Digital Diversion

Saturday was a bit of a surreal day for me. I was covering that night’s Blitzkrieg show in San Jose and had stayed the previous night down there because I had an interview with Marky Ramone on Friday and I didn’t feel like all the driving. I had a lot of time to kill on Saturday, a good portion of which I figured would be spent transcribing the interview (anyone know a good automatic speech-to-text translator that doesn’t require any voice training?). Anyways, I was grabbing the free breakfast in the hotel before hitting the computer and struck up a conversation with a guy named Eduardo in the restaurant. It turns out he was the guitarist for the headlining band, El Tri, from Mexico City. Super nice guy and, when he heard I was there for the show, started regaling me with stories of touring in the U.S. (someone was murdered at their show while they were playing at the Shoreline in Mountain View) and of playing with the Ramones. One of the photographers later told me that El Tri has been around as a band for nearly 40 years. Eduardo didn’t look that old.

The show was held at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds in a long concrete and steel warehouse. I was lucky enough to catch the sound check and I could tell right away that this show going to be loud! Apparently there’s usually a lot of down-time at soundcheck but it was pretty cool to get some pictures of the behind-the-scenes view of things.  Later in the day I did an interview with Michale Graves, singer of Blitzkrieg that is now posted on his site.  You can listen to it here.

I was hanging out in the hotel lobby with Michale and Evan before heading to the show and in walks Marky. Despite having spent almost an hour with him the night before for the interview, I was still in awe of his presence. Then he walks right up to me and starts talking about making some edits to the interview and then tells me it was a good interview. Holy crap, I just got a compliment from Marky Ramone! He probably walked away wondering what was wrong with me as I stood there with my mouth hanging open.

You may have already picked up on this, but the odd thing about this show is that it was billed as El Mexicano Rock Fest and Blitzkrieg was playing in between openers Rostros Ocultos (from Guadalajara) and the aforementioned El Tri. I arrived at the show a little late and only caught the end of Rostros Ocultos’ set. The hall was packed and the crowd was going crazy but the whole thing had a great vibe. No accordions or polka music here … Rostros Ocultos were rocking pretty hard and I got some shots that are included in the gallery below.

Blitzkrieg came on and the crowd was really into it. I only got about two minutes of pictures up front before they kicked me out so I ended up watching the rest of the show from the side of the stage. The lighting was surprisingly good but somebody went a little crazy with the smoke machine; while it may look cool from the audience, it makes all your pictures look blurry. Things cleared up a bit towards the end of the set and, all things considered, I still ended up getting some decent shots but I was grateful I was at the rehearsal for those front-facing shots. I’m not sure what this particular crowd was expecting of Blitzkrieg, but I had a bunch of people come up to me back stage asking what I thought of the set and telling me how great they thought they were. I guess since I was one of only a few people backstage (actually in the whole building) that looked like they don’t speak Spanish, they assumed I was with the band. Even Eduardo from El Tri came by to say ‘hi’ and had a big grin on his face from enjoying Blitzkrieg.

Thanks to Xochitl Garcia for the picture!

Once Blitzkrieg ended, Marky and Michale bolted to the van and took off with an aplomb for avoiding mobs that only comes with practice. Since the van was in a restricted area there wasn’t actually a mob, but you wouldn’t have known it to watch those guys move. I was hoping to catch a ride back to the hotel (where my car was parked) with them but I got side-tracked by the guys from Rostros Ocultos who wanted me to be in a picture with them. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. I want a copy of that picture though!  [edit: ask and you shall receive!]  Anyways, I turned around and the van was gone so I hung out with the band who were really interested in seeing my pictures. Turns out that they’ve been around for 24 (or was it 28?) years. I clearly do not know my Mexican rock bands … shame on me.  Hopefully having my picture taken with Rostros Ocultos will give me some cred, though.  They were really nice guys and gave me a CD which I plan spinning later.

My only regret from the day was not sticking around to see El Tri but I had a long drive ahead of me.  Enjoy the pictures and don’t be afraid to leave a comment!