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I just returned from my short swing through the Mexican/California border areas. The weather was beautiful, from really powerful downpouring storms to verdant scenery and amazing sunsets the whole trip. It was a pleasure driving that much with such beautiful scenery.
I had a wonderful time on my little tour and really enjoyed playing with Gary Lehman in San Diego, Dark Numbers in Pasadena and, of course, my main reason for embarking on such folly: the incomparable Luis Angulo. We are now jokingly referring to our duo as the "Guacamole Brothers".
Luis and I had a fabulous gig in Mexicali ("noche de musica cyclica" at the Cafe Literario, which is a Mexicali cultural center). The audience was incredibly responsive and Luis and I got into some really cool grooves. They seemed to appreciate the grooving material as well as a couple of more abstract pieces that I did. One woman came up to me and said, in halting English, "Your music made my third eye feel tickled" as she rubbed her forehead. I took this as a very unusual and very cool compliment and I kissed her on the forehead when I left............lol!
Our hosts (friends of Luis', Pancho and Isela, who put together and promoted a really nice show on a moment's notice after the person in charge of this leg of the tour dropped the ball) then took us out to check out the incredible new and thriving NORTEC scene at a club that was packed with hundreds of dancers.
Nortec is a combination of dance club electronica (techno and breakbeat) and rhythms and instruments of traditional border folkloric music. A DJ/Producer scene, they add Nortena, Banda, Mariachi and Taca Taca (I hope I spell this correctly) to the mix. It was really fun and really grooving.
They had black lights everywhere (the one night where I didn't make my hair dayglo something, damn it) and the best ice cold Tecate beer on tap. I'm not a beer drinker but the beer in Mexicali was incredibly good. It gets so hot there (154 degrees Fahrenheit, one stunning day several years ago when trees burst into flames, apparently) that the beer has more water in it. They even have a delicious drink that mixes beer with lime juice and ice (with a ring of salt on the rim).
At this nightclub, they even interspersed the DJ sets with a traditional (and unmic'd) acoustic Taca Taca group, which consisted of a snare drummer (with the snares turned off) playing the rim and drum a little like a timbale (its stuttering drag rolls give it the name "taka taka"), a basssist, guitar and accordion. The whole crowd lustfully sang the traditional songs as wacky cut-up images of old Mexican culture were projected on a large screen. The DJ hit the decks again and the throbbing bass commenced. At one point they had someone who must have been using Cycling 74's Jitter making images of a traditional masked wrestling match where the wrestlers jerked backwards and forwards to the beats. The ambience of the gig was really amazing and everyone was deeply into the scene. I felt like a true pasty-faced gringo in the midst of it all, but I have to say that everyone I met was extremely generous and nice. Luis, who grew up in Mexicali, says that this city has a reputation for being very nice.
We then went to an after hours club (where I had to admit my drinking lightweigthedness and commenced to drink bottled water), and then when it closed we drove to the Nuevo Cyclone Taqueria and had the best taco I've ever eaten in my life at this brightly colored (psychedelic green/blue) all-night open air restaurant. Amazingly, across the street there was a closed shop lit up with the title ELECTRONICA RICHARD..............I think I have a new moniker in the Guacamole Brothers.....................LOL. Luis was just cracking up that there was a bright green taqueria with a such a shop across from it considering my whole history with dayglo lime green plastic.
We stumbled back home around 5 in the morning after a perfect day. I can't wait to go back and play there again!
Luis was also able to do an hour and a half (!!) interview on a prominent Radio station (maybe Luis can fill us in on the call letters) which apparently reaches all the way up to L.A. That's some serious radio exposure so it looks like we'll be going back to play Mexicali and Tijuana next time. Luis is seriously considering relocating to San Diego from Germany. Selfishly, I"m hoping that he and Nadja (his lovely wife ) and their two cute kids Elias and Sofia will come to live here. We have a lot more music to make together.
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