“…–CHINGA TU MADRE!–…Viva México, cabrones!…” Echoes of crunching chords and cymbals crash on top of backed-up, slogging slogans belted from the microphone and whiplashed throughout the entire auditorium, creating the sloppy aural pit that is the Aragon acoustic experience, which at the moment parallels perfectly the over-saturated floor of the ballroom booming with bodies and banners.


Mexico City’s hard-rock-rap combo Molotov has the audience draping themselves in nationalistic tricolor and cliché — chanting the equivalent of “Long live Mexico, motherfuckers!” — in their updated rock-‘n’-roll-rebel pose that seems to gloss everything from European conquest to the Zapatista uprising in one squelchingly revisionist power-chord, punctuated by a sucker-punched “puto, PUTO, — PUTO!” (read: “bee-otch”) swear for good measure.
Molotov are the latest, least subtle provocateurs of co-opted culture that is the mixed heritage of rock ‘n’ roll as received in Latin America, whose economic self-subsistence and folk riches have long since been plasticized and re-sold to it. As an attempt to promote alter-Latino bands who made headway in the ’90s — despite a stateside flood of urban/pop product that hardly needs that extra qualifier “Latin” — the third annual Watcha Tour brings a core of acts on a slowly growing North American expo of rock’s colonized counterparts, conceived by the organizers of the Warped Tour.
Adapting to prefab U.S. tastes and regional variation in Latino markets, tour organizers juggle a mixed roster, from the classic ’80s Argentinean new-wave rock of Enanitos Verdes to the hairband-and-heartfelt grunge pop of Spain’s Dover. Honduran and Tijuanense DJs (Latin Froz and the Nortec Collective) provided the intermission beats, which were switched up by rotating headliners and band trade-offs at different legs of the tour, and stretched out to the exemplary four-and-a-half hours by the seven acts featured at the Aragon. (No matter a $45 door charge, the young Mexican audience maxed out floor space and got its money’s worth in slamming sweat.)
Regardless of sharp diversity in style, era, and nationality of some bands — with Chile’s veteran La Ley bringing to memory the hammy stage drama of The Call, while Colombia’s singer/songwriter Juanes reminds of Rick Springfield with vallenata rhythms, all co-existing onstage with the capital-city-club-kid machismo of Molotov, the goofy chicle-pop of Argentina’s red-jumpsuit-wearing El Otro Yo — Chicago is probably as good as it gets for Watcha until California, where the seeds of stateside syncretic combos have been sown since the ’70s.
Some wishes for Watcha’s future: Chicago bands on the bill, a bigger outdoor venue, and bigger (industry?) targets for the rebellious sloganeering of groups like Molotov.
18 August 2001, Illinois Entertainer

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