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...
So I'm in the middle of making some TV reality/doc shows, twelve total, an all-consuming activity which not only results in a admittedly lazy dependence on YouTube blog posts for loyal KenBurnsHatesMexicans readers -- apologies -- but also a serious back up of programs on my TiVo. But one show I never miss is Dancing With the Stars. Not only because the ABC series features the dancing talents of Cheryl Burke (be still my heart), but I'm a sucker for the Pas0 Doble. Imagine the irony, then, of getting offered two free tickets to this Monday's taping of Dancing With the Stars -- and having to turn them down. Like I said, I'm in the middle of production. We'll be flying to San Antonio that day. Oh well...
The upside, of course, is I'm going back home: breakfast tacos 2 for 99 cents; "G-o S-p-u-r-s G-o" spelled out with white styrofoam cups stuck into people's chain link fences (talk about the art of Phantom Sightings); Esteban Jordan live at Salute on Friday nights (the "Jimi Hendrix of the Accordion" -- video proof here); Henry's puffy tacos (over eight million sold); Bill Miller iced tea; the big wide aisles of HEB; plus I can finally figure out why my fellow Tejanos went for Hillary. I mean, what's up with that?
Will be shooting four episodes of the TV show during San Antonio's Fiesta Week. For those non-Texans out there blissfully unaware of the cultural and political dynamics of Fiesta Week -- beyond its apt description of as Mardi Gras, but with Mexicans -- I leave you with this clip from my movie Speeder Kills. And for those of you sadly unaware of the delights of the Paso Doble, I leave you with this clip from last season of Dancing With the Stars, where Mario Lopez introduces America to his Chicano family before dazzling us with his version of the Latin ballroom dance. Have a good weekend.
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...
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.
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.
Self-exiled in California, missing Texas is a perpetual state of being. But on this election day, I am especially depressed I'm not back home. Anecdotal evidence from conversations and emails with various friends in San Antonio and Austin suggests a huge turnout and widespread interest. Hoopla for days. When even my mom can talk the finer details of Texas' particularly strange primary/caucus voting rules I know campaign interest is high.
Hard to predict exactly what's going to happen as all polls remain too close to call, but one agreed-upon trend is the importance of the Mexican American vote. Too much has already been written to rehash the wonkish details -- will Mexicans vote for a black guy?, is the Clinton/Obama split among raza generational?, why did Hillary pose with that mariachi kid? -- but one mainstream (read, gringo) attitude seems to be changing: their simplistic understanding of Brown people and a demographic complexity they are only now beginning to recognize.
Two things always invite scrutiny of Latinos by white people: when they want to sell us something or they want our vote.
When reporters and campaign strategists looked at raza in Texas for insight into voting trends they didn't discover a monolithic block, but discovered instead recent immigrants in Houston, 3rd and 4th gen non-Spanish speakers in San Antonio, college students in Austin, and those crazy people down in the Rio Grande Valley who love their Whataburgers. All different yet all Tejanos and each with different ideas on what they wanted in a candidate. It's a complexity that made itself known in articles in the New York Times, Newsweek, Daily Kos, and others. And while it's easy to make fun of an East Coast reporter just discovering Mexican Americans actually like to watch Project Runway -- just like people do in New Jersey -- it's a improvement from a couple of months ago when the depth of his cultural understanding of Tejanos was the enchilada plate at his favorite Jackson Heights Mexican restaurant. But let's see what happens. It remains to be seen, however, if this desire for understanding continues beyond election day. I don't have my hopes up.
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.
Barack or Hillary? Rolling Stones or the Beatles? Glorious Tejano or second-tier Latino? (Kidding..sort of.) I try and resist all binary determinants of identity except one: in the movie La Bamba, do you like Richie or do you like Bob? There are no in betweens. Fans of Richie tend to color within the lines, never skip school, and clap their hands politely at rock concerts. Fans of Bob wear leather jackets, stage dive, say fuck you, and recognize the injustices of the world -- because they have lived them. How could you not feel sympathy for half-brother Bob, with his sad and proud cartoon drawings of Woody Woodpecker, and the way his family constantly ignored him? Richie, Richie, Richie! Enough already. Sort of like Jan dealing with older sister Marsha only Bob rode a motorcycle and said "cabron" all the time.
The complex portrayal of Bob succeeds in no small part due to the acting chops of Esai Morales, one of our great and under appreciated contemporary American actors. It's one of the best roles in his long and distinguished career. I mention Esai because homeboy hit the airwaves last week in a new TV role. It's no Bob, in fact the character may not even be Latino, but it's good to see Morales on prime time again.
Following in the ethnically ambiguous footsteps of Det. Bobby Simone as played by Jimmy Smits in NYPD Blue, Esai Morales joins the cast of CBS' Jericho as Major Beck, 10th Mountain Division, a badass Army officer. Did I mention the vato's named Beck? Not Rodriguez. Not Garcia. Not even Bill Richardson. This bit of colorblind casting, I'm sure, will lead all Those Latinos Who Care About Such Things to ask -- is homeboy Mexican? Or at least Puerto Rican? I mean, does a Latino actor count as Brown if they give him a gringo name?
No cultural signifiers yet to be gleaned from the first episode. Intense acting to be sure, but no glimpse so far of a Virgen de Guadalupe tattoo (a la Ricky in Project Runway), or even a "cabron" reference or two. Morales co-stars as a no-nonsense soldier just trying to do his job. In this case restore order to the town of Jericho after the U.S. has been hit with a series of nuclear bombs. Talk about Mexicans taking jobs no one else wants. Esai's got to deal with irate white guys from the town of Jericho trying to kill irate white guys from the neighboring town of New Bern. Food shortages. No electricity. Gringo on gringo crime. Not to menion Skeet Ulrich's one dimensional acting style. Like I said, Mexicans taking jobs no one else wants. Go here to see a clip of Esai at work in his new role.
But back to Beck. Maybe it is a Latino name after all. That is if the name's in reference to our favorite multi-culti wanna-be Brown guy Beck Hanson, rock singer, Boyle Heights native, and culture soaking step-son of Asco Chicano artist Sean Carillo. Here's Beck walking the streets of Latino L.A. jamming with some Mexican musicians. I'll let you decide...
Check out this interview with Arturo Vega, from Chihuahua, Mexico. Arturo not only designed the graphics for the Ramones albums, t-shirts, and band's overall style -- a distinct look which worked hand in hand with the Ramone's groundbreaking music to define American punk rock music and aesthetics -- but the vato was a close confidant and witness to Joey, Dee Dee, and Johnny at the invention of it all.
According to this Spin article (click the link -- it's a very cool way to see the magazine online), the Ramones Eagle design only lags behind the logos for the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd in world-wide popularity. Another Phantom Sighting, Secret History, Lipstick Trace for sure.
Still, not sure what to make of the green Ramones flip flops pictured above, but I guess everyone has to make a buck. And for some reason the commodification doesn't quite grate me the way Bud Light used Blitzkrieg Bop in their beer commercial. I'm guessing it's the whimsy of the chanclas. Very Ramones-like, wouldn't you say?
