We played a lot of music that we probably should not have. I’m not talking about songs with offensive words or questionable content or songs written by serial killers but rather songs that really didn’t fit in with everything else. Even within our rigid borders and dayparts, we had some music that met the lowest possible requirements and made it on the air. I've gone on long enough about the "sound of the station" but have to ask myself a decade later why it was insisted we play that very definition of a one-hit wonder, the Macarena, as sung by Los De Rio (Antonio Romeo Monge and Rafael Ruiz). While popular, this was dance-pop at its best. It may have been cool to some but I know I was one of a handful that didn’t think it fit. There were other mild excursions into this contemporary dance medium but they weren’t as memorable as this nerve-twitching, hand-jiving, back-bouncing song was.
Perhaps with this song I am guilty of the same ideology that Syd "the Kid" had – purposely dismissing certain music and allowing something else to come to the top. Perhaps there were some internal biases we each had? If anything, it shows how vastly station management could change each school year, sometimes each semester and, in rare instances, smack in the middle of a semester. Everybody involved has this idea of what the sound of the station is but it can never be finalized. College radio stations bank on this; they evolve but not always in the linear gestation period you'd expect. Freshmen or sophomores arrive with their ideas of how things should be, oblivious that something similar was attempted two or three years ago to results, disastrous or otherwise, and the learning cycle repeats. Perhaps the new crop can make it work, perhaps these new programmers – the students – end with the same problems discovered in years past. If anything, you have to applaud those dedicated faculty advisors who have to hear the good, the bad and the ugly year after year.
Still, once Syd graduated and we reorganized the control room the Macarena was removed and given a home elsewhere, probably given away during one of the purgings of the music library.
And I think we were all happier.
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Macarena
(Monge /Ruiz)
Los Del Rio
From the single Macarena (Bayside Boys Mix)
1995
Oh, oh, oh Ha ha ha ha ha...
I am not trying to seduce you
When I dance they call me Macarena
And the boys they say que soy buena
They all want me, they can't have me
So they all come and dance beside me
Move with me, chant with me
And if you're good I'll take you home with me
* Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
Que tu cuerpo es pa' darle alegria y cosa buena
Dale a tu cuerpo alegria, Macarena
Hey, Macarena
(repeat 2X)
Now don't you worry about my boyfriend
He's a boy whose name is Vittorino
I don't want him, couldn't stand him
He was no good so I ... ha ha ha
Now come on, what was I supposed to do?
He was out of town and his two friends were sooo fine
(repeat chorus twice)
I am not trying to seduce you Macarena, Macarena...
(repeat chorus 2X)
Come and find me, my name is Macarena
I'm always at the party
Con las chicas que estan buenas
Come join me, dance with me
And all you fellows chant along with me
(repeat chorus 5x -till the end-)
