Live Alternative Karaoke?An Open Letter to Andy Primm Front Man for Amazing Larry

It was there, on the main drag in Puerto Escondido, that I saw an act that I *completely* fell in love with one night in the basement of this horrible surf club called Wipe Out. I had listened to Too Much Bad House Music in the name of cheap drinks when i stumbled down the stairs in search of fresh air and quiet, when all of a sudden I heard riotous shrieking guitars and felt the flash of strobe lights coming up from below the street. I peered down the streets and saw about six alterna-punk-looking Mexican kids assaulting each other with the evil howl of rock'n'roll gone wrong, and I knew I had to go check that shit out RIGHT AWAY.

Dear Andy:

So the last time I saw you guys play, I came with my good friend Sam Atakra, a guy I used to live with in San Francisco who is completely crazy and likes to make sure I am good and wasted even when I say no. He loves it when I say "No, I have shit to do tomorrow," and he tosses his credit cards on the bar and hands me drinks - generally double-shot rum'n'cokes, served in pint glasses, and I just keep drinking and shooting if I've got my camera until I start to see stars...

I saw stars that night. I saw you and your little band playing covers and I harkened back to a dream I had way back in 1987, that Someday, MAN, Someday, the 80s would've gone and come back again and I'd get to be in a Cure cover band, belting out Robert Smith with my own poofy hairdo and face obscurred by eyeliner.

And as I watched you play, I Had a Fantasy. Here's the band of my dreams, I said to myself. How hard would it be for Andy's little band to work up a Cure set so I could live out my dream, right here in the El Paseo Bar & Grill?

I was far too drunk to ask at the time, of course, and I was sober enough to know I was That Fucking Drunk, thank god. But the memory of a wish unrequited stuck with me, and followed me - all the way to Mexico.

It was there, on the main drag in Puerto Escondido, that I saw an act that I *completely* fell in love with one night in the basement of this horrible surf club called Wipe Out. I had listened to Too Much Bad House Music in the name of cheap drinks when i stumbled down the stairs in search of fresh air and quiet, when all of a sudden I heard riotous shrieking guitars and felt the flash of strobe lights coming up from below the street. I peered down the streets and saw about six alterna-punk-looking Mexican kids assaulting each other with the evil howl of rock'n'roll gone wrong, and I knew I had to go check that shit out RIGHT AWAY.

I tiptoed timidly down the steps - it was a bar alright, but it felt like someone's practice room, which, of course, is *always* the best venue to see rock'n'roll, methinks. I stepped up to the bar and felt the eyes of the band on me, as if they were incredulous that anyone would enter their space while they were flailing this crap out. And as I stood at the bar with my bottle of Sol beer and listened, I realized that what they had to play wasn't really just random noise at all - instead, it was a tricked-out noise cover of Drunken Butterfly by Sonic Youth, with lyrics in some crazy Spanglish street slang. And right then and there, I knew I'd found the house band for my vacation in Mexico, and I bought a round for the whole damn band as soon as the song was over.

I like to make friends wherever I go, and the band was super-appreciative, and asked me if I wanted to sing anything. Now, at first I thought this was a super-honor (and it was) but the band, (called Los Cincos Inguanas) had a kick-ass trick up their sleeves that I would learn a lot about in the many nights I went to see them. Right then, I asked if they knew any Ramones, and "I Wanna Be Sedated" was right there in their set list. And so we went for it, and I got to bounce all over their stage like a madman and scream out the Ramones, and it was easily one of My Top Ten Experiences in Mexico.

But as the night evolved, I realized that I wasn't the only tourist having This Much Fun with the little band that Could Cover Everything even though NONE of the band members spoke ANY English. (they had a translator in the bartender.) Because Los Cincos Iguanas had a Stupid Human Trick that I'd like to see replicated all over the damn world with cover bands everywhere - as far as I can tell, Los Cincos Iguanas is the world's first Live Alternative Karaoke Band.

You got that right. Their play list had everything you could possibly want to sing from '77 onward. The Sex Pistols. The Clash. The Vandals. Blondie. Romero fucking Void. The Bungles. The Police. Laurie fucking Anderson. The Cure. New Order. Depeche Mode. The Smiths. REM. And, of course, Sonic Youth, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Mudhoney, Sound Garden, Radiohead, Wilco (for chrissakes...WILCO?!?) and a bunch of other shit. They had a singer, who could more or less cover the words of every song (though he probably didn't know what he was saying) AND they had a live mike pointed in the direction of the audience, so if you were drunk enough or inspired enough or if The Song You'd Always Wanted to Sing with a LIVE FUCKING GARAGE BAND suddenly cranked into gear, you could jump up on stage, grab the fricking mike, and just scream scream scream.

By midnight, that shitty little bar was PACKED to the gills with English-speaking tourists, Americans and Canadians and English and Australians, plus a core of French, Germans, and Mexicans who FOUGHT for their turn at the mike. I leaned against the bar giggling at the beautiful irony of it all. The fourth wall that punk wanted to smash with music was being smashed with its greatest hits right here in this dive bar in Mexico, as people leapt to the stage to sing their favorite tunes, and I stood there, chuckling evilly, certain that there was nothing that would get me *fighting* for the mike - I'd already had my turn, and there was nothing I needed to sing that bad...

Until I heard the opening stirrings of "Boys Don't Cry." I pushed the Dutch kid who was coming off the stage, "Dude, this is so my song," and pulled the mike away from him. I leapt to that stage and i sang that motherfucker like I was singing it in the shower, in my car, across a thousand windswept miles of desert back and forth between Santa Fe and Los Angeles, careening up the coast to San Francisco and back again. I sang "Boys Don't Cry" with a Live Fucking Band on Mexico's Pacific Coast, and felt the tingle of twenty years of fandom drench me in sweat and tears and memories, and by the time I got off that fucking stage, I was a fan of that band for life.

Just think...would Amazing Larry ever want to do something like that? Maybe once, as an experiment, or in one set out of three? Would you *like* to give your audience a chance to participate? Do you think it might fill up your room a little more?

I think it might. What do you think?

cheers
gregoryp(tm)

Santa Fe, music, karaoke, alternative, Mexico, punk rock