Songs in the key of my life: Rex Gildo - Fiesta Mexicana

When we emigrated to Germany in 1971 I was in for quite a culture shock. One of the worst things I realized was that Germany probably has the worst popular music in the world. It is bad in any sense of the world. One evening a few weeks after our arrival my parents took my grandparents out for a dinner, and my sister and I stayed with a teenage boy who babysitted us for the few hours they were away. We were at his place, and he fed us with Mon Cheri confection (which contains alcohol!) and watched the show ZDF Hitparade with us. That show was hosted by a very vile guy, Dieter-Thomas Heck, something like a greasy used car dealer celebrating 'German' pop music. The songs were what actually was popular among the older German population, but was watched by nearly everybody. The songs presented were to be sung in German, the rule being that only 3 words could come from a different language. I think much later they changed that rule completely. The music was usually simple conventional songs with a 'catchy' refrain and a monotonous stomping rhythm. Most popular were such songs that had simple lyrics that everybody could clap and sing along to, and even better if the singer and the song had some kind of exotic context. Out of a perverse fascination I have watched most of the shows in the 70s, and although I hate all of them, many songs have remained in my memory - unfortunately. Therefore I could come up with quite a few titles, but I picked this one, since it fits the cliche quite perfectly and was a hit in 1972. Oh, I forgot to mention: like 'Fiesta Mexicana' the more successful songs were not just one-hit wonders. These are played to this day in beer tents and fairs all over the country, everybody knows these songs, if they like them or not. Rex Gildo was successful performing as if he were a Hispanic singer, but actually he was a Bavarian born and raised just a few miles from where I live here, his real name was Ludwig Franz Hirtreiter. Behind the in-the face fake cheery Spanish boy image he must have been a troubled human being. He died in 1999 aged 63, having spent three days in an artificially-induced coma after attempting suicide by jumping from the window of his apartment building. He was said to have been suffering psychological problems. After his death, it was reported that he had been gay and involved in a relationship with his secretary with whom he lived, for seven years.