Being caught off guard by a song is a certain sort of pleasure (and possibly pain). Maybe you notice something in the lyrics you’ve never heard before, or maybe you fall in love with a song from a band you thought you had figured out. Whether you realize you were wrong—or just surprised, discombobulated, maybe even terrified—the unpredictability of music, and more importantly, your reaction to it, is what today’s episode is all about.
Christina was caught off guard by Flo & Eddie’s “Keep it Warm,” and not only because she recognized the sample of this song on Gucci Mane’s Lemonade.
There’s a moment in the song where the lyrics go particularly dark: “Kill another whale with your power… Shoot a bunch of kids from a tower.” That stopped her cold. The reference to the 1966 UT tower shooting is chilling on its own—but it hit her different because she went to UT, AND worked in that very tower as a student. So hearing it casually dropped in what’s technically a “comedy rock” song was totally disorienting. If you’re interested in learning more about the tragic 1966 UT Tower shooting, Christina recommends the animated documentary “Tower” by Keith Maitland.
Christine’s pick took us in a different direction—but was just as surprising to her. “Ixtepec” by Café Tacvba, from their 1994 album Re.
She heard this for the first time just last year and was immediately struck—not just by how good it was, but by the fact that she’d never heard it before. And she thought she had Café Tacvba all figured out!
“Ixtepec” opens with forceful vocals about a man named Juan and his “stupid face,” condemned to walk to a city in Oaxaca. From there, the track—and really the whole album—spirals into this layered, genre-blending masterpiece. There’s rock, funk, bolero, ranchera, banda… basically the SNL Stefan version of an album: it’s got everything. No wonder Re topped Rolling Stone’s list of best Latin rock albums.
Stereothematica 