Sunday, February 24, 2008

Matter of Fact, It's the Only Dance in Cuba

Well, that's that taken care of! A couple of days ago, I had mentioned my difficulty in locating and securing decent free file hosting; it appears I've now found some, and I can operate as such without subjecting my readership to pop-under ads and general slipshoddiness.

So, huzzah! Less hassle involved in music posts! How to commemorate the occasion? How to try out the new host? How, how, how. How to--

Why, of course! Today is Sunday, February 24th, 2008. You remember what that means, right? It means that today marks the final day of Fidel Castro's fourty-nine-year reign as Cuban head of state. Fourty-nine years! Fidel Castro has been in power longer than Barack Obama or Stephen Harper have been alive. Love him or hate him, you know this is important; when a dude spends half a century doing anything on the world stage, much less running a nation, it's going to be notable when he finally retires.

It is popularly reported that Castro is believed to have survived at least 600 (not a typo; six hundred) assassination attempts since his ascension to power in 1959; that works out to 12.24 a year, or roughly one assassination attempt per month (with an extra one thrown in every leap year) for the last five decades. Fourty-nine years of gunshots, explosives, poison pills, gimmicked pens, contaminated wetsuits, booby-trapped mollusks and exploding cigars -- no, I'm not kidding about these -- and after all of that he retires to go home and die peacefully in his sleep someday. What a world!

Today is historic, and with this movement into history comes a shift in popular culture; from this point onward, every reference made to Fidel Castro's Cuba is now outdated and behind the times. Books, magazines, newspapers, comics, movies, television shows -- they weren't outdated yesterday, but by tomorrow they'll be as anachronistic as calling Russia 'the Soviet Union' or calling downtown Winnipeg 'safe'.

So, with that in mind, here are a few songs that just aren't going to mean what they used to any more:

Jay Chevalier and His House Rockers - Castro Rock (Castro Rock, 1960)
[buy compilation | site | bio]

Lord Invader & His Calypso Group - Fidel Castro (Calypso Travels, 1959)
[buy | bio | info | via]

The Skatalites - Fidel Castro (Foundation Ska, 1997)
[buy | site | info | myspace]

Urge Overkill - Sister Havana (Saturation, 1993)
[buy | site | info | myspace | music video -- hoo boy the nineties did not age well]

MP3 posts, you guys! It's good to be doing these again.

I should get working on the next installment of Slurpees and Murder Home Video, but I'll have to think of a topic first; a Homicide Watch doesn't really make sense when there've been no homicides lately. (Although that has not been for lack of effort; the local news has been pretty damn weird over this past month.) Well, we'll see what I come up with.

3 comments:

Romeo Morningwood said...

Fidel is Finito.
Wow I love the title of your Blog...doesnt look as though you will be pumping to much sunshine up the wazoo for the touristos.

I'm out perusing Manitoba Blogs..just found the link...
so hello there fellow citizen.

Michael said...

600 times? Come on people!

I have no respect for that. The world is not threatened by Cuba.

Anonymous said...

Hey, MMK!

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com would like info on an incident that occured within the Canadian government. Views, coverage, whatever one could provide. It involves bribery of an MP dying of cancer in order to topple the Liberal-led government at the time. For some reason, I look your way. ;-)