Obscure Music Search: So much for being able to find anything on the Web

My wife, Kris, is Latvian. Actually, she was born in the U.S. but her parents came over from Latvia after WWII, and they all speak Latvian, have close relatives living in Latvia, and are still culturally connected to Latvia and the Latvian community here.

She has several tapes of Latvian pop music---artifacts of a commercial venture some relative was involved in back in the 90s some time. Music is a big part of Latvian culture and for a relatively small country they produce a lot of it. One day, out of curiosity, I put some of them on while puttering around the house. For the most part, they were pleasant enough pop songs; they were largely vocally driven and I don't know much Latvian myself (to the disappointment of my in-laws) so I didn't get the full effect. And, many of the songs were recorded with what sounded like the rhythm settings from an electronic organ for backing---not the sort of arrangements I usually get excited about.

But there was one song that really leapt off the tape: it was a bouncy little number called "Meksika" ("Mexico") by a band called Lauku Musikanti (the Country Musicians). They were a real, full band, with a full complement of instruments, including a very jaunty and engaging accordion. This became one of my favorite songs. Whenever I played it it made me happy.

Well, on Monday, attempting to share it with the rest of the band, I was devastated when my cheap tape deck ate the tape containing my only copy! So, I set out to find another copy.

One would think that after so many years of the sprawling Internet it would be fairly simple to find information on a band that had released multiple albums in a vibrant music culture and technologically savvy place like Latvia, but that was not the case. With Kris translating, we dug around various Latvian web sites, including Lauku Musikanti's page on what appears to be the Latvian version of MySpace Music. Their biography there informed us that they had formed in 1987 and that "Meksika" had been on their first album, which must have been out by 1993 since that was the date on the tape Kris had. But they only had detailed information about their most recent albums. A search for the older album was unsuccessful. We did find a current picture of them:

Unlike MySpace, to join the Latvian site you must be invited, so we couldn't sign up and send them a message through that site. Kris is going to see if someone she knows in Latvia can help us find a copy of their first album. If all else fails, one or more of her younger cousins seem to always be going over there to visit people or on youth tours, so maybe one of them can find it for me.