CARDOVA

CARDOVA by The Meters.

One consequence of Hurricane Katrina on the internets was that all sorts of music from the Crescent City got dusted off and posted, simply to memorialize the event, or as catharsis, as a coping device, or what have you. Louisiana 1927 by Randy Newman, for example, all of a sudden became very popular.

Naturally, a lot of people were playing The Meters. One of the better music blogs out there, The Funky 16 Corners, posted an entry of a pretty rare Meters track that I had never heard. Called Cardova, it's off their first album. The entry I read said this:

Opening with a fat (and ever so slightly fuzzy) bass line, soon joined by that snappy Modeliste snare, Nocentelli guitar and Neville organ, Cardova is simultaneously relaxed and super, super heavy, with a funk engineered to make your buttocks and feet move independently of the rest of your body. If by the end of this song you aren’t doing the Hip Drop, going all “BOOM-bity BAP BAP UHN BOP A CHICKA” like a goofball, and ratcheting up the volume until the bass is rattling all the bric-a-brac off the top of your speakers, you need to restart the tune and repeat until all described symptoms are apparent.

Another reason why I like this song is because I passed it on to Oren, who decided that this was the music he'd like to be played whenever he entered a room, like an aural calling card. I spent several hours trying to work out the logistics of that idea.

LISTEN.

Photo: Buenos Aires, 2006. This stencil graffiti was EVERYWHERE down there.