La vaquera

For the spy challenge.

Perhaps it will sound more cowboyish than spy to some, but I didn't want to miss the challenge and I'm juggling a very complicated mudanza out of the country, so I had to resort to this and we'll have to imagine one of those surreal Mexican movies where Bond fights against and some zombie cowboy.

This is an old song, recorded about 8 or 9 years ago with a good friend, Carlos Cuellochueco, who played that brilliant guitar (I massacred the drum and occasionally hit the cymbal as well). I know the idea behind the challenge is to come up with new songs, but I thought it would be better for the overall health of the challenge if there were more songs posted (the more the merrier! and that way people don't get the feeling that the challenges are dwindling).

(Get Flash to see the track player.)
posted by micayetoca (10 comments total)

Hey, this is absolutely insane and brilliant. Brilliantly insane! Sure we could get picky about the "rules", but hey man, what a great opportunity to share this masterpiece! Cheers!
posted by snsranch at 3:25 PM on July 22, 2008

This is awesome. I keep thinking of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, but a spy movie by Peckinpah along those lines would do as well.
posted by sleepy pete at 5:12 PM on July 22, 2008

...I didn't want to miss the challenge...

A man after my own heart.

This is great, mica, and yeah, that guitar is brilliant: fabulous bubbly bent-ness to it, I love it.

And thanks for the full-range tagging, as discussed in this thread.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:04 PM on July 22, 2008

Wow, that guitar gets crazy busy for a while there! I enjoyed the persistence of those drums, and then the long pauses. You get tricked into thinking that the threat is gone, but then it starts marching toward you again.
posted by edlundart at 10:10 PM on July 22, 2008

Okay sure, I see cowboy, but the spy sort of cowboy. The sort who's casing the outlaw encampment. Or something. I dig this! Thanks.
posted by uncleozzy at 5:37 AM on July 23, 2008

Thanks a lot to all. The part of my blurb up there where it says "where Bond fights against and some zombie cowboy." should say "Bond fights El Santo and some..."

I'm glad it was so well received. Thx to all again.
posted by micayetoca at 9:08 AM on July 23, 2008

That was wonderful, micayetoca!
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 2:23 PM on July 23, 2008

This is indeed awesome I'm imagining a dude riding into town with a tuxedo and a cowboy hat.

There's a lot to like here -- that drum part, the gurgly tone of the guitar -- but my favorite parts are actually those big pauses. They lend a sort of self-conscious humor to the piece (to my ear, anyway) that I love.
posted by danb at 9:33 PM on July 24, 2008

If I were to hear this song without any backstory whatsoever, this would be my theory: Some Martians come to earth on a scouting mission for exotic ideas to revitalize their film industry, which is in a rut and quickly losing ground to shows directly beamed into people's minds. So they find all of these Italian spaghetti westerns with their expansive Morriconi soundtracks. The intrepid travelers to earth go back home and hand over the reels to the film producers, who produce a cosmic western with all of the dustiness, moustaches and good/evil struggles, only set on Mars. Now, the in-house composers in charge of this project weren't on the earth trip, and they've never even seen an electric guitar before. But they do their best to rig up some sort of equivalent contraption, and cargo-cult style, they're off and running. This is the end result.
posted by umbú at 7:13 PM on July 27, 2008

the envelope follow filter effect is tremendously under used. definitely gonna pull that up next time I get the chance.
posted by dagosto at 12:56 PM on October 29, 2008