Monday 15 December 2008

El Chicano - Cinco





EL CHICANO
Cinco
1974

63.5 MB
256+ VBR LAME mp3
Vinyl rip & scans from MCA 401


Continuing with more Chicano rock
here's the fifth outing from LA's favourite hijos. You might note a lack of preview tracks above...starting with this post Soundological will be attempting to economise by using pre-existing media (i.e., embedded YouTube vids) as much as possible. Although pleasantly surprised with the popularity of the preview tracks, now that boomp3 is dead and I'm on the hook for the bandwidth being chewed up I must admit I'm not prepared to shell out the bucks necessary to help y'all assess whether you want to grab what's being given away. I also threw a PayPal donation button at the bottom of the sidebar in case anyone feels generous but won't harass you about it - in fact this is likely the last you'll hear on the subject.

You've Been Wrong So Long


What You Don't Know Won't Hurt You


Like the other LPs before, this one's split between covers and originals but on the whole is a touch formulaic and more of a radio-oriented affair. Not that either of those is necessarily a bad thing when the formula is proven and radio is a little loose in programming but beyond a cover of Freddie Hubbard's "Little Sunflower" there's not much evidence on hand of that smokey
soul-jazz nightclub influence they wore on their sleeves at the outset of their career. There are the obligatory stabs at salsa with covers of Tito Puente and Ray Barretto and you may recognise the second track above from the repertoire of The Jackson Five. If you check out the actual YT page, someone claiming to be singer Jerry Salas says J5 were covering El Chicano on their Dancing Machine album which happened to be released the same year. However, the fact that J5 had three other tracks on their LP written by the same songwriters doesn't lend much credence to the claim...if someone can support it with more facts, let us know in the comments!

On the whole, another decent effort which will please fans of both the band and the genre. After this LP the quality on the MCA recordings started to slide as formula and the fey factor came to the forefront over the next few years.


Jerry Salas - Guitar, Vocals
Michael "Mickey" Lespron - Guitar
Brian Magness - Bass
Bobby Espinosa - Organ, Synthesizer, Vocals
Enrique "Andre" Baéza - Vocals, Congas, Percussion
Hector "Rudy" Regalado - Timbales, Percussion, Drums, Vocals
Eddie "Yaddie" Rodriquez - Drums, Percussion, Vocals


1 El Cayuco
2 Children
3 You've Been Wrong So Long
4 The Latin One
5 What You Don't Know Won't Hurt You
6 Ahora Si
7 Gringo En Mexico
8 Little Sunflower


Celebrate Cinco de Chicano with Soundological HERE. (updated 2012-07-27)

4 comments:

Wan Safuan said...

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!
Been looking for the band's songs for years. Hope there's more.

cheeba said...

Reloaded today!

Muff Diver said...




Sweet!


Thanks for keeping the link open!

Anonymous said...

...been looking for this for so long. one of my favourite albums when I was 8 yrs old. Thank you.