The Fourth Case of the Pirate's Radio of the Caribbean

We are coming up on the holiday season, when I always put together some special show themes that are off the beaten path.

This week is the last week of the pre-holiday season... since we've been in Africa for the past couple weeks, how about we close this season with one of our mash-ups featuring music from Brazil and Latin America in a single set? I'm speaking, of course, about Pirate's Radio of the Caribbean, my opportunity to mix and match from the full South-of-the-border music scene. 

Most of today's show is focused on rootsy and old-timey sounds from Brazil and Cuba. We will hear sambas and forro from the 60s Brazilian scene alongside guajira and son from the same period in Havana. There are bits of uptown sound here, but mostly a barefoot dance party.

But I will take a sharp turn North toward the end of today's set with a tribute to a great compilation that has just been reissued in a new version:  "Nu Yorica!" was first released by Soul Jazz Records of London in 1996. This has been a benchmark set of melting pot Latin music from the 70s New York scene, featuring so many good songs. Unfortunately, the label crammed the full 2 CD set onto a 2 LP set, with each LP side stretching to about 30 minutes of music. As you might imagine, sound quality suffered...

Soul Jazz Records has fixed that situation for the 20th anniversary of the original pressing, just releasing a new version of the compilation broken out into TWO 2 LP sets (total of 4 platters, people). Sound quality improved... check.

There are some interesting twists, however... to begin with, the songlist has been shuffled:  4 tracks from the original compilation have been dropped, while 6 new tracks have been added.

In the second place, the packaging is a bit confusing:  the cover artwork for both new volumes is almost identical to the artwork for the first 2 LP set, making these three distinct products difficult to tell apart. (To add further confusion, there was a somewhat inferior "Nu Yorica 2!" 2 LP set that was released in 1997.) The key to identifying the new releases is the designation of volume "A" and "B" for the two new reissue sets.