Nuevo Narcocorrido

So yesterday afternoon began my attempt at transcending my Playstation 3 Rock Band stardom and actually playing the real guitar with people again. A good friend who I played in bands with from literally age 11 to about 17 (just picture four 6th graders rocking out in a band called 'Kamikaze'. Yes, that was us) plays bass and is a full-time musician in the city. After telling him about getting laid off, he brought up us playing together and I was definitely excited at the prospect.

He just acquired the keys to some studio space located actually near me, so we met up around 1pm. I hadn't carried my guitar around in a gig bag in ages and hate admitting it...it felt AWESOME. The studio was an interesting deal: apparently someone owns the entire building, the first floor is a performance space, the basement is the practice area, and the top few floors are apartments that are rented out. Apparently Jeff Buckley was living in one of them right before he died...now that his hipster cred.

It was great playing again in a semi-band situation but the sad realization was my playing stalled somewhere in 1998 whereas Chris has definitely evolved for the past ten years, which I guess would make sense as he actually is a musician. To compensate, we went right back into covers of a bunch of 90s songs like Smells Like Teen Spirit, Patience, etc. The basement was freezing and occassionally I'd have to put my hand directly on the tiny space heater just to get it warm enough to play...again, more hipster cred. From trader to starving artist trying to play in a freezing basement studio in a matter of days.

The other great introduction of the afternoon; when I asked Chris what other music he's been playing, a friend of his from Mexico recently introduced him to Narcorrido music. Apparently there's a genre of Mexican music that romanticizes drug dealers as the modern day cowboys, and draws up 'corrido' music which is the music of classic Mexican ballads. Apparently they're trying to take these old songs and make rock versions of them. Nuevo narcocorrido...it's all I listen to now.