The highly influential
Puta's Fever
opened the door for a flood of young
rock
bands outside the English-speaking music world to fashion new hybrids that reflected their own musical cultures blended with popular worldwide sounds like
and
reggae
.
Manu Chao
and company started from patchanka, a fast-paced
French music hall
style that sounds like speeded-up
ragtime
or hot
jazz
, and started singing songs in Spanish, French, and Arabic. The motor driving all the disparate elements on
is
Santiago el Aguila Casariego
's fierce drumming. And what an array of styles -- calliope-like keyboards, a
Latin
groove on
"Patchanka,"
Tex-Mex
on
Joe "King" Carrasco
's
"Patchuko Hop,"
dub
"Peligro"
-- pass through
Mano Negra
's manic mix.
"Mano Negra"
sounds like soundtrack music for a spaghetti western
surf
movie (really), while
"Rebel Spell"
marries a
gospel
chorus and
hard rock
guitar to a rapped street tale of shooting Brother Rasta dead.
is a triumph of eclecticism as a style where each song shifts into a different musical gear, and one key jumping-off point for the
rock en espanol
(or
Latin alternative
) school. Which doesn't mean that
abandoned their original inspiration -- English lyrics dominate and there's a strong identification with a classic
rock & roll
outlaw stance in
"Rock 'N' Roll Band"
and the '50s-rooted
"Devil's Call."
~ Don Snowden