Mexico. Day Two

we woke up around 7am and i was already feeling a little tiny bit better. alz, oscar, ezra and marcos wanted to walk around downtown but carlz, jarz and i had other specific intentions... for example, we needed to buy picks for the guitars. so we decided to find a musical instruments store. what we found was heaven. four blocks of music stores, one next to the other, both sides of the street. we tested everything we wanted, checked out new gear, and of course, bought our miserable picks :P

this lasted like 5 hours, i know, leave us alone... ;) then we met at the hotel and went to eat. i've been trying to remember what we ate, but sorry, i have no idea... now i actually wonder if we ate at all. anyway, the soundcheck was scheduled for 2pm... but we had to wait for a spanish group that hadn't arrived. we ended up doing the soundcheck at 4pm... it went smoothly, we took our sweet time, and everything fell beautiful on stage. we went back to the hotel, slept a little, relaxed, took showers, got dressed, put our make up on and were ready to... gimme an R, gimme an O, gimme a... ok you get the point.

an opening artist was already playing when we arrived... he was like a surprise or something like that, he wasn't on the bill. anyway, he finished, and it was time for us to take the stage. we were scared, but a little less scared than on bryan adams... we were in foreign lands... didn't have anything to lose... just go out and give the best of what we had. and that's exactly what we did. just when the first song ended, people's reaction was already a positive one. they seemed to like the songs, the group, the show, everything. alz made some stage comments, for example inviting people to go to morrissey's concert in mexico city on november 16, and asking who had been at placebo's performance two days before. by the response, you could see there were some placebo attendees there. that was a relief... maybe they are getting our music. we finished with a medley we've been doing for some time and people seemed to enjoy it. everything looked ok. we got down and took our instruments to the hotel... just 30 seconds away ;) at the hotel, we were happy but of course, we needed to hear people's opinion to really feel that we'd accomplished something. we went back to the venue and stood at the back watching the other groups. 5 minutes passed and we were already being talked to and congratulated for the performance.

the mexican crowd is lovely. they go to concerts just to hear new music. that's something completely different than in venezuela. here you need to have a name... or need to be important. sometimes a completely unknown group will come, but the campaign is so good, that people will go. the new bands have no life here. but not in mexico, they want to listen to what you have to offer. if they like it, you have new fans. if they don't like it... they just go. not a word. beautiful.

people started talking to us... asking about our influences, showing us their placebo or morrissey t-shirts. asking if we were selling the CDs, and fortunately the record company did give us a small number of CDs which we sold that day. people were very very nice. and only by talking with them did we realize that yes... billy se fue had officially been heard... and understood... by foreign ears.

before the event had finished, we were already asked to perform at EL CHOPO the next day. but... "what is EL CHOPO?" we asked. "it's a rock fleemarket. you'll find rock accesories, rock CDs, originals and bootlegs. any DVD of any performance of any band you like. it's heaven." that sounded good :) we were also informed by two different people, that the cardigans guitar player and pixies' frank black were spotted in EL CHOPO buying some CDs. hell, we were happy to play there :)

we were scheduled to be there at 11am, so that meant waking up around 8am... it was already very late and we were tired... and we still had to work the next day. so we just bought some alcohol, went to the hotel and relaxed. after the concert... for the first time in a week... i was not feeling ill.