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One of the first albums I ever bought was Los Cocinos by Cheech & Chong at Santos Grocery Store in Riverdrive Mall in 1974--the album came out in 1973. I was 13 years old and a 7nth-grader at St. Augustine High School which, in those days, was down by the Rio Grande downtown. At lunchtime, we would walk on over from the school to the mall to hang out, eat lunch, and try to stay out of trouble.
One of the mysteries of the 16-year odyssey that ended up embodied in Tex[t]-Mex is the invisibility of Cheech and Chong in that volume--next to Speedy Gonzales, they really are the best known "Mexicans" or mass cultural Chicanos on the planet. Here's a little bit of their work from Cheech & Chong's Next Movie--note their signifying play with "Mexican-American" and "Chicano" figuration:
More on this to come in these pages soon!
I always get a big kick out of the Up In Smoke film. A friend of mine plays this tune on guitar when the crowd is predominately Brown and it never fails to generate laughter. However, the risk in satire is that it can be taken very seriously. Tragic, but true, that Cheech & Chong are the best known "Mexicans" on the planet.
ReplyDeleteThat's my kind of protest song.
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