Monday, my last day in New York, was also the day that Spaniard-by-way-of-France hippie-ster (he’s somewhere between both) Manu Chao was playing in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.
Chao is a former member of French band Mano Negra, which mixed Latin music with punk and rock and was fiercely popular, especially in France and Latin countries, as is Chao himself. His often political songs have been sung in French, English and Spanish as well as other languages and shifted from a punk-influenced sound to a more Caribbean-flavored vibe, as with his hit “Clandestino.”
Solo voy con mi pena
Sola va mi condena
Correr es mi destino
Para burlar la ley
Perdido en el corazon
De la grande Babylon
Me dicen el clandestino
Por no llevar papel
Pa una ciudad del norte
Yo me fui a trabajar
Mi vida la deje
Entre ceuta y Gibraltar
Soy una raya en el mar
Fantasma en la ciudad
Mi vida va prohibida
Dice la autoridad
Mano negra clandestina
Peruano clandestino
Africano clandestino
Marijuana ilegal
Which translates roughly to:
Alone I go with my sorrow
Alone goes my sentence
To run is my destiny
To escape the law
Lost in the heart of the great Babylon
They call me clandestine
For not having any papers
To a city of the north
I went to work
I left my life
Between Ceuta and Gibraltar
I’m a line in the sea
A ghost in the city
My life is forbidden
So says the authority
Mano negra (black hand) clandestine
Peruvian clandestine
African clandestine
Marijuana illegal
In a city like New York with large populations from Central America, South America, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and other Latin countries, the opportunity to see a political and musical hero like Manu Chao is cause for excitement. This was reaffirmed before I even headed to New York, when my Manu Chao-loving New York hostess relayed the bad news – sold out weeks ahead of time.
A frantic Craigslist search turned up people selling tickets for well over $100 profit. Plan B was drawn up. We would gather a small group and wing it. If that didn’t work, we would bring a bottle of red wine and put into effect Plan C: listening outside of the fence.
The scene outside the entrance to Prospect Park’s venue was like a Dead show for people with way better taste in music. Desperate hopefuls held up “I NEED A TICKET!” signs and in case we couldn’t read, they also screamed their needs at the top of their lungs. The line at the gates stretched for almost a quarter of a mile, so we planted ourselves on the grass and people-watched. We observed people shriek greetings and hug. We watched a girl sit on a Styrofoam cooler and break it in two pieces, which she found rather entertaining. We listened while various obstacles butchered the sound for Plastilina Mosh, one of my favorite Mexican bands who were opening.
P-Mosh’s first album, Aquamosh (Capitol), was produced by Beck producer Tom Rothrock and it’s obvious. In-your-face, rapid-fire rhymes are splashed over an eclectic blend of styles and samples. It’s a little green in spots (i.e., the lyric, “welcome to my porno show”), but very promising. The Monterrey duo’s next album, Juan Manuel (Astralwerks), was a cooler, sexier, more electronic, 70s sleaze disco affair. But outside the impossibly high walls at Prospect Park, the band sounded like pure noise pollution, as the high-energy rap in “Nino Bomba” came out as nearly hoarse shouts and the rest of the music was muddled. It was one of those moments when having a ticket would have come in handy.
Their 2006 album, Tasty, has not made it into my collection yet, and unfortunately, it was hard to tell if it was worth laying down the cash based on the sound, but there were a few ear-grabbing moments that made their way through the din. But wait, hold the phone – I’m currently listening to a hilarious cover of “Viva Las Vegas” from Tasty, which is sung in an adorably thick accent through a vocal effect. OK, you win, P-Mosh. Me voy a comprar Tasty. And while listening to P-Mosh audio on the band’s Web site, I also discovered “Shake Your Pubis” off Hola Chicuelas which could be a song by Tucson’s own the Pork Torta. This is, as Martha Stewart says, a good thing. How could I not have picked this up already?
The venue must have been huge because when Manu Chao and his band made their way onstage, it sounded like the entire city was screaming at the top of their lungs. There was something very relaxing and yet exhilarating about stretching out on the grass on a warm summer day with good friends listening to free music. So we were surprised to find out it even got better.
A lovely, tiny, fairy-like girl suggested we make our way to “the good spot” where the sound was better and if you strained just so, you could actually see. Sound and sights aside, it was “the good spot” because that was where the party was. Behind the fence directly facing the stage was a closely packed group of a couple hundred dancing, drinking, smoking, smooching and ahem, moshing fans. It was a little strange to see a mosh pit dust cloud rising when the music is so mellow, but sure enough, there was a group of shirtless 20-somethings blissfully and gently writhing in a circular path.
After settling under one of the huge pines that had branches which weren’t filled with intently watching Chao fans, the fairy girl borrowed a corkscrew for our wine and I was introduced to a new treat – alcohol in a public park. Now I know that alcoholics and transients enjoy this luxury all the time, but it is a different experience (I would imagine) when cop cruisers are slithering by a mere 50 feet away and they truly don’t care. I guess they figure as long as you aren’t hurting or harassing anyone, it’s all kool & the gang. We threw our bottle away in the proper receptacle afterwards with an officer mere yards away and he didn’t blink. I love New York.
I have few doubts that the show was better behind the fence than it was within its chain link confines. We were footloose, fancy free and dancing in the dark. We were buzzed on a $9 bottle of wine. We were clandestinos. And face it, we were poor or too lazy to get on the ball and buy tickets ahead of time.
Manu Chao played all the hits with his devotees behind the wall singing along. The fairy was right – the sound was quite excellent back here, almost as good as it would have been inside. And even though sometimes Manu Chao can get a little too reggae for my tastes, the whole experience was one of the best ones of the trip. As the incredibly diverse crowd slowly filed out we made our way down a road that looked like it was in the middle of a semi-desolate woods, heading towards my friend’s Brooklyn neighborhood bar. We passed through an area called Grand Army Plaza that made me have to stop and remind myself that I wasn’t in Spain or France. There was a roundabout and columns and statues that could have been alongside those I had encountered in Europe.
The Soda Bar was in a strangely unpopulated Brooklyn neighborhood, but it was a comfortable mix of locals (it clearly wasn’t a “destination”), couches and candles. My friend who lived a few blocks away said that sometimes he would come in to realize that people were hosting their child’s birthday party there. A kiddie party in a bar? Is this what the big city folks are forced to do when there is no Chuck-E-Cheese?
Since I was leaving the next day, my hostess decided that I was going to get my New York dance party, so we cabbed it to the Meat Packing District. There were two things wrong with this: I’m a vegetarian who is a big sissy about the smell of meat and the area has become a hotspot for the high roller, cologne and button-down shirt crowd.
So I was getting more and more frightened as she tried to remember where the semi-secret club was. When she found it, she had to talk the doorman into letting us in. Also not a good sign. But when we finally made it in the low-ceilinged, long room (how did us hicks get past the velvet rope?), I breathed a sigh of relief. The music was good, old school hip-hop that merged into Stevie Wonder, Prince and the obligatory vintage Michael Jackson hits.
The crowd was diverse, upbeat and featured a guy whose popping skills were unmatched by no one I have ever seen, even in “Breakin’ II, Electric Boogaloo.” But almost as entertaining as watching the Popper, was the seemingly 10-foot tall African gentleman who asked if I thought his dancing was sexy (A: “Hell, yes!”). He disagreed, but engaged me in a 10-minute conversation, offered me some cocaine (A: “Hell, no!”), parted for about 15 minutes and when he returned, started chatting me up as though he had never met me. It was dark, but not that dark. This, boys and girls, is why we shouldn’t do coke. Fortunately, my laughter drove him away.
After a few dances and being recruited to help a Madridian figure out, “What the hell ees een my dreenk?” we bid the nameless club and the Meat Market, no the Meat Packing District, adieu.
And so this is where our journey ends. A mere five hours later I will drag my weary self down four flights of stairs and into the waiting airport shuttle, which is thick with the bad perfume of a chatty passenger. I don’t understand how she can talk the whole time and not stare out the window at all of the fascinating neighborhoods we are driving through on the way to the freeway. New York is a feast/assault of the senses. It’s like the Louvre Museum – you could spend ages there and still never really experience it all. It’s the very definition of the term “melting pot.” New Yorkers probably don’t notice, but as a Tucsonan it’s notable and pretty cool to be literally rubbing elbows with people from all over the world.
And it’s definitely “A Music Town” just as Los Angeles, Nashville, Memphis and Austin have been deemed. It’s streets and clubs are seeped in musical history from CBGB’s to The Chelsea Hotel. No major tour is complete without a stop in New York. Every bartender in ever bar I entered was a blatant musicphile who was only too happy to sing along with the jukebox, talk music or smile warmly when patrons drunkenly exclaim, “OHMYGOD, you look JUST like Freddie Mercury!” There seem to be more sonically sophisticated folks (aka music snobs) per square mile than in any other location. While filling in a friend on the day’s upcoming shows at a café, the café’s owner, a rather conservative-looking fellow, interjected and reminisced about seeing Bad Brains, Bauhaus and the Clash “back in the day, here in Manhattan.”
I would move there in a heartbeat if it didn’t mean having to deal with horrific weather. Or missing the monsoon. Which is all I can think about while lighting explodes out the tiny plane window my face is pressed against. Through the unsavory scents of stale plane air and old coffee, I swear I just got a whiff of wet creosote.
It’s good to be home.
