El Vez “A Lad From Spain? (…No From Mexico!)” 1998. Sympathy for the Record Industry. Six-song (plus one hidden track) 10″ EP of covers, reworked in El Vez’s kitschy, political, classic rock/rockabilly (a bit punk’d up), and hilarious style. It leads off with a brief hard-driving instrumental rendition of T. Rex’s “Twentieth Century Boy” and seamlessly flows into a musically faithful cover of Bachman Turner Overdrive’s “Taking Care of Business” but El Vez changes the lyrics into a biting (but funny) commentary on Mexican immigrant labor (i.e. “You wouldn’t want to be a field worker and be sprayed with pesticide” and “Taking care of business: Working fields! Taking care of business and cooking all your meals”). The last listed song on Side A is “Chihuahua,” a cover of Elvis’ “Hound Dog” (which, of course, was written by power duo Lieber and Stoller and then first – and best – recorded by Big Mama Thorton in 1952) but concluding after a minute or two of run-out groove hiss is the hidden track, the rework of David Bowie’s “Aladdin Sane” to “A Lad From Spain” performed live.  Side B begins with a less-than-towering version of the opening theme from 2001: A Space Oddessey and then segues into  “Si, I’m a Lowrider (Low & Slow Mix),” a bluesy number and then he launches back into more Bowie medley’d with Earl Brown: “Rock and Roll Suicide – If I Can Dream” (Brown wrote “If I Can Dream” to close the “Comeback Special for NBC” by Elvis Presley). The 10″ concludes with a reprise of “Taking Care of Business.” Much of the 10″ is live, recorded partially at Emo’s in Austin.