★★★

1. That’s My Little Suzie: 👍🏻
2. In a Turkish Town: 👎🏻
3. Come On, Let’s Go: 👍🏻
4. Donna: 👎🏻
5. Bony Maronie: 🤷‍♂️
6. Ohh! My Head: 👍🏻
7. La Bamba: 🤷‍♂️
8. Bluebirds Over the Mountain: 🤷‍♂️
9. Hi-Tone: 👍🏻
10. Framed: 👍🏻
11. We Belong Together: 🤷‍♂️
12. Dooby Dooby Wah: 👍🏻

This album was pretty hit or miss for me. In general, I liked the fast paced stuff and didn’t care at all for the ballads. I’ve heard quite a few of these songs before, but had no clue it was Ritchie Valens performing them. Framed was, I think, the standout track. Although it seemed a little off to me that it was done by a white guy and written by two more.

I’ve used my experience reading Confederacy of Dunces multiple times to try to explain a very specific feeling I sometimes get when reading/watching/listening to old stuff. I actually wrote it down in this old review of William Gibson’s Neuromancer. If the rest of this doesn’t make sense, go read that. Maybe it’ll make more sense with extra context.

Listening to Ritchie Valens was interesting because I could hear his influence (and/or the influence of the same style of music) in all kinds of stuff I’m more familiar with. But because I’m more familiar with the people who were influenced by Valens than by Valens himself, and because those people came later and had time to improve on the style, I found his stuff to be less impressive. Because I have this future context and I can’t shake it, I can appreciate his music for what it is, but it doesn’t hit me in the gut the way I imagine it would have if I listened to it when it was current.

In other words, it’s “homework” music. The kind of stuff I’m now glad that I’ve heard. But I probably won’t ever seek it out again, because there’s other stuff I like more that improved upon the foundation he helped build.