I figure in advance of my trip to South America, I should recommend a couple songs with some Latin flavor. Problem is, I’m not all that fond of Latin music. I do like Latin accents, though. A little timbale, or maraca here and there. So my two cop-out picks:

“Carmelita,” by Warren Zevon. What’s great about this song is how effectively Zevon paints a scene (a desperate heroin addict crying out to his paramour in Southern California) with relatively few lyrics, in a rather short song. For such a sad ballad, it also has this remarkable ability to tempt to you to sing along. It’s my favorite Zevon song.

“La Cienega Just Smiled,” by Ryan Adams. A nice, chill cut off of Gold. Still have no idea what La Cienega means. Is it a proper name?

MORE: Several readers email to say “La Cienega” literally means “the swamp” or “the marsh,” but it’s also the proper name of several streets, geographical areas, and such. So I guess we can infer from the lyrics that Adams is referring to the girl by the street she lives on. That, or there’s a poor Latino woman somewhere out there whose parents named her “The Swamp.”

This entry was posted on Friday, May 4th, 2007 at 2:36 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Five-Star Fridays/Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.