CD: Mitch Webb & The Swindles, "The Lonely Kind"
When I first saw Mitchell Justice Webb, he was eating fat flour tortillas smeared with beans and cheese at the Taco Cabana near Brackenridge Park, probably on break from managing the CD Exchange. He was about as unassuming as anyone else sucking down Dr. Pepper and brown salsa in quantity on a hot-ass SanAnto afternoon.
A few years later, and I’d scrape up just enough couch change for a Lone Star Tall Boy to suck on and collapse under tough-love tree-shade in 112-degree heat, crumpled like an empty 12-pack carton thrown out a truck window on Broadway. In other words, my life had started to resemble a dog-eared yarn from a Mitch Webb song.
Even now, when I think of those days, Mitch and his band the Swindles provide the soundtrack for heat-stroked visions of dusty porches and yellowed lawns, cantineras with distinctive skin like wrinkled paper bags calling me “mi’jo” and setting up a Shiner neatly wrapped in napkin sweating like my forehead. Thoughts of old friends who dream of owning their own piece of Texas big enough to shoot a gun and have the bullet drop on their own land, their own proper place.
And oddly enough that makes me miss my home state and ache inside like an empty-stomach buzz at sundown.
Mitch Webb and the Swindles describe themselves on MySpace as “kind of a country garage rock band,” a description about as unassuming and down-home as Webb’s personal presence, and they list commonplace influences that honky-tonk through my head like viejitos doing the tacuache at Lerma’s: “Frito Pie, Doug Sahm, watermelon, Freddy Fender, enchiladas, 13th Floor Elevators, popsicles.” And don’t forget Los #3 Dinners!
Their recent and fourth release, “The Lonely Kind,” bears the imprint of Supreme Music Co., but dial their listed number and Mitch will probably pick up with a big “Howdy!” Following their tribute DVD/CD to the passing of famed rock-spot Taco Land and beloved wild-man owner Ram Ayala, this latest recording contrasts homespun humor on a range of roots covers with more deep country-ballad meditations from Webb’s store of personal history.
I’ve had the chance to write a few reviews over the years that touch on what the Swindles evoke as a Texas band with big chops minus big ego, like when they opened for Doug Sahm on a Quintet reunion some months before he passed: “...the Sir Douglas Quintet represents San Antonio's greatest pop hope of yesteryear, while any number of Swindles tunes could make this band known countrywide.” Closer to home, I tried to describe what the Swindles meant for my own experience of Texas: “Mitch Webb's Tex-Mex balladeering and Spanglish twanging brings to mind being stuck driving through King Ranch on a Sunday afternoon in a pickup truck without A/C, the windows wide-open and radio cranking for a sing-a-long to pass the time.”
More plainly, I described their late-’90s release “Drunk for Your Amusement” as “simply great hip-shaking, beer-drinking rock 'n' roll.” Grammy Winner Joe Reyes rocked the shit on tunes like “H.E.B.” and “Round Rock,” and he returns on “Lonely” with distinctive journeyman fretwork to lay down solid musicianship behind Webb’s drawling vocals and heart-heavy lyrics.
But for the various covers, this release is pretty somber and true to its title. It kicks off with “A Man Can Cry,” a Freddy Fender doo-wop that opens the door for “The Pig Song,” a trad-ditty about hitting rock bottom and literally piggybacking with the only friend who will take you to the nearest liquor store. Though this is pretty playful stuff, Webb’s recently passed-away sister, Dallas Louise Webb Wickham Grodman, contributed vocals on this track that becomes a sort of elegy to how much Webb’s family has informed his musical and cultural background.
Not till the third song do we hear an original Webb composition, and it follows with Sergio Lara adding twinkling texture on mandolin in a flamenco-folk nexus. On this track, drunkenness and love vie for a man’s heart even while both derange his senses beyond clarity. It’s an odd leap next to “10,000 Years Ago (AKA The Bragging Song),” a sort of country one-liner a la Kinky Friedman: “I saw Peter, Paul and Moses playing ring around the roses/ And I’ll lick the guy that says it isn’t so.”
It’s an interesting back-and-forth that seems to find the archetypal Texas troubador caught between sardonic, shit-kickin' wit and searing, whiskey-chasing woe. For good measure, Webb throws in “Blubberball” by Claude Morgan and “Dance a Cachuca” by Sir Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame).
It’s the grit of sorrow and humor caught at the same moment that makes this release a Swindles gem, like the title track that sums up both the despair and hope I sometimes felt in my most solitary moments down South.
Like Mitch says on “Cactus Blooms,” “Every man has his reasons for leaving.” But Texas looms ever-present in my mind as a place I can always come home to with a hunger for a country-kind of happy ending: “Gonna find me a sweet señorita/ Gonna buy me a parcel of land.”
Babasónicos @ The Congress (Chicago Tribune)
"Babasónicos show a retrospective"
By Benjamin Ortiz, Special to the Tribune
Section: Tempo
Date: June 30, 2008
With three opening acts from Mexico and Chicago, Friday's Latin-rock show at the Congress featuring Babasónicos felt like a new wave dance-party demo of the elder Argentine headliner's influences and progression over a 17-year career. Drawing mostly young fans, the set mixed styles from indie to emo to syntho dance, sketching the band's pop trajectory from experimental to streamlined rock.
Despite a middling crowd that never came close to filling the cavernous Congress, the opening acts kept the energy going to hearty applause. Local rockers Re. De la Parka started it off with safely straightforward melodic progressions, while kids in skinny ties, canvas sneakers, supertight jeans, overthick specs and faux hawks gathered.
Likewise, local band Antenna echoed various Spanish pop influences, such as Soda Stereo, in wide-ranging homage to Babasónicos' musical ingredients.
But Monterrey's 60 Tigres were the opening highlight, with a vigorous dance-punk-disco-funk feel from wrangling bass, percussive flourishes and edgy performance energy that felt like a Gang of Four remix, pulling fans onstage for an impromptu thrash-vogue session.
With Babasónicos properly introduced, the crowd swarmed stageward to dig on lead singer and longtime member Adrián "Dárgelos" Rodríguez, who preened and strutted like a glam God through mostly recent cuts from this year's "Mucho" (Universal). In a clean and tight set hitting such video favorites as "Putita" and "Pijamas," the Argentine band's execution was marred only by whistling feedback from a house system that never quite got the pitch.
In counterpoint, the audience let loose with a raunchy catcall common at Latino rock shows to demand an encore. It came off like a warm fan tribute to Babasónicos' more raucous roots, an affectionate way of calling the band back for a few more and recalling the wide range of influences on display at the Congress.
"Mexicanos al Grito de Rock" @ The Aragon (Chicago Tribune)
"Mexican pride rocks at the Aragon"
By Benjamin Ortiz, Special to the Tribune
Section: Tempo
Date: April 28, 2008
Just past midnight at an Aragon Ballroom breaking out in wall-to-wall slam pits, the supershow "Mexicanos al Grito de Rock" had nearly the entire chock-a-block crowd singing the Mexican National Anthem, complete with patriotic gritos (cries) of "¡Que viva México!" to shake the stage like majestic cannonade.
It was not only a pre-Cinco de Mayo celebration but also practice for the upcoming May Day march, flash points for Mexican nationalism and hard-core righteous fury about the treatment of Latino immigrants in the U.S., themes not lost on any of the six bands (mostly from Mexico City) that played from roughly from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m. for an audience seriously rocking the red, white and green.
Frocked in nationalistic T-shirts, lucha libre wrestling masks, soccer jerseys and even the Mexican flag itself draped like a cape, the mainly twentysomething rockeros sported all the cultural commonplaces of the motherland, reinterpreted in Chicago as pride in home, hearth and long hair. As one T-shirt put it, "May the Virgin of Guadalupe bless the rock-and-roll band."
The lineup paid tribute to the elder trio Heavy Nopal, which announced an "Asalto Chido" ("Attack of the Cool"), singing a tune made famous by Mexico's Bob Dylan-esque "Rockdrigo" Gonzalez. Doling out raunchy blues-simmered cabaret rock like a geriatric garage band, Heavy Nopal warned the crowd, "Don't ever stop being rock 'n' rollers but, above all, don't ever stop being Mexican!" This was immediately followed by Hispanic versions of the Eagles and Bob Seger.
Call it MEXimum R&B.
Spinning between sets, local DJ Fuego held it all together with a sonic time trip through Mexico's rock odyssey, and the onslaught of band-upon-band oscillated from Sturm und Drang metal (Luzbel) to grungy rock (Liran' Roll and Banda Bostik) and finally Afro-beat-inspired ska (Panteon Rococo).
Just like stateside, rock long ago in Mexico was once considered anti-establishment, and greñudos (long-hairs) were a threat to the image of traditional folkways. Now, it's a show of national identity to embrace rock and roots in one crunching power chord.
The Mars Volta @ The Aragon (Chicago Tribune)
"The Mars Volta hits hard, loud, otherworldly"
By Benjamin Ortiz, Special to the Tribune
Section: Tempo
Date: April 22, 2008
Self-indulgent, bloated, sprawling, navel-gazing, pretentious, ponderous and hyper-cerebral: On Sunday night, The Mars Volta stomped all over their critics and the verbiage typically bandied about like so much bombast about their sound, with a picaresque performance that started and stopped on a dime while wrenching the sold-out Aragon Ballroom through a rock marathon almost hitting the three-hour mark.
Misleadingly prepping the house with sentimental boleros and chansons, the speakers then unleashed Ennio Morricone's "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly," what proved a battle cry for the band to take stage and kick into an ear-ringingly memorable set that spanned the band's beefy oeuvre while stressing recent release "The Bedlam in Goliath" (Universal).
With a touring lineup to match their studio thunder, The Mars Volta unleashed an array of rhythmic and harmonic textures from a six-man backing band including keys, percussion, bass, guitars and various woodwinds, from flute to sax and clarinet. Much of the delicate instrumentation got lost in the Aragon's roaring reverb-wash, but the central duo of Omar Rodriguez-Lopez on lead guitar and Cedric Bixler-Zavala on lead vocals cut through the chaos with sonic brilliance. It was a hard, loud, flamboyant show.
Feeling every kink and rip coming up through the neck of his guitar, Omar tickled the crowd with inspired solos, daring disbelief with otherworldly pacing and unexpected phrasing that switched between metal and jazz. Melting the microphone with pitch-perfect vocals, Cedric also hit the stage hard with gutsy footwork, leg-shuffling struts and full-bodied handstands.
Jumping between some sort of alternative world-jazz band and a punky prog outfit, The Mars Volta played to all shades of their elaborate and sometimes plodding sound but still kept the crowd attentive, even during lulls and more pensive turns of lengthy arrangements with few breaks and no clear sense of when the show would come crashing to an end.
And when the show ended, it was definitively done, too, with huge cheers and a palpable sense of exhaustion from the crowd.
CD: "Tijuana Sound Machine" (Chicago Tribune)
By Benjamin Ortiz, Special to the Tribune
Section: Arts & Entertainment
Date: April 20, 2008
"Bostich + Fussible: Tijuana Sound Machine," Nortec Collective (Nacional Records)
With three volumes of "Tijuana Sessions" under their ranchero belts, the Nortec Collective of Mexican DJs and graphic artists presents two cornerstone turntable músicos, Bostich (Ramón Amezcua) and Fussible (Pepe Mogt), in a breakaway beats-and-banda summit. Bouncing at the waist with regional-Mexican flavored bass, horns and snare, this musical contraption bounds along like an assembly line of Norteño sounds that interconnect and build in gleeful prefab variation. Whether tickling the eardrum with rollicking clarinets and accordions or prodding the hips with bajo sexto and juicy brass, Bostich and Fussible focus their studio compadres in producing 15 crisp tracks (less than 4 minutes each) like a value pack of Tijuana gusto ready to mix to your own taste, as they do at hopping parties on the border.
CDs: “TTM Greatest Hits” & “Latin Bitman” (Chicago Tribune)
By Benjamin Ortiz, Special to the Tribune
Section: Arts & Entertainment
Date: April 6, 2008
“Greatest Hits,” Todos Tus Muertos (Nacional Records)
Argentina’s Todos Tus Muertos started in 1985 and like many Latin American bands blended ska and reggae into a rasta-punk ethos, but with a political edge and hard-rock sound that prefigured later developments both stateside and abroad. Their “Greatest Hits” kicks off with “Andate,” a deceptively feel-good groove that breaks into a furious dance-hall rap and then shifts just as quickly into tickling Spanish reggae hooks, like Latin changeling Manu Chao, but with signature punk élan jerking between mellow and maniacal. “Mate” likewise drills a funk-bass intro setting up a metallic refrain to rival Rage Against the Machine or Molotov with punchy punk-MC delivery. Raga interludes are followed by funk-rap, plus some very savory straight-ahead reggae.
“Latin Bitman,” DJ Bitman (Nacional Records)
From Santiago, Chile, DJ Bitman (a.k.a. Jose Antonio Bravo) follows up his stateside debut with a sophomore release of Latin electronica. The journey kicks off with a French flight attendant readying listeners for takeoff, listing such sonic destinations as Latin jazz, break-beat and bossa nova. After a bit of geeky audio fumbling, piano funk breaks out with turntablist touches, followed by Bitman’s vocal samplings decontextualized from South American sources in a gleeful romp. Bitman aims for a global jet-set clique, like Mexican duo Plastilina Mosh, but this set announces itself just a bit too much as having “gone Latin.” The trip is nevertheless savory, especially on such samba-inspired tracks as “Tropilove” and “El Diablo.”
Black Moth Super Rainbow @ The Empty Bottle (Chicago Tribune)
"Black Moth drawn to the light of a psychedelic, self-indulgent night"
By Benjamin Ortiz, Special to the Tribune
Section: Tempo
Date: Monday, March 31, 2008
This is how Black Moth Super Rainbow turned the Empty Bottle into a full-blown psychedelic circus Saturday night:
The mix called for balloons bounced about the crowd; beastly beaked pinatas; bubble machines blowing syrupy froth; and grainy video projections that ran the gamut from Richard Simmons gyrating to Tyra Banks pouting. But why stop there? The five-piece brought on deranged hand puppets bobbing through layers of Vocodor and dense funk backbeats. Then, as icing, they blew apart the pinatas, sending Hello Kitty dolls and deformed sugar-suckers flying in all directions.
Such a cerebral tapestry calls to mind the band's logo, bearing the motto "Taste the Rainbow" with a bloody, candied tomato dripping organic gore all over a backdrop of industrial decay. And it stands in contrast to the backwoods Pennsylvania combo's soft-spoken stage demeanor. But don't confuse soft-spoken with non-assertive. As evidenced at the Empty Bottle, Black Moth knows how to create a vocal simmer that sits just above a caldron of effects, distortion and voice-box amplification.
The band's Chicago set list, lasting about a dozen songs and just less than an hour, came mainly from their last recording, "Dandelion Gum" (Graveface) — supposedly a concept album based on rural folklore about witches luring youngsters into the woods with irresistible sweet-tooth treats.
It would be easy to describe the total effect as aerobics on cough syrup, except the music — at turns pensively down-tempo, then electrifying, upbeat and juicy — kept the audience pumping their fists. The synth-pulsing sounds alternated between a mock-instructional gym theme, a Moog suite sounding akin to a TV title track (think "The Rockford Files" meets "Columbo") and the straight-up neo-hippie electro anthem, "Melt Me."
That song proved the set's high point — a variation on Alice's Wonderland instructions to "drink me." The crowd near the stage thoroughly enjoyed the funky rhythm spread between throbbing bass lines, a hip-hoppish snare and synthesizer tweaks and wobbles.
But fans got only one spare encore and minimal interaction from the artists, as if Black Moth's solipsistic compositions kept the members completely inside their heads. Yet they were really into what they're doing, as bassist Power Pill Fist (sporting a glorious beard-fro and orange wristbands) topped an amp to dig into the groove from up above and hand out low-fives. That said: You have to wonder why lead vocalist Tobacco never left his half-lotus position, and the bopping keyboardists perched all-consumed over equipment like kids with Mattel toys on a 1970s Christmas morning.
With the Black Moth set finished, the Empty Bottle returned to its grungy self, the aftertaste akin to waking up from headache sleep, deep in a pool of your own slobber — you want more of the dream, but wonder why.
CDs: "Latin Reggae" & "Lotería Beats" (Chicago Tribune)
By Benjamin Ortiz, Special to the Tribune
Section: Arts & Entertainment
Date: March 2, 2008
"Latin Reggae," various artists (Putumayo World Music)
Since 1993, Putumayo's anthologies have typically dished up genre-samplers from a global menu of possibilities, whether tango or Latin jazz. Spanning the Caribbean to South America, Spain and beyond, "Latin Reggae" marks a soulful counterpoint to contemporary reggaetón with a taste of the roots, but re-interpreted from pan-Latin pop inspiration. Groups such as Los Cafres (Argentina) and Cultura Profetica (Puerto Rico) dip into traditional roots rhythms with socially conscious lyrics in obvious homage to Bob Marley. But tracks such as "Mulata Descolorada" by Macaco and "Ven" by Amparanoia (both from Spain) playfully tickle ska beats with dub, flamenco, rock and salsa. The total effect is "mestizo," as they call it in Barcelona -- "mixed" -- like the Latin and African sources at the heart of reggae itself.
"Lotería Beats Mixtape Vol. 1," DJ Raul Campos (Nacional Records)
Storied DJ Raul Campos, host of a popular Santa Monica public-radio show, teams with L.A.'s Nacional Records, home of such majors as Manu Chao and the Pinker Tones, to remix progressive Latin artists of the moment. Campos evenly pieces together a set that feels down-tempo, despite flourishes of Latin percussion across tropical and traditional genres, for a mellow chillout lounge experience. Various Nacional artists contribute funky sonic ingredients along the way, such as Tijuana's Nortec Collective and the Mexican Institute of Sound. But the club vibe really gets interesting when Campos pairs up David Byrne with Los Amigos Invisibles, Sergio Mendes with Black Eyed Peas, picking up electro steam and then cooling off in a spacey cumbia-dub.
Peña @ Old Town School (Chicago Tribune)
"A Latin American plaza springs up in Chicago"
By Benjamin Ortiz, Special to the Tribune
Section: On the Town
Date: January 25, 2008
The Old Town School of Folk Music bustles daily with students carting instruments to classes and echoes of percussive flamenco stepping or drum circles piecing out African beats. But at midweek, the lobby of the main concert hall becomes a Latin American plaza, the traditional center of folk life and community commonplace.
If you missed its winter kickoff, the 12th season of La Peña continues every Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. through March 12, with free, ticketed shows consisting of two sets every night for a full-bodied showcase of music and dance spanning the trans-continental diversity of Latino culture.
Community projects director Matthew "Mateo" Mulcahy expects average turnout to reach near capacity of 400 people, so Latin music enthusiasts are encouraged to reserve tickets.
Music and dance go hand in hand at each show, along with the easygoing feel of a fiesta among friends, the true root of the Pena transplanted from Latin America to Chicago with sound and savor intact.
This season includes some notable firsts in the quest for true Latino variety, with rock-en-Español, Ecuadorian music and traditional Afro-Colombian culture in the mix. The menu as a whole jumps between salsa, bachata, son, samba and much more.
Four shows stand out.
- - -
Maladicto (Feb. 6)
Metallic Mex-Rican rock probably isn't the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Latino music, but these up-and-coming Spanish-language thrashers might leave ears ringing when they grind out some politically charged, Chicago-bred heavy anthems.
Paoli Mejías Quintet (Feb. 27)
Old Town's Matthew "Mateo" Mulcahy cites this Puerto Rican artist as "one of the top Latin percussionists, period," for his work with such trailblazers as Eddie Palmieri and Tito Puente plus his own Grammy-nominated work on blazing drum skins.
Sones de Mexico Ensemble (Feb. 20)
Our local proponents of traditional Mexican folkloric music celebrate a homecoming and recent Grammy nominations, as they demonstrate what some of them actually teach at the School, including former Peña curator Juan Díes.
Revolu (March 12)
The New York quintet delivers traditional rhythms and songs stretching across centuries of Afro-folklore from the Caribbean coast of Colombia, closing the Peña season with special guests Tierra Colombiana, a celebrated Midwestern dance troupe.
Preview: Alex Cuba (Chicago Tribune)
"Here's how Cuba manages to span North America"
By Benjamin Ortiz, Special to the Tribune
Section: On the Town
Date: January 25, 2008
Notes flow from Alexis Puentes' impassioned voice and delicate strumming of the Cuban tres guitar, syncopated with trickling congas and crisp bata drums, like minty mojito poured onto the tip of the tongue.
It's "the essence" of Cuban music, as Puentes says, what you've been thirsting for when you seek out typically Latino sounds of The Buena Vista Social Club or contemporary salsa borne between New York and the Caribbean.
Like the name -- in Spanish, "puente" means "bridge" -- his musical and personal style is a hemispheric channeling of both this Cuban essence and popular North American music, with a cultural heritage equally Latino and global. In traveling translation, Puentes becomes the stage persona known as Alex Cuba, a sugar-cane-sweet distillation of his homeland and his transnational identity.
With a soulful mix of pan-Caribbean rhythms, African-American funk and R&B, jazz and pop motifs, Alex Cuba strikes a handsomely hip pose musically and stylistically, sporting a vintage Gibson, robust Afro, sideburns and bell-bottoms.
Cuba visits Rumba next week to showcase his CD, "Agua del Pozo" (Caracol Records), due for release Feb. 9. Like "Water From the Well" (as the title translates), Cuba wants to satisfy the palate parched for new Latin musical flavors, and to feed the multiple sources of his own creative soul.
Moving from the countryside near Havana to British Columbia was the first major step in Puentes' quest for a musical persona.
"To be completely honest, I wanted to try life outside of Cuba," he says from Canada, "to hear music from other points of view, and I never regretted that I left." With the Alex Cuba Band, he released "Humo de Tabaco" in 2005, later shortening his artistic brand to Alex Cuba.
"I came to a point where I realized I'm a singer-songwriter," he says, "and the name makes a statement of both where I come from and how I'm trying to stand out."
His latest CD fuses the alt-Latin genre and Afro-American Diaspora, from jazz and soul to traditional Cuban son. The disc digs also into the Cuban "Feeling" Movement, an up-tempo spin on the traditional bolero, but with sentimental, jazz-and-blues-influenced vocals, a la troubadour Pablo Milanes.
With Puentes on Gibson, tres, bass, bata drums, and shaker, the record also features Wurlitzer, congas, bongos, timbales, maracas, and a rich array of horns, suggesting sultry textures and very danceable sentimentality. In "Tu Boca Lo Quita," Puentes plays in Spanish on multiple meanings of "your mouth takes all the bad away" and "your mouth is crazy/wild." And the lyrics "Dame una mordida" mean "give me a bite" and "try me out" and more besides, with Puentes' voice yearning for elusive pleasures, every song dripping with sensual metaphors.
With a stripped-down combo for his show at Rumba, Puentes will play from his recordings and unreleased material. He suggests that even if you don't understand Spanish, the music says all you need to know.
"Somehow, the sound of my voice is very popular with the Anglo-American audience -- it's not a typical singer's voice in Cuba, but it's a very soulful sound, something very intimate and personal I like to share."
Alex Cuba
A bridge to the world
When: 8 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Rumba, 351 W. Hubbard St.
Café Tacuba @ Aragon (Chicago Tribune)
By Benjamin Ortiz, Special to the Tribune
Section: Tempo
Date: Monday, November 26, 2007
After offering everything from floor-stomping punk ska to a cappella folk ballads to intricately textured alt-rock arrangements, Cafe Tacuba closed its Friday show at the Aragon with playful pizazz in a galloping disco line-dance combo of the hokey pokey, the Macarena and the Karate Kid.
Lead singer Ruben Albarran easily switched hats -- from bowler hat to pro wrestling mask to straw sombrero -- like the band bounces from song to song across musical idioms. With a set that spanned the group's 18-year career, the critically acclaimed rock en español icons -- touring behind its latest record, "Sino" -- concocted a menu of sounds and sources.
The new lineup is strictly electric, though -- no folkloric strings or percussion. But the packed Aragon crowd of predominantly Mexican twentysomethings kept the band doling out classics, especially when Los Tacubos came back for a generous, hour-plus encore.
"We're here to serve you," Albarran said with a winning smile, asking the audience for requests. Then, with his signature street-Mex indio-punk vocals, he belted out what became a duet, as the crowd echoed every word.
Despite the more rock-leaning setup, Cafe Tacuba's original Mexico City folkways came across, for example, with punchy ranchera traces in "De Acuerdo."
Lyrically, Albarran clarifies the group's disdain for strict musical categories: "You define rock or electronica, reggaeton or hip-hop on what the radio imposes."
"El Outsider" embraced Tacuba's unique transnational identity.
Openers Austin TV, also from Mexico City, took the stage in matching knickers, sneakers and pro wrestling masks, and said that "race and face don't matter [because] music sometimes says what words can't," as they laid down art-rock instrumentals.
Absolutely nothing about the opener suggested Mexico except for the band speaking Spanish. Such is the culturally unbounded reality of Mex rockeros, who still claim "pais y raiz" ("country and roots"), as Austin TV put it.
Dumpster Diving for Sonic Nuggets
There's something about San Antonio that breeds bands who just don't give a fuck.
Like the Midwestern band that goes by the name Fuck, these groups aren't playing to mainstream hopes of MTV name placement, like so many others who leave in search of the elusive contract. We should all be thankful for this, because SanAnto mainly produces bands who solidly follow trends: pop punk, ska, and most recently, the swing craze. It's a flipside of a scene that finds itself in the wrong town for instant fame yet always in the shadow of the illusionary oasis (get the car gassed up for South by Southwest).
Specifically, many local groups are jumping on the acritical pop-punk bandwagon, following the trendy depoliticization of punk culture. A scenester friend of mine once categorized a certain band as "happy punk" without an ounce of irony, which seemed to aptly describe most bands out there, especially in terms of their complete lack of any dissonance musically, lyrically, or ideologically.
But a few recent CD releases play to different shades of dissonance SanAnto style. Starting out in 1990 as Worm, 1.0 came into existence four years ago, taking the forgotten half of guitarist Phillip Luna's skateboard dubbed "Bedwetter 1.0". Where Bedwetter left some time ago for Dallas, 1.0 plugs away with their e.p. Your Right (Even I Have Seizures Records), offering a good taste of what the band does live, which amounts to chaotic risk-taking rhythms speeding headlong into a wall of noise always on the verge of collapse.
Luna describes every show as "an episode" where the musicians seem to encounter each other for the first time at opposite ends of musical attack. Jerry Rincon lays down a steadily bulldozing bassline that erupts in unexpected time changes, while guitarists Luna and Jason Ucab execute alternating, sometimes arrhythmic chord progressions. And through it all, the expressively pained vocals of Luna and Rincon wrench out Nirvana-esque lyrics as on "Lyon's Park": "Through every crevice and crack goes me/ And on the edge of the world of life I stand/ I wake up fucking you with my hand." This is not exactly "happy" stuff, delving more into love's dark side.
Where 1.0 steps out side of local trends,.... band(s) express a punk approach to doing music despite relative lack of audiences, gigs, and opportunities in our fair city, and they do this without pandering to fans' mass-culture produced tastes, as on 1.0's "I Was Born": "I was born with a microphone/ I was born to sing my song/ I get by on a shoestring, baby/ I get by when I'm falling apart."
San Antonio Current, 1999
Live Review: Quetzal
"It's a daily struggle to keep an identity," Quetzal's song "20 Pesos" opines. "I don't want to be folklore." The third track on their new album, Sing The Real (Vanguard), also followed the opener at their Chicago debut, in which a modest crowd of mainly 20- and 30-something Latinos (like the band) chilled to the eight-piece combo's deep excavations of son Mexicano and Afro-Caribbean rhythms delivered with R&B/soul stylistics matching ranchera fervor from lead duet Martha and Gabriel Gonzalez.
The song speaks to an experience at the templo mayor in Mexico City, in which admission price becomes the wage of broken memory to "walk through the ruins of my soul." As the band ran through a lineup largely culled from the latest release, the crowd quietly vibed for the most part, responding most raucously with dancing and gritos for the recognizably Mexican sounds of zapateado (with Martha Gonzalez stomping on a tarima platform) and string combos (requinto jarocho, violin, and jarana).
Ironically, such traditional flourishes -- most closely associated with Mexican national identity -- were easier to respond to and join in for the audience than the somewhat elegiac yet powerful mixtures of son and soul that, like "20 Pesos," simultaneously capture urban African-American and traditional Mexican vocal emotive dynamics.
Surely, the lyrics of such pieces as "The Social Relevance of Public Art"(with typical couplets that rhyme "community" and "ideology") demand quiet consideration, since they speak to the challenges of discovering and re-inventing cultural identity from the wreckage of colonialism and anthropological erasure. The members of Quetzal reflect the makeup of the audience -- largely Mex-Latino but sometimes mixed genetically and all over the map culturally, inspired by this country's developing demographics and a global sense of cultural context as much from pan-Latino awareness as advanced education in the humanities. Aware of how Western social sciences and the museumification of culture can turn a living, breathing people into quaint folk curios, Quetzal attempt artistic production with academic insight through a prism of folkloric heritage and the "real" that so many claim to keep in Afro-urban culture.
Though the gravity of the music derives from lyrics and a mission inspired by Latin American nueva canción -- equivalent in some ways to U.S. folk-protest music -- variable rhythms (hip-hop and rock) inflect the talented vocals that are straight out of the L.A. Chicano/doo-wop tradition. Recognition and reveling in African culture by way of both U.S. and Caribbean sources make Quetzal more than an anthropological experiment or activist band. Their debut at the HotHouse -- at turns, like a musicology seminar and lounge session -- demonstrated the exciting space between intellectual understanding of Latino heritage and its artistic expression as a kind of nouveau "son rocklórico," perfectly expressed in the closing acappella, barrio-harmonicized ranchera by the Gonzalez siblings.
21 April 2002, Illinois Entertainer
"Del Corazón Festival"
Since its performance space opened in 1990, the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum has featured artists across the spectrum of time and tradition, from folkloric to avant-garde, through regular events and spring/fall festival series. This season's ninth annual Del Corazón Mexican Performing Arts Festival features a diverse multimedia lineup, including a solid musical component with two Chicago debuts.
For the first time in these parts, celebrated Mexico chanteuse Jaramar visits on May 10 and 11 at 7 p.m., bringing Spanish Moor/Christian music and interpretations of poetry by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Nezahualcóyotl. Similarly, the spoken-word/jam troupe of California's Taco Shop Poets pull double-duty for the Center and the Guild Complex's "Musicality Of Poetry" series, on May 17 and 18 and 7 p.m. With contemporary groove/hip-hop style, these poets break down the fourth wall with confrontational verse culled from guerrilla performances at taquerías in their native San Diego and Tijuana.
Most Del Corazón events appear at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum (1852 W. 19th Street, 312.738.1503), though the standout Los Angeles combo Quetzal will unleash a fiery mix of Mexicano, R&B, Afro-Caribbean, and Chicano folk-protest music at the HotHouse on Sunday, April 21, at 7 p.m.
April 2002, Illinois Entertainer
Live Review: ¡Cubanismo!
People danced! Though the roots of the music take that for granted, ¡Cubanismo!'s recent visit to Chicago thankfully found a venue that welcomed and encouraged a full floor of couples and gyrating loners to feel the rhythms moving through their bodies. Cuban musicians from storied groups, such as Orquesta Aragón and Irakere, have appropriately been hosted at the Chicago Theatre or the Symphony Center, and though such swank venues seem appropriate for the acts' distinguished profile, these auditoriums tend to quell dancing unless someone ventures to crowd the aisles with a partner. But the Park West made for comfortable digs for those sipping at cocktails and venturing out onto the floor.
Locals Casolando already had the audience warmed up with flamenco-styled guitar flourish. But the four-piece opener was quickly overshadowed by 13-piece ¡Cubanismo! and a full percussion array pattering dance beats over standout trés and keys. Throughout the show, the group stayed close to traditional mambo and rumba, unfortunately putting aside the interesting experimentation on a recent best-of Rykodisc (¡Mucho Gusto!) that features Cubanoid covers of the Marley/Tosh tune "Get up, Stand Up" and Marley's "Could You Be Loved." The crowd called for "Descaraga de Hoy" as encore, but ¡Cubanismo! chose a new composition instead that nonetheless kept the dance going. Reportedly, members of Casolando stuck around afterwards for a jam session with members of the Cuban touring group that kept them up after kerfew for late-night descarga.
April 2002, Illinois Entertainer
Live Review: Sindicato Argentino del Hip-Hop
"I don't understand a word of Spanish," says Abstruse Tone (aka Seth Rich) of local hip-hoppers Earatik Statik. Neither does his partner-in-rhyme C-Lo (Carlos Polk), but that doesn't stop them from grabbing the mic and freestyling in honor of tonight's guests from the Oeste Side of Buenos Aires who, depending on perspective, are probably the farthest Down South group to come through Chicago. El Sindicato Argentino and Earatik Statik speak a common language of beats and flow from the mother tongue of hip-hop; neither outfit understands the specifics of what each other is saying tonight, but they embrace like homies meeting at a turntable land-bridge. "I can tell the production and rhymes are real tight," says Abstruse Tone after ripping it on stage, "and they got a good mix of commercial and underground going on."
He picks up on the sound that was nurtured by the streets of B.A. and cultivated to garner last year's Latin Grammy for Best Hip-Hop album, an amazing feat for a scene so far removed from affordable access to the latest recordings and live music we take for granted here.
Earatik Statik are among few black patrons in attendance, and they're in the subcultural minority, since few obvious hip-hop heads are mixing it up with a largely Mexican rockero crowd. So why are they here, at a show that's not on the mainstream hip-hop or rock map? "Because we're not haters," says Tone. "It's about music." These words cut right through all the artificial divisions, especially at a club that usually features big regional Mexican acts on the main stage and weekly merengue-salsa-bachata mixes -- local rockeros play on Saturdays in the small Dirty Worm Room downstairs.
After some DJ sound checks and mixes of Kurtis Blow, the Beatnuts, and Jay-Z, the evening starts with a specifically Mexican rock sound from Conflictos, kicking out ska rhythms and heavy-metal-styled guitar solos. Their last piece starts with a hearty grito and a shout of "¡Viva México Cabrones!" as Conflictos barrel into a raucous rendition of "México Lindo y Querido." As the feedback subsides, Dre and Snoop-Dogg crescendo on the house speakers with "Nuthin' But A 'G' Thang." Milwaukee's Kinto Sol (with Los Marijuanos members and DJ Playback Garcia) follow with a solidly Latino bilingual hip-hop vibe, and though it's more of a compatible intro to what el Sindicato will bring, their sound and swagger speak largely to U.S. Mexican b-boy concerns, opening with an Aztec danzante and miming barrio confrontations with their stage show.
By the time el Sindicato take control of the mics and turntables, the crowd seems to have thinned out, massing near the front of the stage. MCs Derek, Frost, Smoler, and Huexo, with DJ Fabri, bring a more clean and tight style of tag-team rap bubbling against a tapestry of beats and samples from Joan Manuel Serrat, Celia Cruz, Chic, and Argentinean folk. Plus, they're rather stylishly decked out in jerseys, hoodies, du-rags, and sports caps -- gear that violates the club's dress code, by the way. The usually frenetic speed-rap of many Latin hip-hoppers gets a chill pill with the catchy melodic strain in el Sindicato, from an R&B knack demonstrated both by versatile vocalists and multi-textured DJ tapestries on such tracks as "Mil Horas" and "Cuatro Minutos de Funk." Except for the linguistic difference, the performance matches most live hip-hop and surpasses the usual head-nodding with a more variable rhythmic attack. The mutual genres and fans at the show at least made it past prohibitive labels and categories, because like Earatic Statik said, it's all about the music, after all.
April 2002, Illinois Entertainer
Shakira: Laundry Service
A co-worker once summed up Shakira after "Whenever, Wherever" molested our ears for the 20th time on the same day: "She's the Brazilian Britney." "But she's Columbian," I corrected, and then I immediately felt like an ass. What 's the difference in this context, really?
Shakira as a Brazilian might have made for some interesting pop-samba Portuguese poetry, but Shakira as a Colombian never really made for anything anywhere near as syncretic and dynamically, creatively cool as, say, Aterciopelados.
Some early reviews of Shakira's crossover English-language debut grumble about how the record doesn't sound particularly Latin, which makes me wonder if these critics ever heard any of her Spanish-language releases which, aside from the Colombian-inflected Castilian, are international-pop confections and not much more. So she got an English rhyming dictionary and transferred her piquant yodel from one colonial tongue to another -- where's the substance of insight and creative ingenuity from Shakira's mixed Colombian/Lebanese background, except for the worst platitudes about Latin passion and Gabriel García-Marquez's (typical) influence?
It's all in the production, with the endpoint of U.S. consumption now at hand and promotional stories that once had her co-writing some of her songs in Spanish, now conquering English all by her deceptively diminutive self. Add this one to the Latin boom of the late-'90s, though some years late, as it joins the ranks of J-Lo and whatever Ricky Martin comes up with next for the Pepsi Generation -- no more pop-en-Castellano for Shakira -- though perhaps we can look forward to less flat-footed lyrics and a more savory CD title, as she masters such English slang as "ka-ching!"
February 2002, Illinois Entertainer
Latin Rock Expo
The boys of Kardoid play music from their ranchera-loving parents' nightmares. Mostly Mexican-American teenagers native to Chicago, these four up-and-coming rockers prefer Slipknot and Molotov -- bands that can sound like airplanes taking off in their near-Midway neighborhood -- instead of the rural ballads and bandas of México lindo y querido.
But when I telephoned guitarist Ivan Duarte at home, his mom answered excitedly in Spanish that he was busy practicing, as she passed the phone through a wash of feedback and amp distortion. "They really don't like the music we play," Duarte says of his family's more traditional tastes. "But now that we're getting attention, they have a little more respect for what we're trying to do."
In a city bred on blues, where immigrant musicians might make more money playing regional music from the motherland at cotillions and weddings, a rock invasion has been cooking (literally) in Latin kitchens around town since the late-'90s. Balancing underground cred with a strong web presence and word-of-mouth publicity, Chicago Latinos have put together their own tight-knit network of indie radio shows, Mexican-restaurant rock venues, and rockero tiendas vending paraphernalia and spreading news about shows. With weekly concerts at La Justicia Restaurant (www.justiciarestaurante.com) on 26th Street on Fridays, and Club PM (2047 N. Milwaukee) and Los Cazos Restaurant (5945 W. Fullerton) on Saturdays, the scene continues to reach beyond neighborhood, genre, and linguistic frontiers that once kept choices limited to a few touring shows at the same venue every year.
Now, Latin rock is in the loop, literally. In a no-man's-land near a chicken-shack bar at Lake and Halsted, Rooster Blues & Bar B.Q. (www.roosterblues.net) used to bill itself as "the only blues club in the West Loop area," but now the Rooster can claim fame as the most centrally located professional venue for weekly Latin rock in town. Owner Rufus McCullum built the club in 1999, from a cold-cut factory and print shop where he set up two stages, wooden benches and bar stools, exposed-brick décor, and a kitchen serving barbecue and shrimp. Turns out that the blues did not draw enough throughout the week, so McCullum diversified the calendar, which he is still tweaking with underground hip-hop, house music, Chicago Samba, and blues-rock. When Rooster cook and booking manager Francisco Villa suggested rock-en-español, McCullum was skeptical. "We still want something more like cumbias and salsa, for people to dance to," says McCullum, "but we finally tried the Spanish rock [starting in November], because that's what Francisco likes, and it's working out."
McCullum doesn't like everything he hears on Saturday nights, but the weekly shows have so far drawn a growing crowd for four bands that typically mix it up, from industrial-goth to speed metal to garage rock. Promoter Antonio Cordova -- a 21-year-old Ace Hardware worker called "Vampiro" because of his strangely sharp canines -- has been working shows at La Justicia and Rooster from the get-go, building on his experience throwing high-school house-parties in his basement at home near Midway Airport. He appreciates McCullum's gamble on Latin rock and loves the venue for its pro sound system and capacity.
Cordova hopes more of Chicago will come out for a local "Latin Rock Expo" that will feature 20 bands for $10, lasting from 4 p.m. until the early morning. With an egalitarian spirit based on a sense of community, the Expo schedule is the result of a lottery drawing that randomly assigned a 30-minute spot to each band participating. Using Rooster's twin stages advantageously for quick set-up and transitions, the Expo should prove to be a shotgun-sampler of the various tastes, languages (Spanish or English, and in some cases both), and styles that mingle within the local scene. These bands are just as likely to cover the Who as Juan Gabriel.
The lineup includes:
Bajo Cero: Young Latin rock/pop tastes seem forever wed to '80s New Wave, the stuff both from this side of the border and beyond (The Cure, Soda Stereo). With a sometime jangly sound that says these boys "don't cry," this quintet updates the brooding sounds of yesterday in a tight synth-rock effort. (www.bajoceromusic.com)
Descarga: 30-year-old manager Sandra Treviño -- who grew up listening to norteño, classical Mexican trios, and Tejano -- sums up her band and the scene when she says, "There are so many styles ... that it doesn't even make sense to categorize it all as just Spanish rock." With a clean, focused sound, this quartet of Chicago-born Mexican-Americans contrasts elements of international pop-flavored vocals against harder-edged rhythms. With a gig at NYC's 2001 Latin Alternative Music Conference under their belt, Descarga capture bits of the Chicago alter-Latino psyche with the savor of Caifanes and Foo Fighters. (www.descargazone.com)
El Guapo: The live backing band for local hip-hoppers Los Marijuanos, El Guapo boast a diverse list of venues and lineups, including a spot with Survivor, .38 Special, and Night Ranger in South Barrington a few years ago. With a straightforward pop/rock-in-Spanish sound, they've found their way onto Mancow and Q101.
Kardoid: This rookie band's sound is raw, sometimes sloppy, but spirited, turning Molotov's "Puto" into an even more frenetic experience than the original and pelting out speed-metallish growler-rock with songs titled "Maldito" and "Desmadre." (www.kardoid.com)
Loner: With a history of collaborating on Christian Spanish rock projects, suburban guitarist/songwriter Larry Kahn says he used to play mostly in English-language venues, but he likes the respectful reception from such spots as La Justicia. With nods to classic and grunge rock, the band is not particularly Latino but enjoys the benefits of assimilation as a spin-off from locals Biblia Negra (also on the Expo bill).
Monospit: "Blah blah blah," reads the bio scrawled on construction paper that the band handed to me. Their point: "This is not about us -- it's about the music." Hailing from Aurora, Monospit mixes punk attitude with hard-rock execution for an aggressive, energetic performance. (www.monospit.com)
Planeta de Crystal: Their cover of the classic Who cut, translated as "Mi Generación," comes off as a mini-manifesto for local Latin rock and update of ur-rockeros Los Locos del Ritmo: "Todo el mundo me quiere pisotear/porque me gusta desmadrar." With traces of trad-Mexican son, PDC are evocative of '80s power-pop. (www.planetadecrystal.com)
Vendima: Citing influences from Rush to Siouxsie to Sheep On Drugs, Vendima grinds out tunes with melodramatically dark names like "Hasta Morir" and "Oración" that amble along with heavy bass, synth programming, and Exene-like, pedal-distorted vocals from lead "Vixen" Brenda, who wears bilingual goth-influences on her sleeve, whether Mephisto Walz or Santa Sabina.
Zamandoque Tarahum: Having experimented with Afro-Cuban and folkloric Mexican music, los Bros. Amaro put together a rock combo whose name is inspired by the Mexican states of Chihuaha and San Luís Potosí. Mixing catchy riffs from Santana and Jaguares, ZT draw a rowdy crowd of SLAMistas. (www.zamandoquetarahum.com)
Expo bands not listed above include: Alebrije, Biblia Negra, Blister, Los Borrachos X, CF3, Jaula, Miseria Urbana, La Muerte, Norge Glass Company, Sacramento, and Uno de Mas. Juan "Fito" Salinas, rhythm guitarist for Uno de Mas, speaks for many of his friends when he says: "All of us, at some point or other, have been outcast . . . all of my friends growing up were into rap music, but now the Spanish rock scene is a place for me to get away." With reports of two more restaurants on the South Side featuring Latin rock, and a February 9th mega-concert at the Congress Theatre set to start at 11am with 30 bands, local Latino rock transgresses boundaries just as its sources come from all over the world to make it here in Chicago.
February 2002, Illinois Entertainer
B-Side Players: Movement
Like Ozomatli, San Diego's B-Side Players observe the fateful September 11th release of their latest album, which in this case is a full-length debut for a septet that has been moving booties since 1993. Given the group's new-school, pan-Latino-groove similarities to los Ozos from L.A., the disc's title seems to describe a cultural phenomenon rather than political program.
The influential Chicano Movement of the '60s and '70s that inspired such funky Cali groups as Malo and Tierra is abridged here, and the "movement" now stands for a trans-nationalist, anti-machismo (though largely male), socially conscious junta of artists whose lyrical messages and musical mezclas are more spiritual than militant, more culturally inclusive than centric.
Not afraid to take a peyote vision-quest, B-Side Players also have no problem reaching beyond the borders of Aztlán (Southwestern territory claimed by the Chicano Movement) to savor East Coast confluences of Nuyorican/African boogaloo and salsa. But B-Side Players come together more out of energy -- or "Puro Feeling," as they put it -- than musical virtuosity. Their use of horns, woodwinds, keys, turntables, Afro-Latin percussion, and rock instrumentation is not as seamless as Ozomatli's, nor is it as masterful in its grasp of sources, execution, or overt political articulation. More pages are borrowed from pop reggae and alt-rock genera than the old masters, but as the B-Sides put it on the opening cut, "Souldier," which features a sizzling timbale-versus-turntable descarga, "you're fighting to keep your soul alive." Bottom line: They succeed.
December 2001, Illinois Entertainer
Live Review: Orquesta Aragón & Arturo Sandoval
An interesting future experiment with international roots music will someday feature a bluegrass rustic on the banjo, a Cuban guajiro on the tres, a Puerto Rican jibaro on the cuatro, a Mexican ranchero on bajo sexto, and perhaps a Tejano on accordion. Maybe such singers as Freddy Fender and Ibrahim Ferrer will contribute vocals. After all, country's country, no matter what hill the billy calls home, and developments in alternative "insurgent" country music, for example, point to the continuity of roots folkways as they adapt to contemporary sounds, historical change, and, in some cases, cultural mix.
In a similar vein, the Symphony Center's pairing of Orquesta Aragón from Cuba with Cuban expatriate Arturo Sandoval makes for an enjoyable evening's focus on the lineage of Cubano folk-roots -- heavily influenced by Spanish guitar and African multi-vocal chorus and rhythm -- as those roots have transformed with time and turmoil in the native homeland and abroad. In this case, it's the guajiro and the hipster together again. Orquesta Aragón largely stays true to its origins in 1939 Cuba and to its development of cha-cha in the '50s, while Sandoval's embrace of be-bop and jazz fusion makes for a Cubop sound that he pursued outside of his former homeland.
The Symphony Center provides an important context for Orquesta Aragón to open the night with demonstrations of danzon, rumba, cha-cha, and bolero from the oldest charanga orchestra around. The venue is a tacit recognition of the sophisticated compositions that make for the full, hot sound coming from seemingly basic arrangements. And though the auditorium makes for crisp acoustics to enjoy every nuance from the 12-piece group, the tight seating and distance quell the crowd from all but dancing in their seats. Many of the impeccable Latin couples in attendance are dressed to cut a rug, but they only look on as the Orquesta's dancer, Armando Amezaga, gooses the conga patter and timbale flourishes with gyrations and spirited call-and-response improv with the percussion.
This is the only frustration with concerts at such venues that honor a musical group carrying the weight of history as something of an archival project -- we don't get to experience the original club, corner, or social gathering, but instead reverence for Orquesta Aragón's cultural significance, though warranted, seems to put them at more of a distance than the physical layout of the stage. Nonetheless, this barrier is broken at various times when the combo gets the audience to clap along.
Arturo Sandoval recognizes the gulf between performer and crowd, and so he urges people to dance when he hits stage after an intermission. With incredible blowing chops that reach well into stellar regions of the trumpet's upper registers, he also animates his public with a playful sense of humor between numbers. And during an extended, absurd scat session, he simulates a standup bass and classic jazz vocals with respectful pranksterism that breaks up the potentially stiff atmosphere of an orchestra hall. But old compositions and the musicians who have preserved and adapted them create an amazing event that interestingly obscures the simple, rural origins of popular pastime.
7 December 2001, Illinois Entertainer
Live Review:
"There have come to pass these agents of deconstruction and thank God they're here or else everybody'd be on a square lunch and nobody'd eat," says Chicago percussionist Kahil El'Zabar.
Who knows what he means, but the crowd digs it, whether he's talking about current events or the loud cigar-smoking jerks at a nearby table in the cozy HotHouse. More than anything else, he looks weary and yet more wiry than usual, because he's been pulling double-duty along with the rest of his storied Ritual Trio. The same goes for suavely dressed New York violinist Billy Bang, who has been on the road in and around recording sessions for his latest project -- he is billed as a guest artist sitting in with the Trio, but he likewise has to work for a living, with his already explosive bow-and-string execution given that much more attention at tonight's gig. Why? Sadly, Ritual Trio bassist Malachi Favors checked into the hospital yesterday and is under observation for high blood pressure, so the group (plus guest) shrinks to a true trio.
Opening with Kahil's standard "Ornette," the Trio more than makes up for the missing rhythmic anchor, and then some. Kahil's conga work creates a well-worn groove to fit a rotating cast of amazing guests, in this case accommodating Bang's blazing, frenzied violin work with surprising, novel results. And as always, Kahil's emotive, hypothalamic grunts and digestive noises play along the edges of jazz scat and soul slather, slurring twisted variations on what sounds like "baby," "get it," and "girl." He and saxophonist Ari Brown set up Bang to shine on an instrument that smacks of somber classical tone while improvising beyond its usual registers. And when Brown switches to piano, the Western instruments wrap in and around the African percussive backbone, even when Kahil goes to kalimba or the drum kit to make a crashing cymbal tempest point up Bangs' and Brown's wending solos. "With Bang, it's a whole new feel," says Kahil, "and without Malachi, even more." In this case, less does not necessarily mean more, but it provides an opportunity to hear the two Trio-ists and the amazing Bang in a set that was seemingly meant to happen with three voices sounding like four or five. Well, thank goodness for those agents of deconstruction who give us something different to eat every now and then.
30 November 2001, Illinois Entertainer
Live Review: David Hernandez & Street Sounds
Twenty-four-year-old Pilsen poet AidÈ Rodriguez seems "stuck between cornfields and prickly pears," as she says in one of her compositions, looking down the barrel of a microphone with rows of audience on one side and her own arsenal of words on the other. She has the tough job of opening for middle-aged veteran David Hernández and his perennial spoken-word combo, Street Sounds, at their CD release party for Satin City Serenade (Street Sounds Media Group). Her poems evoke images of nopales wrapped with barbed wire rooted in Midwestern concrete, referencing indigenous and Illinois literary touchstones in the same breath. But she doesn't want to get stuck on her own words -- she just wants to get offstage so she can watch the main attraction. Her unassuming presence fits the evening's theme -- "Poets Across Generations," as the Guild dubs it -- because she is the humble rookie whom the elders always put out first to break the ice.
Though a literary lineage between Rodriguez and Hernández is never made clear, their generational differences play out best through performance personae, especially since their cultural sources (though Latino in general) are more contrasting than congruent. Hernández has staked his Chicago performative claim in the Puerto Rican community, mainly circulating in nostalgia for his upbringing in the long-since-gentrified Lakeview and Lincoln Park neighborhoods of the '60s and '70s; Rodriguez of course has no established poetic identity, but her pieces ring with echoes of Mexican 18th Street, especially in the context of her own combo -- avant-punk/poets Sonido Ink (Quieto). In that group, Rodriguez duels with her partner in spoken-word vocals, Brenda Cárdenas, while a rock outfit (including a turntablist and a former member of Los Crudos) wrings out a soundscape that ambles like a South Side barrio stroll with young "crazy vatos, rucas, punks, artfags, hippies, poetas, and musicians" (as the liner notes to their recent release put it).
Rodriguez's opening set at the Chopin is relatively tame, but that's more a function of the programming than her chops. Whether black or Latino, young poets can sometimes get thrown into the same all-purpose lit ghetto, and though the Guild Complex does a good job of integrating youngsters, Rodriguez's opener is presented as an afterthought. Accordingly, she's nervous, immobile, and recites with a typical poetic-newbie delivery. She also makes a brief, vague, and touchingly courteous reference to CDs and an anthology that carry her work; Hernández, by contrast, has the merch pitch down to an art of its own, especially for the new CD that prominently cites him as a "Famous Poet," also dubbing Street Sounds as "Chicago's Premiere Poetry/Music Group."
Certainly, Hernández is a living piece of Chicago history who has paid his dues, and the new release is as much a tribute to the city he loves as to his own respectable place in it. Guild Complex executive director Julie Parson-Nesbitt introduces Hernández with a call to make him the new poet laureate of Illinois, and the modest crowd responds lovingly to his tight, competent combo's weaving of words with smooth jazz and jÌbaro roots-folk. But his pieces speak largely to family history, bygone doo-wop days at Lakeview High School, and adventures on an Armitage Avenue that once smelled of beans and rice rather than Starbucks coffee beans. His poetry is nonetheless relevant and powerful, though the night's program (within a stone's throw of new gentrification frontiers in West Town and Pilsen) is more sentimental than prescient.
For a dialogue that really crosses generational borders and speaks to cultural continuity, the program might have paired Street Sounds with the promising Sonido Ink (Quieto), especially since Rodriguez's group also has a new CD -- Chicano, Illinoize: The Blue Island Sessions (deSPICable Records). West Side Puerto Rican salsa rock and South Side Aztechnopunk might have made for an interesting conversation, giving a dynamic sense of Chicago Latino soul and speaking to "the music of stories/ rippling from pens/ that send bassy vibrations from floor to tambor over two-flats,/ skyscrapers, liquor stores/ Our acrobatic musical scores," as Rodriguez memorably puts it.
28 November 2001, Illinois Entertainer
Ratos de Porão: Guerra Civil Canibal
Brazilian hardcore veterans Ratos de Porão (Basement Rats) spit metal and bone splinters on this "Holiday In São Paolo" romp, managing in a spare 16 minutes and 55 seconds to barnstorm such topics as ethnocide (on the title track, "Cannibal Civil War") and corporate science ("Biotech Is Godzilla," copped from Jello Biafra and Sepultura), while throwing in goofs on samba and poser metal/hardcore.
The sound splatters like a grody food joke at the junior-high cafeteria (especially the cover art, reminiscent of The Dead Kennedys' Plastic Surgery Disasters), but it's a short enough set to enjoy the thick 'n' chunky spew without too nasty an aftertaste.
November 2001, Illinois Entertainer
David Garza: Overdub
The 10 Rock Commandments Of Davíd Garza, or, The Book Of Dah-veed:
I. In a pretentious, uber-ironic, over-produced pop universe of false prophets, plastic product, and producer pimps pushing for the man, the order of the day is to out-produce, outclass, over-croon, ultra-pose -- to be more pretentious than thou in extremis ad absurdum ex nihilo.
Ergo: Overdub. Irving, Texas-born Garza "used to hear voices, and used to sing along" ("Drone" 3:02) in the mystical, apocryphal days of youth when Texas airwave firmaments supplied early-'80s manna of Tejano cumbias and Cheap Trick as a calling to the mantle of crypto-Latino singer/songwriter/ guitarist. Relocating to the University Of Texas/Austin "in a silent violent generation," he is re-"born in the shadow of a stadium" as Dah-veed ("God's Hands" 3:22), campus troubadour and eventual creator/sustainer of Wide Open Records, which releases a dozen of Garza's albums, EPs, and so-called manifestos while financing indie evangelistic tours.
II. If the right hand offends, pursue big-label attention with the left.
Upon securing a Beck-like deal to release 1998's This Euphoria on Atlantic while reserving the right to still put out whatever he wants indie-style, the ridiculously prolific Garza continues to churn out cuts like a stuck jukebox -- 1999 brings the full-length Kingdom Come And Go on Wide Open, and even the Time Warner AOL-marketed Overdub contains a "hidden" version of the vinyl-released, four-track counterpart Underdub. Somewhere within the frenzy of activity, he shoots a commercial for Best Buy's "Find 'Em First" series, with the decree: "You don't know me, but you will."
III. Keep your set together, tight, solid, and ready for gigs galore -- "Saturday night/It's judgment day" ("Crown Of Thorns" 3:23), but the time is always right for loss of faith, falling short of the glory, and of course, confession: "[I] used to breathe blessings all around town/Used to get down, used to get wild/Used to get holy, used to start fires/ Used to harmonize to the stereo/And now I just drone" ("Drone" 3:02).
IV. Cuts should neatly fit within three-to-four-and-a-half-minute sermon size for possible airplay. "If they ain't down with your dublingo, if they don't hear no single/When you're trying to get on the radio, don't sweat when you quit yourself and go solo/And if you feel like Jethro on death row/Better call and request your own video/Soul is a four-letter word/And don't forget to say baby baby baby baby baby baby" ("Say Baby" 3:50).
V. Deliver such anti-pop bites with vocal fragility and wan, fey poses to sweeten thy lyrical kissoffs. Songs like that are virtually guaranteed to review themselves. Invite Juliana Hatfield, another like-minded babe in the woods, to help elegize innocence lost ("Keep on Crying" 4:34).
VI. Let someone else rage against the machine. Empty and yet super-suggestive references to Black Panthers, Zapatistas, and executions never hurt, though.
VII. Skepticism of the mysterious ways of rock 'n' roll always leads back to reaffirmation, the dance of belief, the leap of faith, direct experience of the divine through kick-ass riffs: "Touched by a human omen/Try not to tremble/My eyes play tricks when I blink/Confetti snow and found fire" ("Blow My Mind" 4:06).
VIII. I forget what eight was for, but
IX. If major-label success just doesn't happen, then hit the 4-track, jack. Go "back to the womb, back to the van/Goddamn/Praise the Lord and shake your ass" ("God's Hands" 3:22).
X. If you do arrive in the Promised Land, don't let anyone call you a sellout, because even "poor Jesus still trying to crossover/But it ain't a sin to swim" ("Say Baby" 3:50). Now, is that Gee-zuss or Hay-soos you're talking about, Señor Garza?
November 2001, Illinois Entertainer
Live Review: Lila Downs
For Minnesota-Mexicana Lila Downs, the "standing o" at the Old Town School stands for resounding cries of "OTRA!" -- as in, "Sing another song!" -- echoing from the audience which is at its feet applauding for more from the spellbinding chanteuse. Her five-piece band weaves new-age-textured splices of pre-Columbian-flavored world music with lite jazz as backdrop for the female lead's invocations of native spirituality and Latino social conscience to interpret Mexican/American folk music. As performer Guillermo Gómez-Peña would say, Downs goes from Aztec to hi-tech without skipping a beat.
But the strain of keeping current seems to show a bit, since a later show has been added for tonight per public demand, and Downs does not move about the stage much -- aside from a few foot-stomping moves to complement the sounds of Mexican son, or her spirited use of the güiro and tambora to join in with the band on percussion. Mainly, her body is immobile while a wide, multifaceted range of emotions sweeps across her face in concert with the voice -- from husky baritone to sustained flight through upper, piercing trills. Though she does not cast an imposing physical presence, she looms larger than her petite frame throughout the night, eclipsing the backing combo.
Having excavated personal, spiritual, and communitarian roots from indigenous cultural traditions with the eye of an archeologist and heart of the earth on her last album Tree of Life, Downs turns to largely contemporary immigration issues on Border/La Línea (Narada). Her personal connection to the lyrics and music is no less heartfelt or visceral, as she interprets the material with the syncretic eye of mixed Mixtec-Indian and Irish-American upbringing. From a jazz-inflected re-phrasing of the traditional Mexican "La Llorona" to an American protest-folk medley of Woody Guthrie tunes, Downs invests psyche and soul into her projects, which is probably why she is sparing of her physical energy and only does one encore for the first Old Town show. Nevertheless, her incredible vocal persona provides all the energy that the crowd needs to be completely absorbed.
4 November 2001, Illinois Entertainer
Live Review: David Sanchez
"What is the influence of Latin rhythms on my music?" David Sánchez says during an interview between sets. "That's a hard question -- I think in lines and melodies when I'm playing, but I'm feeling rhythm even when I'm doing bar lines." After playing two shows at Jazz Showcase during a five-night stint, he's charged up as he taps out a typical Puerto Rican plena rhythm with his hands to demonstrate how he absorbs the folk music of his native island while interpreting straight-ahead jazz from Wayne Shorter, opening up a Caribbean-folk/urban-American jazz dialogue with free influences from Ornette Coleman. "Plena and straight-ahead jazz have been done," he explains, "so I want to give a new vibe to plena and a new vibe to jazz."
Accomplished tenor saxophonist, composer, and bandleader, Sánchez started out with congas and bongos as an eight-year-old growing up in Guaynabo near San Juan, but he took up the sax at age 12 because there were already too many percussionists on an island without much of a jazz scene. At 19 he left Puerto Rico for a music scholarship at Rutgers, playing also in New York City with Latin jazzmen Eddie Palmieri, Paquito D'Rivera, and Danilo Perez, and eventually touring with Dizzy Gillespie, among others. In 1994, he made his recording debut as a leader. The recently-released Travesía (Columbia) follows up his last two Latin Grammy-nominated albums from that label.
He finds an apt title for his latest, since "travesía" can have shades of meaning "a crossing over," "transgression," or simply "a journey." At the Jazz Showcase, he opens with a seductively rendered "Prince Of Darkness" by Wayne Shorter, which appears on his album with a full sextet. But for the Chicago shows, the band is pared down to a quintet -- piano, bass, drums, and arguably Sanchez' equal on alto sax, Miguel Zenón -- without the recording's percussionist. Pianist Edsel Gomez begins with the song's melodic motif, and soon the saxes are dueling between upper and lower registers, weaving in and out of lightly Latin-accented drumming from Mexico City-native Antonio Sanchez and rhythmic variations from bassist Hans Glawischnig. This intro strikes the tone for the night, with deceptively foregrounded U.S.-jazz chops that blow from hot blues to free sax solos, with quotes of Charlie Parker and John Coltrane.
Toward the end of the set, Sánchez introduces a hybrid plena/jazz tune. Originating in the late 19th century near Ponce, plena emphasizes beats one and three, with elements of call and response between soloist and chorus. Rooted equally in West African and Moor-influenced Spanish percussion, plena is sometimes called "el periódico cantao," or "sung newspaper," for its social commentary. In that tradition, Sánchez' cultural fusions intermingle with current events -- as on his composition "Paz Pa' Vieques (Seis)," a mix of jazz with Puerto Rican "seis," another Spanish-influenced folk tradition that in this case comments on the use of the island for U.S. military operations. But these messages are never heavy-handed, as his sets in Chicago fly without a Latin percussionist, leaving the subtle folk influences to draw the audience in by way of solid jazz skills.
"That's our job," Sánchez says from the stage, "to lift spirits and forget for a minute about CNN and ABC."
26 October 2001, Illinois Entertainer
The Trummerflora Collective: No Stars Please
War-torn, bombed-out urban landscapes give root to plants and trees that sprout from the rubble, according to San Diego artists Helen and Newton Harrison. The Trummerflora Collective take the Harrison's name for this foliage as nom-de-guerre, though their improvisational excursions are equal parts explosive-plow and seed. Coagulating around common interests in free jazz and world music, seven post-national musicians found their niche together as Trummerflora while fomenting interest in experimental, non-commercial sound-artistry in late-'90s San Diego.
Their double-disc No Stars Please is more historical document than manifesto for this local movement, recorded live in 2000 at various galleries and freak-out strongholds. Some of the record's open-ended tracks seem directed at border issues that are generally relevant in these WTO days (e.g. "From The Waste Up" and "Punch Press Pull"), but you probably have to be there (at the exhibit-opening gig, with the fine boxed wine) to fully understand what's afoot with the electronic/organic-interface chaos, especially since the wandering cuts (like a 27-minute version of "Frosty the Snowman") become painful to sit through.
The San Diego/Tijuana nexus -- with its maquiladoras, immigration battles, and tourist consumerism -- has provided enough of a war zone for creative cross-pollination, resulting in such border-crossing art as Guillermo Gómez-Peña's New World Border and the NorTec DJ Collective, and Trummerflora fit right in with the cultural schizophrenia.
October 2001, Illinois Entertainer
Live Review: Marc Ribot
A return to the solo acoustic peregrinations of 1998's Don't Blame Me, Marc Ribot's recent Saints (Atlantic) likewise takes standards and contemporary compositions as conceptual springboards for wending, warped sound-art that realizes the potential sonic surprise hidden in the corners of every melodic digression, missed note, and false start. What Ribot does with his arrangements of such traditional pieces as "Go Down Moses" parallels his instrumental attack, actualizing peripheral parts of the guitar that others might only hit on accidentally -- for example, using the body as a treasure trove of percussive possibility, plinking and plunking out harmonic netherscapes from sections of the strings not (necessarily) meant for strumming, setting pickups along the fingerboard to catch incidental scratches and hangnail-sustain shakes, and extending the use of plastic or fingernail pick to tools and toys.
This composition-instrumentation parallel further plays itself out between studio recording and live performance, as Ribot's latest CD suggests potential tracks that are made kinetic on stage. A full house at the Old Town School receives him pleasantly enough as he sets himself immediately to business without introduction. At a stool surrounded by effects-processing units, unexplained gadgets, and pedals with red and blue balloons attached, Ribot launches into a bent melody that wavers in the air as he hits bass strings for rhythmic suggestion while dynamically twisting arms and hands around the guitar body to scrape, slide, and screech accents out of the instrument, alternating between meditative moments and chaotic inspiration that draws chuckles and muffled cackles from the audience.
Ribot elicits this response from the crowd as brief relief from the hushed, painstaking attention that the music sometimes demands. This is the equivalent of an extended Jim Jarmusch scene, where nothing really happens except for the limping verisimilitude of lived experienced in all its poignant, pregnant emptiness that nods off and then slaps back into consciousness.Throughout the show, he keeps the tune -- whether a Django Reindhardt composition or Lennon/McCartney's "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" -- on its toes.
During a rendition of a piece from John Zorn's Book Of Heads, he uses the balloons for busting effect and to squeak tones against the strings. A recital of "Our Love Is Here to Stay" has him delicately pattering out the lyrics with his voice as apparatus rather than music box, making the lyrics sound more like a warning of disaster than confessional affection. It's the kind of settling-into versus shocking-out-of play that one would expect from such a versatile musician, whose backup work with Tom Waits, Susana Baca, and Elvis Costello gives just a taste of skill that translates into such projects as his Cubanoid homage to big-band composer and traditional tres-player Arsenio Rodriguez.
Despite a palpable sense of restlessness, the audience sticks around with applause for an encore that seems a trickster-nod to Ribot's garage roots, jangling out an abrasive rhythm-guitar duel between different noise effects. With daring and humor, he pulls off the most important play -- between technique and entertainment.
19 October 2001, Illinois Entertainer
Live Review: Ozomatli
"Just walk in like you own the place," Ozomatli guitarist and singer Raul Pacheco tells me. His advice seems like the perfect all-purpose approach to the music biz, because that's exactly what Ozo have done, with their seamless pan-Latino sound and political stance that courageously kick the door wide open to increasing popularity, regardless of whether potential fans appreciate the intricacies of traditional Latin music or leftist activism.
The House Of Blues has a balcony and private boxes overlooking the groundlings, but Ozo typically confound these divisions by marching right into the floor crowd from behind, with percussionist Justin "Nico" Porée whistling like a drum major and every Ozo rattling away on bells and pads. Ozomatli launch right into "Dos Cosas Ciertas," from their new album Embrace The Chaos, and despite the sprawling array (with a drummer, DJ, MC, horns/woodwinds, two percussionists, bassist, and guitarist totaling 10 band members), the sound is tight and focused, juicing the audience into Latin couples-dancing and hip-hop pogos. The seeming chaos of on-stage antics (from pop-locking to manic booty shaking) erupts at times into synchronized salsero spins, jumps, and slides, but it is as seamless as the band's segues from drum 'n' bass to son Cubano, with DJ Spinobi's skratch accents and Asdru honking on a conch shell to Kanetic's fluid flow.
Throughout the show, Ulises switches from tenor to bari-sax and then clarinet, later dueling on the Mexican six-stringed requinto with Raul on the eight-stringed jarana guitar from Veracruz. The band proceeds to wear the crowd down with 17 cuts from the new disc and their self-titled debut, taking time for sizzling solos from every member and to sing "Happy Birthday" to Jiro, who is 34 today and the oldest Ozo.
Towards the end of the gig, Wil-Dog steps to the mic and dedicates the show to the World Trade Center victims, adding that the band is against terrorism as "national policy" and sending 19-year-olds to bomb the shit out of innocents, against attacks on Muslims, against state-sponsored terror. If anyone is heckling, they are drowned out by enthusiastic cheers, and the band gets the audience to chant "Ozomatli ya se fue!" ("Ozomatli is out!") for the drum exit that lasts almost 15 minutes, with a conga line and New Orleans funeral-style rendition of the hokey-pokey, and I can feel the whole stage bouncing from the floor stomping. Next to me, a House Of Blues techie says, "That's the coolest thing I ever seen, to take a band out into the audience while they're still playing -- you can't beat that!" The audience agrees, as they get to slap five on los Ozos, who don't really see themselves as unapproachable rock stars anyway. They are "the people's band," they claim, and they continue to back up their words modestly and fearlessly.
4 October 2001, Illinois Entertainer
Thalía: ...con Banda
Madonna will earn those spurs of hers someday by going to Nashville to record neo-country-swing versions of all her greatest hits. She'll twang out "Like A Virgin" on banjo, pedal steel, and washboard, playing hillbilly chanteuse to match all her shitkicker-chic fashion.
The results will be equivalent to Mexican mega-pop star/ultra-sex symbol/soap opera siren Thalìa's move to get rootsy a la banda Sinaloense. Adapting her pop goldmine of tunes to the regional Mexican ranchera sounds based in military marches and folk balladry from the 19th century, Thalìa is assisted by a competent cast of musicians (on crisp and beefy brass, woodwinds, and percussion) and producers (including Emilio Estefan Jr.) to create tight and danceable cuts. But this is not their story.
Like Madonna, Thalìa continues to plumb the depths of world pop and indigenous cultures for whatever scrap of spiritual-seeming sartorial epiphany, showing off the goods and dressing up yesterday's party, this time with vaquero gear and touchstone references to tequila, tobacco, and rum. Though Thalìa has always had cultural nationalist flavor, dedicated fans of banda music should be skeptical of this move. But most will care more about how she looks in tight jeans dancing the quebradita in her next video.
October 2001, Illinois Entertainer
El Gran Silencio: Chúntaros Radio Poder
The city of Monterrey in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León sits at the crossroads of culture and capital -- close enough to Texas for North American radio/TV reception but not too far from South America for the rhythmic influence of Colombian cumbia. Though strongly identified with its own specific regional history of international trade and rural Mexicanidad as a major border presence, it's no wonder that this rugged, industrial oasis produced at least three groups in the last decade -- synth-styling sophisticates Plastilina Mosh, attitudinous rappers Control Machete, and conjunto-cred barrio combo El Gran Silencio -- whose cultural savvy and idiomatic adeptness have garnered attention from U.S. recording labels while confounding any tidy labeling of their music, whether by measure of generic "world music," outdated "rock-en-español," or the misleading "Latin pop" moniker.
In particular, El Gran Silencio's 1999 stateside debut Libres Y Locos simulated the versatility of dynamic young street músicos on the border turning tourist coin with a freewheeling mix of ragamuffin-roots-polka-ranchera-hop. This second effort seems more radio- friendly insofar as its polished production and instrumental execution would get more play. (Plus, constant faux-disc jockey interludes give a nod to Mexican radio as an important source of inspiration singled out from the border's cultural wash.) Employing traditional north Mexican conjunto instruments (the accordion and bajo sexto), EGS branches out with more Afro-Caribbean-flavored horns and percussion (such as timbales) and, as a goof, electronic flourishes. Somewhat sprawling, "Chúntaros" ends up a bit too cumbia-heavy, echoing itself at times, even though some cuts cleverly seem to put the rhythm on hydraulics and turn it inside-out. A step in musical maturation, Chúntaros maintains the radical diaspora of recent Monterrey products, while suggesting a career soon to rival Mexican rock pioneers Café Tacuba.
September 2001, Illinois Entertainer
Live Review: Watcha 2001
"...--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
Live Review: Los Lobos/Julieta Venegas
SHOW ME LA BAMBA . . .
The demand to see the headliner seems politely etched onto the subdued yet puzzled faces of those NorthShorreños sparsely seated in the pavilion, though enough Latinos are present to sing along with opener Julieta Venegas, to respond generously to her unassuming presence and charming bilingual embrace of the audience, even if she sometimes breaks a word or two, but apologizes: "Tengo que pensar doble ... I have to think double, in English and Spanish." This admission seems as honest as her voice -- at turns fragile and then growling, but with cariño -- and the mewling, cabaret-siren of her piano-accordion instrumentation, that sounds more European than Latin American.
"Thinking double" is not a new strategy for such artists, but Venegas makes it seem refreshingly sincere. After all, Highland Park is a ways from Tijuana -- where Venegas got her start as a hard-rockera with Tijuana No! before going solo, now with two records and a Grammy nomination to her credit -- just as Ravinia is a far cry from the backyard barbacoas and drunken-compadre party-tune-request quinceañera culture that bred those infamous beer guts that, if nothing else, keep Los Lobos from glam pretentions. Venegas finishes a half-hour set, and toasts are served on the lawn, where the pachanga fare is a tad more elaborate than tacos.
Security guards cannot hold back the rush of fans who break the staid seating borders when Los Lobos take the stage. After a trickster-rendition of "Sweet Home Chicago" plus some going-through-the-motions cuts from their last three albums, guitarist César Rosas urges the crowd to dance. This is when Los Lobos seem to be most at home, as the crowd pushes forward with herky-jerky gyrations and sloppy swing -- new interpretations of Latin dance that might be called "noterno," as the official Ravinia program comically labels "the traditional folk music of northern Mexico" -- and the band launches into a barrio-garage mix: "Cumbia Raza" from This Time, then a Flaco Jimenez polka, a speed-corrido for "El Mexicano-Americano," a doo-wop R&B version of "Volver," a nod to the late Sir Douglas Sahm with "She's About A Mover," and eventually the obligatory "Oye Como Va."
Puro party. But not for long. Los Lobos play a solitary encore tune, ironically "Más Y Más," from Colossal Head. They do not play "La Bamba."
8 August 2001, Illinois Entertainer
Live Review: Alejandro Escovedo
"Doin' it up San Antonio style" -- the motto on Alejandro Escovedo's T-shirt announces his plain jeans-and-boots getup for this rather dressy cocktail-and-finger-foods show in the second-floor salon of the Nature Museum, overlooking Lincoln Park's swank marinas and jogging paths. With a capo sticking out of his back pocket and a gaunt profile, he looks more like a carpenter than a rocker, which fits the fine craftsmanship of his compositions and storytelling.
Before the concert, he's mobbed by a few gushing, displaced Texans who wax nostalgic about South Austin, and he mentions a new house out yonder that he has hardly seen for all the touring since the April release of A Man Under The Influence (Bloodshot), his first album of original tunes since the late '90s.
Before stepping onto the small mobile stage, he answers a few questions about the Chicago popularity of a new country/folk sound that has kept him coming back since his first show here in 1980 at Fitzgerald's. "I don't believe in this 'insurgent' label," he says with exasperation. "They call it 'new country,' but it ain't nothing new. Labels are labels -- the idea that 'underground' means that you don't sell records is not what I'm about. Right now, I could have the best record I've made in my entire life but not sell because it's 'underground.' I make records because I want to sell them."
If he seems a bit grizzled offstage, he's nothing but appreciative on. Over the roar of conversational echoes and the clink of free liquor samples, Escovedo kicks off the show with material from his latest album, which he has described as his most melodic and romantic. "I like this gig," he says between tunes, despite the poor acoustics, technical flubs, and progressively drunken ambient, " because it reminds me of some kind of high school sock hop," as he launches into a fitting, howling refrain from 1999's Bourbonitis Blues: "Everybody says they love me but I don't know why." With a brand-new band in tow that retains the time-bendingly eerie pedal steel guitar but does away with the textured strings from his prior pared-down "orchestra," Escovedo has indeed chosen a less brokenhearted and more linear sound for such new tunes as "Rhapsody" and "Castanets."
The show masterfully moves between raucous, distorted jam sessions and the confessional cries of older tunes like "Five Hearts Breaking" and "Pissed Off 2AM." Claiming that this might be the last time he comes through town -- "if we come back at all ... I'm serious" -- Escovedo wears the crowd out with a final medley mixing new songs and influential standards from Iggy Pop and the Velvet Underground. An encore features his most powerfully plaintive acoustic effort, "Last To Know," and even though he has worked this gig nicely, he wants to play more, despite a pressing WXRT studio appearance. If this is the last, it certainly isn't the least Chicago has gotten from Escovedo.
9 August 2001, Illinois Entertainer
Live Review: Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra
"This is a vegetarian show," says band spokesman and bari-sax player Martin Perna, and he explains what he means by asking for no hams, hot dogs, meatheads, or chickenhead-type behavior from the audience. With the venue packed to the point of suffocation during the first set of Antibalas' return to Chicago, Perna and his mates ask a lot of their fans -- not only to be cool to the people immediately around them, but to think about their fellow man, the impact of one's profession, the many causes worthy of support, and people long dead and far away from ground zero of tonight's booty shaking.
Plus, the crowd is drafted to be the 13th member of the band -- Antibalas can sometimes balloon to 20-plus members at any of their tireless gigs around the world or at home in Brooklyn. Reflecting the tight floor space, the stage is stuffed elbow-to-elbow with 12 musicians who can't exactly dance so much as sway, but with a tough, enthusiastic vibe that makes up for stuffy venue conditions.
Like Perna says, there's enough drama in the world today, so the only confrontations Antibalas want to create are between the ears and the conscience, between dance-partner hips and the groove flowing through the kind of vintage Fela Kuti-styled Afrobeat that the band inhabits. Their latest CD, Talkatif, bears a strange name for the set's largely instrumental feel (even when vocals are involved), but their thematic, spare political suggestion on disc contrasts the smooth mini-speeches during the show that are met with grateful cheers. And listeners are more than happy to participate in the call-and-response choral bursts led by Perna and vocalist Duke Amayo. During a rendition of "Nyash" from the new album, Amayo plays a Simon-Says kind of game with the audience, shuffling vocally between "left and right, right and left, no matter love or hate, you got to move your Nyash!"
The second set builds slowly, and more space clears as some people seem to have been wiped out by dancing. Antibalas stick closely to their sources, calling Fela Kuti "the one and only godfather," but referring still to that other influence, James Brown. Fans might not buy everything they say or even understand all the words, but when Amayo asks (on "Talkatif") "can you walk dem talk, talk dem walk?" the answer gets summed up in a percussive "yeah yeah," bringing the politics back down to the basics of rhythm, jazzy solos, and communal chant that keep everyone shimmying together.
29 March 2002, Illinois Entertainer
Live Review: Descarga, El Guapo, & Zamandoque Tarahum
The entrance to the Big Horse Lounge looks like an average Chicago lunch counter turned taco stand -- with a facsimile of the historic Villa/Zapata photo from the Mexican Revolution and soccer-fan paraphernalia on bare white walls glaring under greasy fluorescent wash -- opening into a backroom cantina that has featured rock bands on its small stage since the height of '90s Wicker Park popularity. Mixed identity is no new thing for the venue, which still goes by its former name for owner Armando Enriquez, who calls it "El Chaparral" when answering the phone. A native of Chihuaha, Enriquez has run the business for 14 years, in which time it went from serving the Latino community with Mexican music -- rancheras, norteñas, and bandas -- to providing another rock venue for the rapidly gentrified neighborhood. The bar's musical format changed with new developments and tastes, and even though "white folks call it 'Big Horse'," Enriquez says, "this place is still Mexican."
And it's getting even more Mexican, as booking manager Fabian Guerra has started making room at the lounge for local Latin bands looking to climb the walls of cultural/linguistic difference and get into mainstream rock venues. In the shadow of the Double Door, "Big Horse is a testing ground for bands to get into bigger venues," says Guerra. Of Ecuadorian descent, he has been working with the lounge for a few years, booking alt-country, punk, and rock bands. He also has his own promotions company -- Quest Management -- and considers the Latin bands on par with their English-language rock counterparts. The opening salvo of Latin rock at the Big Horse -- with Descarga and El Guapo warming up the crowd for Zamandoque Tarahum -- came to pass with a call from band manager and promoter Sandra Treviño. "As long as they're good and promote themselves, I'm open to booking more," Guerra points out.
As the night progresses, the cantina gets cozy with moderate turnout, and Guerra is enthusiastic about the possibilities. He hears commercial potential in El Guapo, for example, as a kind of Spanish-language Third Eye Blind. Coming through a revolving door of cultural connection, El Guapo once played mainstream venues (e.g. Double Door, Metro, and Thurston's) as an English-language band called Mud, but they changed their name to vibe with Latino fans after doing a Spanish rock showcase at House of Blues, choosing the name of the villain from The Three Amigos as their new handle. With a polished sound and pop-punk-style progressions, El Guapo wear savvy on their sleeves from working the music scene bilingually to maximize exposure.
Standing out as one of the more unique-sounding Latin rock bands locally, Zamandoque Tarahum typically get the crowd slamming and surfing with open-ended jam sessions between congas, timbales, and guitar, fusing rock attitude with folkloric Mexican spirit. During the closer, Chicago police and FBI agents arrive to investigate a bomb threat made from the Big horse payphone to the Hancock Center, and one of the officers pauses to ask, "What kind of music is this?" during a Santana-like arabesque of percussion and guitar wailing.
The owner has been busy accommodating the police, but he smiles and gives a salute from behind the bar when Descarga launch into a punkified version of "Siempre en Mi Mente," by Mexican pop sensation Juan Gabriel. "I'm still Mexican," Descarga singer Hector Garcia seems to say through the JuanGa cover, "and I did it my way."
14 March 2002, Illinois Entertainer
Band Review: El Guapo
"We're a straight-up alternative rock band, but with lyrics in Spanish," El Guapo's lead vocalist Mike Lopez once said.
With their four-song demo, the group presents a polished sound that owes more to Lopez's circulation in Chicago power/alterna-pop than his participation in the local Latin rock set, though the disc exists because of both. Their newer compositions and Mud-to-Guapo-translated ditties feature simple chord progressions on rhythm, wandering solo accompaniment, and floating bass lines for a background guitar-wash that nods to Smashing Pumpkins in its alternating soft-to-hard switches. Though their strategy is calculated, the music sounds like it flows naturally from the group's versatile gigging on both sides of Chicago rock's linguistic frontiers.
June 2002, Illinois Entertainer
We Sold Our Soul for Rocanrol
In March 1989, University of Texas at Austin premed student Mark Kilroy disappeared during a drunken spree that led him and hundreds of spring-breakers from South Padre Island across the Texas border into Matamoros, Mexico. What promised to be a carefree week of surf, sun and cheap Mexican liquor became grisly grist for tabloids, as an international manhunt eventually discovered Kilroy’s body and the mutilated remains of at least a dozen others in a mass grave, located at what came to be known as Hell Ranch.
The gruesome slaughter of mostly poor Mexicans might have been buried forever had it not been for Kilroy, a clean-cut American with family connections to U.S. Customs authorities. It turned out that a drug-running cult had ritually sacrificed these victims to dark forces in order to secure supernatural protection against the police. Inspired by a mix of Caribbean religions and voodoo-themed movies such as The Believers, the cult’s charismatic leader subsequently expired in a bloody shootout with Mexico City federales.
Likewise inspired, the hardcore narco-Satánico death metal group Brujería seized on the Hell Ranch butchery as a symbol of cultural resistance to Anglo incursion, tapping into the nexus of history and hysteria surrounding the status of Mexicans in the United States. But far from an earnest commitment to the prince of darkness, their embrace of horrific, diabolical imagery consists more of that American rock pose—scaring the hell out of mom and dad, whether through pelvis-shaking rhythms or parental advisory warnings. Scholar José Limón described this balance of Latino cultural accommodation—specifically through the mix of music and communal standards—as a sort of boogie-woogie with Beelzebub, in 1994’s Dancing With the Devil: Society and Cultural Poetics in Mexican-American South Texas.
On October 2, 2003, a rock show at Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom commemorated the 35th anniversary of another such massacre, of student protestors at Tlatelolco, Mexico City. But 18-year-old Mex-American rockero Erik Duarte hadn’t heard about lurid 1989 machete murders in Matamoros or about recently declassified documents showing that government snipers opened fire on the students in 1968. His teenage band Kardoid opened for Brujería, launching into the chorus of their song “Amén”: “¡Soy Satánico!” (I am Satanic!). The audience of largely Mex-descent teens and twentysomethings, clad in camouflage and Guevara chic, responded raucously with the rock cliché devil sign, holding up the index and pinky fingers to mime Satan’s horns. “‘Soy Satánico’ means I’m tired of being judged as a freak for how I dress and the music I listen to,” Duarte emotes over the feedback. “It’s like saying I’m your worst nightmare, I’m the devil, whatever you’re afraid of.”
Typically, in much Latin hard rock, crunching power chords conflate politics and pop culture, and the Mexican grito—a commonplace vocalization of sorrow and celebration—serves as the rockero gloss on everything from European conquest to immigrant reconquista of the Americas.
Recasting Norteño accordion music, Brujería metallizes the narco-corrido, an updated troubadour tradition that lionizes smugglers and border-hoppers to the status of national heroes. And honoring Subcomandante Marcos, band members cloak their faces in macho outlaw pose, adopting such nom de guerre monikers as Juan Brujo (Juan Witch), Asesino (Assassin), and Fantasma (Phantasm). They claim consort with Satan, sing the praises of the mom-and-pop-killing Menendez Brothers and Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar and exhort every pot-smoking greñudo (longhair) to spill whitey’s blood on turf stolen from Mexico (e.g. the album Matando Güeros, “Killing Honkies”). Chronicling current events much like corrido singers, Brujería speaks to such travails as Proposition 187 (on the song “Pito Wilson”), border-crossing casualties (“La Migra”), and the Zapatista uprising (“Revolución”). On the track “Consejos Narcos” (“Advice for Narcos”), Juan Brujo articulates the basic truths of drug running for Satanists. In a humorously bizarre equation, he also reduces nightmarish fantasies of Satanism and Communism to the reality of the Mexican P.R.I. : “Comunismo, Satanismo, P.R.I.—es lo mismo (“Revolución”).
The recent Best of Brujería release charts the band’s rise as a pioneering Spanish-language metal band formed from Mexican rockers and American collaborators. With liner notes by Hank Williams III, the disc gives a sense of their aggressive pose effected by an aural barrage of growling, slashing barbarity that sounds anything but typically “Mexican.” But as their recent show at the Aragon demonstrates, Brujería is proof of rock ’n’ roll’s absorption into the immigrant soul—as a space of simultaneous resistance and capitulation to bedeviling American culture.