1	Books The Migrant Project looks at what it takes to put food on America’s tables; a conversation with the author of Mexican Enough. read more...
2	Film & TV Getting psyched with actor James Roday; the surprisingly varied career of Rey Valentin. read more...
3	Music Indie rocker Julieta Venegas unplugs; the boys of Plastilina Mosh mellow out. read more...
4	Ask Julie Tapping retirement accounts for funding. read more...
5	Calendar Outstanding events around the country. read more...
6	Picture This Wilfredo Lam in North America. read more...

Latin Forum

MUSIC

Julieta Unplugged

Mexico’s reigning queen of indie rock rounds up a stable of famous collaborators, goes acoustic for MTV and gears up for an international tour.

For music aficionados Julieta Venegas has the ideal mix of musical chops: undeniable indie credibility and pure pop appeal. The multi-talented singer-songwriter is far from today’s over-produced Top 40 starlets, and no where is this more apparent than on her new project: Julieta Venegas Unplugged. The 20th unplugged
project for MTV Latin America, this acoustic album, and accompanying DVD, highlights Venegas’ easy voice, sentimental lyrics and unparalleled instrumental talent.
“It sounded like a really refreshing idea,” says Venegas on her decision to record an unplugged album at this point in her career. Her cutting-edge sound and artist’s ear lend each album a “new artist” vibe, so it’s easy to forget that the sprite-like Venegas has been around for much more than a decade.
Venegas burst onto the scene in 1997 with the release of her first album, Aqui, which marked her as a brainy lyricist and musical savant and earned her a spot among the growing Latin American alternative rock genre. It also served to showcase her eclectic style, developed through her early and diverse musical experience.
“I’m really a piano player,” she says modestly during an interview in Miami Beach in late June, where she stopped just before returning to Mexico City to prepare for her latest tour. Add to that: accordion player, violoncello player, guitar player, singer, songwriter and composer—all skills that the Tijuana, Mexico native picked up along her musical education.
After studying music in high school and college, Venegas was well trained for her future stardom. In her early 20s, she collaborated with Tijuana No, a ska and reggae band. She then took a turn in musical theater, and then found herself working with popular Mexican alternative group Café Tacuba, whom she counts among her influences. All of this before forming her own band, Lula, touring the music festival circuit and composing the musical score for a Francisco Franco play.
As a result, her first album, produced by Gustavo Santaolalla, hosts a score of collaborators including members of the bands Café Tacuba, Botellitas de Jerez and Santa Sabina.
When it comes to creating, Venegas reveals that songs come to her in pieces. Usually it’s the lyrics first. She admits she has to put herself in a physical and mental space to be creative, and for her it’s usually at home. She isn’t one to be at a restaurant and say “pass me a napkin, I’m inspired,” she says. “If I have a month off, I take it to write,” she says, and she can stay there all day tinkering with words. The songwriter is also an avid reader and finds wordsmiths inspiring as well.
Venegas says she prefers scribes who write with passion and intensity. “Most poetry by Luis Bermudez and Emily Dickinson. I start getting inspired by that. I need to read something and maybe a word will push a button.”
As for her musical influences: “They are always changing around,” she says. They include Lou Reed, Tom Waits, Café Tacuba, Animal Collective and Suzanne Vega, among others. “It was songwriters, especially when I began. I mix it up; right now I am listening to a lot of folk. I really love sound.”
When selecting hits for her Unplugged project, Venegas revisited her repertoire as she would for a live show, which makes sense since the album was recorded live in front of an audience in Mexico City and filmed for television and DVD.
Yet she didn’t want the album to merely be a selection of her biggest hits recorded acoustically, so she thought to “refresh the songs for something different.” The newer songs were the most difficult to give a new twist to, she says. So with a new vibe in mind, she took to her accordion and piano and worked backwards, rehashing her newer hits (El Presente) first and then working toward her classic hits (Algo Esta Cambiando and Me Voy).
As for her personal look, Venegas has always had a punky style and her videos show her in poofy ‘80s tutus and florescent gear, sporting side ponytails and flirty dresses. The pretty punk look is manifested once again in a shredded purple and lavender number she sports on stage.
“I like to [dress in clothes by] Mexican designers, usually those who are adventurous and experimental,” she says. “This one is by designer Andrés Jiménez, its comfortable and original at the same time.”
She also looked to her stable of friends and collaborators to help freshen up some of her standards, and as such Spanish rapper Mala Rodriguez, Brazilian star Marisa Monte, singer Juan Carlos Son and, of course Gustavo Santaolalla, who plays the banjo on the record, make an appearance. And there is nearly an orchestra of musicians playing all sorts of instruments backing her up.
Although the process proved tough, it wasn’t the most challenging thing about creating her MTV Unplugged special. “We prepared for three and a half months and it was done in two days: one for the show and one for the rehearsal,” she says, relaying her apprehension that all that work might be ruined by one bad move. “I thought, ‘God what if someone doesn’t tune right?’”
But being a touch nervous for such a production is a good thing, she contends. “You never stop being nervous, you can’t stop getting nervous. It always depends on the crowd; you never know what you get,” she says. She prepares for her show by hanging out with the band to focus, warming up her voice, listening to music and occasionally sipping a little tequila. Casadores reposado is her favorite.
“I’m very shy; its just my character, I’m very private. I just like to be with my band,” she says, and admits she prefers when people don’t hover backstage before showtime. The nerves settle when she steps on the stage and feeds off the energy of the audience. It’s evident on the DVD, and in person, where her natural warmth and ease radiate, and her listeners can’t help but give it back.

Discography

D 2008: MTV Unplugged

D 2007: Realmente lo Mejor

D 2006: Limon y Sal

D 2003: Sí

D 2000: Bueninvento

D 1998: Aquí

A More Mellow MOSH

By Lissette Corsa

The raucous boys of Plastilina Mosh surprise with their new album full of all their usual hijinks but with a more carefree vibe.

From the moment Alejandro Rosso and Juan José Gonzalez, a.k.a. Jonaz, first bonded over Super Nintendo, industrial rock and cervezas in Monterrey’s then nascent underground music scene, one thing was clear: Their musical pact as Plastilina Mosh would be a reaction to the predictability of conventional rock en español bands and the dictatorial powers of the music industry.
“I’ve always had a problem with bands or projects, or with music that is predictable,” Rosso, 35, says on the phone from his home in Monterrey. “If music was like that, it would be boring. So one thing we do take seriously is not to make our music predictable.”
But when they dropped their full-length debut, 1998’s Aquamosh, under Capitol Records and subsequent albums under EMI, it seemed contradictory to Pmosh’s philosophy. Yet the Grammy-nominated electro-rock duo managed to remain unencumbered in their quest to make waves, and above all have a hell of a time in the process. After a two-year hiatus since the release of Tasty, a “Best of” collection in 2006 that included B-sides and three new songs, PMosh has unleashed a 12-track disc titled All U Need Is Mosh. The new album finds the genre-busting bad boys having outgrown their major label straightjacket in favor of just the right fit under the Latin alternative indie imprint of Nacional Records.
“We’re more relaxed now,” says Rosso of their decision not to renew the contract with EMI. “It became a little difficult towards the end because even if there was good faith on the part of the record company, and for the most part they gave us creative freedom, it was very difficult to go through with things we thought were important for us as a unit.”
Rosso cites an example of wanting to perform in Japan and not receiving backing from EMI. “We were invited to a festival, and the record company couldn’t or didn’t want to do any promotion in Japan because maybe we were selling records there but not in Mexico and we were signed in Mexico, so corporate politics dictated that if you didn’t sell a certain amount here then they weren’t going to let you tour outside. So I think it was time. There was no need to continue in a situation that was in a way limiting for us.”
In an ironic twist, All U Need Is Mosh has all the makings of a mainstream crossover success. “Now that we don’t have a record company that could directly take advantage of these types of songs is when we decide in our heads to make them,” Rosso says. Laden with infectious hooks, power chords, taut disco riffs, sexual innuendo, riotous choruses and tumbling freestyle rhymes, All U Need is Mosh has all the guilty pleasure trappings of a deftly crafted pop album, only it’s not pop, it’s PMosh—a phenomenon unto itself.
The music media has gone to great lengths in attempting to encapsulate the music generated by Plastilina Mosh—an impossible feat given that Rosso and Jonaz are living catalogues of musical diversity. From John Coltrane to Sepultura, very little is off limits in the amalgamation of sound that informs the duo. Critics have even come up with the wildest classifications that more than anything seem to be exercises journalistic verbosity. One, for example, covers all the bases in an exhausting trip through the decades: ‘60s sleazy listening, ‘70s disco/funk, ‘80s punk/new wave and ‘90s hip hop” all bubbling in a frenzied maelstrom of sound.
Then there are the incessant comparisons to Beck and The Beastie Boys as points of references in the dissection of PMosh’s constantly shifting sonic terrain. To this Rosso and Jonaz’ reactions range from indifference to flattery. “It doesn’t bother me,” says Jonaz, 32, amid yawns on the horn from his hotel room at the Fiesta Inn in Chihuahua, just hours before a concert. “And even less so when we’re compared to The Beastie Boys.” The same goes for Rosso, though he expresses outright revulsion at the underlying obsessive need to define music.
“In a way it’s pathetic,” Rosso says. “Because if you’re not fed something that’s semi-digested you aren’t going to try it ... I know we’re not doing something new or unusual, but it’s been funny how through the years we’ve been referred to as hip hop artists, at other times as a punk rock band, then electronica, or a pop group, or commercial. ... Why the need of having to explain something that’s explicit? I think part of the enjoyment is discovering it for yourself, not being told what it is.”
Rosso and Jonaz worked on the new disc in bursts with recording sessions across California, Texas and Mexico. Mostly pieced together between gigs while they honed their live show, the pair plunged into the project without any preconceived notion of what it would sound like.
“It just flowed,” Jonaz explains. “It wasn’t like ‘We’re going to make this kind or that kind of record.’ It was more like ‘Let’s make a solid record.’ We started composing like crazy and made like 20 songs. From there we took the ones we thought should be on the disc and polished them.”
Once the final tracks were mixed the two identified three strong currents anchoring the album. The more rock-infused, in-your-face concoctions were rooted in Jonaz’ punk influences, while the cerebral electronic forays were fed by Rosso’s instrumental background in jazz and classical music. The campy, party vibe both brought to the table. They enlisted guitarist Eddy Gonzalez, drummer/vocalist Natalia Slipak and bassist Milton Pacheco. On the dirty, hot-under-the-collar romp Paso Fino, Babasónicos’ Adrian Dargelos was invited to spout the hedonistic exhortations. While Niña Dios rapped about ex-con-turned-Hollywood-actor Danny Trejo’s beyond-human exploits. The disc’s aptly titled closer, Pervert Pop Song, featuring Mexican buzz artist Ximena Sariñana, is poised to become the summer’s most deliciously indulgent, dance-floor fetish. It falls under Jonaz’ triptych description that is the most fitting for Plastilina Mosh’s music: unconcerned, irreverent and formerly grotesque.

SoundBites

Whether live in concert, hot on the Internet or dropping a new album, musicians are heating up the month. These picks are some of August’s best.

Aleks Syntek
The Mexican pop star and music producer boasts a one-of-a-kind approach, blending languages and a myriad of instruments to lend his music an orchestra sound. He takes the stage in August starting in Texas and making his way through Houston, Dallas and McAllen before shipping off to Honduras and closing out the month in Atlanta.

Alejandro Escovedo
Perpetually on tour, Escovedo and his blues-y rock pack in fans at every show all over the country. In addition to stops in venues yet to be determined, this month sees the artist entertain the late night crowd on the Late Show with David Letterman.

Alejandro Fernández
El Potrillo will take his brand of sexy Mexican ballads,
ranging in genres from mariachi to pop, through California, Texas, New York, Connecticut, Virginia and Nevada before the fall is over.

Gypsy Kings
The flamenco-fusion, guitar strumming gypsy band caravans all over the country to Philadelphia, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Corpus Christi, Houston, El Paso, New York and more.

Marco Antonio Solis
A music star from the age of 12, Marco Antonio Solis has had fame in all forms—as half of a duet as a teen, as part of Los Bukis and as a solo artist. This and next month he wows Miami, New York and Rosemont, Illinois.

Title: Roots Prop
Artist: The Paul
Carlson Octet
Genre: Afro Big Band Why buy: The eclectic mix of classic big band jazz is decidedly Yoruba.

Title: Conga Eléctrica
Artist: Quimbombó Genre: Cuban dance Why Buy: Quimbombó layers funk and dance grooves on top of a foundation of traditional Cuban son.

Title: Renacer
Artist: DLG
(Dark Latin Groove)
Genre: Salsa
Why Buy: DLG is back after years of silence with a new lead singer, Yaya Vargas.

Title: Gratitud
Artist: Fonseca
Genre: Pop
Why Buy: The unique organic blend of Colombian vallenato with pop.

Title: Banda Larga Cordel
Artist: Gilberto Gil
Genre: Brazilian
Why Buy: This long-time music man takes sound cues from technological sounds, and the result is melodious.

Title: Una Reina en
Hollywood
Artist: Graciela Beltran
Genre: Ranchera
Why Buy: La Reina del Pueblo performs with Mariachi accompaniment.

Title: Tequila Moon
Artist: Jessy J
Genre: Jazz
Why Buy: The saxophone, flute and singer create a seamless sound.

Title: Hot Bread
Artist: Pulpo
Genre: Salsa
Why Buy: Gilberto “Pulpo” Colón, Jr. establishes his own sound.