I had probably my favorite conversational exchange last night. It went like this:
Shana: ¿No hablás ingles? ¿Pero escribís tus letras en ingles? (You don’t speak English? But you write your lyrics in Engish? NOTE: Check out that castellano riplatense in action!)
Frederico: No, seriously. Hardcorelyrics.com. Ctrl-C. Ctrl-V. That’s it.
Jajajajajajajajaja says me.
Hat trick to Marie on this one: When I talked to her this week in my generally down state, she encouraged me to put myself out there in order to make Argentine friends. After a fierce internal debate and an extremely lucky venue change from the province to 8 blocks from my apartment, I made the incredibly wise decision to go to my first Argentine hardcore show by myself. Because I went by myself, I didn’t have the luxury of withdrawing into myself. I was forced to be friendly as fuck. It paid off.
The strategy: Take pictures of random kids waiting for the show to start. Successful? Yeah! Because it’s pretty awkward to just snap photos of some dudes, I told them that I was American and taking some photos for my friends to document the scene here. Okay that’s probably equally awkward… but it was also true and it worked on two separate occasions to strike up conversations, one of which was extremely successful. Marcelo, Axel, Ryan, and Paula -- featured below in their Verse shirts har har – were super friendly and nice and patient about my Spanish and helpful.
 |
| From BAxHC |
Marcelo gave me the lowdown on some of the who’s who – pointing out the 674 crew with neck tattoos and DB4D shirts and Red Sox hats (so much like I never left!), the kids in important bands I hadn’t heard of, and the kids I wanted to meet – while also listening with some degree of really adorable awe about Boston. We talked about bands we all liked and the hilarious National Geographic doc about Edge Day and straightedge. The best part was that none of those dudes really spoke English and for the first time in way too long I was forced to speak Spanish to execute a conversation. (!!!) They also introduced me to their awesome friends Carlos and Magalí, who I especially loved and with whom I spent most of the rest of the show.
 |
| From BAxHC |
In addition, Marcelo pointed out Kiko, the amazing kid who runs Varsity Records whom I emailed my first week of being down here and with whom I’ve been doing some MSN chatting. OKAY Kiko is seriously one of the nicest people I have ever met in my whole life. He immediately was super warm to me, asking me lots of questions about how I’m doing, how I got to the show, etc etc. He introduced me to his friend and bandmate Frederico, of the infamous Ctrl-C Ctrl-V quote, who also went out of his way to be super friendly and who also knew way too much about American college sports and that Tufts was good at crew (uh?). Frederico introduced me to his gf (I think) Pauly who was super adorable and with whom I waited after the show ended because Kiko had asked me to stay. He promised to meet me in the city and literally take me to the show next Sunday, which is just amazing considering he doesn't even live in the city. And when I parted ways with them, he gave me a sincere “cuidate.”
Check out their band Reconcile on myspace or in youtube video.
 |
| From BAxHC |
As for the show itself: The opening band was terrible. They were followed by a hard, New York influenced band and their singer, of course, was the dude with neck tattoos. Reconcile was legitimately really good and it was great to see a hometown band that hometown kids were into. No Turning Back (Holland) was just hilarious. Their singer was a Dutch version of Scott Vogel in Greg Mental's oddly proportioned body. I took some video which I am stoked to show Bobby in the fall. Only about half of the kids knew enough English to laugh at his jokes and participate in his requests for call and response. I laughed throughout the whole set, pretty much. Plus they played covers of Negative Approach and Alone in a Crowd, which allowed me to participate a bit thank goodness.
Although I feel a little bit embarrassed admitting it to folks, especially when they don’t really understand hardcore at all, last night demonstrated the success of my logic: I picked BsAs in large part because there is a hardcore scene. With all of those kids I met last night, I spoke Spanish, exchanged contact information, and just generally had a meaningful experience over which to bond. For the first time, although I obviously felt like an outsider to some degree, I didn’t feel like such a tourist or such an American. I felt like a hardcore kid. And with the greatness of the smallness of the hardcore scene (¿hardcore es un panuelo?) I had more than just interests in common but also some friends as well. It was pretty incredible to explain where I live in the States by proximity to the Anthrax Club, to discuss kids I know from
No comments:
Post a Comment