Happy birthday Joey Ramone, father of punk rock, and Pete Townshend, lead guitar player for the Who and inventor of the Marshall Stack. Joey would have been 57 today. Townshend turns 63. Here's a video of the Ramones going political with "My Brain is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)," their protest song railing against Ronald Regan's controversial visit to a Nazi cemetery in 1985. And check out Joey singing Louis Armstrong's "It's a Wonderful World" and go here for a 1992 interview.
Clip 2 is the Who from around 1965 with their mod classic "I Can't Explain." I love this song, proto punk for days. No wonder the Clash ripped off the guitar riff for "Guns on the Roof." Steal from the best. But for a more representative demonstration of Townshend's patented windmill guitar strumming (not to mention some amazing shots of Keith Moon, rock's greatest drummer) go here, and a live version of "The Seeker," best known today as the song used in the opening of Steven Soderbergh's The Limey.
NPR ran a great piece the other day on Brian May, the guitar player from the classic rock group Queen. The dude is now an astrophysicist studying the origins of the universe. From writing songs with Freddy Mercury to the Big Bang Theory. Badass. So of course I quickly went to YouTube to find the perfect companion video for illustrative purposes when -- snap! -- I remembered: Queen En Espanol: Tributo a Queen, the 1997 tribute album of Queen songs by various roc en espanol groups. This must-have CD included El General doing We Will Rock You (Nosotros Te Conmoveremos), Fobia doing Under Pressure (Presionando, video here), and my absolute fave cover song of the bunch, Molotov and their sly, transgressive, and delightfully irreverent version of Bohemian Rhapsody...
In my view, no Mexican American performer better embodies the notion of Secret History and/or Phantom Sighting than Alejandro Escovedo. During his long rock and roll career Escovedo was present at the birth of West Coast punk in the late 70s; opened for the Sex Pistol's for the legendary English band's infamous last gig at the Winterland in 1978, hung out with Sid and Nancy in the days before the couple's last days at the Chelsea; invented cowpunk with his NYC band Rank and File; helped form in the mid 80s what we now know at the Austin music scene; all the while creating some of the most heartfelt rock and roll all under the radar of the national media. From a link where you can hear Alejandro as he is best heard: live in front of an audience:
Born into a large Mexican immigrant family in San Antonio, Escovedo was
heavily influenced by his father, who loved music and often sang in
local mariachi bands. His career began with The Nuns, a mid-'70s punk
outfit from San Francisco; later, he co-founded the country-influenced
punk band Rank and File. He began to make a name for himself in True
Believers with his brother Javier, with national tours supporting the
likes of Los Lobos, and his solo career took off with 1992's critically
acclaimed Gravity. Since then, Escovedo has recorded eight
albums under his own name, in the process winning numerous awards and
accolades, including "Artist of the Decade" from No Depression magazine.
One of my favorite cover songs of all time is Escovedo's transcendent take on the Mott the Hoople classic All the Young Dudes. Just a few days ago Alejandro played with Bruce Springsteen at the Boss's Houston concert. Several friends have sent me the link. I share it with you now. And for further Alejandro clips to enjoy go here to see him perform my second favorite cover song of all time, Escovedo's version of Iggy Pop's I Wanna Be Your Dog; and in a Must See clip go here to see a story on the old 80s MTV show The Cutting Edge highlighting one of the biggest and baddest big guitar bands in rock and roll history, The True Believers, which Alejandro fronted with his brother Javier. Chicanos with Guitars. Badass.
Was away for the past three days in Seattle giving a presentation at the Experience Music Project's Pop Conference, an annual gathering of music critics talking about all things cultural, musical, and pop. Amazing time, in an admitted geeky fan boy kind of way. Best part of the weekend was meeting two of my heroes, Griel Marcus, who's idea of Lipstick Traces led me to apply his theory of Secret Histories oh-so-appropriately to U.S. Latinos, and my main man Greg Tate, who's seminal book of essays on Black culture and music, Flyboy in the Buttermilk, taught me how to be a better post-Chicano. I've been carrying around my tattered paperback of Tate's book for almost fourteen years now freely appropriating vato's still radical ideas on race and culture.
Allow me to quote from a piece I wrote on Latino filmmaking for the San Francisco Bay Guardian many years ago (full article here). The essay not only distills Tate's particular ideas on fusing specific ethnic sensibilities with "white" influences to create something new, but also gives a snapshot of the sad state of Latino filmmaking eight or nine years ago. But even more lamentable? The situation of Raza cinema hasn't improved much since then. Oh well, at least we had Elisa Jimenez from Project Runway last year and, of course, Alex Rivera's upcoming post-border sci-fi epic, Sleep Dealer. Punto!
It is with some irony, then, that I turn to the ideas of the one African American writer who most captures the emerging hybrid sensibility/strategy of a new post-movimiento generation of Latino filmmakers, and future of brown film.
There is a patented, vertiginous moment in a Greg Tate essay ("Cult Nats Meet Freaky-Deke") where the self-described Flyboy in the Buttermilk expounds in his usual dizzying and apt rhetoric on a liberating aesthetic current among certain enlightened Black artists. He talks about those anti-essentialist folks who "feel secure enough about Black culture to claim art produced by nonblacks as part of their inheritance." (Substitute “black” for “brown” in the above quote and it sounds like many contemporary U.S. Latinos.) A 150 plus word litany then ensues where the provocative writer headbumps pairings of seminal influential artist types as evidence of his theory of how seemingly disparate cultural influences actually make cogent sense when incorporated by certain enlightened black artists.
Just a sampling from Señor Tate’s intentionally contradictory two-page list: "...George Clinton and George Romero, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Lisette Model, Zora Neale Hurston and Akira Kurosawa...Jah Rastafari and Johnny Rotten...Anthony Braxton and Bruce Lee...Antonin Artaud and Amira Baraka...Fredric Jameson and Reverend James Cleveland," and on and on and on.
Absent, of course, in Tate's glib Who's Who are any American artists of the Brown variety. Now I mention this not so much to dis brother Tate (OK, maybe just a little -- those who preach post-modern pastiche, after all, should practice it) but more so because the guy's on to something.
“...Malcolm X and Jimi Hendrix...?”
That’s cool. But how about certain Chicano/Latino artists that also easily navigate and reference and knowingly subvert all that pop America -- North and South -- has to offer. Take Luis M. Meza's sublime 1996 ultra low budget feature, Staccato Purr of the Exhaust. In that very cool ultra low budget feature Meza mixes the influences of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jim Jarmusch, and lo-fi rock and roll into a new American idie film sensibility.
The point being, of course, not to lay down some unproductive one-up-manship in referencology with African American artists -- 'cause Prince Paul or the RZA would totally kick our Latino ass in that kind of sampling mano-a-mano -- no, what matters here is illustrating just another example of the culturally specific, all-encompassing power of mestizaje -- our people's predeliction for hybridity and mixing -- our necessary mastery of two cultures -- the creation of a natural brown aesthetic informing our movies. It's a distinct creative strategy that's worked in the past, and being transformed for the future.
Will be posting more details and observations the next few days on all the things Latino and pop and relevant I encountered at the conference. Not to mention pontifications on Alberto "The Geneva Convention is Quaint" Gonzales' job search (no one wants to hire him); the Spurs loss to the hated Lakers (we'll get 'em in the playoffs); and a response to a way fucked up review by a clueless gringo critic writing on the Phantom Sightings show. Stay tuned...
Been back in LA for only a few days and already into a second day of production on a TV project I'm working on (more on that later, promise.) Long days of shooting, my feet hurt, not a lot of time for blogging which is very frustrating since I have a lot on my mind....for instance, saw Phantom Sightings this weekend (amazing show) have some thoughts on that; saw lots of Mexicans while in NYC signifying a cultural shift in the making, very badass; Junot Diaz AND Bob Dylan win a Pulitzer Prize, congrats; and my man Steve Guttenburg got kicked off Dancing With the Stars, que lastima! Anyway, things ease up tomorrow so expect some major pontificating in the next couple of days on these and other important matters on all things Latino and pop.
But big news today is my San Antonio buds Girl in a Coma have made iTunes Editors Choice pick. Now, for a week, every time someone in the world opens the iTunes store the page's top banner features the band's debut album on sale for 5.99. Sales should be great, but more importantly, the opportunity will introduce the band to many more listeners. Check it out, download a copy. And actually see for yourself the word "chicana" mentioned in an iTunes description. Mechistas must be dancing in the street. I leave you with this homemade clip of a Girl in a Coma song. As most KenBurns readers know my latest music video for the Girls was "Say" (go here to check it out), in this very cool DIY version, a fan gives her interpretation of the tune. Enjoy.
Doh! Just discovered I can actually embed clips from my Myspace page to this blog. Badass. Have been wanting to post my first film, Pretty Vacant (16mm, Black and White, 33 1.3 min), in several segments over the course of a few weeks for your viewing pleasure...you know, serial narrative like, a la Charles Dickens, only San Antonio instead of London and Sex Pistol's lyricis instead of "These were the best of times, the worst of times."
Anyway, like I said, this was my first movie, finished in 1996, starring my friend Mariana Vasquez, shot entirely inside Loop 410 San Antonio, Texas, it won some awards, I corresponded with Griel Marcus because of the movie (didn't actually meet him, though), and features songs by Velocity Girl, Esteban Jordan, Freddy Fender, and Cafe Tacuba, among many others. The story's about a girl in a punk band called Aztlan-A-Go-Go, her name is Molly, every summer her family goes back to Mexico to visit the relatives but this time she doesn't want to go because she's convinced she's stumbled across something that will change the very foundation of rock history. Something to do with the Sex Pistol's infamous 1978 gig in San Antonio. It'll all make sense when you watch the movie. Anyway, here's the opening. More clips in the weeks to come.
Ooops. I forgot to mention yesterday another significant event of March 31. So here it is, a day late, and I'll let another one of the entries from our "The Truthful History of the Conquest of Nuevo Aztlan" explain it all:
March 31, 1997 1995 Corpus Christi, Texas Tejana singer Selena is gunned down at a Day's Inn motel. Mainstream media outlets from the BBC to the New York Times try to understand why sixty thousand mourners file past her casket in eleven hours. People magazine publishes a special issue devoted entirely to the life of the fallen singer. This had been done only twice before, after the deaths of Jackie Onassis and Audrey Hepburn. The Selena issue easily outsells them both combined. Soon after, the company launches People en Espanol A market is noticed.
And I'll end, via Perezhilton, with this way cool fan tribute video.
Got my computer back from the repair shop today. Finally. Immediately tidied up my hard drive, cleaning up files, documents, and the occasional downloaded picture of Cheryl Burke. And even better, came across this article I wrote a few years back about the coolest Chicano band of all time, Question Mark and the Mysterians (check out their website here.) I leave you with my text and a clip of their hit song:
Throughout pop history, one-hit wonders stand as three minute testaments to the sometimes accessible and occationally democratic nature of American rock and roll. Billboard evidence that a no-name garage band can, overnight, with the right song, timing, and dumb luck, become a Spin magazine cover girl and/or boy. And while these kinds of rags to riches stories are pretty much the glorious MTV exception rather than the anonymous bar band rule, in 1966 five Mexican kids, the sons of Saginaw, Michigan migrant workers, via Corpus Christi, Texas, beat the odds and accomplished just that.
‘96 Tears,’ their crude, catchy, home recorded single, hit number one all across America. A solo, yet potent, US salvo against the then burgeoning British invasion. Even Dick Clark couldn’t ignore these brown skinned homeboys, the enigmatically named rock band called ? and the Mysterians.
Since ‘96 Tears’ song hit the AM airwaves, legends and band misinformation have flourished, much to the intended delight, I’m sure, of bizarro frontman Rudy Martinez, who not only was never photographed without his dark sunglasses, but legally changed his name to ?. Speculation as to just “who are these guys” not only contributed to the song’s success, but in hindsight, makes you wonder why Chicano kids (like Question Mark; like Sam the Sham, aka Domingo Samudio) felt the need to hide their brown identity in the lily white field of U.S. rock and roll. But then again maybe not. Considering it was 1966, and these guys were poor Chicano kids from nowhere, it’s no suprise that in the seven months between recording and stardom, two of the original band members were called to Vietnam. They made it back, but the band broke up. ‘96 Tears,’ however, lives on forever.
On April 6 Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement opens at the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art. As the title suggests, the exhibition is an effort to make some sort of sense about what it means re: Brown people making art post-movement, post-Chicano, and post-colonial. Don't ask me the answer to this admittedly loaded question, I'm still trying to figure out why they canceled George Lopez.
I mention the LACMA show because I collaborated with my friend artist Ruben Ortiz on a written timeline for Phantom Sightings: our totally subjective picks of crucial events in raza cultural history that have made us what we are, and inspired Latinos to create sublime artistic expressions such as Bidi Bidi Bom Bom, anything by Esteban Jordan (the Jimi Hendriz of the Accordian), "Sueno de una tarde en la Alameda Central" (view here), and certain recent pieces by Latino artists at this year's Whitney Biennial.
So here's two of the more than 60 plus entries to give you an idea of our timeline:
1944 Mexico City, Mexico Wearing a Zoot Suit, speaking Spanglish, and billed as “the only Authentic Pachuco,” pioneer border-crosser, German Valdés, aka “Tin Tan,” triumphantly returns from his Juarez/El Paso self-exile to dazzle sold-out Mexico City music hall crowds with all things proto Chicano. Mexican traditionalists bemoan the entertainer’s pocho ways as a “barbarian invasion from the North.” Two decades later, Tin Tan politely declines an offer by the Beatles to stand among the luminaries gracing the cover of their Sgt. Pepper’s album. He asks, instead, that a photo of Mexican tree take his place. A phantom sighting.
June 29, 1955 Oaxaca, Mexico Mexican curandera Maria Sabina gives psychedelic mushrooms to a vacationing J.P. Morgan banker from New York City. Life Magazine publishes the mind-altering experience in a travel article titled “Seeking the Magic Mushroom.” Among the impressionable readers of the story in this the country’s most popular weekly is Timothy Leary. As news spreads, subsequent acolytes to Sabina’s sacred mushroom ceremony in the remote Oaxacan village will include Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Pete Townsend, and Bob Dylan. Rock music is forever changed.
April 6. Mark your calendars. I'll post a couple of more of our entries in the weeks ahead as the date approaches. Everything you wanted to know about Captain Kirk, Selena, the Alamo, Ozzy, hydraulics, etc. etc., and what they have to do with all things Latino and pop. For anyone interested, the timeline is featured in the Phantom Sightings exhibition catalog which is available here.
