Saturday, July 19, 2008

The Joy of Jamming to the Tijuana Brass

Somehow my oldies favorites have been on my mind lately. I haven't been much into listening to secular music for a long time, but there are some classics that I really enjoy. When Katie was young, we used to watch a couple of boys from time to time who were her age. It wasn't that they were so compatible with her as friends, but we moms always got along and helped each other out. (In fact, Katie went to their house at 3 a.m. the night that I went into labor with Tim.)
Katie would get after them as a mother-the-second to get them to wash their grubby hands--and I have to agree they were indeed grubby at any given time--and about other issues often relating to cleanliness. So the tension would build, and the attitudes would be morose or cranky, and I had an ace up my sleeve. The boys loved Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, and I would put that on the record player (yes, we still had one). Pretty soon the boys would be dancing around the room and the mood would again be light and sweet as whipped cream.
Today I am making jam with a day pretty much to myself, and I thought I'd look up Tijuana Brass on YouTube. There are indeed some wonderful videos--I'd never seen them, only heard them on records--and so today I am full of happy discoveries that I want to share. If only they would play sequentially without my going back to the computer, so I could make my jam to the beat without stop! Whatever, it's fun.
I have to share them with you, though. You are my mystery friends, and it's just too good to hold back. (Yesterday I was looking up Bob Hope and Bing Crosby and various other oldie favorites that I adore...sometime I'll share those with you as well.) At least I've found out how you put YouTube on in the midst of a regular blog post. I like it much better than how I was doing it before. You copy the address under where it says "Embed"...and paste it on your blog (if it doesn't paste well, go to a word-processing program, paste, copy, and then go to the blog and paste again)...and voila! It's there!

Here's their Whipped Cream video. I guess Charlie Chaplain composed Whipped Cream, and he's very much portrayed in this, as you will see:


Here's a video of "The Lonely Bull." They're playing in a bull-fighting stadium, and it must be filmed by helicopter for the first portion. Great video.


Here's "Spanish Flea." How can you not be in a good mood listening to these songs?


And, "Casino Royale." I didn't even know it was a movie. (Not only a movie, a James Bond movie at that. Ha!)


And how could I leave out Tijuana Taxi? You'll love this video. At least, I think you'll love it.

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