Favorite Song No. 349: Diego’s Umbrella – Swayze

Diego's Umbrella - Swayze

Song: Swayze
Artist: Diego’s Umbrella
Year: 2009
Album: Double Panther
Genre: Rock
Style: Gypsy Rock / Folk
Pictured: LP
Click Here to Play the Song

This strikes me as a good time to reiterate, or simply iterate if I did not tell you before, that I am not a music critic. Neither am I a music expert. If you’ve come looking for that sort of expertise, you’ve come to the wrong place. I am a music lover, and I’ve learned how to manipulate records (or mp3s) in ways that make people dance, but the fact that I’m a successful wedding DJ does not mean I know an E minor chord from a glockenspiel. When I write here about songs, I’m less interested in the nuances of a shredding double contrabass flute solo than I am about telling you when or where I first heard the song, why I like it, or what person I associate it with. There are plenty of music blogs, review sites, and song databases chock-full of scholarly takes on song structure, lyric meaning, recording history, or the geo-political overtones of any given song, so rather than pretend to know about any of that stuff, I’m here to share what I really know: does this track bang on the dance floor?

Today’s song doesn’t really bang on the dance floor, though for an open-minded crowd looking to groove down to some upbeat world music, this might be a real winner. As I’m often finding myself doing before writing one of these blogs, I had to Google the band before tucking into writing. Turns out these guys are from San Francisco! They’re local! And apparently not the world-famous band I’ve always assumed them to be. I noticed on their upcoming tour schedule one of their shows is listed as being at someone’s house in Oakland. Well, as Confucius never said, but my brother Ted often did say when we were playing Risk when I was a kid, 千里之行,始於足下. He said it in English of course: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” so don’t fear, Diego, you and your Umbrella may be playing Todd’s house on Piedmont next month, but soon enough you’ll be rocking Wembley.

I first heard this song on KALX, the UC Berkeley radio station, sometime in 2009 or 2010, because of course a song this good won’t get airplay anywhere other than college radio, and I dug it, so I found a copy and it has lived in my regular rotation of favorite songs ever since. I even included it on the “Inspiration” mixtape I made in Lisbon in 2011, which you can listen to on my mixtapes page.

I read on the band’s web page that they describe their music as “Gypsy Rock,” which seems like a perfect description to me. I have it categorized it as Folk-Gypsy in iTunes, so I wasn’t far off the mark. When I hear this song, I’m transported. Suddenly it has become a foggy night in the countryside, Maria Ouspenskaya and her clan are twirling around a campfire, and wolves howl at a full moon. I’m sure you feel the same way, too. Don’t you? Of course you do!

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