Consumer Guide Album

Sir Douglas Quintet: Together After Five [Smash, 1970]
The hallmark of Doug Sahm's warm, reliable, steady-rocking Tex-Mex is that it always sounds like you've heard it before--not the lyrics, which Doug just jotted down on some rolling papers five minutes ago, but the riffs. This can drive you crazy--"Nuevo Laredo" is "Mendocino," obviously, but where the hell does "Revolutionary Ways" come from? When the mood is right, though, it gives the music a kind of folkish inevitability that doesn't get boring because Tex-Mex is such a stew of influences. This is way too loose, and forget the slow ones, but what fun. B+