As you tuck into your Chili con Carne, and the tang of Mexican spices tickles your tongue, you sip your sparkling Spanish wine and reflect —the flavour is perfect, your companion delightful —but surely an element is missing, the masterstroke that will conjure up the very spirit of the amorous South.
The candlelight flickers in your partner’s eyes as you rise, and crossing the room you lower the stylus deftly onto the solution to your problems—lightly Latin’, a stereo feast of musical delicacies from the Latin lands.
You glow as the International Hits Orchestra bring all their glittering but gentle finesse to Tijuana favourites such as ‘Spanish Flea’ and ‘The Lonely Bull’, you vibrate to the funky bass guitar of ‘Southern Festival’ and tremble to the beguiling percussion of ‘Cast Your Fate to the Wind’; you tingle to the Mariachi trumpets of ‘Lisboa Antigua’ and bask in the beauty of ‘A Day in the Life of a Fool’.
But before memories of Spanish sunsets swamp your brain, climb down from the table, put down your castanets, and clear up the wine. There’s one way you can save your evening. Play the first side again.
