One thing this video doesn’t mention is how this guy built his entire audience off of rapidshare.com and the like. He’s come a loooong way. Based on what he used to tell me in emails, his day starts at like 5 a.m. or something. An Internet hustler with a Master’s and a day job.
He doesn’t drink or do drugs, but he does puff menthols pretty heavy. Somehow or another he convinced me to write for him after seeing my nonsense writing on his forum. And that’s how I got into the writing game. If you like what I write, or you don’t, thank this bum for showing me the light.
I’m sharing here my pain at catching an L. A loss. We’re running out of semester over here at the Uptown Vatican of journalism. I’ve fought to survive, but it hasn’t been without one or several defeats along the way. I’m learning to respect these deadlines more. Break them when I can, but nonetheless grind until my fingers bleed and my eyes go blurry from too much screen staring. It’s rough, it’s a way of life. It’s called a “calling”. Whatever that means. All I know is that it’s not funded so well.
For this class on catching an L in digital media, a/k/a This is NOT how we Duy take a look at exhibit A and B of an assignment I’ve been trying to get right for almost a month. The job: produce a video about a high school that was listed to close. Outcome: questionable.
A. My second attempt. Okay. No excuses son. This is pure sewage in the sense of professional work. I’m playing the student card through all three-and-a-half minutes. I want to come back to this in less than a year and laugh, because I’ll be so dope by then. Let’s pray. Then watch.
It’s like 14 degrees and windy right now. A light flurry outside. My ears were freezing.
Now, I grew up in New Jersey, but L.A. weather was my warm blanket for a long time before I returned to the Great East this year. This is my first winter in a long while.
California is definitely on the brain. L.A. sunshine, all the time. I wish.
Larry Hernandez at Club Luna in the Bronx last month.
This guy brought his narco corrido flavor to East Coast in late November. I heard this one, from a different group, on Saturday night filming some video footage in Washington Heights with Manny Wheels. It was for our updated digital media piece that I mentioned in a previous post.
We’re looking at narco corridos and their increased presence on the local Mexican off-the-radar dance circuit here in N.Y.
Not to give too much away right now, but the party ended before its expected 3:30 a.m. time, because some knuckleheads sprayed the front of the party location with bullets, hitting one kid in the leg. Someone got jumped and the response was to spray half a block with lead. No one else was hurt.
While a sonidero was playing (they rocked everything at that party from bachatta to ranchera to groupero to tropical), I saw a kid walk up to him and send some shouts to Sureño 13. I don’t know if it was him or his click who participated in the shooting. It really messed up a good night, though. I’m not trying to draw any real parallels between narco corridos and the shooting, although it’s possible gang bangers were at the party to hear some. The fact is that part of Uptown is really hot right now, hot in the sense of crime and gangs and drugs…the stuff of poor not-yet-fully-gentrified areas.
**UPDATE: I just got a call back from one of the security guards who works these types of events (allegedly, the Ecuadorian and Mexican public and private party circuit in N.Y. has a high demand for security). He confirmed that a young guy was shot in the leg Saturday night, and said it stemmed from a beef between local Mexican gangs whose turf is divided along 155th St.
Los Traviesos were set tripping on a guy who rolls with Los Cholos. Neither had anything to do with the party (they like to wait outside for family, friends, rivals or girls I’m told. But maybe they were causing trouble because they couldn’t afford the $6 Modelos, or $5 waters that were being sold. Oops, I forgot to mention the ridiculous markup at this and many local events like this. I have to say I’m a little critical. Just because there’s a monopoly on these “authentic” spaces for Mexican regional music culture in N.Y., promoters don’t have to engañar la gente.
We were all set to check out the Grupo Illegales, which is an outfit that was supposed to play a song called “500 balazos”. Instead we got a hyper-authentic Norteño group called Conjunto Dinamico. Some cats from Chihuahua.
They opened their set with speedy Norteño jams before moving into the narco corridos, which really started to get the dance floor (gym floor!) packed.
Their youtube presence gives you an idea of how they get down:
Though they play a variety of music, they say the narco corridos are a must to please the crowd. Even though this is mostly music that tells stories of drug cartel life, it’s been a boon to the career of newer singers such as Larry Hernandez from Culiacan. One of his earliest albums was explicitly called “16 Narco Corridos”. He was recently in Neuva York. He played club Luna in the Bronx (check out a snippet, here). He puts some pretty revealing things on his Twitter feed:
While doing research for the piece I came across the always pretty grisly Blog del Narco.
If you look in the top, right corner of the site you’ll see a link to youtube video. It’s not a video of chopped-off heads like you’ll find in the blog’s forum, but a group music video. What I know is the future of narco corrido as envisioned in this track “C A R T E L E S U N I D O S”
It’s gangster music, but with accordions and the smell of a promoter who knows violence sells. (Download a mixtape, here)
This is a piece of crap. Why post it then? Because when I’m done with the better version I want you kids to see the ch-ch-ch-ch-changes. Word to Bowie.
On the real, though, main critique: convoluted as hell!
Some of you may get a lot out of this, but for broadcast purposes, this is not how we Duy. Word to Stephen Hawking.
One thing I hate about having a Jersey accent is that when I speak face-to-face with one of the more WASPY-looking editors, and tell them I have a couple pitches to send them, they usually tell me they don’t edit photos.
Mid-Atlantic accents aside, there’s this growing frustration with just getting a pitch accepted by folks up in here. Someone turned up the “son of a pitch” dial on the J school toughness meter or something. The photo above is a show flyer for one of the many, many Mexi-inspired noches de baile, or dance hall events, that are similar to the ones that pop up around the 5 boroughs on a nearly weekly basis. Great story I thought! I’m from Jerz man, I know how “new” this is, compared with L.A. or Arizona. We’ll go to a show or two and knock this out tight little video for DM.
Not so.
The first in the barrage or questions: How “new” is this scene?
Huh? It’s new to Sally down the street, I’m sure. She follows me on Twitter, she’ll watch the video if it’s good. New?
Little did I know this fuselage was coming:
How many concerts has [been] held? Where? What kinds of crowds? How big?
What are you planning to shoot?
Have you developed a pre-script?
What access do you have to bands, concerts, the venues?
What about the talent?
Hold it, hold it, hold it…..I’m just talking about shooting cats as they pick guitars, sing in Spanish and wear matching uniforms with cowboy boots. What’s really good with the 20 Qs? But they kept coming…
channibalsmith.com 