Wednesday, May 1, 2013

This Is Your Song For....May 1st, 2013: Dandy by Los Helldandys

Viva Le Rockabilly!

Happy May Day, Communists!  Here’s some instrumental Mexican rockabilly to celebrate with!

Utilizing my limited Spanish, I can determine that Los Helldandys was founded in 2006 in Tijuana and try to mix their rockabilly with touches of punk, blues and surf.  And in the tradition of surf rock, this is an instrumental, but it’s unmistakable in its fusion of rockabilly twang with the beefier, more heavily countrified twang of some of the traditional Mexican pop.  In particular, there’s a time change that to me seems alien to other forms of rockabilly, as if our musicians decided to shift their attentions.  I’ve always appreciated and been fascinated by how American pop music gets filtered through foreign eyes; looking through the playlist on my Sansa Fuze right now, you’ll see Swedish, French, German and Japanese versions of rockabilly and garage rock.  There is something about how something that was designed to be so uniquely Amurrican becomes warped and altered by a pair of eyes from Somewhere Else that frequently results in something delightful.  Hell, it might be why I became such a devote of second and third wave ska, since the bulk of that is a mutation of the Jamaican original through English and American eyes.

I obtained this song through an episode of the rather cool Portuguese radio show Revolution Rock Radio, although further samples of Los Helldandys’ work can be found at a number of places.

Here's a live video of the band so you can figure out if they're for you.