Rooftop Photo Sesh

Pescado frito, preparada

This might be the last food porn shot from Mexico on this blog. This is from the feria: fried white fish, mayonaise, salsa, avocado, hot sauce and the omnipresent lime. Simple, but oh so good. Eaten, of course, with a michelada in a big styrofoam cup. This is how we do it.

Moodymann- Freaky MF (live)

Ha ha here is Detroit house legend Moodymann doing his track "Freaky MF" live with some help from a special guest. NSFW!

Pasion en Iztapalapa

My friends brought me to Iztapalapa, a part of the city that is best know fo r the Pasion, or reeanctment of the crucifixion that they have every year. As you arrived by train you walked by some cool photos they they had of previous years, like one of the guy who had played Jesus being treated for serious wounds. Someone even told me that they really put nails through his hands. I realized early on that there were many similarities here to Lucha Libre- professional wrestling. The suspension of disbelief was key.


We had been invited by Marcy (left side), who Polka Madre knows because she works in a place near casa Kramer called "Polleria 'las Pollitas'" ("The "Little Chicken" Chicken Shop[!]). But on this special day she was all dressed up and asked Marina not to tell any of us how they knew each other. She didn't want to be known as a "chicken girl".Tejja was taking photos as well.

The other aspect of the day was these guys who drag heavy crosses throug the street and up to the top of the steep hill where Jesus is to be crucified.When you aren't dragging it, it's time to casually lean on it!


They had them up for sale.
I liked this guy cause his assistant was wearing a Scotty Pippen jersey.

You could buy snacks like these: boiled pork skin with lime.

This float was made of flower petalsThis was like sand or sawdust

Reporters queried Eric about his mustache.I saw these people scarfing down Chicharrons while passively watching Jesus die and though "Can you be any more Mexican?"...

...and then I saw this guy. His girlfriend looked like she was twelve and ready for breeding. I thought "I guess someone is more Mexican."This guy, too. He was wearing a hat of Brujeria, which is a satanic metal band while avidly watching the passion play.On jumbotrons, cause it was too crowded to see much.
really crowded.
See those little crosses? Thats Jesus biting it. Then they played "Ave Maria" and things were serious for like 2 minutes. Then it was back to the usual. Although 15 minutes later out of the clear blue sky it started raining. Marina told me that this has happened five years in a row. I'm serious.
Jesus!

Vacances en Hidalgo

I went with Polka Madre to the state of Hidalgo where they went to play a show and film a video.
















I jumped in the van at the last minute with no bags or anything, I was out after a long night out by myself and showed up wearing a t-shirt with Scarface on it and not answering questions.
Soon my phone ran out of batteries and I couldn't take any more photos of what might have been the most photogenic weekend of my trip. Polka Madre played an awesome show, the theatre put us up in the best hotel in the city, with our suites looking out onto the main square, which was dominated by an enormous colonial clocktower under which Mariachis sang in the evening. The next day we went out to Mariana's grandmother's house in the desert where we spent the rest of the weekend filming a music video, drinking pulque, grilling out, playing futball, and heading into town where we descended like the plague of wild-ass city kids that we were. When the video for the Polka Madre song "Life" debuts I'll post it up here, it should be a surreal affair. Until then, these photos I took before my batteries died will be my only visual record of our weekend in Hidalgo.

Sonida Animal Blanco- Cumbia Megamix

Here's a sample of what my recent DJ sets sounded like in Mexico City. These are all cumbia classics with some added beats from the soundsystem. This is my last shot of latin flavor before i go back to America and back to playing black music.
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Como te Voy a Olvidar?

Every time you travel in a different country, there is usually one song that ends up becoming the unofficial theme song of your trip. It's the song that you hear coming out of cheap radios in the market, coming out of pick-up trucks, it's the song that somehow gets inside your head and makes the soundtrack of your memories of a country. This was definetely the song of my time in Mexico:


I realize that a few months ago this might have sounded to me like it might sound to you now: like just another Mexican cumbia-lite pop ballad. But at this point I love it with that quixotic mix of sentimentality and irony that typifies most Mexican people's appreciation of their culture.

Sex on Fire

Sometimes you need to turn to some major-label Walmart rockers and some of those kind of DJs that go by their full name and wouldn't know irony if it was sharing the bill with them at Creamfeilds when you want a solid club remix that isn't going to degenerate into stuttering beat-repeat madness or fall apart before the ladies have a chance to buy another drink and put their hands in the air.

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Maria's Place

Mexico City Cute

Bacalo Torta

Dan, the eccentric soundman for Balkan Beat Box, World Inferno, Firewater etc. and the producer of the forthcoming Polka Madre disc "Dead in the Eye" is of the Israeli vegetarian persuasion, so where to take him for late night drunk food in D.F.? To Condessa for a Torta de Bacalo! What do you get when you take a Portuguese dried salt fish cooked in a spicy red sauce with olives and put it on the Mexican version of an American grinder and add melted cheese?

You get some all-time top-ten gangster shit!