Here’s what happened on our trip to Mexico.
It started off with a painfully early flight from Glasgow to Amsterdam then from Amsterdam to Mexico City and then straight from there to Guadalajara airport, all in the luxury of…um…economy class. It’s the good life for us huge rock stars.
We get to Guadalajara with only 1 piece of luggage gone missing (quite good!) and meet up with Hector Mijangos, our dear friend, promoter and record company boss. This man is a fashion icon in my opinion and I would quite like to look like him. We go to the hotel after some of the boys smoke cigarettes and the journey takes about an hour. We later find out that every single car/van journey takes an hour, anywhere in Mexico, due to the traffic problems.
So we dump our stuff in the hotel and Hector takes us to a restaurant which is closed, it’s already 11:30p.m. We eventually go to a place called Karne Garibaldi which apparently has the fastest service around. I order my food at 11:45 and it arrives at 11:44. Zoom. It was a kind of beefy soup and was awesome. Along with it comes all the sauces you get in Mexico like the tomatillo and tomato salsas. I love that shit. The rest of the boys get the same stuff and the vegetarians (who I feel sorry for in Mexico) get grilled cheese. This is basically what Stuart will eat for the rest of the trip along with Refritos and salsa.
Next day we get ready for the first show we’ve played in a while.
We go to soundcheck and eat some amazing pork sandwiches but I cannot remember the name. You smother them in chili and tomato sauce. I had 2 of these local delicacies. It’s all about the food for me when I go to play in foreign countries. Some people like Museums, I like to eat. We have to practise the whole setlist and then again because we are so out-of-shape musically. After soundcheck Hector takes us to dinner and we all have things like chicken with mole sauce and loads of tacos. Guess what the vegetarians eat? Yip. Cheese with cheese sauce covered with cheese.
They have some cheese beer. I have some Tequila and a few beers and then I realise I am drunk and stop drinking alcohol. Once we get back to the venue, they have put more plates of cheese and meat in the dressing room but John and I decide it would be a waste of food if nobody eats it so we go out into the audience and offer people food, like waiters. Weirdly, some people think we are Mexican (I am so white that I am almost transparent) and ask me questions, I say something like No Habla Espanol or something and then they understand that I might be Scottish or something. It caused great confusion but it was good fun.
So we play the show and in my opinion we were extremely bad. Not Michael Jackson “Bad”, more like George Bush “Bad”. The guitars are all a bit fucked too so they don’t stay in tune. We get an encore (though I do not know why!) and John runs onto the stage, tripping and falling over the drum-riser to a huge cheer from the Guadalajaran’s. This is the highlight of the night because the last song is terrible. Oh well. You live and learn.
On the drive home to the hotel it rains the heaviest rain we have ever seen in our lives. There is thunder and lightning every 3 seconds and we are like children, scared and excited. The roads are completely like rivers and all the drains/sewers are like fountains. I don’t think when people first came to Mexico from Europe that they came during the rainy season! They would have gone home very quickly!
