[Editor's Note: The following guest post is by Ryan Muir, one of NYC's most hardworking and talented photographers. After spending the better part of five days lugging his camera equipment all over Austin on our behalf, he waited for hours in a parking lot for a bus to Monterrey, Mexico to attend NYC promoter Todd P's MtyMx festival. Here's Ryan's report in photos, videso, and words.]
Last week Stereogum sent me down to Monterrey, Mexico toexperience the inaugural Todd P/Yo Garage DIY music festival. While manythings went wrong on the trip, many things also went so right. Chalk itup to event fatigue, but in some ways the tiny Mexican musical outposttaught me more about new music and cultural community than anyexperience the days previously at SXSW. In spite of the relative successes and failures of this ambitious and experimentalmission, it's difficult not to dwell on the obvious logistical complications(and implications) which set the festival back. From an outside perspective, it would be easy to consider MtyMx afailure by the measure of any typical music festival, especially the way ithas been covered so far as nothing short of a humanitarian catastrophe,but from the onset, both in design and execution one should haveexpected that this was not promised as a usual music festival. This is aMexican Todd P DIY-festival. There are no VIP lines.
The goal as I understood was not to appease brands and make the bigcashola, but to bring American bands to new audiences south of theborder off the tailwind of Austin's SXSW festival, and introduceadventurous American audiences to Mexican bands unable to to secureexpensive and elusive work Visas. As far as I know, nobody was hurt, shot, killed orkidnapped . Otherwise, I can think of two other unfortunate incidents: One carelessMtyMx filmmaker was indirectly threatened for exploring a filminglocation on an adjacent mountain, and a group of hipsters were muggedafter walking under the mountain in a storm drain … Stupid antics aside,the local population does not live in fear, and those who were able to seemed to have a pretty good time. True, many American bands didcancel, but the pervasive attitude I observed on the bus, and throughspeaking to several bands after the fact, was that it was for logisticalpurposes. Very few (and there were some) cancelled due to safetyconcerns crossing the border. I'll abstain from naming names here.
It was perhaps because of my perseverance that I really wanted toenjoy the festival. But what struck me most was the local populationcould not have wanted to have a good time any less than I. Slam dancingalong to Sunday night headliner Andrew WK (who had just started his setas our bus pulled into festival grounds), or crowd surfing for Liars onthe last night. The Mexicans knew how to party better than mostBrooklynites over 25. Notable headlining performers like No Age and Fucked Up were surely missed, but you would have a hard time tellingfrom the smiling, shouting faces in the Autocinema Las Torres movie lot.
After the fist-pumping enthusiasm of the AWK set, my true introductionto the Monterrey music scene for me was spending time in the DIY venueGarage with the locals in between the extra-late night sets of Brooklyn's Das Racist (a crowd favorite), Baltimore's Teeth Mountain and DJ Dan Deacon (3am, 4am, and 5am respectively). In many obviousways, the location reminded me of many of Brooklyn's finer DIYestablishments, but with a cheaper bar, more expensive backlineequipment, brighter stage lights, and more comfortably chosen interiordecoration. But also striking was the lack of cross-armed cynicalhipster snobs and an abundance of cross-dressing, beer-sharing, crowdsurfing, and appreciative Mexican music lovers. After taking in a fewsets, and saying hello to some familiar faces most of my ill-conceivedimpressions of the trip had been blown away. I was already having a lotof fun.
At the start of the third festival day I wouldreturn, in light of day, to an unusually sparse yet idyllic and whollyunique environment at the base of the Sierra Madre Orientales -- all ofwhich had been essentially invisible during our late night arrival. I made avow to catch every set and soak in as much as I could with band bothfamiliar and unexpected. My alternatives being: drink lots of cheapIndio Beer and eat tacos, or smoke Mexican dirt-weed joints in the shadeand make some new Mexican friends. It was pretty easy to do all of theabove if one so chose.
Musically, I noticed several Mexican Bands. MentiraMentira was amanic playful jokester guitar maverick named Gaby. What he lacked insonic clarity and precision he made up for with scaffolding climbing,compulsory audience interaction. I pity the poor cable wrangler who (onrequest) strived to keep Gaby's guitar cable plugged in. Alexico,a Mexican new wave duo, who on the surface reminded me of playful andmore coy Sleigh Bells, and eventually did some interesting things withvocal chord modulation, and even impressively switching instruments midset. It was hard to ignore the singer's lithe charisma and she tended tomake herself at home lounging on her keyboard table or writhing on thestage. Jovenes y Sexys,who I overheard one concert-goer describe as a "Mexican Broken SocialScene" were an unusual acoustic outlier in the mostly electric themed afternoon. However their serene crooning was anappropriate fit for the dusky evening skies. At that point in theday, I had started to feel the toll of the hot unrelenting sun. Also on the Sunday bill: Sr. Amable and Mr. Racoon, Mockinpott, Bam Bam, and Ratas Del Vaticano, a Mexican hardcore band.
America made a strong showing as well: I was impressed bythe newly improved live performance of Lemonade, who were visiblyenjoying themselves on stage. For a time the dusty lot turned into a dance party. IndianJewlery, who were previously scheduled for the lineup a day earlier, perseveredon our lost border bus. And I'm glad they did, they truly impressed. An excellent live presence with persistent tom-tom heavy jams underrhythmic, driving krautish-riffs. Visually they utilized a strobing flash onstage and on spectators as cameras popped away. This was my firstexperience with Indian Jewelery and it wont be my last. Neon Indian marked the point in the the night wherethe crowd really began to swell, and it was one of the most upbeat andcolorful acts of the entire day. The chilled out,reverb-soaked Neon Indian recordings took on a near pop-noise live, makingit less unusual that they would open for HEALTH and Liars.
HEALTH is a band I am always very excited to see, and the new moreaccessible direction the band has decided to take may mean for a largermainstream breakthrough soon. Liars, too, performed an impressive set punctuated by alwayscaptivating frontsmanship from Angus Andrew. Several times betweensongs, Angus thanked Todd P for putting together such a wonderfulfestival for the Mexican fans, drawing attention to the "weird and awesomefestival". Can't argue with him there. During the set closing Sisterworld LP track "Proud Evolution," Angus dedicated the closing refrain of "Youshould be careful" to a "all the fuck ups who couldn't make it toMexico because they were too fucking careful!"
The true festivalafterparty, also at Garage, was promised to include an encore of MenitraMenitra, Mexico's XYX and Brooklyn's Coasting, which I had everyintention of attending, but when arriving back at the hotel I almostimmediately passed out, sleeping through the whole thing. Based oneverything else it was probably a blast. I rested enough so that the next day(after the music, by which time most had already left for home) toexplore the local historical district, as well as some of thesurrounding neighborhood, and found the people friendly and tolerant (ifbemused) by my lack of Spanish proficiency. I'm disappointed inretrospect that I didn't have more time to explore but relieved I wasable to dispel some of my own prejudice about the safety and vitality ofthe city.
Truthfully, I had it as bad as anybody in terms of transportationsnafus: What was initially advertised as a 6+ hour trip stretched intoone that took nearly 24 hours from initial departure time. So I wasonly able to experience one day (characterized by the most, but notentirely, complete line-up) of the scheduled three. Despite that, however, Iheard a bunch of good music in an unusual and eye opening setting. Themusical curation was certainly more consistent than many of thestew-pot sets I had caught the week previously in Austin. Its just ashame that more people hadn't braved the same path, as at I would say atits peak the crowd never breached 500, and at its lowest … wellsometimes it seems like ONLY my bus had made it.
The overarchinganxiety on both sides of the border was the mismanagement oftransportation, which is one thing that festival organizer ToddPatrick would be first to admit went very badly. Was the bus trip acrossthe American/Mexican border complicated? Yes. Arduous? Yes.Discouraging? Yes. Necessarily so? Also yes. I could list the ways theprocess could have been simpler if , but there's no way around the fact that border crossing between the twocountries at present is not as simple as passing into America'sfriendly neighbor to the North. It should be said that I was beyondimpressed with the professionalism and temerity of the MtyMxvolunteers both at Cheer Up Charlies (the bus pickup in Austin, TX) andon site in base-camp Monterrey. The delays I was subject to were due to flaky or unstable drivers. It's telling that once I arrived most of my time at thefest was relatively stress free and I was able to soak in the otherwisegood vibes. However for many bands and fans both, transportationcontinued to cast a shadow over the proceedings. Hopefully my experiencewould be more typical at next year's fest assuming MtyMx 2011 does cometo fruition. Thank you Todd P, and Yo Garage for inviting us toMonterrey, for putting on a good party, and doing so with smiling faces.
Some video to take you there.
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