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 Tijuana
Time Capsules
By
Shawn Stone
Herb
Alpert’s Tijuana Brass
The
Herb Alpert Signature Series (Shout Factory)
Whipped
Cream & Other Delights: Rewhipped (Shout Factory)
Having
most of the original Herb Alpert/Tijuana Brass albums magically
reappear on remastered CDs has been a shock. The sound of
Alpert’s faux-Mariachi brass—most often his own, doubled trumpet
over marimba and a shifting array of brass and reeds—was everywhere
in the ’60s, as much the soundtrack of the times as the canonical
efforts of rock heavyweights. Pop glory is ephemeral, however:
By the late ’70s, the easiest place to find a TJB album was
a yard sale. (Alpert himself had gone on to build A&M
Records into an industry powerhouse.) But here most of the
original Brass albums are again, in their poptastic glory.
Of the nine reissues, there are three key discs, all released
in 1965-66: Whipped Cream & Other Delights, Going
Places!!! and What Now My Love. Whipped Cream
(Alpert’s fourth album) is a showcase for assured pop eclecticism;
Going Places!!! is a gooey, rock-flavored explosion;
and What is showy, easy listening.
The nearly naked cover girl slathered in shaving cream got
all the attention, but Whipped Cream earned its glory
in the grooves. >From the indelible kickoff of “A Taste of
Honey,” the album moves pleasingly from genre to genre. Moody,
atmospheric miniatures like “Tangerine,” one of many big-band
hits Alpert would radically rearrange, are set against New
Orleans rags (Allan Toussaint’s title cut), playful burlesques
(“Love Potion No. 9”) and polkas (“Peanuts”). It also doesn’t
outlast its welcome: Like most TJB albums, it clocks in at
around 30 minutes.
>From
the opening honk of “Tijuana Taxi,” Going Places!!!,
my own fave, is goofy. The lounge-on-acid versions of “3rd
Man Theme” and the Ventures’ “Walk, Don’t Run” are but the
tip of an ice cube floating in a very fruity, tasty musical
beverage. The album is, by 1965 standards, “rock”; that is,
it has what used to be called the “big beat” and fits comfortably
into a musical universe populated by the Supremes, the Beatles
and Petula Clark. What Now My Love, however, is the
worm in the apple. Alpert conquers Easy Listening, but, however
assured, it’s a letdown: The fact that he could squeeze every
drop of drama out of “The Shadow of Your Smile” is impressive,
but kinda unnecessary.
The TJB were a touring and LP-making machine through 1969.
If no other album achieved the coherence of these three, most
have something to recommend them. (Not all: Stay away from
S.R.O., for example.) The best of the rest is probably
1967’s Sounds Like. Featuring Burt Bacharach’s ecstatic
“Casino Royale,” this disc is a rollicking mix of lounge jazz,
Tijuana-ized pop hits and originals by Alpert’s usual collaborators,
including the great Sol Lake. Lake, more than anyone else,
wrote the kind of jaunty miniatures that helped define the
TJB sound.
This brings us to the “new” album, Whipped Cream &
Other Delights: Rewhipped. The original disc gets the
remix treatment from producer Anthony Marinelli and such soundscape
artists as Thievery Corporation, Mocean Worker, John King
and Medeski, Martin & Wood. The effect is like transforming
a margarita happy hour into a stoner afternoon. It works,
but it’s disorienting. The fact that Alpert himself lays new
trumpet solos over “Whipped Cream” and a few other tracks
only adds to the sense of dislocation: To a ’60s kid like
me, it’s the equivalent of someone lacing Proust’s cookie
with acid—and thorazine. Fun, but the resulting memories are
slow-motion and unrecognizably weird.
Slayer
Christ
Illusion (Def American)
Slayer are responsible for ruining all the good work I have
done in sobriety. One early-morning listen, and all talk about
accepting the things you cannot change is jettisoned into
the cosmos as if I’d never slept in a baseball dugout in January.
The band have been accused of being tactless and exploitative
in this release, using the music as a means of provocation
over all else, but frankly, I just don’t see it. What makes
“Pissing on your faith/Incinerate God’s whore/Perpetual is
my reign/I will eat your soul” any more goading and outrageous
than “Kill the preacher’s only son/Watch the infant die/Bodily
dismemberment/Drink the purest blood,” which was written more
than 20 (count ’em—20) years ago? Such detractors seem
to expect Slayer to evolve, something they will never
do in any empirical sense. Like the Ramones, they long ago
perfected the template of their vocation and have won the
right to endlessly reinterpret it.
Tom Araya’s Cro-Magnon scream replaces all prayers and ability
to meditate as effortlessly as China will replace the United
States as the world’s superpower in less than a hundred years
if it can get a grip on its flailing banking infrastructure.
Similarly, the Hanneman-King hurt reserves are plentiful,
and the homecoming of drummer Dave Lombardo reestablishes
the more organic pulse the band enjoyed prior to the unwavering
robot cannon that was Paul Bostaph. From the blazing cadences
of “Jihad” and “Flesh Storm” to the flagellating hurricane
“Black Serenade,” the material seethes almost extemporaneously,
yet is surely as deliberate as an autopsy. Even better, we
get several heavy-hoofed roots salutes to the Show No Mercy
era; “Supremacist” in particular recalls the days when metalheads
would “Fight Till Death” over lukewarm Pabst while warning
onlookers (as if they doubted) that evil, in fact, has no
boundaries. Yep, this is just another montage of war, madness
and the futility of organized religion, but what else is there
really? A well-considered, philosophical aria decrying the
Taliban’s destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan? Yeesh.
—Bill
Ketzer
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