My First Riot, Part I

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I know what you're thinking, but this is not a children's story about an Irish lad going to his first soccer game. Nor is it a terrible memoir about the life-changing night when I met my heroes Quiet Riot.

No, My First Riot started out innocently enough. After attending a preliminary round of the Miche Rock Festival several weeks ago, I went to the finals on Friday night with some co-workers. There had been several preliminary rounds, with the top 2 bands from each making it to the final. I had enjoyed the one round I went to, so I thought the finals would be great! Well, they were great... they just didn't go as long as they were supposed to. But we'll get to that part later.

Before I take you inside, I have to tell you about the coat check. Coat check? What are you talking about, Xave? Isn't it like 32˚ every day? Why yes, Xave-pretending-to-be-a-reader, that is true. There wasn't a coat check - instead, there was a mandatory belt check! I had to give my belt to a chick, not at a station or anything, just a chick who walked around collecting all belts. Seemed like a scam, but she had lots of belts already, so I relented, even though I was wearing unfortunately-too-big-around-the-waste-or-maybe-I've-just-lost-weight? pants.

It was a pretty good sized crowd, as you can see. The grandstand was separated from the ground floor by a fence - both areas were free, but you needed a VIP pass to get onto the ground. A co-worker of mine does media work for one of the bands, so I had the good fortune of being in said VIP area.

The first couple bands were solid, if somewhat generic. They each had their moments, and I enjoyed both, and with the knowledge that a couple of awesome bands were coming later, I knew I was in for a great evening of music.

The stage

The third band was the first metal band of the evening, and obviously their name was Existential Hate.

I have to go off on a bit of a tangent here. Metal is extremely popular here, and clearly this came as a huge surprise to me. I think I've figured out why it's so popular, though: there are those who like the popular music of the region, which includes salsa, reggaeton, merengue, latin pop, and a couple of regional styles of music called vallenato and cumbia, and then there are those who reject the pop music. I'm sure this is not an unfamiliar concept. However, it seems like there is only one acceptable way to reject pop music, and that is to listen to anything hard: hard rock (lots of my students love AC/DC, Guns 'n Roses, Metallica, etc.), metal, death metal.

It's ironic, of course, that the very people who claim to reject conformity are so conformy themselves, but once again, this is nothing new, and I don't want to get into a whole commentary about it, because I really don't care that much - it's just an observation. The point is simply to paint you a picture of the crowd at this event - almost uniformly metal-heads. As someone who preferred the straight-up rock, reggae and ska bands, I felt like a bit of an outsider, despite the fact that these bands made up the majority of the show.

So anyway, as soon as Existential Hate was announced, people started teeming over the fence like despair over a German comedian in Israel. This is the best picture I got, but it was certainly not taken at the peak of the deluge.

There were too many people, and too few unprepared cops, for anything to be done, and soon there was a full-blown hockey-style mosh pit (where people just run and body-check each other - maybe this is just regular mosh pit? I don't know, I don't go to a lot of mosh pits). I didn't mind - it was easy to avoid by staying around the fringes, and it actually gave me some entertainment, since the band sucked.

Tangent time again: I don't listen to a lot of hard rock/metal, and I don't listen to any death metal, but I try to stay open - some of those bands are pretty good. I like Metallica, I like Dream Theater, I've liked other bands that I've heard here and there but couldn't name. But this band (and the one that came later, which was obviously called Vicious Circle (actually Circulo Vicioso, but you know)), just wasn't very good, and it really reinforced the notion that the whole metal thing around here is just another clique. Once again, I'm not passing judgment - I just think it's interesting.

After another straight-up rock band played (and played a pretty impressive cover of Led Zeppelin's Rock and Roll, with an amazing female singer), it was time for the band I was most excited about - the one K, E and I had all agreed was the best of the preliminary round we saw. They're a reggae band called Doris Vespa (you should click on that link just to look at their MySpace page - it's by far the most beautifully designed MySpace page I've ever seen) who are from right here, Barranquilla.

Doris Vespa was pretty good on Friday, but they didn't really live up to my expectations. After a number of high-energy acts, the laid back groove of their opening song didn't capture the crowd until about mid-way through, when they displayed a picture of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez with an X through it, and repeated the line "we don't need no Chavez" or something to that effect several times. (that was awesome, though)

Even though they didn't impressa me much, I remain a fan. They have a great guitar player (shown below), and really cool instrumentation: drums, bass, auxiliary percussion, guitar, trumpet, flute, 2 back-up singer chicks. Also: their lead singer is the Colombian Patrick. (see the MySpace page for further evidence, as this isn't a great pic)

Eschuchen, señoras!

the guitarist - hmm, he's skinny, plays guitar and has a lot of hair... Colombian Adam?

I don't see any bacon though...

When the next band came on, things got a little rougher. But you'll have to come back tomorrow to find out about it! Stay tuned - tomorrow, Xave's Xlog presents My First Riot, Part II.