El Gusano

El Gusano

Romantic rendezvous for a Montague newly arrived in San Antonio and his Laredo-born Capulet occurred more than halfway between the two Hispanic outposts for yours truly nearly 20 years ago. Who knew that highway overpass we met under in Cotulla ran through the hometown of one Eugenio Jaimez? Wounded in Vietnam and still suffering that trauma today in Laredo, the sexagenarian stringed-instrument-maker dances again through his 1975 musical autobiography, Fantasia del Barrio. Recorded in one 10-hour session in the Alamo City – 10 tracks cut in single takes on an 8-track recorder, with overdubs – the LP's Cotulla quartet of guitarist Jaimez, drummer Sonny Ramirez and his 14-year-old, bass-playing brother Ruben, plus sax man Carlos Salazar, swings raza rock. An original record jacket inscription by Jaimez describes Fantasia del Barrio as "remembrance of a hellish war that many of our brothers met with by chance," and his instrumental arc from agricultural beginnings ("Work Your Hand to the Bone") to Vietnam ("Pleiku") and back ("Going Home") reverberates in the here and now. The bulbous bass of opener "Bone" and the frontman's nonaggro sting hum a tune tickled by psychedelic effects, "Journey of the Mind" succeeding with a dramatic march of inner psych and outré riffs. Exotic interlude "Pleiku" gives way to "Juan Tutri 10pm," a Cotulla bar recalled with a ripe, warm musical matte of beer, botanas, and belly-rubbing. Side two coalesces Santo & Johnny ("Melancolia"), ghosts of Woodstock ("Going Home"), and the heavy Asian accents of "Road to Nirvana," which recalls Alice Cooper's "I'm Eighteen" lumbering elephantine to The Jungle Book. Boosting the record's initial run from 300 to 1,000, Austin preservationists Heavy Light Records relive Fantasia del Barrio on vinyl much like 2009 local breakout Don't Let Me Fall by West Dallas congregation the Relatives, both featuring contextualization by Chronicle musicologist Thomas Fawcett. Slight at just under 23 minutes, like sketches for a more in-depth work, its author notes contemporarily, "I think that we should have been more disciplined and less plastered." Don't you believe it. Ghetto dreams are sober enough.