Welcome back NACIONALISTAS to our weekly morsel of goodness, also known as the Nacional Records’ Newsletter! We thank you for staying in touch with us and look forward to giving you all the latest in 2008!

Read The Entire Newsletter for more great news HERE or by clicking the NEWSLETTER link on the side.

Here’s a peek at the cover to the new Pinker Tones disc “Wild Animals” due for release very soon below.

Guess what!  I’m no longer the gringa 17-year-old music loca - I’m now 18 and still anxious to tell you more about my adventures when I went to Mexico City and saw the Soda Stereo concerts last month.  I had some amazing musical moments on the streets of DF.  (That’s ‘day-effay’ for Distrito Federal, as the Chilangos – the hip residents of DF - call their city.)    Tell any Chilango you’re from LA and they’ll say, “That’s where all the Mexicans are!”  And even if “all the Mexicans” have moved to LA, the music just isn’t the same as in DF.  Mexico City has been described as the most surreal place on earth.  It’s also described as delirious, anarchic, chaotic, vibrant, horrendous, indescribable and magnificent.  I believe it all.  After spending a week in DF, I am now convinced that the streets of DF are home to sights and sounds that would never happen in the USA.    I experienced some truly amazing, musical, magical moments….

(Actually, so many that this topic will be posted in THREE PARTS! Stay tuned!) 

Celebrating the Revolution with…a Sports Parade?

Here’s a musical experience I never could imagine in the USA.  November 20 celebrates el Día de la Revolution, a Mexican national holiday.  It was the day in 1910 that the opposition made its call to arms to overthrow the rule of dictator Porfirio Díaz.  The civil war that followed made héroes of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata and soldaderas like Adelita.  DF celebrates the day with a sports parade.  Sitting by the statue of Cristobal Colón in front of my hotel, I watched DF sports teams on their march from el Ángel de la Independencia to el Zócalo.  There were the Condesa cycling club, the Benito Juárez Bomberos Beisbol team, the Santa Fe skateboarders, the San Angel aerobics group, the Tepito tennis team and the Coyoacán Club Cachibol, motorcycle acrobatic shows, police rescue divers, skaters, bodybuilders, fencers, boxers, dancers, rock climbers, lucha libre wrestlers, gymnasts, and so many more.  Many carried banners of revolutionary héroes and heroínas.   Most marched; some rode on floats.  Every team brought its music; many had bands - drums, horns, flutes, tubas, and clarinets.  Others marched to brassy music blaring from enormous speakers.    It went on for over FOUR HOURS.   The streets were lined with exuberant Chilangos.  My friend Santiago, the doorman at my hotel, explained that this parade celebrates what’s most important to Mexican people – their revolutionary history, sports, and their music. 

Una Tuna at Café Tacuba

Another big astonishment was una tuna at Café Tacuba. Do you know that the incredible, DF-born rock group Café Tacuba named themselves after this place?  It was originally a 17th-century mansion but opened as a restaurant in 1912, serving politicians, businessmen and celebrities, seeing quite a bit of history along the way.  The place is gorgeous with its vaulted ceiling, ornate tiles, stained glass and museum-quality artwork.   As I ate my enchilada poblana, I was startled by a dozen guys entering from the back in medieval doublets and stockings, like from a Renaissance Faire, playing lutes and tambourines and weird guitars.  I thought, “That’s a tuna!  A medieval-Spain, university musical ensemble!”  (I knew because I had seen one on a Madrid episode of a telenovela.)   Well, these guys did turn out to be the Tuna Bohemia del Estado de México and they were incredible.   Trust me, there are no tunas performing in Los Angeles, and they deserved each peso I spent on their CD. 

Songs of Love from Toy Guitars

In DF I was serenaded with my first love song.  Qué romantico - that’s never happened in Los Angeles!  My admirer (I think of him as El Chavo), spotted me in front of el Palacio de Bellas Artes and seemed to fall in love.  He asked, “Una canción, señorita bonita?”  I motioned for him to go away but his love was strong.  He followed me all along the border of Alameda Park serenading me with “Celito Lindo” on his guitar. That guitar!  I wish that San Judas Tadeo, Patron Saint of Miracles and Thieves, or Santa Cecilia, the Saint of Music, had been up in the sky with a camera to take a picture of that guitar.  You have to image a genuine, amusement-park-prize-quality, bright green, TOY guitar. I was amazed that he was able to make this guitar play.  Hm, I like the idea that my first love song was played on a toy guitar. I gave El Chavo a few pesos; he finally stopped following me.  When I told Santiago, he said “Mexicans can make music out of anything!”

Snaggle-Tooth Clarinet Guy in Colonia Condesa 

One of my most memorable musical moments was outside an outside an upscale outdoor café in Colonia Condesa, a hip DF barrio that’s kind of like New York’s SoHo.  More street musicians, this time a clarinetist, had stopped to entertain.  As a clarinet player myself, I could see his technique was far from perfect but each note was distinct and loud enough to carry across the buzz of the crowded café.  Plus, he was playing from memory and even improvising.  The lovely patrons stopped buzzing to listen to his bright, bold tones.  When he finished, his snaggle-toothed grin made his smile even warmer.  I wasn’t the only one who emptied out my pockets into his cup.  I tried to imagine him playing outside the California Pizza Kitchen or Spago.  I chuckled.  Only in DF could there be a Snaggle-Tooth Clarinet Guy. 

And that was just PART I of my adventures! Read next week about the extraordinary experiences awaiting you when you buy discos in DF… 

Hasta luego, mis amorcitos! 

These aren’t toys, they’re instruments:   This digital world wonder is called TENORI-ON:

Fussible+Bostich from Nortec Collective are always hungry for music

technology. They’re improvising using their syncopated rhythms, analog synths and some sinaloense glitches which are controlled by these little silver groove boxes.