Day 6
Tuesday November 4
Up quite early today and the first thing we hear is that another gig has been added to the agenda. But there isn’t too much time to think about that, as we have to head straight out to get to our live radio interview on Mexico’s Reactor 105FM.
That’s going to start at 11am so we’re on the road not long after nine. We really have no idea of how big a deal this is we’re walking into. But when we arrive at the studio and meet one of the DJs outside, he can’t believe it when Richard tells him we’re going in to be interviewed by Maria Letona. He repeats the whole name to make sure he actually heard it right.
Then we’re past security and into the large building, all dedicated to Reactor 105FM. It’s basically broadcasts to Mexico City, but that alone means going out to a population of 25 million people, and we’re assured that many people across the country also listen to it online. I’m not saying we’re about to go and be heard by an audience of millions, but unofficial numbers suggest the reach is consistently in the deep hundreds of thousands in Mexico City with worldwide internet users also added to that number. And within this, one of the most popular personalities is Maria Letona.
We’re led upstairs and to a small hallway outside the studio. As we arrive, it’s off air and the door is open and there’s Maria, the personality we’ve had a bit of a look at on Youtube. Right now she’s actually talking to the DJ we just met in the carpark. We discover now that he’s the stations movie critic, so that’s what they’ll be talking about when the red light goes on again. But for now, she becomes aware of some activity out in the hallway as we arrive and turns to face us to smile and mouth hello. Then the door closes, the red light goes on and they’re back on the air again.
As we’re waiting here, a guy emerges from one of the nearby offices and approaches Richard, who introduces us to him. This is Axel, the station’s head of programming. He’s asking Richard now for a song or two of ours that he can put on the station for rotation following our interview. As he leaves, Richard is clearly hugely surprised. ‘This is not normal,’ he says.
We don’t have time to process that because it’s now just about approaching 11am and the ad break has started and our DJ friend from earlier leaves the studio and says hi and good luck before we’re gestured in by Maria. In we go and she’s out of her chair and up to hug us and enthusiastically say hello. ‘So, you’re The Diaries.’ Oh wow. This voice has already become a little familiar to me, as has the face, so it’s really cool to be able to say hi to her now and feel such warmth coming back. She’s mid to late 20s, looks very fresh and has an easy smile and a huge charm. She really is every inch the radio and overall media star she seemed to be from afar. With this, we just settle into conversation. She speaks great English which we use more than Spanish to make it easier for Maja. And for me. Let’s not kid ourselves here. Through this chat we discover that Maria grew up in England with English as her first language. But she moved to Mexico early enough so that when she speaks English, as fluent and easy as it is to her, that wonderful Mexican accent comes through bright and clear.
But damn she’s enthusiastic about us and almost immediately starts telling us about putting our music on while she was in the shower and thinking, ‘Yes. Today is going to be a good day.’ Still off air, she coyly confesses that not every band fills her with as much enthusiasm going into an interview having heard their music, but she says she was very happy with what she heard today and is now delighted to have us there. This energy is fully received and given back and before we know it we’ve become a team of three and the red light hasn’t even gone on yet as we chat freely like old reunited friends.
During this, the one bit of housekeeping comes up as she asks if we have a gig list she can see. We do, and Maja wrote it out super clean so that it could be read easily by someone else, ie Maria, as we plan to ask if she could read it out as she’ll be able to pronounce all the venues properly and without hesitation. ‘Of course I’ll do that for you,’ she says graciously. Brilliant. That’s that sorted. But as she reads through it she’s like, ‘You guys aren’t messing around. Most people come to Mexico for the first time and they’re like, we have this show and maybe that one. But wow, you have like ten on here already.’ Fast forward mild spoiler. Throughout our stay, Richard and his friends keep adding shows, and by the time we’ve leave Mexico City we will have played live 17 times, one of them in here. I can’t claim to have a comprehensive account of which shows were added when, partly because so many other shows get talked about which either just don’t quite materialise, or we can’t do them because they clash with something we’ve already got, or Richard knows we wouldn’t be able to make it in time. And in at least one case a show gets refused because Richard says it’s just too far away. So yeah, if we could have done every show offered, we would have sailed well past 20 for our time here.
Back to Maria reading the list in the studio. She suddenly looks up as she’s reading through it to say, ‘Wow, you have Pata Negra in here. That’s a good one to have.’ Not only that, but we’re actually headling a six band bill at Pata Negra. Of course, we will get to that. We have already been told it’s a big deal to be playing there our first time here, but it’s only really now that we fully realise that yes, it really is.
This gig list has given Maria and us fresh impetus to talk a little more, as if we needed it really. But there it is. So much so that when the red light does go on and the interview proper begins as Maria comes back from the ad break and introduces us, there’s no feeling at all that we’re suddenly live on the radio to potentially hundreds of thousands. Instead it just feels like we’re continuing the same conversation without any break at all. Just three friends chatting energetically and having a wonderful time. And yes, I get to talk Spanish with her and she is wonderfully complimentary about it, even saying, ‘It sounds like you were born speaking Spanish.’ As compliments go, I’ll clip that one up. But Maja is here, it’s very important she’s included too and Maria happily and freely switches languages, every now and again indicating to us with a polite hand to pause so that she can tell her audience what we’ve all just been saying.
This is not what we had prepared for at all. The ten minute how did you start, tell us about your sound, where are you playing. No. This is full on special guest treatment we’re getting here. Well, 10 minutes have whizzed by and we haven’t got out of casual sparkling chat mode when Maria announces they’re going to play a song by us, and with that, Make Me Shine comes on. Some of our songs have a lot of pauses, and Make Me Shine comes to a sudden violent stop near to the end with a pause that deliberately holds longer than is comfortable, which makes the coming back in all that more impactful. However, we haven’t warned about this and when that stop comes, Maria comes right back in and the song is cut. It actually becomes a comical moment, but we really are right on it with, ‘No, the song’s not over.’ But the moment has gone, we’ve already moved on and that’s that. But we chat a little bit more, Maria enjoying the moment with us and being genuinely sorry about it too, then we’re into the ad break. Immediately Maria removes her headphones and goes, ‘Great chat guys. This is really fun. We are a team.’ Me and Maja are ecstatic and I’m just ridiculously relieved. This has been a big pressure moment weighing on me for days; through all our triumphs and passed tests, I always knew this was coming and it felt like the biggest one and that I wasn’t going to be able to relax until it was done. And even at that if it was done well and my Spanish held up. Tick tick and tick to all and every box. And we’re really not even getting started. Maria’s clearly showing no sign that we’re going to be in and out with the ten minute almost prepared questionnaire. Instead she’s chatting away to us like we were before and yeah, this is just going to roll on and on.
After the break, we’re back on the headphones and Maria announces that we’re going to play live a little later. And you know what, I don’t feel remotely nervous about this and I don’t think Maja is either. We are just so relaxed, chilled and just hugely ridiculously happy to be here. Oh, I should mention now that Richard is in here with us too, standing in the corner and just watching happily as we smash this thing all over every park and back again. Wow, this really is a long way away from our first night here when I was stumbling over my Spanish and looking every inch like I hadn’t come properly prepared and was totally flunking the test before even getting behind the wheel to attempt to drive the thing properly. Yet, here we are powersliding through all the corners on full throttle and two wheels.
In fact, it’s going so well that a little into this next on-air chat, Maria announces they’re going to have another song from us. This was definitely not prepared. By any of us. And she asks us which one we would like them to play. Now we have a real live mini chat about what song to play, which sees me even go to stand behind Maria so that I can see our playlist on her screen. Me and Maja have a totally unselfconscious chat and wonder about this before we finally settle on Freefall. Because it shows a gentler side of us and we’ve just had Make Me Shine and are in no doubt that I Like You (Better When You’re Naked) is going to be our live song. So Freefall it is. But what we’ve forgotten is that this has a whole bunch of pauses in it and we have to keep signalling that it’s not over as Maria laughingly says that all this is making her nervous as the song produces yet another slightly prolonged bout of dead air, especially in the intro to the mid section where it sounds like it’s climaxed to an ending before gently coming back in again with something completely different.
But yes, the whole song does get played this time.
Chat chat chat. English, Spanish, back to English, and then it’s live session time. With this, me and Maja stand up and prepare to fully launch into I Like You (Better When You’re Naked). Richard has warned me that my hard playing style might be a bit too much for the sensitive microphones of radio, so maybe I should tone it back a little. So I try, chunking the deadened strings for the four count into Naked. But trying to play that little bit gently means I don’t have as tight a grip on the plectrum and with the fourth sweep of the strings, on live radio, it flicks out of my hand and across the studio. In the moment I totally forget I always have spare plectrums in my back pocket for precisely this reason. So instead of smoothly reaching into my back pocket and instantly starting again, I lurch forward to retrieve the escaped plectrum from the floor, right at the feet of Maria. Having recollected both that and my thoughts, I quickly give the count again and we’re off. And we really do get into it, Maja just thundering away on the microphone over there. Also, with the loosely gripped plectrum drop having happened, all thoughts of me holding back for the delicacies of live radio have just gone and I’m powering away as much as I ever have. And it works and it sounds and feels great and Maria is there just vibing away with us the whole time.
When the song hits its triumphant final beat, and is very clearly over, Maria just throws her hands up and cheers in jubilation, proclaiming, ‘I think I do like you better when you’re naked.’
Unbelievably, this has all been going on for nearly 45 minutes and we’ve just covered so much ground and chatted excitedly over everything. With that, Maria says, ‘You know what happens when you’re having fun…Yes, time flies. We’ve come to the end now.’ With that she starts wrapping up until Richard suddenly jumps in gently and politely says, ‘We need to do the gig list.’ She stops herself midflow and says, ‘Oh, what was I thinking. Yes. We need to do the gig list.’ This is the one thing we had prepared for as though everything would pretty much centre around that. You know, the who are you, what are your influences, where are you playing, over and out. But of course this has gone so far off script, we’ve all forgotten to read the actual important part of the script. But Maria is on it and, as agreed beforehand, we give our list to her and she reads it out, and then we really are done as she thanks us, the red light goes off, and we all sit back and look around at each other. Wow. We’ve really done it and wow, that was special. Maria is sharing every bit in that as well because yes, we really have been a team of three in here. And four really as we have to count Richard who’s been there the whole time and has felt like a warm safety net underneath us if ever needed. It wasn’t, but I think knowing he was there on hand to help out is probably the reason it’s all properly worked how it has because we were maybe able to relax more, knowing there was someone to catch us if things did go slightly west. But really, they never even began to. Oh, but of course there was that one moment when he had to jump in to remind us all to do the gig list. And that was an enormously important catch. And then we also have to give a huge thanks of how this has all gone to Maria who put us so much at ease right at the beginning and made the whole thing feel easy and effortless. What a huge pro she is. I’ve been a journalist, and I’ve also done live radio – radio at the very lowest college level, but still, the job is the job. And it is not easy. And the whole journalism interviewing thing as well. Not easy and it doesn’t always sing as you would like it too, but you still have to keep it all moving. So yeah. What a total pro she is, especially given the widely held sentiment that the best people make the hard things look easy. Well, I present to you one Maria Letona.
But we’re still not quite done as she now tells us that everyone who comes in to be interviewed get their picture taken with her for their social media and then also has to do a shoutout for the station. So we line up together in front of the effervescent Reactor 105 sign, then it’s up to me to get out my Spanish once more and do the promo. Now the job really is done and the four of us spill out into the main lobby where we were nervously waiting less than an hour before. We’re joined by their social media person Dulce who took the pictures and did the filming, and there’s a lovely quick group chat out there before Maria really does have to rush off. She has another assignment to get to for her magazine writing. The life of an on the go adrenaline fueled media personality. Her and Maja in particular part as long lost and new found friends.
Richard waits until we’re down the stairs and safely outside and out of anyone’s earshot before he says, ‘This just does not happen. Forty-five minutes and three songs. For a new band in town. No. This is not normal. Well done guys.’
Well, how to cover the rest of the day? Certainly not in as much detail as all that or we’ll never get out of it, and the park and museum visit about to come up would in normal circumstances be worth an entry all of its own.
First, in celebratory mood, he takes us to an amazing steak restaurant. The kind of place they bring out a selection of raw steaks for you to choose from.
Yes, this really does feel like a celebration. I’m sure there are more tests to come, but coming into all this, we were looking at this as the last big bump. And over it we now totally are.
After the restaurant Richard takes us to Bosque de Chapultepec, the huge central park of Mexico. A wonderful walk through here and we come to the National Museum of Anthropology which has objects dating right back to the Mayas. Yep, after whom Maja was actually named. In here we also learn about Zapata, after whom Richard’s bar is named. Back outside again and we come to the viewing platform from where we can look over a huge swathe of this almost impossibly vast city. It really is hard to take in the scale of this place, but this is as good a place as any to start.
And when it’s time to buy drinks, I discover the quite wonderful flavoured fizzy water of Topo Chico. This becomes an instant favourite and something I will constantly seek out during our time here. Today is pink grapefruit flavour. Quite brilliant and I already know I will miss this greatly when the time comes to leave.
But for now, the only place we have to leave is this park as we head to a semi outdoor bar right outside a replica of Madrid’s famous Cibeles roundabout. I used to live right down the road from the real thing, and Maja got to see that too when we were in Madrid right about this time last year.
After this we head back to Richard’s neighbourhood of Coyocan, but the day isn’t over yet as he takes us to the town centre area here and into the Irish bar they have. Here, we sit very contentedly at the bar and try to take in just what happened today. As one of our very own songs says, another Oh what a day.
