By BOB TARTE

I recently received an e-mail from my good friend and fellow Beat columnist Dave Hucker, threatening to drag me in front of the International Web Crimes Tribunal at the Hague unless I added his recent "Hey Mr. Music" installments to my technobeat.com Web site. And by "recent," he was referring to the fact that I hadn't updated the site since 2003.

Remarkably, despite the dearth of any material post-dating the break-up of the Beatles, the "Technobeat" Web site still received between 1832 and 2681 hits per day this month--which made me wonder how much traffic I might get if I actually caught up the content. But content wasn't the only problem. I designed the site late last century in the days before large monitors became the norm. So it also needed a more modem look that replaced the postage stamp-size area I'd reserved for text and graphics to a window you could view without resorting to scanning electron microscopy.

By the time you read this, I should have finished the reconstruction. That is, if Mr. Hucker, who egged me on to update in the first place, gets around to sending me the info he wants on his home page. Otherwise, I have no choice but to drag him in front of the Internet division of Interpol. All of this I do simply to serve the public--and also with the hope of pointing more traffic toward my bobtarte.com Web site and selling copies of my two books, Enslaved by Ducks and Fowl Weather, which every reader of this magazine should immediately buy.

Check out the site, which includes all "Technobeat" columns since 1990 and all "Hey Mr. Music" columns since 1997, and let me know what you think of the new design. You can e-mail me at r.tarte@att.net and Uncle Huck at huckero@ btintemet.com.

Sones de Mexico Ensemble Chicago blends Mexican roots music with Woody Guthrie on title cut Esta Tierra Es Tuya (This Land is Your Land) (Sones de Mexico), the second movement of Bach's "Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major" on another track and elsewhere a 5/4-meter version of Led Zeppelin's "Four Sticks," and they do all sources proud. Such implausible fusions usually turn fissionable, but pulling prejudices apart is sort of the point here. After 13 years in the U.S., these overachievers bring so much authenticity to the regional folk styles, so much virtuosity to the orchestral excursions (on which they play over 50 all-acoustic instruments), and so much fun to everything they touch, that you can't help but surrender to their creativity.

Some of the tracks play it more or less straight with traditionalism, such as the razor-honed son huasteco "La Presumida," boasting a duel between the stinging violin and a dancer's boots, plus octave-hopping yodeling vocals. "Tabasco Suite" ornaments a son de marimba medley with guest Ramon Sanchez's piccolo and saxophones, and I'm guessing he's the contributor of the un-credited soprano sax break on son de tarima "Yo Vendo Unos Ojos Negros."

A disc of these would have more than satisfied, but the Ensemble ponies up the trumpet and sax-led love song "Eres Bella Flor" by music director and lead vocalist Victor Pichardo, and surprises with the medley "Los Panaderos," which opens with fast harp work on a trio of sones jarochos from Veracruz before plunging us into a festive Puerto Rican plena. If we needed a demonstration that there's plenty of sparks left in Mexican folk genres, Esta Tierra Es Tuya revs up an impressive musical engine. The cd includes a better-than-average booklet plus a separate foldout insert providing song lyrics, credits, notes and a guide to the instruments.