Me dad drew this lovely goat in the moon… and I had to include it. Gracias, papá 🙂
So Jose and me are putting images and music to his writing:
here’s the ‘demo’. Enjoy…
http://www.gwynunlimited.com/propaganda.htm
& people are starting to wimp out of the lucha libre mission. I’m going, no matter what (as long as I can bring me camera…)
Well the plan was to go to La Fuente cantina @ 8am (when the England vs Paraguay match starts over here), but I didn’t make it after a latish night sampling the wares of Sacromonte (new top 5 Guadalajara restaurant) and a few drinks at the bar opposite. i can’t remember its name, but its logo is the same as Enron’s (a slanted E) and finished off with Dr.Who (Cheap and cheerful cross between The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, The Matrix, The 5th Element and er, Dr. Who). A well nice evening all round. So I watched the match at home, good first half, dull second half… but we won… Then I spent an hour or so pestering people around the world on Skype and now I have to do stuff: Sort out the divine salon . com .mx website, source a Sopranos DVD set and a few other minor errands. Sita’s got the camera cos she’s off with her professor friend and a gaggle of reporters interviewing tequileros in the countryside. It’s harder to motivate myself to go out if I don’t have my camera on me, but I’ve got a few new podcasts to keep me busy. Found a great kareoke program too, more of which later. Comment if you’d like me to post my rendition of The Bangles’ Eternal Flame… Darlin’
Instead of full blown reviews, check out the ‘Consumed’ iFrame to the right (bottom IE users) in 10 minutes or so… Righty, a la chamba…
Off to Kilcar tomorrow- Exeter -> Belfast and on to County Donegal. Back Sundayish. Flippin’ marvelous to see Bert, Anne, Stu and friends at the weekend in London. Met media types, danced to DJ Bert, had pasties, kebabs and sunday roasts and finally got something back from the Salvation Army. Cheers everyone. For Kilcar photos from 3 yrs ago, or was it 2… click here Blogging may resume properly in MEJICO…
To be fair, ramraids isn’t in the SOWPODs wordlist neither.
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:
Another expat’s reviewed the gig here . And even has a camera phone photo of the bullring… Tell him I sent you 🙂
