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:: Ghost Riders In The Sky ::

OK, enough about America, let's get to MEXICO. Actually, there's nothing really truly Mexican about this album at all. A recurring theme in music history, and definitely with some of the things we put up on here, is opportunists jumping on the bandwagon when a certain style of music is hot and can be fairly easily imitated. Most of the time the results are tepid, but sometimes they are humorous little mutations that should have never been. Make no mistake, this promotional album was studio musicians hired to do a quick job (says so on the back), and I bet these cats were about as Mexican as a polar bear.

If you've ever shuffled through dingy, dusty record bins, you've seen Tijuana Brass imitations aplenty. This little beaut is brought to you by Mark 56 Records, and George Garabedian, who was also the mastermind behind such Tijuana Brass knockoffs as The Tijuana Taxi and the infamous, dubious, almost-unbelievable-that-it-exists Col. Sanders' Tijuana Picnic. Even the cover art here wants to be something else, Jack Davis to be exact. And like the studio musicians who were all involved, the artist Reynold Brown did good, respectable work when he wasn't doing work for this album. If you are wondering what Alpha Beta is, it used to be a grocery store here in Southern California that went under around the late 80's.

What else? Well, not much. Most of the songs covered here were already on Tijuana Brass, or Baja Marimba Band albums. The front and back cover list a song called "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" that is listed as "Stop You're Breaking My Heart" on the label itself. I told you they threw it together quick. So feed your post-Independence Day meat hangover with the frenetic vibes-fueled rendition of Ghost Riders In The Sky. Olé?


Tony

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 at 5:58 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.