Popularity: 5
Vote:   | A lot of times you're just conditioned by what's around you. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | And Buscando America made a lot of noise. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | And music was a very important part of our lives. The radio was on all day. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | And, he'd seen me in Panama, and he talked about maybe doing something in New York so I hooked it up when I came here and I recorded in 1969 my first album with Pete Rodriguez. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | And, we watched the Beatles one week after they showed up on the Ed Sullivan Show because of the U.S. Southern Command TV network. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | Anywhere you had a commerce center, you had a lot of music. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | Because I can respect his acumen and his vision, which he did have, and if it hadn't been for Jerry Masucci and Fania, the impact of salsa music would have never occurred. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | Before this, before my trip to New York, people like Roberto Roena and Richie Ray had tried to get me a contract with Fania. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | But, when I was about thirteen, I began to sort of sing in my neighborhood. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | Every band had their own distinctive sound, but it was pretty much dancing music and rhythmic music with a tremendous emphasis on copying the Cuban models. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | Frankie Lymon was someone that I saw and said, if he can do that, I can do that. |
Popularity: -4
Vote: | I came in with an emphasis on lyrics. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | I decided we should book ourselves, so I started booking the band. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | I didn't do drugs, I never did do drugs. Never. I don't have any story of drugs, you know, to speak of. Never did drugs, never was interested in drugs and then I wasn't interested in the people around the drugs. |
Popularity: -2
Vote: | I think in New York we had respect and we would pretty much fill up the places where we went, but I never got the sense that we really were Number 1 here in New York among the Latin crowds. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | I was a kid, and I remember my mother singing. She was also a radio soap opera actress, but my mother sang. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | I was born in Panama, the Republic of Panama, on July 16, 1948 in Panama City, in an area called San Felipe. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | I was the first person to come into New York with a Latin American point of view which was also very much influenced by political happenings in Latin America. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | If people want to pronounce it Bla-des, I don't have a problem with that, as long as they don't think that I am ashamed of my name or that I'm trying to Anglicize my name to get over or that kind of stupid thing. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | In Panama the DJ would play you a big band, Stan Kenton, or play you Frank Sinatra or a Tony Bennett song and then he would follow up with Beny More or Casino de la Playa, and then he would probably put on a Mexican trio or he would put on a Puerto Rican trio, and then a guitar and voices, and then he could follow up with rock and roll. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | In Panama, the radio stations were very broadminded. In Panama I did not grow up with the inflexibility of format radio. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | In those days the big U.S. labels didn't have any particular interest in the Latin market. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | It doesn't make sense for me to be a lawyer in a place where there is no law. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | It was very interesting, and we went to Germany and we toured Germany like we were a German band in 1985. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | It's almost as if people think that in Latin America we're not hip to what's happening here. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | Masucci was clever enough to understand the potential of the music and he made it big. |
Popularity: 8
Vote: | My grandfather on my father's side was English. That is why my last name is Blades. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | People are a lot smarter than anyone gives them credit for being. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Rock is young music, it is youth oriented. It just speaks for a generation. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | So everything that ever happened, we knew about in Panama. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | So I came from Miami and I started working in the mailroom at Fania and, like you said, I was sweeping floors and picking up stuff. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | So I went to Miami in '74 with my family and while I was there it became obvious that we needed money and we needed to do something, because my family, we left without anything really, and we didn't have any money to begin with. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | So it was a big, huge impact that was caused by the fact of the lyrics and that is why Siembra became the first million seller. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | So that I saw music as a way of documenting realities from the urban cities of Latin America. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | So that in 1974, when I graduated as a lawyer, I figured I'm not going to be a lawyer under a military regime. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | So that when I came from Panama... my family was exiled in 1973 and they went to Miami. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | So that when I came to New York again, it was, I'm not too sure right now, but it was '74 or '75. I went to Miami in '74 and then I came to New York, I think, at the end of '74. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | The first time I came to New York was 1969. I came because the university, the National University of Panama, had been closed by the military. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | The grandmother, the mother, the worker, the student, the intellectual, the professional, the unemployed, everybody identified with the songs because they were descriptions of life in the city. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | There was a lot of stuff happening in Havana that was being heard and appreciated by New Orleans musicians because of this situation. And vice versa. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | There was no television, so the radio provided you with everything. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | They had seen me performing in Panama, but in Panama I had to quit performing because teachers in the national university were against my performing. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | They're making a ton of money, and no one is getting a nickel. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | This is important to clarify, because a lot of people don't understand that I came in '69 and then went back to Panama to finish school. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | We had something to say. Whenever we played, people didn't dance, they listened. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | What I do not accept is the fact that so many people's talents were ripped off. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | What is interesting in this is the exchange of music that occurred between New Orleans and Cuba, I mean, they had ferries that would go from one port to another. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | Yes, I was going to law school and it was closed in '69. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | You know, it was uncomfortable doing the same thing. I don't like a rut. |