Wall Of Voodoo - "Mexican Radio"

Wall of Voodoo were a band from Los Angeles and this song "Mexican Radio" was their big hit. It came out in 1983 and is a good example of their New Wave/ Morricone Spaghetti Western hybrid sound. The singer Stan Ridgeway went on to have a reasonably successful solo career after the band broke up. "Mexican Radio" had the highest chart placing here in New Zealand and most of us probably didn't even know what it was about.... I only found out years later. It is obviously about listening to Mexican radio... but I wasn't aware of the unregulated high wattage AM radio stations in Mexico. The Mexican stations (known as border busters) near the border operated on such high power that many American stations were over powered by the Mexican ones... and this was over large areas of USA. This went on until about 1972, which was when there was an agreement between the two governments about broadcasting modulation of the FM band. I have heard they still have some Border Buster stations on the AM band but no longer cause problems because of the dominance of the FM band in the US. Wolfman Jack is the most famous of the Border Buster station DJ's, although he was an American DJ and was hired by one of the Mexican stations after he had already established a career in the US, however, under his real name. Ironically, he became a bigger star because he was now broadcasting to most of America from his Mexican station. He stated that you could drive from New York to LA and listen to the station without changing the dial. This may be boring you, but it is fascinating to me now that I run a Low Power station.... I can't believe the power they were operating on. Some of the stations were operating on 250000 watts and when I started Bitter FM our limit was half a watt... yes that is right, HALF of 1 watt. Now it is 1 watt...and I thought that was exciting when they brought that change in. So hopefully you can understand why I love this song even more now. I have heard that the American radio operators may have hated the Mexican X stations (all starting with an X) but a lot of young Americans remember them fondly, because of the diverse range of music some of them played. In fact, Wolfman Jack may have actually been the American John Peel.