el bimbo

by Art Chantry ( art@artchantry.com)

i as i waste my time digging through the piles of crap that compose my life, i gather old 45′s. it’s a dreadful habit. i have gone through thousands of these things. i take the ones i like and record them (very very badly) onto cd’s and maybe scan the labels and/or the covers before i give them away to friends of mine. sounds crazy and it is. but i find the most amazing music!

AC:so, it seems this is a famous record. but, in all honesty, i thought it was completely obscure when i found it. that's one of the nifty things about digging into old 45's, you find entire new universes to explore. it's a really great fun way to constantly expand horizons and discover new lands. so cool.

also, i never buy these records from used record stores. i get them in thrift stores, often having to dig them one by one out of a pile of rubbish. i never pay more than a buck apiece for them (and rarely that.) i usually get them for closer to like two bits or even ten cents a piece. and the condition is dreadful. skips, cracks, dirt, spilled sticky crap warped, i don;t care. i listen to them anyway.

b-sides are always amazing. even on very famous hit records, the b-side is rarely listened to. it’s also where a great band takes the time to enjoy their work. the a-side is for the record company (to make money). the b-side is where the artist gets the chance to place the music THEY want to do. so, at times you find the most passionate, intricate, enjoyable and most interesting stuff literally buried there, unheard. i love it. it’s like finding pirate treasure.

another item i look for is the obscure self-released records that was self-produced by the band or artist. they pay for it out of their own pocket and press them and distribute them out of their garage of the trunk of their car or (if they’re lucky enough to have a gig) off the stage. they’re usually produced in runs of a few hundred. the minimum amount a record pressing plant does is 500 copies. but, earlier on, it was as few as 50.


these ‘vanity press’ records are always worth picking up. in reality, what they represent is that one shot at the bigtime. it’s where some hopelessly obscure artist takes their best aim at immortality, their one ever recording for the ages. the resulting music is often the most strident, heartfelt, intense emotional and utterly talentless stuff imaginable. the sincerity makes you just want to cry. you may be holding in your hands the only existing copy of that music, the only surviving evidence that this lost person ever felt anything in their entire lives. it can be absolutely gutwrenching. and hilarious.

another thing i always try to snag when i dig around is ‘foreign language’ records. basically, records released in other countries. you just never know what you’re going to get. the peculiarities of japanese pop records or german balladeering can sound like fingernails on a chalk board to our ears. but, when you combine it with with soulless unimaginative derivative americanesque pop/rock background music, it has a sort of dischordant vibration that professional musicians in our culture spend lifetimes trying to achieve. foreign pop can crack glass.

this little 45 i post today combines a couple of my favorite categories. it’s got a really great piece of type on the cover, for starters. the graphic design is done in that ‘foreign pop’ style that we can’t imitate no matter how hard we try. them foreigners just seem to take the graphic language differently than us (can you imagine?) and can do this stuff without even thinking about it. i’ve tried to imitate this style for decades without success. it’s second nature to world pop. it’s downright icky. doing really bad graphic design INTENTIONALLY is very hard to do. you have to learn how to ‘unteach’ yourself everything you know about design before you can even begin to approach this look. it’s extremely difficult to do. try it sometime, you’ll see what i mean.

the music is mexican “go-go” music. on mexican 45′s, they often print the ‘type’ of music on the label itself. so, you often find the word ‘ranchera’ printed, to indicate it’s ranchera music. if it’s a ballad, there is often the word ‘ballada’ prin


on the label. if you find a mexican 45 with the word ‘go-go” printed on it, definitely grab it. it’s rock, garage rock. mexican garage rock of the 1960′s is absolutely the best, totally priceless, guileless and sincerely raunchy slabs of magnificent rock and roll music. never fails you.

great little record. purdy, too.

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