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Cholo Valderrama
Lila Downs
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Lucero
Myriam Hernandez
Olga Taņon
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Shakira
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Thalía
An Introduction to My Likes
6 July 2008 - I just did my latest check of Patricia Vonne's web site and found that she had released a new album called "Firebird". I have a love/hate relationship with Vonne. I seem to like the song and hate the video or vice versa. I also hate not being able to walk into one of the local stores and buy her albums. On Firebird, she has a song called "Missing Women". I liked both the video and the song. This is a song about the 400+ women who have been killed in Ciudad de Júarez, México. The missing women of Júarez, México became a hot subject with me after watching the movie "Without a Trace". At any rate, I liked the album so much so that I immediately went to iTunes and purchased the album as a "plus" album. One of the songs is called "Hot Rod" heart and it is kind of funny but it struck a cord with me. I have always felt that I have a hot rod heart. I had a Camaro that would easily hit 140+ mph on the speedometer and did so on numerous occasions. It amazed me but "battle scars" reminded me of "Sweethearts of the Rodeo", a group that I really liked from the past. At any rate, Firebird is an album that I really like. It will be the first album that contains songs in English to be played in my car for many years.
22 June 2008 - I just read where Mexican Regional music sales are down less than many other genres. Recently, Banda Quisillos performed in the local TRAC facility. The show started at 8pm but people were still streaming in at 10:30pm. It was so bad on the freeway that there were several Washington State Police cars protecting the line of slowly moving cars. There were a number of acts and people were coming to see Cuisillos. I can listen to the Mexican Regional music but I really prefer the more main stream Spanish music. Unfortunately, sales of the more traditional Spanish music were down more than 30%. I was not surprised. I have been commenting that the people responsible for purchasing have been buying late and after the demand has gone away and when the CDs didn't sell they blame the artist. I can only purchase what I want to listen to via mail order or iTunes. No wonder sales are down.
14 May 2008 - I like Mexican food and there is a market in Pasco, Washington called Fiesta Food where I buy food. When I have been driving there, I have been bumping into a really cool looking tour bus with "Arranque Norteño" on the side. They have a site on myspace called arranquenorteno. They formed in 2006 and sound pretty good. You have to understand that most of my Mexican friends are from Michoacán and when I am around them I have to listen to five styles of music - Banda, Cumbia, Norteña, Pop, and Mariachi. I have been around them long enough that I actually like the lighter versions of the non-pop. To my taste, "Arranque Norteño" is kind of mid range in Norteño. At any rate, they are performing with Quisillos at the Trac Arena in Pasco on 31 May 2008.
1 February 2008 - I was in Hastings and talking to the person responsible for the music section. He is from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. We were talking about artists that we liked. I was telling him about Lila Downs. I tried to find her in the store but "things" have happened. It was like she had PO'ed Hastings like some of my other favorites had PO'ed the establishment. They just disappeared from the listings. The separators with their names on it had disappeared and they didn't have any of their CDs. Now I find Narada Music has killed "Narada Radio". That was what I used to find Lila Downs and Maria de Barros. None of the alternatives have ever played their music. They seem to have missed the fishermans concept of chumming. That is where you throw bait into the water to attract fish.
11 December 2007 - I read that the Latin Music Industry has had a really bad year. I had to agree because I had never encountered an industry that appeared to be clueless when it came to marketing. I am in an area where the lowest percentage of Hispanics in the 3 local towns is 15% and the highest is estimated to be around 60% or so. You would think that with a demographics like that, you would be able to buy any of the new Latin music albums. Unfortunately, that is not true, for example, it took me 4 days to find a copy of Sin Banderas new album "Hasta ahora". I think each of the Hastings stores had a single copy. One of the stores is in the 15% town, which is where I live. If the labels don't market, how can they sell albums. I happen to really like Camila, one of the few groups to sell over 100,000 albums. They released 2 versions of "Todo cambio" and I bought both of them. The report had total sales of Latin music albums to be around what 2 really popular singers could produce.
I have felt for several years that the purchasing people for the local stores have waited to see if an album is popular and then, they put in an order. That is a failure mode similar to buying high and selling low on the stock market. After several weeks and the new album has dropped from being popular, the CDs start showing up on the shelves. It is too late and they don't sell. The lack of sales wasn't the fault of the artist but the purchasing people. Of course, they are not where you can bang on them to wake them up. If you hear something you like and can't buy it, you shrug your shoulders and go on with life.
21 November 2007 - I was going through my bookmarks looking for Jenni Rivera's web site. I had purchased "La Diva en Vivo!!", wanted to find out about the album and came across a comment I had made about Luz Rios. I was looking for my original comment. It has been several years. LCR Music had a white van parked in the lot of a local hotel. It had an image of Luz on one of the doors. I had circled around it and probably should have stopped to ask about her but I didn't. Back then she had some songs online that were hits and some that were real misses. I am sitting here listening to "Y ahora que" on myspace.com/luzrios and shaking my head. The music suits her vocal range. The track appears to be well engineered and is just down right enjoyable to listen to. I can see that I am going to have to purchase "De Mi Corazon".
3 September 2007 - I was thinking about artistic freedom and the fans. It should be entirely obvious to singers that artistic freedom doesn't mean much if they lose their fans. I recently purchased Enamorandome by Myriam Hernández. I have always wondered what happened to her fans. She just dropped off of the latin music scene. Soraya also did the same thing. Do they have to keep their finger on top of what fans want or can they express their artistic freedom. Both are important to an artist but how far can the artist go. If they express their artistic freedom and their label chooses to not publicize their new album, you can not completely fault the artist. It frequently seems as if 2 children are trying to force the other party to accept them as the "adult alpha dog" and neither succeeds. The label goes into pouting mode and doesn't spend a lot of time marketing an album that wasn't done their way. By the time the artist figures out what is going wrong, it seems to be too late.
17 June 2007 - I have to comment on "Big Dog Daddy" by Toby Keith. I was sitting on my computer while "Insomniac" by Enrique Iglesias and BDD was playing in iTunes. It wasn't until "Wouldn't Wanna Be Ya" played by Keith that I really sat up and listened. The lyrics went something like "Goodby Señorita. You've been a good friend of mine" and she said "Adios Amigo. I wouldn't wanna be ya" that I sat up and listened. That isn't how the lyrics went but that was the way I remembered them. It was a really strange how my memory worked.
12 January 2007 - Jennifer Peña has a new web site coming. It is too bad that her web people appear to be clueless. Switching over to a new web site should not take more than 20-30 seconds. You create a site called "Jennifer...new" and check out the new site. Then, you install it by renaming the old site to "Jennifer....old" and rename the new site to www.jenniferpena.com.The switch will take 10 seconds or less.
In my case, I use Apache-2.0.54 and use the Unix link command to link the local .../data directory to /usr2/data. It could have easily been /usr2/jenniferpena/data. The ln command sticks around in my history and I do not even have to retype the whole command. The site is down for the few seconds required to do the unlink of the old site and the new site is up as soon as you complete the final link. You don't even have to stop Apache and restart it. For an existing site to be down for construction is unbelieveable from my point of view. But then, they have a tendancy to over do using flash and my vote doesn't count.
2 January 2007 - I was updating iTunes on "coral" because I had to do a clean reinstall. I went past Buff St. Marie and noticed that I didn't have the album art. For some reason, I visited iTunes and found that 12 of her albums were added to iTunes in 2006.
31 December 2006 - What usually happens when you do not renew your domain name is that a cyber squater will grab it. If you go to Alicia Villarreal's web site, you will find a site that mostly looks like a porn site.
5 October 2006 - This looks like a bad week for official web sites. It has been almost 2 weeks since I found that Jennifer Peña's web site had been hacked by the "GresikMetaL Crew" and now, it looks like Alicia Villarreal's web site has disappeared. My web browser's can not find a DNS entry for it. Villarreal's web site had not been updated for some time and perhaps they are upgrading it.
8 July 2006 - I was adding more music to my iPod and it was time for "Mis Treinta Mejores Canciones" by Vikki Carr to be added. I told iTunes to play it and remembered how good of a singer Carr was. One song in particular gave me goosebumps. It was "Palmoa Negra", a song that did the same thing, in the soundtrack of Frida. On the Frida soundtrack, it was Chavela Vargas singing. Frida was the movie that I bought because several songs were sung by Lila Downs. She also sang them in the movie. I wouldn't have bought all of her albums because of the movie but I bought the movie because of her CDs. "La Llorona" also gave me goosebumps but Vargas voice was virtually destroyed by the time she recorded the song.
19 June 2006 - I have to swallow my pride and tell all of the people that I ragged on for buying an iPod that they were right. It is a pretty fantastic piece of equipment. It has a much cleaner feel to the touch operation. I have had to reconvert all of the CDs that I had only converted to wma's. Converting one lossy format to another lossy format is a lost cause.
15 June 2006 - I have replaced my last Creative player. My Nomad Touch quit working properly and if you can not hear sound out of the earphone port, a portable MP3 player is not worth much. I bought the Touch on 17 September 2005. I purchased the replacement policy from Best Buy. I had my first Touch for 2+ months and the touch pad quit working. The 2nd one was always kind of squirley and I was always having to reset it. I finally read that you need to clean the HD, which is an option from the trouble menu that you can boot into. That worked for awhile and then I started losing my "playing now" list. That was irritating but it got worse and I had them test it and they decided that the HD was going bad. Now, a few months later, it started not passing the sound to the earbuds. I went into Best Buy to explore my options. Creative no longer manufactures the Touch 40 GB. Best Buy doesn't carry any of the large HD Creative players. The ones that they carried would only hold 2/3rds of the number of tracks that I had in my current player. I would be back to buying dups and finding out it was a dup after I have opened the jewel box. So, I asked about an upgrade to something else and they offered me a 60 GB iPod for the difference in the replacement cost, which was $100. Now, I have to be patient while the battery charges and then I can begin converting my music to something the iPod understands and loading it onto the player. This could take several days.
29 April 2006 - I walked into my living room and saw the end of a new music video by Shakira called "Lo dejo Madrid". It was a confusing mix of her and a matador but I was frozen until the video finished. Then, I couldn't remember why I went in there to begin with. Needless to say, it was an interesting video. I have to add that I did not like "La tortura". It was just plain strange.
25 April 2006 - I recently added Yahoo music engine and learned about the Spanish singer Rosana. Me gusta mucha Rosana. Her pitch is lower like I prefer. She sings songs that you can understand.
7 March 2006 - There is a web page for voting for your "Latino Artist". You have choices for Solo Female, Solo Male, and Band or Group.
25 February 2006 - I was going through the CD holder with all of my old CDs in it and decided to add Lorrie Morgan on to my iTune library. It has been a long time since I really listened to her but whenever some one mouths off or gets pushy, Morgan's song "What Part Of No" comes to mind.
24 February 2006 - I was adding more of my important CDs into iTunes and finally got around to Buffy St. Marie. Most people would probably say "Buffy who?" but I can still remember some of the protest folk singers from the Vietnam War time frame. At this time, I can only remember Joan Baez and Buffy. I never bought Baez and had a really difficult time buying CDs by Buffy. I have a tendancy to like indigenous peoples music. I don't really care if it is American, Mexican, or African. It is different but if you have feet that will move, they will start moving to the beat of the music.
When Buffy released "Up Where We Belong" in 1996, you could go into any music store and you could not find her name in any of the music databases. I finally complained to one of the web programmers that I had an email address for that they couldn't expect to sell her albums if you couldn't look her up. He said he had an idea. I eventually gave up on buying her album and then, one day I went into a local music store and there was "Up Where We Belong", which I immediately purchased. She has a vibrato that makes her sound very different. Some reviewers maintain that it makes her non-commercial. I am sitting here writing this and listening to my 4 or 5 star tracks and it is really weird to have Buffy popup with "Universal Soldier" and then "Tantita Pena" by Alejandro Fernádez.
15 February 2006 - I am sitting here listening to Robert Rodriquez's album about "Mexico and Mariachis". I really like this style of music. I also like to listen to his sister, Patricia Vonne, sing. I just can not watch some of her music videos. A good "shudder" example is "Traeme Paz". I think the video is freaky just like I don't like the "La Tortura" video of Shakira. Then, she comes back with "Texas Burning", which I could watch for a lot longer than you can play over the Internet. I like the song "Traeme Paz" best but I like the "Texas Burning" video much, much better. There are times when I don't think she (this could be her manager) understands Internet marketing. Of course, everytime I tell one of my Mexican friends that I like Chingon, the group assembled by Rodriqez, they all blush and giggle.
9 February 2006 - I have been playing with iTunes. I updated QuickTime and got iTunes. I have a Creative Touch 40 GB player. When I got my first portable player, anyone that purchased an iPod was certifiable crazy. You had to buy your music from Apple's iTunes. I have almost 11,000 tracks on my Touch. That would have cost a lot using songs that I purchased from iTunes. Just my normal favorites list is 439 songs. Even that would cost more than I wanted to spend.
The whole point of this comment is that the Windows application iTunes does a better job of converting CDs to a compressed form than any of the software that I have purchased. First of all, before iTunes, no one had done a good conversion to mp3. They all had bursts of noise, which I found to be enormously irritating. So, to find something that was free to be vastly superior was astounding.
8 Februrary 2006 - I was using iTunes to build a new database of music and noticed that I hadn't played Lila Downs for awhile. I am listening to Down's "Tree of Life" album as I write this. I love much of her music. I intend to spend time in Summer 2006 in a Zapotec village in Oaxaca. I will probably shoot a couple of GB of photos of the "danza de las plumas". The last time I visited Down's web page you couldn't provide feedback. That is the beginning of what I call becoming a Diva. I read a comment by Madonna and I couldn't find the article but it was something about what was the difference between a Diva and a Terrorist. The answer was that you could negotiate with a terrorist. I don't care how good their music is, I don't have any use for Divas. It is such a strong bias that it affects who I listen to. I still think that you should visit Down's web page and you should also see if you like her music.
28 January 2006 - I forgot to update this once Best Buy got in new Touch 40 GBs and they replaced my broken Touch. Everything worked as advertised. This was a first. I like their hardware but their software frequently leaves a lot to be desired. I feel very strongly that you shouldn't purchase a piece of Creative hardware until they have their *.1 software version released. My personal history with Creative is that their programmers couldn't program their way out of a wet paper bag. So, when I say that I have had no problems, you have to understand how positive an experience that is for me.
The only group that has a more negative personal history was Adaptec's CD division. I purchase Nero CD software instead of Roxio because of that negative history. Back to the Touch, I have loaded almost 10,000 audio tracks on my Touch and I haven't had to rebuild the library database once. ¡WOW!
19 December 2005 - This is a really bad day. In an hour I have to get ready for my dinner and I don't have an mp3 player that works to provide me with entertainment when I walk. I have had 2 Creative Nomad Touch's die on me. They are treated with tender loving care and the fact that they died was not due to any physical abuse. I don't use the holder provided by Creative because you can easily pop them off of your belt. It is the week before Christmas and no one has a 40GB player in stock. Costco thought they had a 40 GB Toshiba but they didn't have a demo and had to refund my purchase. Best Buy may have something on the 22nd but no bets.
On the other hand. Franco de Vita started playing on my "On Demand" subscription and he sounds really good.
14 December 2005 - I liked the DVD by Alejandro Fernández so well that I purchased his first one. It shows him from something like 20 years old until he is 30 or so. The productions remind you of something you would only see at the movies. I related to "Si tu supieras".
11 December 2005 - There has been some really good música latina released recently. I really like Elefante by Elefante and "México >> Madrid En Directo y sin escalas" by Alejandro Fernández. I also finally found a copy of Adentro by Arjona. Neither of these CDs made it into the local music store on the release date. The scary part is that both were released by Sony BMG.
30 November 2005 - Of course, I purchased Shakira's "Oral Fixation Vol. 2". That was a given. What was different is that I also purchased Diez de Intocable and Nuestro Amor de RBD. All three are now on My Touch. I enjoy Shakira but my tastes are changing. RBD is a group from a telenovela and the music video is a good enough reason to purchase the CD. Intocable is different but I listen to their music once in a while. All of them were good enough that I have purchased more than 1 album.
21 November 2005 - I have real problems with Sony BMG. They had no scruples against installing rootkit software on my computer. They appear to only be embarassed because they were caught. I was just lucky that I didn't buy one of their CDs using it. This made be do some reflections on SONY in general. FWIW, if you haven't noticed, their typical CD is only 30 minutes more or less of music. I have some really good friends from Mexico and they introduced me to what they call "Mexican Music". You don´t refer to them as Hispanic or Latina. They hate both descriptions. After a while, my tastes changed and I am less into Mexican Regional music but now the more standard Spanish singers have my favor. Half of the music playing on my Nomad Touch is still by Mexican singers but they are singers such as Marco Antonio Solís, Alicia Villareal, Lucero, Thalá, and etc. Bronco is also in my playing list. I think Bronco is consider Norteño. What is missing is the "banda" singers. I am sitting here listening to Elefante´s latest CD, which is playing on "my computer". It is 57:29 minutes of really cool music, and I am wondering why I ever bought anything from SONY. You have to understand that I have a SONY hifi receiver, a SONY statelite receiver, a SONY tv, a SONY DVD burner in my computer, and etc. All of my future purchases from them are in jeopardy. Just writing this made me angry. Sony is really in trouble and I don't know what it will take to turn my attitude around.
14 November 2005 - I was working on my computer and went out to eat dinner. I went by FYE and they had the album Acústico de La 5a Estación or La Quinta Estación and the album La Historia de Caifanes. I have been listening to "Flores de Alquiler" by La 5a Estación for quite some time now. They made it onto my playing now list on my Nomad but never into the car. I rank Elefante and La 5a Estación very close to each other. The have good voices and you can understand them. I was listening to Elefante as I walked after eating today and there was one song that I completely understood. I wanted to tell someone about it but couldn´t find any of my friends. I have only listened to Caifanes on my "On Demand" subscription to Music Match Jukebox. A small sample sounded really good and a 2-CD album will be a good test.
5 November 2005 - I cleaned the computer room and found my really old Case Logic CD holder. It had about 50 CDs that were my playlist before I started listening to mostly Spanish music. There were 3 CDs that I had been looking for really seriously. The list in order of importance was Robbie Robertson's "Music for The Native Americans". The second CD was Buffy St. Marie's "Up Where We Belong". The third was by David Frizzell and Shelly West called "Greatest Hits - Alone & Together". If you went back a few years, everyone could sing José Cuervo you are a friend of mine". Another song was "I'm Gonna To Hire A Wino To Decorate Our House". You might even remember "Flight 309 to Tennessee" or a "Honky Tonk Night on Broadway". David & Shelly had the first pocket in the holder.
Buffy's CD was located on the same page with my favorite George Strait albums. Robbie's album was the strange one in the mix and was located towards the very back. Some of his tracks were not in English. His album had more Pow Wow style chanting in it but "Cherokee Morning Song" was the first track to lock me in a loop like a moth around a bright light. Everytime I walked by a bookstore in West Yellowstone, Montana, they seemed to be playing that song. Of course, there wasn't a CD of it to be found in town.
Buffy goes back to when I graduated from college in 1963. I went back to school in 1962 and that was the year she graduated. I would have graduated in 1960 but stopped to work for 3 years. You had a number of Vietnam War, folk, protest singers, such as Joan Baez and Buffy. There were numerous others but the only one I really identified with was Buffy. That was a long time ago but now, she has a number of important projects that she enumerates on her Creative Native web site. Most of her projects involve making the early Americans have a sense of worth and pride. You have to understand that I don't belive in the term "Native American". The DNA people can track when the "native Americans" migrated out of Africa. There may have even been people such as Kennewick Man that were here 1000's of years before them. Regardless of the terminology, when you live on a reservation, what do you have to be proud of. Sometimes it has to be pointed out to you. When someone like Buffy St. Marie makes a list, you need to listen.
I think her projects are similar to helping a kid, with parents from Mexico, learn how to read. They need a jumpstart tutor that frequently only a native English speaker can provide. The parents need to take a GED class to understand some of the requirements. All of their historical knowledge is about Mexico and Mexican achievments. When would they have time to take a GED class. So, their children are missing background knowledge that they need in an American school. If you help the current group of children, the next group will not need as much help.
24 October 2005 - I started Musicmatch Jukebox tonight and Janina started playing from my "On Demand" subscription. It took a little while and then I stopped working on the computer to just listen. I haven't done that since I first heard Maria de Barros playing on Narado radio. Janina sings in the tone range I enjoy. She sings slow enough that you can hear every word. She has exellent vocal skills. I am just amazed that I haven't bought "Todo de mi". I went to Univision to learn about her. I found her on the multimedia web page and clicked her image and Lupillo Rivera started playing. I can handle some banda singers but Lupillo is not one of them. I chuckled and said "Oops! Someone had a bad day". You can listen if you find her on the list of artists and follow the links.
15 October 2005 - I recently found a local copy of Maria Rita's new CD. I purchased the one with an accompaning DVD. There is a lot of hype associated with Rita. There is no question that she has a good voice. Unfortunately, her management group doesn't understand Internet marketing. She has released 2 albums; however, if you visit maria-rita.com, you get the message "Site em construção. Aguarde". Fortunately, she has a fan site that does her justice.
I have spent time listening to Rita's new CD but personally, I prefer Maria de Barros. Her CD "DANÇA MA MI" is a hands down favorite of mine. She also makes me want to learn Portuguese so that I fully understand her songs. It is really funny to me but her "Caresse Moi" causes me problems. It is in French but when I am walking around the shopping mall after eating and listening to it on my Nomad Zen Touch, it makes me want to sing along. We have a large number of Spanish speakers locally but the French are looked on with disdain. So, getting caught singing along with a song in French could be embarassing. I figure that it is none of their business but the thought keeps popping up in my mind.
1 October 2005 - I just visited www.marcoantoniosolis.com.mx. The site has changed. It is much more functional. I have a 20 second rule. Any page people visit should load in less than 20 seconds. His previous startup was atrocious. It was interesting, it just took way to long to load. I have wanted a DVD full of Marco's videos. I got started thinking and that can be dangerous because of the cost. My question is who do I really like the most at this time. I used to claim that Soraya was my most favorite singer but her latest album was disappointing. It sounded too much like a real Spanish Christina Aguilera.
My Mexicana amiga had a birthday party for me and we got into my music tastes. Pedro, her husband laughed when I shook my hands and talked about Tahlía pato a patoing. He understood. I don't know at this point who I would list as my top 3 cantantes de español. Marco would be close. He may even be numero uno. Everyone else in my current play list has released a CD that I didn't like. You may wonder why Marco. Well, to my anglo ears, his songs are kind of slow and you can hear every word in his songs. It may be a song for his women fans but they are still good from both technical and audible view points. If you want to be proficient in Spanish like I do, you can not be that choosy.
18 September 2005 - I just visited LCR Music. They have finally got their web page working. I can't imagine any marketeer completely taking a web page down but they did. They appear to be a startup company and I will allow for moments of stupidity. A change over to a new format should not take more than 15-30 seconds. You stop Apache, rename the old home directory, rename the new web directory as the current one, and restart Apache. If your webmaster can't do that in 15 seconds or less, you should not be in the business. This is important because a web browser trying to access the page will hang when you stop Apache and if you do the change over very quickly, it will load the new page and the visitor will not notice something major has happened. "In the blink of an eye" comes to mind.
First of all, they must be too close to "Luz Rios" because their background music for their home page has moments where it sounds more like shouting than music. If you choose Artists (artistas), you can listen to Luz Rios. Some of her tracks sound very good but some have moments of shouting. You might ask what do I mean by "shouting". Well, if you meant to be really loud and sound like you are shouting instead of singing very loudly, you will understand what I mean. The mp3 download of "El Chico Aquel" has moments of what can only be described as shouting. None of the other 9 downloads suffer from this deficiency. A FWIW, I don't like the rap moments of "Casanova" but that is a personal choice.
Luz also looks like she has a pretty black marketing van. The old one was white. I have long thought that only back vehicles were elegant. If you live in "hot country" like I do, a black vehicle may not be very smart. When it comes to marketing someone, smart may never enter the picture. A black vehicle on a sunny, 115oF day can burn you on contact, where as, white will only be very hot.
Finally, if my brother called me and told me he had tickets to one of her concerts in Fresno, California, I would not hesitate to fly down.
14-15 September 2005 - One of these days was a complete disaster. I had to use "el baño" and as I was getting ready to get my Nomad Xtra off of the door, it fell out of the bag and onto the floor where it split into 3 pieces. The reason I am not sure on the date was I was so numb that I could only be described in being in shock. I was trapped in Yellowstone and without my música latina. I couldn't solve that problem until the 18th and I had arrived home. I have protection but it doesn't cover physical damage and I replaced it with a Nomad Touch 40 GB system. Unfortunately, it is too much like a iPod and has major stupid points. For example, the Xtra could maintain a play list of 30 albums with out any problems. You can view the list as albums or as tracks with the album as a separator. All you see in the Touch is the tracks. This is a major deficiency. The Touch has a number of pluses over the Xtra but I am not sure if they can make up for the lack of the album name in the play list.
6 September 2005 - Ever since I bought the DVD "Without A Trace" (Sin dejar huella), I have been trying to find some norteña music. Fox/cinemalatino has a number of movies that are simple but enjoyable. The link to WAT is buried in a frame and all I can point you to is the frame. Where ever Aurelia goes, she is listening to norteña music. It was like an itch that I could not satisfy no matter how much I tried. Then, I finally found a 3-CD collection by Conjunto Primavera. The "Coleccion Norteña" has 30 norteña songs and sounds sort of like the music Auralia is listening to in the movie.
I also came across a new Ednita Nazario album called Apasionada. It didn't break me away from playing Maria de Barros' "nha mundo". I have also been playing Myriam Hernández's album called "Lo mejor de mi". It combines some old hits into a single large album.
5 July 2005 - Sissi has been staring at me from the "Música Latina" section long enough. I bought it and then went on the web to visit www.sissimusic.com. The first thing that came to mind was "Oh no, another TV star that thinks they can sing". The album isn't that bad. My first TV star singer was either Lucero or Thalía. I still like to listen Albums by both of them. I have Lucero´s Mi Destino album and Thalía's Arrasando album in my Nomad's "playing now list". That means they are still in the top 20. Back to Sissi's Enamorada album, I am indecisive. It is good enough to make a copy and play it in the car. The car CD player slowly scratches CDs and I don't play originals in it. I may not be able to decide how I would rate it and wait to see how they review it in "People en Español". I doubt it will get an "A" but I think it is at least a "B". I have found that the PeE reviewer is very consistant with my tastes. When they give an album an "A", I have liked everyone of them. I had bought Olga Tañon's "Nueva Mujer" and it was in the box behind the driver seat and not being played by the time PeE gave it a "C". I didn't think it was that bad but it was another one of those albums that I was indecisive about. I think Sissi has a stronger voice than Thalía does but Olga could blow her off of a stage in a show down. I think I own all of Thalía´s CDs, so, that is oviously not important to me. The choice of songs and album engineering are much more important.
13 May 2005 - I finally found a copy of Jorge Drexler's "Eco", and the soundtrack from "The Motorcycle Diaries". Drexler won an academy award for "Best New Song" for "Al Otro Lado Del Río". I think he is unique in the history of the awards because the artist was not allowed to sing his song during the show and then won the oscar.
Santana provided the background music and Antonio Banderas sang the song. The combination was not as good as the artist. Drexler had his moment by singing the first couple of bars acapella instead of thanking people. I thought it was fitting. In the movie, the other side of the river was a leper colony.
26 April 2005 - If I have a calming music it is "música andina". When I woke up this morning, I sensed something was wrong. It was too quiet but it took a few seconds to realize that I had no power in my house. The power had been off long enough that my UPSes had all shut down. So, I had to go through and check all of the HDs. As soon as I had coral running, I had "Walisuma De Los Andes" playing on Radio365.
27 March 2005 - I was sitting at my computer and enjoying listening to the DVD by Maria Rita. The first thing that came to mind was that Portuguese wasn't as harsh a language as I thought. The 2nd thought was that DVDs and Dolby 5.1 audio was much better than listening to ordinary CDs. The DVD is about 2 hours of video and live music. It may be in Portuguese but it doesn't matter.
22 March 2005 - Well, I liked "Dança Ma Mi" so well that I had to see what Maria's Godmother sounded like. I was walking around the DVD/CD places to see what was new and saw "The Very Best of Cesoria Evora. She has a web site called www.cesaria-evora.com. The link will take you there. The album shows up as African in the genre but it is much more like something from Brazil and Portuguese, just not bosa nova.
21 March 2005 - My "Dança Ma Mi" (Dance With Me)" CD arrived today. Maria has a very pleasant voice to listen to. Time was really tight. I got it and just had enough time to rip to wma and add the tracks onto my Nomad Zen Xtra. I was able to eat dinner and walk my first mile while the album was playing. The last mile was walked while I listen to Alicia Villareal.
15 March 2005 - I finally created a web page about Lila Downs. I was filling my music pages about her and they were getting too long. I ordered the new Maria de Barros CD called "Dança Ma Mi" (Dance With Me)" from Amazon.com. I liked the voice of Chavela Vargas on the soundtrack of Frida so well that I wanted to hear her "Grandes Exitos". In the special features of Frida, Vargas talks about having a broken voice. That may be true but "Paloma Negra" almost gave me chills. The song "La Llorona" was done live and her voice sounds broken but it fit the scene where it was sung.
8 March 2005 - I finally found one of my computers that will play the dual-disc Los Lonely Boys CD. It is a DVD burner like the other machine but when I try to play it on the other machine, it just hangs. I kind of like the "Los Lonely Boys" CD but I don't like screechy quitar's. So some songs are ok and others get a shudder. I guess that is why I never liked metal music or the various incantations.
7 March 2005 - I found a copy of "La Sandunga" at the other Hastings Book Store. It is Downs's earlier work and was supported to some extent by a grant in Oaxaca. It is an early work and it feels like she was searching for what she wanted to do. Tree of Life is more like the result of that search. I still smile when "Nueve viento" plays. I kind of wonder how the Mixtec think each serpent looks. I have not heard enough stories to create a mental image of how these mystical snakes look. I just always seems to be out of focus. I need a "xitán" or "xií" to teach me. For a mixteco to español dictionary, visit www.sil.org/mexico. This one is for the town of Xochapa, Guerrero. Another, but preliminary, dictionary for zapoteco - español is also available at "sil.org/mexico". A grandmother or grandfather in zapoteco is "tao" and "xtao".
6 March 2005 - You can add Downs' "Tree of Life" and "Border" to the list. One of the songs on "Tree of Life" that brings a smile to my face is "Nueve viento koó sau" As Downs' explains it, "Nine Wind" is the Mixtec manifestations of the plumed serpents. You have a cloud snake and a rain snake. She is older than some of the people that I enjoy listening to but her voice seems more mature than that. Perhaps it is a function of the opera training that she started. Her songs don't seem to border on silly like many of the pop songs.
3 March 2005 - This week has turned out to be more different than I expected. I have Soraya's new album. It turned out that Circuit City had 6 copies. What is different is that instead of listening to Soraya's new album, I am listening to the album "Una Sangre" or "One Blood" by Lila Downs. Downs home page almost gives me goosebumps (carne de gallina). She sings notes as what looks like an ancient Mixtec snake enters the screen. It is really cool.
27 Februrary 2005 - When you visit Soraya's site you see "FALTAN 2 DIAS!". Her new album is called "El otro lado de mi". It will be released on 1 March and I can not find any local stores with it in their stocking list. Here is a Grammy award winner and purchasing people are clueless.
24 December 2004 - I was watching a performance on Univision called "Thalía: La trayectoria". All I could think of was she shouldn't freelance perform. All one of the songs did is give me goosebumps (carne de gallina) to watch. The problem was that she barely sounded close to hitting the notes and close isn't good enough. I also need to point out that "Arrasando" is one of my favorite música latina albums. It is always in my "Now Playing" list on my Nomad.
Music Match´s on demand is dysfunctional again. In fact, on demand hasn´t worked since I upgraded to version 10. I should have beta tested. If things don´t work, they have these fixes where you manually remove their cookies and etc. They obviously don´t understand that problems like this are an indication of a lack of skills on their end. The joke cracked by a good Unix programmer would have been that they didn´t understand that MCSE stands for "Must Consult Someone Experienced" and they didn't hire the really experienced programmer to guide their developing programmers.
7 November 2004 - MusicMatch can't clap their hands in a dark room today. I have lost my personalization options again. I don't know where they are getting the choices that are showing up but I would not listen to them. So, I am sitting here bitching about their programmers and listening to Patricia Vonne's "Top Tracks". It isn't my day because her web programmer has apparently exceeded their level according to the "Peter Principal". That is the concept that people are promoted until they become incompetent. Look at the missing files on her videos option. These people appear to have no concept of QA.
19 October 2004 - You have to blame the movie "Man On Fire" for my currernt choices of music. I have been playing mostly nostalgic stuff. For example, if you are reading this, you have probably never heard of "Sweethearts of The Rodeo". Janis' took the blame for Vince Gill fooling around with Amy Grant. If my interpretation is wrong, you have your interpretation of their divorce and I have mine. Right or wrong, preceptions are almost impossible to over come. I have a tendancy to enjoy music with a little bit of an edge to the sound. The comparison is always to the Sweethearts.
9 September 2004 - I was listening to Music Match's On Demand and the first selection for today was Pablo Milanés' Yolanda. This was the first time I had heard anything by Milanés. The first thing I heard was a panpipe (zampoña) playing from the right speaker. It wasn't your typical música andina that I really enjoy. I got these little goosebumps and all that had been played to that point was the instrument lead in. Then, I found that it was música de Cuba. I will probably see if I can find an album later today. I have some Cuban friends and I may irritate them a little bit because Milanés is a staunch supporter of Castro but a good singer is still good regardless of his political views. Besides, the Cuban missile crisis didn't end up with me called to active duty like I thought it would and I find that I can be a little lenient as I grow older.
I was sitting here thinking and it suddenly struck me how my Latin music taste has changed over the last 2 years. When I started listening to Spanish music, my taste was more towards singers such as Shakira and traditional Mexican. Now, I like groups like Jennifer Peña, La Ley, Maná, Marco Antonio Solís, and Alicia Villareal. Don't get me wrong. Joan Sebatian's "En Vivo" from Guadalajara is still in my playlist.
I played Maria Rita's album that won her a Latin Grammy at a friends house and they thought it was different, which probably meant that they wouldn't play it more than once, but they all didn't have a problem with the smooth sounding singer in the background while we talked. I have also spent some time listening to Las Ketchup. At first, I couldn't understand much of their lyrics but after awhile, I found that I could tune out the chanting parts and pick up the lyrics.
7 September 2004 - I was in one of the local Hasting Book Stores and found a CD by Maria Rita. I tuned in late and she was the first person I saw receive and award on the 2004 Latin Grammy Award Show. The advertising pushes her as a Brazilian Nora Jones. I have found that my músical latina taste has changed and picked up 2 older Alejandro Fernandez CDs. I did a firmware upgrade to my Nomad Xtra. There were some additional software changes that corrected problems adding tracks to the Nomad. You could add tracks but "10 -" would appear between 01 and 02. That wasn't the intent of the sequencing. Now track 10 appears after track 9 and so on. The problem is that I may have to re-import all of the albums with problems.
28 August 2004 - I went back to Patricia Vonne's web site. I am like a moth with a light and her singing. In the past I especially liked the tracks Bandalero and Traeme Paz but this may change after I listen to her album a few times. I can't make up my mind to order her CD but would buy it in a heart beat from a local store. I have to like more tracks to spend the effort to order it from a store. I had Music Match Juke box playing my "On Demand" music and for some strange reason I did a search on her name and up pops her CD on demand. I am playing it as I write this.
23 August 2004 - I subscribe to Music Match's "On Demand" service. It was kind of strange because today they started playing Armando Manzanero, Alicia Villarreal, Los Terricolas, Alberto Plaza, Alfredo Jiménez, Magneto, Rubén Blades, Frankie Ruiz, DLG and Bobby Pulido. I haven´t figured out if I like Manzanero but I already own all of the solo albums by Villarreal. I sort of liked Grupo Limite but Alicia sounds much better as a solo act than she did in Limite. Plaza and Pulido sound really good. I will have to see what albums I can purchase from them. There are tejano singers that sounds like pleasant pop singers and then there are the ones that are only a step away from "banda". I really don't like banda; however, there are a few artists that are exceptions.
I basically like música andina. The zampoña and quenas stand out. I think that música español from countries such as Brazil, Columbia, and Chile are very mellow, with the exception of the "rockers". Some of the artistas de México can sound of harsh to my ears. The images of Jiménez makes him look mariachi but he is a very pleasant singer. After I finished listening to MM´s choices, I decided that they had pretty well pegged my listening choices. The bonus is that everyday I get 10 more choices.
18 July 2004 - I have a tendancy to not like rock music. I blaim my ears. I have fired too many guns before it was cool to use protective hearing. So, when I listened to Libertad de La Ley and liked it, it was a strange moment of awareness. I have a younger friend that would tell me who to buy but this was a long time age. On Melissa's recommendation, I ended up with groups such as Bon Jovi, Chicago, Lisa Lisa, Cult Jam, and others that I really liked. I haven't figured out who La Ley sounds like but some of their music sounds like albums that I have bought in the past. I told Sal that I like some of La Ley and got this strange look because he knows that I haven't bought any hard rock stuff. Their Libertad album is not all metal.
9 July 2004 - I have decided that I really like Alicia Villarreal. On "Quando el corazon se cruza", she has some really powerful songs and some funny one. The title track is one of them but the funny one has to be "Pepe le pew". Poor Pepe doesn't like water or bathing and he smells. So, he likes the girls but the girls don't like him too.
5 July 2004 - I have spent a busy 2 days loading my Nomad Zen Xtra. The left channel on my Zen2 died. The earphone jack has springs to push against the earphone plug. When the springs die, you lose the output on at least one of the channels. Normally, you only lose one channel; however, you can lose the ground, which will wipe out audio to both channels. The old Zen2 had 15 GB of music and learning Spanish audio. The tracks were in the form of wav, mp3, or wma.
After converting ~4,000 tracks (300 albums), I am convinced that there are no really good mp3 converters. All of the ones I have used, have added bursts of noise or simply did a poor job of converting some tracks. Since mp3 is a lossy medium, it should not come as a surprise. The best example of a trashed conversion that I have found is with track 6 (prisionera) of the beautiful Mexican singer Lucero's "Mi Destino" album. She talks over background music and the mp3 converters trash the voice part. The music sounds just fine. You just can't understand Lucero and have a reasonable bit rate. Mp3pro may work but I don't have any portable audio devices that support mp3pro. I think it depends on the voice and it seems to really pick on Lucero. Mercedes Sosa, for example, talks in María Va and she isn't affected like Lucero was.
26 June 2004 - I finally got around to adding more people to my list of "New Artists". Alicia Villarreal was the first but there a quite a few others that should be mentioned. I will get around to them later.
3 April 2004 - I was converting some old CDs into wma and MusicMatchbox chose Selina as one of my matches. It is so easy to choose "play artist" and I did. The fact that she was killed and is gone still bothers me. The movie Selina had a lot to do with me listening to Spanish Music. It also caused me to listen to J. Lo. I no longer buy her music but that was a matter of my taste and the style of music she was singing.
23 March 2004 - Who do I think is over rated? Well, Ana Bárbara, Paulina Rubio and Thalía for sure. Do I think they are bad? No, because I wouldn't own all of their CDs if I did <smile>. I do distinguish between the quality of singing versus entertaining. A friend once said that Dolly Parton can't sing. I responded with, yes, but I can listen to her for hours.
Who is the newest singer that I like? That is easy to answer because it is Patricia Vonne. FYE considers her a rock singer. For the most part, I don´t like rock music; however, I think of the música latina side and most of those songs are not rock. I was introduced to her singing on the soundtrack from "Once upon a time in Mexico". The first time thru, I liked Vonne's "Traema Paz" (bring peace) and Pistoleros (robbing banks and pistols). She also sounds a bit like Soraya who is my most favorite latin music singer but sings more music that I like. The song Pistoleros sounds like something straight from the Spagetti Westerns. I remember chuckling at a song played by an Andean group called "El Bueno, El Malo, Y La Fea". In English, that is "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly".
As an introduction to my music, you have to understand that I have pretty much only listened to country music since 1978. Somewhere around 1988, I pretty much gave up on the local country radio stations and started making tapes of my own choices. It usually required 3 albums to make a 90 minute tape. I would occassionally listen to the local country radio stations but I could only handle them for minutes at a time. I started adding these comments after reading about how songs such as "O Brother Where Art Tho" couldn't get air-time. I'm not a fan of this song but when it wins a grammy and can not get air time, there is something wrong with the radio programmers. I don't see any reason to listen to the local slop.
I did not listen completely to country music because I also like jazz. I just didn't listen to jazz nearly as much as I did country. This all changed during the summer of 2000, I decided I was going to learn Spanish. I have only listened to Spanish music since then. I got tired of my automobile CD-ROM player scratching the CD's and began converting them to MP3 and also making duplicates that I play in the car. The duplicates can be thrown away when they start skipping. At this time, I have over 20 GB of Spanish mp3s. Of this, all but 5.1 GB are Música Latina tracks. The total size reached the point that I could no longer store them on my Windows 2000 Server.
The rationale in buying Spanish was to help my ears get used to Spanish. What I found was music that I really enjoyed with out fully understanding the lyrics. Everytime I read this I have to chuckle because I encountered Stacy Tipton's web page where she writes about using her Musical Spanish CD to learn Spanish. She states that listening to Spanish music can be addicting. I have really found this to be especially true but read about the effect to late to do anything about it. I also found that after listening to her CD and reading the book as the same time that I seemed to jump a level in the Spanish that I understood.
Some of the artists such as Soraya also have songs sung in English on their CD's. Some are making cross over albums. You will find a lot of "I have found" or equivalent topics in my música latina web pages. There are so many good sounding Latin artists. There are many that I can't handle. You may find it strange for an anglo to like Mexican Regional music but I grew up with Cowboy movies where many of them had an amigo that sang. Many of the villages in the movies had mariachi or ranchero style bands. A friend likes Pancho Barraza and I like Graciela Beltran better. The background music is not that much different.
This music page grew until I separated all of my favorites out and created individual web pages. The individual web pages may not be very large but they hold a place of honor.
Música Latina.
I was accidentally introduced to the music of Shakira. Since she was first and was directly responsible for my buying the CDs of the other artists, she will alway have the top spot. I was looking thru the new country albums and just happened to see the "Latin Mix 2" album. I purchased it and started listening to it. It seems like most of the artists recorded for Sony Music Latin. That isn't any wonder because Sony produced the CD. At any rate, I liked the sound of Shakira's song "Ciego Sordomuda". I'm not a fan of rock music and Shakira is consider a Latin Rocker. I can listen to rock but not for a long time When I kept listening to Shakira, my friends all noticed. There were several songs of Shakira that would start my feet to thumping. The song "Ojos Asi" from the album " MTV Unplugged" does this the most. It is an interesting mix because she was born in Columbia to a father of Arabic descent. The music is very unique. The album "¿Dónde están los ladrones?" went platinum 23x around the world. That means she sold millions of albums. I don't really speak Spanish yet. I understand a lot more than I can say but I still added one to the list.I think "Exitos de Onda Max" is where I first listened to Ana Bárbara. I happen to really like Ana Bárbara's, "Yo quiero saber", from her "Tu decisión" album. After a while, I was bored listening to the music I had. We are not talking about a short time thing here. Some of these albums would be listened to for days or weeks before I grew tired of listening to the album.You may notice that I don't have a real section on Ana; however, you have to understand that I have almost all of her recent albums.
At some point, I started looking around at various artists. It was at this point that I encountered music from artists such as Soraya, Myriam Hernandez, Lucero, Laura Flores, Luis Miguel, Selena, Jaci Velásquez, and others. My current top-5 are Soraya, Juanes, Jimena, Olga Tañon, and Marco Antonio Solís. With the Zen2, I don't find myself limited to what I can store on an mp3 CD. My "Playing Now" list contains at least 10 artists in a repeat loop. I have to pause the Zen2 for it to powerdown.
It wasn't too long ago that a lady from México reintroduced me to Thalía. I just happened to have been listening to her Arrasando album. It had won the Latin Grammy for the best engineered album of 2001. What I did was combine Arrasando and Con Banda into a 80 minute CD. I happen to like Pata, Pata because I can see Thalía shaking her legs to music and my friend from Mexico doesn´t find that interesting like I do. I haven't decided but I think that Thalía has moved above Paulina for a while. This was true until Thalía released "Thalia" and Paulina released "Border Girl". The order flipped into Paulina´s favor. The English songs on "Border Girl" are much better sounding than those on "Thalia". She released a 2nd Thalia and I still like Border Girl much better. I also happen to like Casanova en español. I think the whole line up is different right now and the 4 albums that are played when I go out for dinner change almost everyday. The Zen2, which I describe below, changed everything. Having the ability to add an album or individual song to the "Playing Now" list made the concept of a top-anything list meaningless.
I had a Philip's mp3 CD-ROM player that I could carry around with me. On 18 March 2002, I purchased an Apex 1500D. You could get them at Circuit City for $69. It will play DVDs and MP3 CD-ROMs. I created 5 hour CDs that I play using the random option on the CD player. The usual claim is that CDs will hold 10 hours of MP3 music. The CD-ROMs that I burn only hold 5 hours of music because I discovered listening to the Méxicana artista Lucero that mp3 was a lossy conversion and 128kb/s produced a typically trashed conversion. Once I had heard the noise produced by the conversion, I could hear regions of it on every song that friends had downloaded from Napster. You can get rid of most of the conversion errors by converting them at 256kb/s but then a CD can only hold 5 hours of music. I had to laugh at the RIAA and their fight over Napster. They should have encouraged people to listen to their music on Napster and then pointed out all of the conversion errors, which would have encourage people to buy the real CD. Then, I purchased a Creative Audigy Gamer sound card, and found that mp3vbr will produce a file about the same size as the 128kbs conversion rate and eliminate most of the errors. A 700MB CD will hold 10 hours of mp3vbr music. The clean conversion to mp3 depends on digital access to the CD and not analog.
It wasn't too long until the 2nd Panasonic MP3 CD-ROM player died. Well, it didn't die but batteries only lasting a day instead of 40 play hours was dead to my way of thinking. Then, I walked by a display at the local Best Buy and saw the Creative Nomad Zen2. The Zen2 is controlled using a USB-2 link and comes in 2 sizes. You have the choice of a 20 or 60 GB hard drive. The options convered every point that I considered important. The iPod did not and was much more expensive. When I bought my Zen2, they were only selling the 20 GB system. The USB-2 link runs at 480 Mbps and I can load a new album on the Zen faster than I can burn a new favorite CD-ROM. The Zen2 has all of my Spanish CDs on it and I don't have to pick and choose what to store on a 700 MB CD-R.
My friend (mi amiga) from Michuacan introduced me to Pilar Montenegro. They only way to describe Pilar is that she sings music similar to Thalía and sounds more like Paulina Rubio. I think she has a better voice than Paulina. See Pilar Montenegro on Amazon.com.
Amazon also listed Laura Pausini on the also buy lists. I can listen to Montenegro or Pausini and have for extended periods of time; however, I think I favor Pilar a little bit more at this point; however, I don't find it painful to listen to either for extended periods of time. I set the cd player on repeat and I don't know really know how long it has been when I stop it.
I kept seeing Mónica Naranjo and Azúcar Moreno on top-40 lists and so I purchased their current albums. I like what I am already listening to much better. They didn't make my list. I have to moderate that a little bit. I found Azúcar Moreno was really kind of irritating to listen to at first. Since then, I have listened to their "Amen" album several times and liked it better everytime I played it. Some of Soraya's songs did the same thing and I have almost wore out her CDs. The subjects of their songs are a little bit strange. Azúcar Moreno have a sound that is very similar to how Pimpinela's Lucia sounds in mañana. I have Amen in my current "Playing Now" list.
Pimpinela (Pimpinela, Universal) is interesting to listen to because they sing in castellano. They also sound like many other artists used them as a basis for their sounds. Some of their songs sound like Mercedes Sosa and since they are from Argentina, that shouldn´t be a surprise. Listening to Sosa is a lot like listening to Joan Baez and other folk singers that were protesting the war in Vietnam. The big difference is that she ended up in prison because of her songs about the dictatorship and the quest for freedom.
What follows is list of Artists that I like to listen to but didn't make it into my hot-5 list. It is also seriously out of date. The complete list has more than 32 artists in it and the hot-5 list has almost completely changed. I just haven't spent the time to update it to represent my current likes.
Latin Mix 2
The "Latin Mix 2" album started it all. It provided me with my first encounter of listening to Shakira. It also introduced me to Marc Antony, Fey, and Jennifer Lopez. Some of the artists I currently listen to such as Ana Bárbara, Laura Flores, Paulina Rubio, and Sparx were first seen on the satelite version of Univision TV. I taped "Exitos de Onda Max" every morning at 3 am, which is when I could watch it. The tapes I used were not the cheap VHS tapes but the much more expensive SVHS tapes. I have always thought this was kind of funny because I did not like Shakira's early videos; however, I was like a moth around a bright light and would get up and walk from the computer room into the room where the tv is just to watch her sing. I didn't have to do this because I have a set of speakers in the computer room that I was listening to.
Marta Sanchez
Another artist from the Amazon list is Marta Sanchez. She decided to go blond some time ago. I don't have problems with that. In fact, two of my wives were blonds. If you had spun me around when I was younger, I would probably stop pointing at a blond (rubio). It never seemed to matter if they were bleached or otherwise. When they really sound good, that is even better and Sanchez fits into this category. She also has a collection of fans. The site I have visited most often is one by Victoria Martínez Casis. Her Marta-Sanchez site is interesting. It is a real struggle for me to learn Spanish and she has a number of pages in English. You have to translate some of her English. You would believe that she is inventing English words at times but don't be critical and ignore that because her enthusiastic support of Sanchez provides truly interesting reading..
Jaci Velásquez
Sony Latin Music has been pushing Jaci Velásquez. She has a new album out called "mi corazón". I have it but haven't listened enough to form an opinion. I like her sound well enough to pick up "llegar a ti". I don't know where she will end up but she will not be down here on the bottom. Her album Milagro is even better. I purchased the DVD of "Chasing Papi" because she is in the movie. It has been a while since I walked by the magazine rack at the local Hastins Book Store where they have the Spanish magazines and saw a cover article of "Why Latinos Cheat" and had to laugh because the ladies in "Chasing Papi" were 3 good examples.
