Old Highway Notes: Border Curios Part 2

Restaurants and Curio Shops on the Avenida Revelution in Tijuana, Mexico

This is part of a multi-part post: Tijuana Day Trip

It Started At The Border-A Visit To Tijuana Mexico

Still in Tijuana and Enjoying the Music of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass

Still in Tijuana With Artists Inspired By Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass

Rock and Roll in Tijuana-Mexican Style!

Tijuana Remixed: Molotov, Nortec Collective, and Faca

Border Curios Part 1

Border Curios Part 2

Border Curios Part 3

Hello and welcome back to Old Highway Notes. This week continue our browse through the musical curios of my collection that relate to Tijuana, Mexico, our side trip off of old Highway 101. The curio shelves contain songs about Mexico, Tijuana, and the border in general. When last we left off things were getting pretty intense, Lets try this again with something a little softer.

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Our first track comes from a collection I found on archive.org. It is a 500 song collection of creative commons licenced music that was gathered from all over the Internet. It takes over 33 hours to listen to it all! The other nice thing is it is both free and legal. I have enjoyed a lot of the music on the set and today we open with a peppy little surf guitar number. The beaches of Baja California are legendary to surf culture. Rick Volcano is Baja Bound:

Baja Bound 500 Song Trip Rick Volcano 2:35

If you would like to download the track you can HERE. If you want to download the entire collection it is available HERE. And if you would like to listen to the collection without leaving my site, you can do that too, Baja Bound is Track 387:

After that surf guitar track, our next track comes to us with a connection to surfing's stepchild-skateboarding and other extreme sports. Every summer Vans puts on a tour of skateboarding, BMX, and alternative rock of the more punky variety. There are often 50-100 acts playing short sets throughout the day. I haven't made it to one, but have acquired several of the compilation albums that are released in conjunction with the tour each year. The next track is from Vans Warped Tour 2010, and its a lot softer and more melodic than a lot of the music on the Warped compilations. It is a daydream of Mexico kind of song as will be the next track on the list.

Hello Mexico 2010 Warped Tour Compilation Sparks The Rescue 3:48

Amazon doesn't offer the track individually but you can download the whole album:

Next up is one of the more popular songs with title Mexico. James Taylor's "Mexico". I have 2 versions in my collection. The original release was a hit from his 1975 Gorilla and the second is from his 1992 Live album. To break them up I have a cover by Jimmy Buffett from his 1994 album Barometer Soup. Click on the title for download links.

Mexico     Gorilla    James Taylor     2:59
Mexico    Barometer Soup    Jimmy Buffett     4:06
Mexico Greatest Hits James Taylor 3:26

Here is a 1998 video of James Taylor performing the song. It's a different version than either of the two on my list, but I rather like it.

Jimmy Buffett doing his version in 2010:

Jefferson Airplane take off next with their "Mexico". It is a drugged out tribute to Mexican weed and a call to solidarity to hippies to resist Richard Nixon's assaults on hippies and drugs.

Mexico 2400 Fulton Street Jefferson Airplane     2:08

A few years ago, I discovered Slightly Stoopid. They are a California Alt-Reggae band similar to Sublime out of San Diego, CA. There used to be a website that had a lot of Sublime and Sublime-inspired bands shows and tracks for download. I found several Slightly Stoopid shows that feature their song "Mexico". Unfortunately the page is no longer so I cannot offer you links to these tracks.
Mexico     May 24th, 2002 Canes Santa Cruz, CA    Slightly Stoopid     5:29
Mexico     November 4th, 2002 Fox Theater, Boulder CO    Slightly Stoopid     5:44
Mexico     April 24, 2003 Fox Theater, Boulder, CO    Slightly Stoopid     5:11
Mexico    April 8th 2004, The Masquerade, Tampa FL     Slightly Stoopid     7:00

The last track featured this week were also offered as single tracks on that same Sublime site. Its more of that California, alterna-reggae-surf sound. Pretty tasty jam actually. Again, I have no download link. I did however find a video.
Baja     880 South     2:59

That about does it for this week. There are still more dusty old curios to be considered in this musical Curio Shop in Tijuana Mexico, off of old Highway 101, join us next week as we continue exploring. Meanwhile, on Route 66 we will finally be talking about Chicago. Join us next Saturday for that.

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