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Showing posts from June 25, 2026

Ray Galindo: The Accidental Historian of the Sidewalk Republic A Lester Bangs-ish Meditation on Songs, Salads, Fires, French Girls, and the Last Honest Power Popper By Somebody Who Stayed Too Long at the Coffee Shop

There are musicians who write songs. Then there are musicians who accidentally document entire civilizations. Ray Galindo belongs to the second category.  The strange thing is that he doesn't seem particularly interested in mythology when he's living it. The mythology arrives later, after the dust settles, after the girlfriends leave, after the landlords die, after the studios close, after the receipts are filed away in drawers, and after the songs have already been recorded. Only then does the pattern emerge. You start listening to the records and realize you're not hearing a songwriter. You're hearing a witness.   The story begins in Tampa, Florida. Or maybe it begins in Greenwich Village. Or perhaps it starts in a Bronx apartment in the 1960s. The problem with writing about Galindo is that every story branches into three other stories before you've reached the second paragraph. The man is a human hyperlink. You ask about one song and suddenly you're...