Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass - Whipped Cream & Other Delights
It was the cover of this whole run, so of course we'd listen to it eventually. Why not now, as the coincidental continuation of mentioning Eddy Arnold's unpopularly popular switch to Pop? Originally, Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass was just his own trumpet overdubs imitating Mariachi music, but by this point it was The Wrecking Crew. After Whipped Cream and Other Delights got huge, he hired actual touring musicians and officially made them a real band, hence the grammatical name change.
Sure, we're flirting with disaster by waving the red cape of cultural appropriation around, but i highly doubt there's a vaquero solitario a pinin' after shaving cream lady (studio lights generate way too much heat for dairy products). Plus, Dolores Erickson was a professional model, so this was certainly not the most horrible photoshoot she ever participated in. With its roster of food songs, and Herb Alpert never hesitating to point out that they were expressly dopey white guys (two lasagnas, a bagel, etc.), this is meant to be campy and fun. Making their money by selling the sync rights to terrible gameshows is a bit iffy, but i'm not gonna sit here and pretend this isn't fun. Much more like the Guitars Unlimited version of Eddy Arnold than actual Eddy Arnold. For starters, it's instrumental music so we don't have to deal with lyrics at all. Mariachi versions of songs people know, no matter who's actually playing them, are clearly intended to be festive and exciting. Obviously i'll change my opinion if actual Mexican ensembles were being denied work visas for gigs like Nixon loved doing to Canadians, but US-Mexico international affairs are a bit much to heap onto Herb Alpert, especially for southern California. The copycat scene afterward is a totally different story, and i seem to recall Jack White did a song one time, but i want to get to this album by a band actually and demonstrably more popular than the Beatles in 1965.
No, first you need to explain why any of this is relevant to Country. Oh, ok me, sorry, i thought it was obvious. We didn't invent cowboys. We got the idea from Mexican vaqueros, who learned the lifestyle from their Spanish conquerors/colonizers. Fair bit of cross mythologizing from Italian film makers, to boot. The relevant difference for Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass is that in Spain they run from the bulls, Mexico fights them, we for some reason cinch a rope around their testicles and try to ride them for 8 seconds. Now that we've got that cleared up...
... this is fantastic. It may sound extremely dated and schlocky to our ears, but from a more objective standpoint its great music played exceptionally well, and it has undeniable charm. Opinions on cultural appropriation run the gamut from it's a stupid concept to it's a grievous sin, but i think there's an easy litmus test you can apply to come to your own conclusion. Is he doing it because it's his thing, a style he likes and respects, or is he doing it to cash in on a commercially fabricated fad with stereotypically embarrassing cosplay? Baja Marimba Band looks way more like the latter, in my opinion. The former is certainly appreciation, the latter draws immediate comparison to terrible things like blackface and sports team mascots. There's no actual right or wrong answer here, only honest or dishonest interpretation.
Goodness this is enjoyable. I bet if i looked into my palantÃr i'd see Skip out on the beach doing his pencil/coconut rendition of the title track drums with an adoring audience of softshell crabs joining in with their conveniently built-in castanets.
Fun fact, every Tijuana Brass album has a striptease on it, and this one is Love Potion No. 9. Don't forget to notice the honky-tonk barroom piano. There's a reason this was immensely popular, and that reason is escapism. I'm normally an anti-escapist, lean into it guy, but it's undeniably delicious. Maybe not an everyday dietary staple, but a little bit of sweet indulgence never hurt nobody too much.
If Sandra were here we could wonder if the cover is sexist. It's naughty or titillating, sure, but i can only think of a couple things less sexy than being covered in actual food, not to mention deep cleaning all the upholstery afterward. Even Ricardo MontelKHAAAAAAN! would try to talk you into a different fantasy if at all possible.
... and with that out of nowhere Fantasy Island/Star Trek mashup, i think it might be time to reawrangle all the usb cables and relearn how to play this guitar-shaped thingamabob into the computation box; coax Carl's dog back out of the pasture, if you catch my drift. Don't worry, i still gots lots more albums to bad mouth but since my thumb's back in the swing of things (i write all these things on my phone), my other fingers need a bit of a wiggle walk too. Look at me, setting up another Chet Atkins album for tomorrow like i have any idea what i'm doing. Preposterous.
Comments
Post a Comment