Boddega | Lo Mejor De Boddega

Listen to "Dame Tu Amor"


Listen to "Seremos Dos" 

Get the whole album here.

A super-group formed in late 1971 in Guayaquil, Ecuador, Bodegga was made up of former members of sixties bands Los Hippies, Los Picapiedras, Los Vanders and Los Cardenales. They recorded two albums (1973, 1975) and an EP (1974), toured incessently while going through numerous personnel changes before disbanding for good in 1980. They came up with their name because their first practice space was a bodega--though I'm not sure from the Spanish-language Wikipedia page where I gleaned this fact whether the bodega in that instance was a wine cellar or a storage room. (Seriously.) The present collection, which draws its two dozen tracks from those three records and previously uncollected singles was published in 1983.

I found this gem literally on the street in east Jackson Heights; I bought it for from a woman who was selling all manner of Ecuadoran goods from a table she'd plopped down on the northwest corner of Roosevelt and 85th just outside of what I recall being a phone card store. As the 7 train rattled overhead, I managed to talk the woman into selling me 10 CDs for $4 a piece--no small feat, considering that I don't speak Spanish and she didn't speak English. I can't remember how much she was asking for them, but I know I wanted all ten I'd set aside, but that I couldn't really justify that many at her asking price.

I almost didn't post this record; as you can probably imagine, the gears in my brain were clicking when I picked it up: How awesome would it be to manipulate it in Photoshop (wouldn't be too hard to remove one of the "D"s in BODDEGGA) and use it as the cover of some comp or other--perhaps even a comp of Ecuadoran music? It's a tribute to the awesomeness of the actual CD that I finally broke down this evening and have posted it for you, instead.