"Bad Rap" / Joe 'King' Carrasco

TEXAS MUSIC WEEK

An oddball choice, maybe.  But you don't need me to tell you about Willie Nelson or Waylon Jennings or the more obvious Texas music stars, and anyway, I love this guy's stuff. Maybe it's because my ears were warped at an early age by ? and the Mysterians' classic "96 Tears" and Sam the Sham's "Woolly Bully," but this garagey Tejano pop sound -- forget the horn section, let's just throw in a Farfisa organ! -- makes perfect sense to me.  After all, if bands like Talking Heads and the B-52s and Blondie could throw a jittery organ into the New Wave mix, it was only a matter of time before somebody like Joe Carrasco was going to come along and give us a shot of Tex-Mex New Wave. And you know me -- I'm a sucker for the New Wave sound.



Born in Dumas, Texas, Joe Carrasco (originally Joe Teusch) lucked into his musical career hanging around the Austin clubs in the late 70s. On his first album, 1978's Joe King Carrasco and El Molino, the iconic organ tracks were even laid down by Austin's resident organ whiz, the great Augie Meyers, Doug Sahm's longtime collaborator. And talk about luck -- with a nod from Elvis Costello (once quoted as saying they were better than the Police), Stiff Records picked up Joe's band, now named Joe 'King' Carrasco and the Crowns, to release their self-titled second album in 1981.  Ah, Stiff, always a home for quirky, D.I.Y. pop.  Joe's biggest hit was the title track off of his 1983 album Party Weekend, after which the party began to wind down for Joe and the Crowns, just as New Wave was beginning to lose its fun edge and turn tedious and mannered.  (Flock of Seagulls, anyone?)  Joe decamped to Nicaragua for a while; he lives now in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, but he's still writing, performing, doing his Joe King thing, with a little more reggae added into the mix.  Think Jimmy Buffet without the baggage of Parrothead Nation.

The loose, wacky vibe of Carrasco's 80s tracks still sounds fresh to me -- the Crowns never went synth-crazy, never forgot that they were making party music to dance to.  "Bad Rap" comes from JKC's 1981 Party Safari EP, but really, it could have come from any of his 1980s albums.  The lyrics are generic New Wave neurotic:  In the first verse, his girlfriend's making eyes at his best friend, in the second his car is stolen, everything in his life is seriously out of whack. But it's all played for tongue-in-cheek comic effect, layered with exotic Middle Eastern musical motifs (shades of "Rock the Casbah") and melodramatic horror-movie overtones. Joe's jerky vocals, the cheese-grater guitar, the whiplash drums, the stabbing organ -- it's all in the service of party fun.

It would be easy to pass off Joe King Carrasco as a novelty act; the fact that he used to perform in full crown and royal robe probably didn't help.  On the other hand, let's remember the musical landscape of the time, when Devo performed in hazmat suits with flowerpots on their heads, and the B-52s sported absurd bouffant hairdos.  Coasting comfortably under the radar, Carrasco never lost his garage-y vibe -- art-school cleverness never got in the way of him putting on a high-energy show.  And hey, pretentiousness never goes down well in Texas, anyway.

"Tears Been A-Falling" / Joe King Carrasco

One of the best organ riffs ever, a perky funhouse ripple of sound that always makes me smile. Maybe this track lacks that Tex-Mex quality that allowed Joe King Carrasco to trademark his music as Nuevo Wavo , but it's still cheeky and danceable and irrepressibly fun.

I never heard of Joe King Carrasco back in the late 70s-early 80s, when he played the New York clubs and joined Stiff Records' traveling show. That's a pity -- I would have loved to cram into a dank little club and groove to songs like this and "Perfect Spot" and "Buena." Looking back on my musical tastes at the time, I was always more easily seduced by the fun groups -- the B-52s, Jonathan Richman, Devo, Blondie, even the early Talking Heads (before David Byrne's terminal artsy pretension set in). Joe King Carrasco & the Crowns would have fit in just fine.

The lyrics are pretty elementary -- "Tears been a-falling / Since you've gone away / Tears been a-falling / Please come back to me," and so on. He slops around his house all day and cries himself to sleep; he just can't believe she's really gone, his tears fall like rain, the usual pop sentiments. You could write such words yourself, in five minutes; they don't even rhyme. But the extra syllable he has to throw in -- "Tears been A-fallin'" -- is proof positive that this number is really all about that catchy shuffling rhythm, punctuated by Kris Cummings' winsome organ fills. In fact this song, from Carrasco's 1983 album Party Weekend, was a reworking of his own earlier "Tears Been Falling," a much more pedestrian rocker. Without that syncopation, this song is nothing; with it, it's magic.

Frankly, this guy doesn't sound too terribly broken-hearted; it's more like a sort of numb slacker woe. My girlfriend's gone, what a bummer. Pass me that Corona there, will ya? Joe King's voice can't help but sound playful and adolescent, like a guy you might have had a crush on in high school. Nothing angst-y there, nothing menacing, nothing earth-shaking -- but someone you'd sure have fun hanging out with. I can't imagine why that girl ever left him . . . but take my word for it, he won't stay lonely for long.

Tears Been A-Falling sample