Manu Chao at the Plaza de Toros de Guadalajara, Sunday, February 26th

First off, Manu Chao 101. He’s a French/Basque/Spanish bloke who used to be in (French band) Mano Negra. In ’98 or thereabouts he released his first album, Clandestino which is a fantastic mix of songs about his life as a world traveller sung in French, Spanish, English and nonsense, among other languages, (‘I’m the king of bongo baby, I’m the king of bongo bong”…). Laid back rhythms, sampled loops and irresistible grooves all feature prominently. Also there’s an effect which I’m fairly sure he nicked from an 80s electronic keychain that makes a whistling noise then arcade machine explosion which he’s well fond of. It was followed up in 2002 with Proxima Estación: Esperanza which was more of the same; and when your first album’s as good as his was this is no bad thing. In fact, Radiohead could learn from this stick-to-what-you-know approach to writing albums… but I digress. A live album came out relatively recently which I never got round to downloading, but since I’m not writing for Rolling Stone or Q, that’s allowed… All in all tuneful, politically-aware hippy music.

So what was he like on Sunday? Well we arrived at 7:30, doors were billed for 8 and we queued for quite a while building up a quite a thirst and admiring the t-shirts, listening to some kind of musical mayhem inside… we finally got in and found our seats right at the vertiginous top of the bull ring to the left of the stage and established base camp. I went to get a round of Estrella dobles in. The first bar had sold out so they sent me to the next which was also dry, I then made it to the last bar and managed to get to the front without too much elbowing only to be ignored for 15 minutes. Victor had come looking for me by this stage, and helped me get their attention but even then it took forever. I managed to get the last 5 beers in the whole stadium. Amazing if you ask me that an event like this was going to end up beer-free. This is Mexico, not Massachusetts… Victor has a conspiracy theory that they were holding back the booze to prevent trouble. But I don’t reckon so as the beer was warm and they obviously weren’t prepared… Anyroad… during the queueing about fifty people without tickets stormed the entrance gates chucking bottles and suchlike at the security staff and streaming into the building. There were a fair few flashes going off, but I haven’t managed to track down any pictures on the intarwebs. These things always happen when you’ve not got your camera. Maybe it’s time to upgrade my mobile phone… anyroad, it was a little hairy for a few minutes there, but all part of the colourful Mexican concert-going experience. And most of the broken glass missed me…

Back up the 6 flights of steps to the top of the bullring and the lights went down and Mr Chau and band took the stage setting the musical agenda for the evening. Live it is a very different beast. Studio albums rely on carefully crafted editing and samples whereas live it’s an all-out ska-fest. Even gentler numbers got the Dreadzone-at-Ashton-Court treatment, which is all well and good if you’re in the moshpit at the front, but less so for a sedate 31-year-old married bloke sitting comfortably far from the speakers. The energy from the mosh pit and crowd surfers soon worked its way around the crowd and despite the lack of booze I found myself risking my neck by jumping around on the precarious seating. The sound system left a fair bit to be desired and it was hard to hear what the between-songs patter was all about. Something about democracy. I’m guessing he thinks it’s a good thing, but we’ll never know… They played for more than two hours which is fantastic value and it was great to watch the crowd getting more anarchic and the security guards slowly edging away in growing terror. So despite major logistical problems as a spectacle it was great, far better than my last Mexican concert (Oasis in el D.F. in 1998) where everyone behaved far too normally.

Lessons learnt:

• Ticketmaster won’t accept foreign credit cards. The pendejos.
• If you go to a concert to jump around, you’ll be needing tickets at the front.
• It never hurts to bring a hip-flask of tequila and a camera phone.
• If you’re going just to hear albums recreated on stage, you’re better off going to the offy, and listening at home with the volume at 11.
• If you can’t get tickets, find 50 other fans in the same position and riot.
• If you’re after a socio-cultural spectacular with a superlative soundtrack, Manu Chao in a bullring fits the bill nicely.

Another expat’s reviewed the gig here . And even has a camera phone photo of the bullring… Tell him I sent you 🙂