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LATIN PLAYBOYS

Latin Playboys

review by David Levine

When I started writing this, I was reviewing another band. Then I was handed a cassette by a friend. She said she thought I'd like it. She was wrong. I loved it. I had never heard of this band but they sounded wonderful and strangely familiar. The grooves were hypnotizing. The guitar playing was from Egypt or South America or Mississippi. (176k .au) The percussion was from a time when we all still lived in the jungle. I was transported to another place, a place dark, cool, and smoky. (176k .au) What is this!? Then the vocal came in...David Hidalgo from Los Lobos. Now singing with the otherworldly Latin Playboys. This is the real shit!

As far as I can tell the Latin Playboys are David Hidalgo, Louis Perez, Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake. The Latin Playboys are on the Splash Label, distributed by Warner Brothers, and I couldn't find it at my large local record chain. This music is so original and yet so familiar, it's almost archetypal. I know I sound like I am foaming but I can't possibly describe it. The way the acoustic and electric instruments interplay without overpowering each other is impossible. Some songs sound almost Irish: a fiddle, a low drum and some sounds I can't identify. (179k .au) Some songs like Manifold De Amour (180k .au) have a Latin feel. Then other songs resemble only themselves.

David Hidalgo's voice is one of my favorite in modern music. He is also one of the most underrated singers and songwriters around. I bow down and worship the use of strings on this record. Single guitar lines bounce off interspersed rhythm parts while the acoustic bass works an off time drunken rhythm down some backwood road. This C.D. really evokes mood and place. It's like listening to some great band through the floorboards of your cheap hotel in Guadalajara at three a.m. This is one of the funkiest, strangest, deepest releases of '94. I think you will find the Latin Playboys a delightful change from the usual musical pablum Rolling Stone and Spin tout on their covers. It is not often an album this original comes around. So it's not surprising it wasn't promoted. As with all things original, Latin Playboys are not commercial. I'll tell you what though, if you buy this album and don't like it, well... you can kick yourself for listening to me.