“Que Calor” Is So Hot Right Now
While home in Houston this summer, I’ve spent many hours in the car (no such thing as trains or buses out in the hinterlands) with the radio on scan, mostly just trying to see how many stations I can catch playing “Hotel California” at the same time. But this habit had unforeseen consequences: in addition to discovering Delilah (who definitely did save my life, just for the record), I also became a dedicated fan of “Que calor” by the band Super Mer Ka 2. It’s the kind of song that causes you to nearly veer off the road in your fevered attempts to stop the scan before it switches the station, so excited are you for its manic keyboards and infectious chorus. YouTube links after the jump, but I’m warning you: your life may never be the same once you’ve entered its insidious melody zone.
Give it 20 seconds before you pass judgment. Aaaaand… now your life is over! If you’re like me those keyboards will haunt you on an hourly basis for the rest of your days. Luckily (for me, at least) I truly love it. It reminds me of my favorite part of my favorite part of my favorite movie, where an old Mexican woman does a weird little shuffle dance:
(That specific part is at 5:20.)Aside from a few clips posted to YouTube, Super Mer Ka 2 has almost no discernible web presence, which is almost better because it keeps them enigmatic. This bit is by far the best trace of them on the Internet:
We need to get these hombres onto the Grammys, VMAs, AMAs, CMT Awards, and any other American music-related broadcast immediately. And they should probably bring their dancing girls and shopping cart-equipped camera man, too. Seriously, they might just save music awards shows if we gave them a chance.
Side note: this summer’s runner-up for my favorite song on the radio was also a staple of Houston’s many Latino stations, and quite nearly as infectious as “Que calor”:
“Calabria ft. Natasja” by ENUR
I don’t really know the history of this sax riff, but I wrote about a variation of “Calabria” a few months ago in a post about Spanish ringtones. It was obviously created by the devil after he gave up the fiddle and started playing the saxophone.
