In this episode we talk about actions that involve parts of the body and clothes. Putting on clothes, taking off clothes… Especially the latter. Taking off one’s clothes became a big trend in mid-to-late 70’s Spain. With dictator Franco finally dead, it was a turbulent time of change as a heady sense of liberation descended…

Every once in a while, a pop song comes up that plays around with religious imagery and metaphors. We all know Like a Prayer or There Must Be an Angel (Playing with my Heart). You can probably think of your own examples. Well, in this episode we learn about one of such songs: Experiencia religiosa…

La Polla Records, known by fans simply as La Polla, emerged from Álava, in the Basque Country (el País Vasco) right at the end of the 70’s. In a strictly punk sense, the group were to Spain what the Sex Pistols were to England. Theirs was scathing, take-no-prisoners protest music for Spain’s fledging democracy in…

During the 60’s and 70’s, pop artists would often record their most popular songs in multiple languages. Such was the case with Dalida, an Egypt-born Italian-French singer who became a huge star in France and much of the Middle East throughout the second half of the 20th century. For this type of artist it was…

Paco Ibáñez en el Olympia was an album recorded in the famous Parisian venue in 1969. It has since become one of the great classic albums of Spanish music, and a window into a very particular time and place in both Spain’s and France’s recent history. Ibáñez had been banned from performing in public in…

Juntos is an uplifting, life-affirming love song. In recent years, the 1982 hit from Madrileña singer Paloma San Basilio has come to be seen as something of a gay anthem, which has helped to keep the song alive and relevant for new, younger audiences. It is very much a ‘gay’ song in the old sense…

Chico conoce a chica. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl stop seeing each other. Boy and girl bump into each other in a club after one year. Timidly, they start chatting and… Well, you guessed. What had to happen, happened. The song is called El encuentro (The encounter), and is track #4 from Tiene que…

Argentinian singer-songwriter Facundo Cabral was a true bohemian. He was taught to read at fourteen by a Jesuit teacher and met his father at forty-six. These and other experiences – his wife and daughter died on a plane crash – came to shape his outlook on life and his music. His signature song, No soy…

José Ángel Espinoza, better known as Ferrusquilla, was a Mexican songwriter and actor. Early in his career he became known as El Hombre de las Mil Voces, for his ability to play multiple characters for radio drama productions and to (allegedly) being able to impersonate God himself! One of Ferrusquilla’s most recorded songs was El…

Brace yourself: it’s Putochinomaricón! And he’s not amused! And he’s using the subjunctive!! “Yo creo que la buena música surge de los intestinos y del odio extremo”, says Chenta Tsai, born in 1990 of Taiwanese parents. ‘I think Good music springs from the guts and from extreme hatred’. Here’s one of the key tenets of…