Y TUS COVERS TAMBIEN posted by O.W.

Hnos. Carrion: Rosa Mi Rosita
Toño Quirazco: Aprieta Arriba
Hielo Ardiente: Mambo La Merced

(Editor's Note: Sonido Franko of Super Sonido blesses us with another guest post, this time tapping into my favorite genre: covers! --O.W.)

Everything you’ve ever known about copyright laws seems to fall off some huge cliff as soon as you enter a Latin American country. In fact, one has to simply walk over the boarder to Tijuana and find that the entire city is pretty much infringing upon everything. This especially rings true for the Mexican music industry, which has a long history of copped covers in almost every genre. Maybe it’s reparations for all the land we took from them.

Take Los Hermanos Carrion for example. These two brothers started their career as the Mexican version of the Everly Brothers (see my prior post El Ultimo Adiós). From the pioneers of Mexican rock to the kings of cheesy ballads, they have run the gamut of every genre imaginable. I guess to stay on top you just have to keep reinventing yourself. Or if you run out of ideas you can always rip off Sly & The Family Stone’s Thank You. They actually pen themselves as authors for this pretty banging track.

On the other hand, Toño Quirazco gives credit where credit is due. The king of Mexican Ska actually doesn’t claim to have written the cover of Stevie’s Uptight. Then again he is guilty of covering a shit piles of other tunes from ska, to rock, to reggae, to just about everything else under the sun.

And lastly, we have El Salvador’s Hielo Ardiente doing what seems like a lot of Latin American groups do, cover a Perez Prado song. I chose the dope cover of Mambo La Merced, which is about the Merced Market in Mexico City. I was going to us the song Mensaje, which is the cover of Cymande’s The Message. But then I would have only been copying Mr. O-dub.

I’d like to thank Soul-Sides for having me on their site, it has been a huge honor. I look forward to doing more in the future and I hope everyone likes what they hear! Saludos!!!

– Sonido Franko