Day two
Friday October 31
Yesterday we told the story of how this whole Mexico City ball got rolling. Today, before putting this entry up, it occurred to us that you might be coming to this completely new, having seen little or maybe none of our previous Diaries. We’re writing and posting this quite retrospectively, so this is Diary number 18 out of 20, which means there are 19 more of them. The whole thing comes in at just over half a million words. The first three Diaries, plus the bits before them, make up our debut book, Music, Love and Impossibilities. You can order from us if you go check our website on how to do that. It’s also just possible that if you go down to your local bookshop or library, they might be able to get a copy in for you. But really, it would be quicker for you and better for us if you did it direct. And of course you can read it in this website. However, the book does contain around 14000 words that aren’t on here for one reason or another.
I’ll try and nutshell this. This is Mark writing this, so me and Maja became an item early in 2021 when she came to London from Sweden for what was supposed to be a short visit. She had read my own Diaries – Marks Diaries (just over a million words and covering July 2014 to February 2021) in a few months. This is my own story of trying to become a professional bass player. It began with me trying my bass playing luck on the Spanish Costa Blanca holiday scene with me living in Madrid at the time. As a direct result of having that experience and writing about it, I got the opportunity to move to London where I worked as a barman/waiter while also having a go at the professional bass scene. I did alright and had decent prospects but never quite managed to get it over the line into full time. But I had a damn good go, played a lot of gigs, some of them at least moderately well paying, and really built a solid reputation in London as a bass player. If you’re so minded, you can read that at: https://marksdiaries.wordpress.com/
So yeah, she read that whole thing, got in touch and offered to build my bass website – markthebassist.com. That’s currently offline. I might just try to get that back up. In return, I gave her remote bass lessons. Oh, I need to add here that before even reading my own diaries, she had started her own, so that was on the go too. Then, when she needed to get away from Sweden for a while due to some personal issues, I told her there was a spare room at my shared house in Kentish Town, London. That’s just down the road from Camden Town; their high streets kind of melt into each other. She came over about a week later. We became an item the day she arrived, and 16 days after that moved into what was supposed to be our own place – that whole part of the story is absolutely mad. Then, two months after that, we then moved to Ireland. We did this because not long after moving into that first apartment we’d decided to become a musical duo and tour internationally with our own songs. Which we hadn’t written yet. So we needed a space where we could make noise 24/7 to develop our sound and write songs. And where do you find that in London at any kind of reasonable price? Apart from that, Maja couldn’t get a visa to stay in London long term and, being English, I wasn’t able to move to Europe and work. We researched places all over the world, but this was also still Covid time so everywhere we looked was prohibitively restrictive; there was a Monday during this when we decided to move to Thailand and we were going to go that coming weekend. Until we started properly looking into it and all the usual legal roadblocks emerged. Then, in a flash of inspiration, we suddenly realised we could both live in the Republic of Ireland. So that’s what we did. Somehow, we managed to get the most incredible house in its own ruined mill grounds in Clara, County Offaly. There, we set up our studio and got to writing, rehearsing and recording. Then, six months after arriving we played our first gig in what had become our local pub The Trap, playing only our own original songs. We got encore calls and someone tried to buy one of our songs off of us. Our next gig was in Berlin as we almost immediately set off on our first European tour.
Another European tour and a whole load of gigs around Ireland later, we moved back to London where Maja was by now able to do the visa thing and live and work here. That was late 2022. Since then we’ve been playing around as much as we can and self published that debut book I mentioned at the top of this.
As a direct result of that playing around, as we saw yesterday, we met Richard and Los Ekis in a London pub and that led directly to Mexico City. Where we now continue the story.
We wake into our first day in Mexico City. But before we actually go out and really get into it, we’re straight into business.
The first thing we see in the morning is a poster in our social media featuring us for a gig on November 15. Oh wow. That’s already a new show for us. We were told things could develop once we were here but we weren’t expecting it to happen this quickly. We’re just taking this in when Richard says there may be another gig for us that day as well. He is immediately on the phone to see how that particular ball is rolling.
Off the phone and he announces that the second gig for that day is confirmed. Wow. So out of nowhere we now have two shows for that Saturday.
And while we’re here, I should say that all of the gigs that are being prepared are for sets of between 35 and 45 minutes. So all pretty full on for a grassroots original act.
This is the start of quite a period of activity in his big main front room as we all start to work on our own little things, but all Diary related. This place has instantly become some kind of little Diary office. One of the things Maja is working on is to make a QR code and get it printable so that we can give it to people at gigs. This will take people to the page on our website that will have our lyrics in Spanish. Oh yeah. That’s my job in all this now. Getting our lyrics into Spanish. In the first iteration I run them through an online automatic translator. But then I have to go through them and make sure they actually say what they’re supposed to say and then correct as appropriate. As for Richard, apart from continuing with hustling and setting things up, he’s now working on backdrops. We have no idea what this means but he asked if we had any video for backdrops. We do not. What even is that. Not something we’ve ever thought of. Making video to play behind us while we play? We’re in little bars and stuff right? Why do we need media for backdrops? OK. We have no idea what this means. But Richard clearly does and he gets on with seeing what he can do to fill this little gap in our repertoire.
A little of this and we head out for our first trip to Mexico City city centre because now we have to buy the guitar we’re going to use for this trip. Once outside, we get to see the area we’re in. A very quiet suburban scene outside the low rise apartment we’re in, and the area has its own security gate for cars coming in. Like the kind of barrier you would see at a small level crossing. Out of that and we’re almost immediately onto the main motorway type thing which is an absolute festivity of cars and motorbikes, with many people not wearing helmets. Not a thing here apparently. And we see trucks with people just sitting freely in the open backs of them. An instant movie scene. We mention our surprise to this to Richard and he shrugs and laughs and says, What are the police going to do?
As for the guitar, Richard has a lovely one which he has generously said we can use, and it does feel great, but we also want to see what else we can find. Apart from anything else, we are very heavy on guitars and also have our own kind of tuning and prefer very heavy strings, so it would probably be best to have our own thing to beat upon rather than mercilessly bashing someone else’s, but Richard knows what we’re about and is cool with that, so yeah. Another option there.
We’re really proud of our little Denmark Street in central London. During the 60s this was home to so many music offices from where some of the biggest stars emerged, including Elton John, and a few of the Sex Pistols even lived here for a while. It is now our premier street of music instrument shops. Although some favourites have sadly disappeared over the years, including one really major mainstay very recently, it is still stubbornly hanging on as a London musical hub and the thrill of walking along it still persists for me.
What the city centre here has makes Denmark Street look like a toy. It’s a whole district of music shops within a wider city centre area. And I should also add that we’ve arrived into what feels like a beautiful summer’s day as opposed to the chilly November we have left behind in London. Lucky us, we have an expert guide with Richard having lived around here all his life. He makes a beeline for a few shops he recommends we have a look at. In the third shop we find what will be our guitar and that’s it. Job done. Time for our first Mexican dining out experience as Richard introduces us to an enchilada restaurant in what feels like a large, high ceilinged old post office area. And another first, the Mexican red and green salsas on the table which are an absolute revelation. An instant favourite and I’m thrilled when Richard says that we will find things like this almost everywhere.
Guitar bought and we continue walking through the thronged old city centre to the main square of Mexico City. Here we get our first look at the famous city pyramids on which it is built. Flanking the square is a street of houses that are slightly wonky. Richard is quick to explain this and it’s culturally heartbreaking. Apparently the Spanish conquistadors of the 1500s simply built over the pyramids, burying them under their new city construction. But overtime the physicality of the pyramids’ shape caused the ground to subside in, I guess, an almost literal glacially slow revenge.
Back at the apartment and we have some chill time before we’re out again, this time to the local town centre area and for Richard to really introduce us to this place as Halloween and the Day of the Dead emerge into the calendar.
We learn that Mexico City is made up of many many towns, all with their own town centre. We’re in the town of Coyoaca, just a little to the south – about 20 minutes’ drive – of the actual city centre. And from Richard’s place, it’s a very pleasant ten to fifteen minute walk to this town centre. So this is what we do now as we head out into the busy and celebratory streets, for Day of the Dead is indeed a celebratory occasion with all the departed friends and family remembered in a quite spectacular way. All along the streets we pass people in wonderful fancy dress costumes and very much in party mood. Then we emerge out into the main square. But we really don’t get to see it at all. It is absolutely packed and we walk through it as though we are leaving a concert or football match. Off to the side of the square Richard shows us the Day of the Dead exhibition that all towns have, made up of models of people and various scenes, with this one dedicated to football. Again, we don’t get massively close to it but it’s great to see. Then we’re off again and all around us are candy floss sellers. Maja just has to get one and this is our own little nod to the celebrations. But then we see the extra twist. The air is filled with strings of cotton candy with the sellers allowing their spinning open candy ovens to throw some of their contents up into the night sky. As they hover and float above our heads, people are able to put up their hands and capture some of the threads and then spin them into their own personal and free mini cotton candy, wrapped around their own hands and fingers rather than the traditional stick. Maja tries to join in but every candy thread that passes over us is just that little too high, so she has to stick with the enormous ball of it she already has.
A walk around this for a while and Richard takes us for what will now be our dinner plans in a Mariachi restaurant bar where, as soon as we enter, it’s clear he is very well known and respected. We are led to a table in the very atmospheric and busy live room where a band is playing, but the volume is still low enough for us all to be able to talk at our table, where we are joined by Richard’s friend, Sami who also speaks excellent English.
Me and Maja love spicy food and here we are in our first evening restaurant experience in one of the homes of hot and spicy. With this, talk turns the subject and Sami blows every spice experience out of the water with his story of a friend who tried to wow everyone by munching on a Carolina Reaper pepper and ended the evening in an ambulance. Oh damn, I am just destroyed in laughter at that. Oh, just in case you don’t know, the Carolina Reaper is the hottest pepper in the world. Don’t eat it.
Not long after finishing dinner jet lag really starts to hit us so we don’t attempt the repeat walk back, instead calling a taxi.
But the night very much still isn’t over. Once back at the apartment Maja goes to bed and Sami leads the way in asking how my Spanish is. That radio interview I mentioned yesterday, that’s on Tuesday. Sami quickly shows that he really does know what he talks about and I’m not entirely sure if Richard planned this, but it certainly is very convenient and Sami is quite amazing in his enthusiasm and knowledge of how we should proceed. Yes I am jetlagged and yes we have been in party mode and yes the tequila is out. But it now all suddenly gets serious as my Spanish is put to the test. Am I ready to be trusted and thrown out in Mexican live radio? You know what? I’m really not sure, and yes, I do feel just a little bit edgy about it. And now I’m about to be put to the test. It can often be tricky when called upon to prove your language skills and your mind just goes blank.
Which happens now when Sami goes into radio presenter mode and asks his first question. Which I don’t understand at all because he uses a key word which is specific to Mexican Spanish. Oh dear. Bad start. We go again. And I stumble again, this time because I just don’t know what to say succinctly, and I explain I would have had the same issue in English. One thing this has told me immediately is that I need to have thought about at least some basic questions and how I might tackle them. Such as how did The Diaries begin, and the like.
It’s here that Sami shows his experience again and says that there will only be so many basic questions. He and Richard are envisaging a ten minute interview covering the well trodden basics because there really isn’t time for anything else in that format. How did you begin, what are your influences, where are your shows, and that’s pretty much it, with one or two other stock questions maybe added. So let’s be prepared for at least them. But now we’ve warmed up and I’ve had my first few stumbles, we try again. By now, even I’m on the side of the fence that says, Mark’s Spanish isn’t good enough for this and he told us he would work on it and that it would be. To add to the pressure, Maja has heard the fun, woken up and joined us and can see that after saying I was OK with Spanish and working with it, this is happening. But bang, right at this very moment when I really need it, my Spanish comes back and is right there at this third time of asking. Suddenly I manage to pass off a perfectly good impression of someone who speaks the language and might just be able to survive a live radio interview. Wow. Job done and Richard and Sami, not to mention me, happy.
Maja:
Well I needed to sleep. Tomorrow is a big day and I have two 45 minute shows to sing. It’s not gonna be fun if my throat closes on me due to exhaustion. And honestly you all need to rest too. All this excitement and lack of sleep is gonna impact us badly soon.
