![\"His](\"http:\/\/www.fivetools.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/CIMG2295.jpg\" "\\"His")
<\/a><\/p>\nThat’s me, actually, not Fangio. Read the full story<\/a> at the reliably awesome Clunkbucket<\/a>. <\/p>\n Pleased to report that as of this week Fayettenam<\/a> is not just taking but filling<\/em> orders for both the 7″ single and the LP. They exist!<\/p>\n Today, in celebration of this fact, some further elaboration to enhance your listening experience. <\/p>\n 01 Operational Detachment Juan Manuel Fangio<\/a> <\/a>Operational Detachment Juan Manuel Fangio<\/strong> once upon a time I couldn’t go out to eat but I traded that all in a long, long time ago now I roll invisible, stripped of every badge <\/a>El Narcoavi\u00f3n<\/strong> find a light twin-engined airframe and if there’s E-2Cs<\/a> around once you’re back in U.S. airspace and when there’s federales on your tail <\/a>My God Is an Angry God (Juan Manuel Fangio Castiga los Pecados del Mundo)<\/strong> I killed a man in a synagogue last night I killed a man at the Temple Beth last night I killed a guy in Jericho last night <\/a>La Consciencia Intranquila de Juan Manuel Fangio<\/strong> narcos in Colombia IEDs in Kandahar Juan, where you gonna run? the pirates of Somalia the face that haunts you in your sleep Juan, where you gonna run? <\/a>Edwardian Gray<\/strong> they met me at the airport just like they said they would two long hours in the back of a van a business park on the outskirts of town a Swedish stunner in Edwardian Gray<\/a> that roof so high, the hood so low it had been more than twenty years since I put her away I grabbed that rubbery shifter and I threw it in first across the high arid plains I drove all night I reached my destination in a cold, cold sweat that roof so high, the hood so low <\/a>Bebe’s Song<\/strong> well of course there were others what was in it for you, Bebe? you gave up the child I gave you what was in it for you, Bebe? <\/a>El Hombre M\u00e1s Macho<\/strong> who’s that driving that fancy car? who’s that leading at Monaco<\/a>? <\/a>Compared to Their Predecessors, late winter it’s not like Havana in 1958 I remember talking like Stockholm Syndrome except in reverse twenty-four years later I had a heart bypass a tu salud, Se\u00f1or Fangio <\/a>Los Viejos<\/strong> sometimes I miss my mom and dad I lost my best friend on a road like this so as I drive along this precipice tonight Wolfgang<\/a>, Luigi<\/a>, Alberto<\/a> <\/a>Beat Your Halfshafts Into Swords I don’t like to kill it’s been too many years regrets, I’ve had a few That’s me, actually, not Fangio. Read the full story at the reliably awesome Clunkbucket. Pleased to report that as of this week Fayettenam is not just taking but filling orders for both the 7″ single and the LP. They exist! Today, in celebration of this fact, some further elaboration to enhance your listening experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[50,9,34,8,31],"class_list":["post-446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-supplementary","tag-clunkbucket","tag-fangio","tag-fayettenam-records","tag-pph","tag-saab"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fivetools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fivetools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fivetools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fivetools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fivetools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"http:\/\/www.fivetools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":480,"href":"http:\/\/www.fivetools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions\/480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fivetools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fivetools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fivetools.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n02 El Narcoavi\u00f3n<\/a>
\n03 My God Is An Angry God (Juan Manuel Fangio Castiga Los Pecados Del Mundo)<\/a>
\n04 La Consciencia Intranquila de Juan Manuel Fangio<\/a>
\n05 Edwardian Gray<\/a>
\n06 Bebe’s Song<\/a>
\n07 El Hombre M\u00e1s Macho<\/a>
\n08 Compared To Their Predecessors, Today’s Politically Motivated Kidnappers Are Total Dicks<\/a>
\n09 Los Viejos<\/a>
\n10 Beat Your Halfshafts Into Swords (The Radicalization And Redemption Of Juan Manuel Fangio)<\/a><\/p>\n
\nIn which Fangio introduces himself, and provides as tangible an explanation for whatever magical mechanism has made possible his resurrection as we’re going to get. The first lines allude to a story from Leo Levine’s Fangio obituary for Road & Track<\/em>: “It took a remarkable man to maintain his equilibrium. One night in Buenos Aires when we entered a restaurant, the entire assemblage stood. This was thirty years after he retired.” The “stripped of every badge” line refers both to Fangio’s unofficial and unaffiliated status as a rogue agent who takes his orders from no one, and to the Saab 900 Turbo that serves as his primary undercover vehicle, high-performance SPG variants of which typically shipped from the factory sans rear nameplates<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nwithout everyone in the room
\nrising to their feet
\nI couldn’t go shopping
\nI couldn’t walk down the street<\/em><\/p>\n
\nin exchange for immortality
\nsome sort of purchase on my soul
\nI struck a sinner’s bargain
\nlate one summer night
\nnot to be a hero
\nbut for the chance to make things right<\/em><\/p>\n
\nfor maximized efficiency I’ve but a single task
\nI’m more than an assassin
\nand I’m not a hired gun
\nI’m Operational Detachment
\nJuan Manuel Fangio
\nI’m a special force of one<\/em><\/p>\n
\n(Tr. the drug plane.) Working title: “Protocol for Impersonating a Trafficker of Illegal Goods and Substances in Order to Gain Access to and Win Confidence of Cartel Leadership While Avoiding Detection by International Authorities.” “Garlic and cocoa leaves” were remedies used by Fangio and his navigator to overcome fatigue and altitude sickness during the 1940 Gran Premio del Norte<\/a>, a two-week, six-thousand-mile race over public roads from Buenos Aires to Lima and back. Fangio won the race in a ’39 Chevrolet.<\/p>\n
\nrip out all the seats
\nstuff every inch with hidden bladders
\nfilled with aviation gasoline
\narm yourself with a small revolver
\ngarlic and cocoa leaves
\nnow you’re good for direct service
\nfrom Florida to Medell\u00edn<\/em><\/p>\n
\njust stay under the radar
\nand if the Sinaloa shoot you down
\njust take one of these<\/em><\/p>\n
\nstay beneath one thousand feet
\npick your favorite abandoned airfield
\nand set her down nice and neat
\ncall your man to arrange the drop-off
\ntell him where and when to meet
\nannounce your flight, you’re all alright now
\nget yourself something to eat<\/em><\/p>\n
\nyou can jettison your cargo
\nand if you need to spend a night in jail
\nnext time: submarines<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n
\n(Tr. Juan Manuel Fangio punishes the sins of the world.) The first of the “mission” songs finds Fangio taking out a target about whom we know little more than that he doesn’t seem to have any business hanging out in a synagogue. The venue is significant, however, in that our Catholic-born protagonist finds in the idea of the Old Testament God\u2014the “God of wrath”\u2014a measure of validation for the role he’s taken on. Jericho\/Buffalo confusion merely a symptom of overarching Borgesian spatiotemporal displacement.<\/p>\n
\nI put him in a headlock
\nand I squeezed out his cursed life
\nafterwards I put the windows down
\nand I drove til it was light
\nI killed a man in a synagogue last night<\/em><\/p>\n
\nwhen I was done I looked up
\nand saw a god I recognized
\nI said you know what he was doing here
\nI hope that makes it right
\nI killed a man at the Temple Beth last night<\/em><\/p>\n
\nI killed a guy in Jericho last night
\nfor every set of circumstances
\nthere are corresponding consequences
\nI killed a guy in Buffalo last night<\/em><\/p>\n
\n(Tr. the guilty conscience of Juan Manuel Fangio.) A catalog of underworld activity in which our hero may or may not be involved, this song at the very least provides a broad outline of the universe he inhabits. It also expands, albeit somewhat vaguely, on the notion alluded to in the album’s opener, that this Fangio is haunted by an inescapable sense of shame, a need “to make things right.” As Ricky Watters<\/a> wondered: For who? For what?<\/p>\n
\nanthrax traced to Wichita
\nbackpack bomb Islamabad
\nwhere you gonna run?<\/em><\/p>\n
\nhijacking Paris\u2013Dakar<\/a>
\nyou’re not the man they think you are
\nwhere you gonna run?<\/em><\/p>\n
\nwhen it’s you you’re running from<\/em><\/p>\n
\nthe thieves that guard LaGuardia
\nthey’re picking out a part of you
\nwhere you gonna run?<\/em><\/p>\n
\nthe threat that lurks on every street
\nthe promise that you couldn’t keep
\nwhere you gonna run?<\/em><\/p>\n
\nwhen it’s you you’re running from<\/em><\/p>\n
\nAnother mission song, this one finds Fangio reunited with the vehicle that two decades earlier accompanied him on his failed attempt to assassinate Augusto Pinochet. Think of it in the tradition of great American rock’n’roll songs about cars, like “Little Deuce Coupe” or “Little GTO,” except this one is about a 1988 Saab 900 Turbo SPG<\/a>. And the guy driving the car is on his way to kill someone. (Incidentally, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this might be the first time in the history of music that the term “greenhouse” in its automotive design context<\/a> has been used in a pop song. Can somebody wiki this?)<\/p>\n
\none guy with a sign, two more with a hood
\nwe all nodded politely and headed for the door
\nthey bound my wrists behind me and put me on the floor<\/em><\/p>\n
\ndriven badly around the city just as fast as they can
\noff came the hood, up went the door
\nand I got a funny feeling \u2014 I’ve been here before<\/em><\/p>\n
\nthree units back, two units down
\nwe scanned our palms and irises and stepped inside
\nsure enough \u2014 there was my ride<\/em><\/p>\n
\nwith a sagging headliner and a dirty ashtray
\na two-liter four under a clamshell hood
\nboosting plenty healthy and sounding good<\/em><\/p>\n
\nthe way the greenhouse wraps around its occupants
\nit just says go
\nI’ve never had a more faithful steed
\nsafety, comfort, stealth and speed<\/em><\/p>\n
\nbut one whiff of cracked leather
\nbrought me right back to that day
\nnothing that anyone could do about it now
\nand there were more important issues at hand<\/em><\/p>\n
\nspun the front tires and launched with a lurch
\nI had a pressing obligation one thousand miles away
\nwith a \u2014 well let’s just say “an old friend”<\/em><\/p>\n
\nnot another vehicle or soul in sight
\nsixteen valves tapping out the code
\nthe oldest song I know<\/em><\/p>\n
\nhow I was received I honestly forget
\nmy friend must have known why I had come
\nhe didn’t even try to run<\/em><\/p>\n
\nthe way that function has made a slave of form
\nit just says go
\nI’ve never had a more faithful steed
\nsafety, comfort, stealth and speed<\/em><\/p>\n
\nEvery story needs a love interest. “Bebe” was Andreina Berruet, Fangio’s companion for twenty years. She accompanied him to races throughout his career and they frequently appeared together in photos in the European motoring press, who tactfully referred to her as Fangio’s wife. Significantly, such photos appeared less frequently, if indeed at all, in their native Argentina, as in fact they weren’t married, and it’s been claimed that she was married to someone else altogether.<\/p>\n
\nin the end there was only one
\nfrom the best days to the worst days
\nto the broken, bloody cursed days
\nyou were my keeper, you patched me up<\/em><\/p>\n
\nthrough good and bad you were always there
\nthat husband of yours didn’t notice
\nhe didn’t notice or he didn’t care<\/em><\/p>\n
\nperhaps I was child enough
\nyou needed someone to take care of
\nI needed your patience, I needed your love<\/em><\/p>\n
\nthrough good and bad you were always there
\nthat husband of yours didn’t notice
\nhe didn’t notice or he didn’t care<\/em><\/p>\n
\nA sing-along.<\/p>\n
\nFangio, Juan Fangio!
\nwho’s that drifting that SLR<\/a>?
\nFangio, Juan Fangio!
\nwho crossed the Andes in a rusty Saab?
\nFangio, Juan Fangio!
\nwho put the final bullet in Escobar<\/a>?
\nJuan Manuel Fangio<\/em><\/p>\n
\nFangio, Juan Fangio!
\nwho’s that sideways through Nouveau Monde<\/a>?
\nFangio, Juan Fangio!
\nwho gave the Heisman<\/a> to Marilyn Monroe?
\nFangio, Juan Fangio!
\n\u00bfquien es el hombre m\u00e1s macho?
\nJuan Manuel Fangio<\/em><\/p>\n
\nToday’s Politically Motivated Kidnappers Are Total Dicks<\/strong>
\nFinding himself held hostage in a harsh and hostile landscape, Fangio reminisces about the time he got kidnapped<\/a> on his way out to dinner before the Cuban Grand Prix. He was sure it was a practical joke, but no, these kids with beards and guns were Castro revolutionaries and they assured him that they were serious. Serious enough, at least, to detain him in a nicely furnished apartment and act like total fanboys while the Battista’s “bourgeois” Grand Prix went on without him (until an accident killed a bunch of spectators and the race was suspended, anyway). Afterwards they dropped him off with the Argentine embassy, the seeds of political enlightenment having been planted. Years later, Fangio would receive a get-well card from one of his captors, now representing Cuba’s Ministry of Commerce. \u00a1A tu salud!<\/em> (This actually happened, by the way.)<\/p>\n
\nsnow still on the ground
\neleven weeks now
\nthese guys aren’t fucking around<\/em><\/p>\n
\nit sounds weird to say but those guys were okay
\na case could be made
\nthat they saved my life that day<\/em><\/p>\n
\nCuban sandwiches and beers
\nwhich title meant the most to me?
\nasked my most gracious host of me<\/em><\/p>\n
\nI charmed the pants right off of them
\nsmiling they sent me home again<\/em><\/p>\n
\nI got a card: “Get well soon Se\u00f1or Fangio”
\nsigned, Movimiento 26 de Julio<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n
\nget well soon Se\u00f1or Fangio
\nMovimiento 26 de Julio
\nget well soon Se\u00f1or Fangio
\nwe miss you too Se\u00f1or Fangio
\nhope you’re doing good Se\u00f1or Fangio
\nthings are good here Se\u00f1or Fangio
\nget well soon Se\u00f1or Fangio<\/em><\/p>\n
\n(Tr. the old ones, or the old men.) Another mission, another long solo drive through forbidding and familiar terrain, and another opportunity for inevitable reflections on absence and loss. The mention of “the disappeared<\/a>” hints at a creeping awareness of what’s really haunting our Fangio, but for now it’s easier and perhaps safer to ponder the fates of those directly known to him: his family; his navigator Daniel Urritia, killed in an accident during the 1948 Gran Premio del America del Sur<\/a>; his former teammate Onofre Marim\u00f3n<\/a>, killed during practice at the N\u00fcrburgring<\/a> in 1954; and a roll-call of contemporaries who fell victim to the occupational hazards and war-like mortality rates of mid-century automobile racing.<\/p>\n
\nmy brother and his kid
\nbut I can’t afford to look back now
\nit’s not like I ever did<\/em><\/p>\n
\nand another at the ‘ring
\nsince then the disappeared have piled high
\nhands up if you know what I mean<\/em><\/p>\n
\nit comes as no surprise
\nwhen the mind begins to play its tricks
\nand the ghosts pull up alongside<\/em><\/p>\n
\nPeter<\/a> and Pierre<\/a>
\nPedro<\/a> y Ricardo<\/a>
\nlook now, the gang’s all here<\/em><\/p>\n
\n(The Radicalization and Redemption of Juan Manuel Fangio)<\/strong>
\nIt starts innocently enough, with a conversational and entirely reasonable response to the unpleasantness of certain aspects of Fangio’s chosen vocation; from there the tone turns wistful, as our narrator recalls his hometown and the distance, both physical and emotional, between his life now and the occasions of his greatest glory. Then comes a third verse, though, and suddenly shit gets real. For the first time, Fangio comes face to face with his demons and confesses his shame for his silence during the Guerra Sucia<\/em><\/a>, for the artful dodge of one “not interested in politics,” for his cowardice and betrayal of the very people who had elevated him to the status of national hero. For the first time, the true nature of Fangio’s mission is made clear: redemption for himself, and revenge for his fellow countrymen\u2014revenge against not a particular regime or nation, not just the CIA or the cartels, not just the IMF or the WTO, but against every agent of oppression that has served to exploit and terrorize the people of Latin America for the last five hundred years.<\/p>\n
\nit gives me little satisfaction
\nto do what’s now required
\nof the responsible man of action
\nthe psychopaths and sadists
\nthey bring such joy to the task
\nbut me, yeah, not so much
\nwhy do you ask?<\/em><\/p>\n
\nsince I dropped in on Balcarce
\nthe town where I was born
\nwhere I kept my Maserati
\nit’s a sweet 250F<\/a>
\nI last drove at Spa<\/a>, 1954
\nit was like an extension of my body then
\nnot anymore<\/em><\/p>\n
\nwell okay, I’ve had a lot
\nI was courageous, a hero on the track
\nand off it I was not
\nI watched my countrymen
\nsent off to their deaths
\nand I never said a word
\ninstead I used my celebrity and my fame
\nand I hid behind my name as a shield
\na fucking shield
\nwhen it should have been a sword<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
![drifting that SLR<\/a>?\nFangio, Juan Fangio!\nwho crossed the Andes in a rusty Saab?\nFangio, Juan Fangio!\nwho put](\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_i_AovfzNXgQ\/S8NEJMzdy3I\/AAAAAAABI0A\/W-6EfGhqp2M\/s1600\/fangio,+le+mans+1955+airbreak.jpg\"){kind=link}