Mexico or Crazy: 5 Songs on Mexico

This week's songs are from Bob Dylan & the Band, Night Moves, At the Drive-In, Wayne Shorter, and Austin TV.

“Never apologize, never explain - didn't we always say that? Well, I haven't and I don't.” - Marianne Faithful

Marianne Faithfull - “Times Square”

My introduction to Marianne Faithfull was this Metallica video from when I was 12 or so. She sings a “da-da-da-da-da” refrain at the end of this song as she cranks a barrel organ. In my memory the video wasn’t nearly as dated as it looks, but 30 years will do that. Despite some drastic ups-and-downs, Faithfull turned some early hits as a 60s ingenue singing songs Jagger & Richards wrote to get publishing income into a highly respected six-decade career, which included many changes to her distinct voice. RIP Marianne Faithfull.

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5 Songs on Mexico

There are certain musicians who have made entire careers out of singing about cold beer, warm beaches, and tequila. We don’t need to list them out here. Chances are you’ve already thought of five of them before getting to the end of this sentence. I’m headed there this week for a family wedding and—if I’m being honest—all the stuff those honkeys twang about: sunshine, sand, and cold drinks.

There’s plenty of songs that mention Mexico, typically in the context of running away, or escaping. In a way, Mexico represents the Wild West for people who’ve already run their course in the Wild West. No one’s ever running away to Canada, or hopping a cargo ship out into the Pacific. No one’s chasing anything in Mexico, they’re all running away. They’ve already gone out as far west as they could, so now they’re headed down.

So with an attempt to get beyond all that, here are 5 songs on Mexico. Only one is about running away, and none are about drinking on a beach.

"Behind us lay the whole of America and everything Dean and I had previously known about life, and life on the road. We had finally found the magic land at the end of the road and we never dreamed the extent of the magic." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Bob Dylan & the Band - “Going to Acapulco”

I’m a pretty big Dylan fan. Love the Band, too. But most of The Basement Tapes sounds like old-timey goofing off to me. I can’t get into it. But damn is “Going to Acapulco” a great tune. The resignation in the melody betrays any suggestion that this will be a fun trip. The organ. The guitars. The drums sticking to the hi-hat. Those fragile harmonies. It’s all played with a tragic amount of indifference from a broken man. It’s the end of the road and he knows it, so he’s getting himself one last bit of fun before he heads out to meet his end.

Night Moves - “Mexico”

This is the opposite of a running-away song. Singer John Pelant is pleading for someone named Alameda to stay. Mexico itself is never mentioned or referenced directly in the song. It’s a crisp, cool, and shimmery jam from Minneapolis’ Night Moves. Their IG bio describes them as “Cosmic Twang Rock Disco Fog Sludge” and—yeah, all of that tracks. They hit my radar after I saw them as an opening band twice within a year or so, and they held their own. “Mexico” ticks the “Cosmic”, “Twang,” and maybe a little bit of the “Disco” boxes. They’re one of those bands I have never talked about with anyone in passing, or seen much press about them, so I have no gauge as to where they’re at, so I assume they should be bigger. Songs like this are just begging to be played loud in a car with the windows down on a nice day.

“The culture definitely affects us, the heat and the shit that goes on over the border. Things like that influence us to write music that is not necessarily of a political nature, but has a message of ‘fight back.’” - Cedric Bixler-Zavala

At the Drive-In - “Porfirio Diaz”

There was so much hype around Relationship of Command before it was released in 2000 that I went and sought out any At the Drive-In music I could find, given I never heard them before. My local Best Buy (my young and ignorant self’s CD shop) had a single copy of Acrobatic Tenement. I still think it’s At the Drive-In’s best work. It’s got such a unique sound to it. Flat and muffled, guitars played with aggression but lacking distortion, it shows every dollar of its $600 recording budget. At that cost, they apparently couldn’t afford choruses, coherent lyrics, or songs longer than 3 minutes. Don’t need ‘em! What stays is a tight live band pummeling its way through frenetic bursts of chaos. The energy translated to tape. “Porfirio Diaz,” named after the Mexican dictator and/or the street in El Paso named after him, is the album’s closer. I couldn’t then, and still can’t now, decipher what singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala is saying most of the time. What I did hear I always assumed was fragmented stream-of-conscious babbling. But it turns out you can literally write a dissertation on what his lyrics communicate about border identity. Who knew? Dumbass American that I am, I just loved the part where he screams about being “proud to be assholes.”

“If you’re playing something that’s supposed to sound like it’s supposed to be and you’re perfecting this mandatory expression with mandates all around it, it’s nothing more than a statue. Like polishing a statue.” - Wayne Shorter

Wayne Shorter - “Montezuma”

I don’t know if there is a method to how musicians go about naming instrumentals. But here we have Wayne Shorter’s “Montezuma,” named for the legendary Aztec Emperor. From the album Moto Grosso Feio, which translates loosely to “lively ugly movement,” drummer Jack DeJohnette lives up to that description. He makes the kit sound like it’s tumbling down a flight of stairs and recorded from a hallway. It expands and collapses with an echo that brings the sound of the room into the recording. I love that. You can almost feel the walls, and definitely sense the atmosphere. The track is held together by two pulsing basses (Milton Nascimento and Dave Holland) and pianist Chick Corea on the marimba. And of course, that’s Shorter wailing over the top.

“Your face is not important. The truth is inside.” - Austin TV

Austin TV - “Lo Bonito de la Muerte”

Mexico City’s Austin TV is Explosions in the Sky or This Will Destroy You style post-rock, but they mostly strip out the quiet parts and focus on the rock. They lean into a more frenetic and punk-ish pace as well. Like the Residents or Orville Peck, the band all wear masks, although the purpose is more aligned to the Residents (anonymity) than Orville Peck (a persona). I got hip to them thanks to YouTube recommending this fantastic live performance on KEXP. When you see masks and guitars in a still image, you’ve got to find out the sound behind it. I’ve opted for “Lo Bonito de la Muerte,” the closer to 2023’s come-back album Rizoma because of the grand, soaring melodies we all want from post rock, but also the bright textures of a looped synthesizer running over the top.

Thanks for reading. Enjoy the listening.