Lennon & McCartmey Tijuana Style: The Torero Band - Music For Pleasure 1969

Lennon and McCartney played Tijuana Style? Well why not? We've already had a stranger proposition with their oeuvre being channelled through a military band so a bit of a brassy makeover shouldn't be beyond the pale. I daresay there'd be versions of this stuff played on the spoons if someone thought there might be a market for it. And so, as the cover so ably demonstrates, what we have here is a broad selection of Beatles songs drawn from all points of their career 'excitingly recreated to the sound of brass'. 

 

And from that description, you can probably second guess how it's going to sound without actually listening to it - that is, all blaring horns and busy percussion picking out the familiar Beatles melodies on trumpets and trombones. But as I have actually listened to it, I can report that, if these songs were carefully selected on the basis that they'd lend themselves well to this kind of approach, then 100% success has not been achieved and that some work better than others. A lot better in fact.

 

Perhaps predictably, it's the more upbeat numbers that work best; 'She Loves You', 'Ob La Di Ob La Da', 'Can't Buy Me Love' - all of these were already pumped full of air before The Torero Band got started on them, and whilst giving them a sunny Latin bounce doesn't improve them overly, it doesn't cause them any harm either. Fair enough then, but then any joy that's to be had from them is drowned in a sack elsewhere by jaunty, knees-up versions of 'Yesterday', 'Eleanor Rigby' and 'Hey Jude', arrangements which are hardly in keeping with the rather more sombre originals. Just as well these are all instrumental versions then.

 

But despite the swings and roundabouts of taste on offer here, at heart I can't regard this stuff as anything but a gimmick. Like thrash metal versions of John Denver songs or hip hop takes on Elizabethan madrigals, marrying two genres that wouldn't ordinarily meet can raise a smile at first listen, but unless their pony has got more than one trick it gets boring quickly and I'm forced to question the point of it all. Playing Lennon and McCartney songs Tijuana style doesn't expose any secrets and the songs themselves do nothing to progress the Tijuana style. In truth I'd rather listen to a Tijuana bands playing proper Mexican music, and if I want to listen to The Beatles then I'm spoiled for choice; this sort of cheap, cultural tourism only leaves me cold.