're 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 becomes 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 94.7 The Wave 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 truly 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 than my own), and the selections are mostly from that period as well. As it was then, it today remains more than suitable for summer listening. In fact it's actually pretty great for summer listening. Looking back, it obviously wasn't Talaya's salsa program, but all things considered, I didn't do too bad of a job with it. I mean, I'd get calls from Mission low riders, some of the brothers over in Oaktown, and even the random cholo from East San Jose. I figured that kind of response was pretty decent for a honky/gringo who was learning on the fly, making up the rules as he went along. Man, what was that thing that Honest Abe once 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, Vol.1

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


Viva La Musica Latina, Vol.2

1) Jerry Gonzalez/Bye-Ya
2) Pedro's Request
3) Tower Of Power/You're Still A Young Man
4) The Chico O'Farrill Orchestra/Freezelandia
5) Donny Hathaway/The Ghetto
6) Cal Tjader/This Is Always
7) Malo/Nana
8) Las Siete Potencias/No Volvere
9) Celia Cruz/La Guaga
10) Pedro, Red Freak, And 'La Bamba'
11) War/All Day Music