Welcome to Mexico, starring The Beatles

One thing that both Mexicand and Peruvians have in common is their love of cover bands.  In Cusco, there were a plethora of fliers advertising a Pearl Jam cover band coming to the local theater.  Not satisfied?  If you like Sound Garden, Stone Temple Pilots or Foo Fighters, you can request to be blessed with some of their music too.  At the same concert.  Cover bands are like a one size fits all, multipurpose remote, 18 in 1 shampoo/conditioner/soap/toothpaste.

 At Te Macho in Cusco, we saw a band cover the Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Beatles.  This is 16 seconds worth of their rendition of I Saw Her Standing There:

Fast forward to day 4 in Mexico City.  We're wandering around the city, wanting to make the most out of our last night in the D.F.  We're being recruited to pay a 5 dollar cover here, or a 1 drink minimum here;  There's 6 people in this bar, 10 people in this club, etc etc.  Finally we stumble on a noisy bar: The doorman invites us in "No cover?" we ask, "No".  "Can we dance?", "Yes."  We go downstairs and there's tons of people singing Hey Jude as Sergeant Pepper lookalikes jam out on stage.  It's an entire Beatles themed bar.  We meet some nice Argentinian girls, some nice New Zealanders, a dude from Texas, all singing every word to Let it Be, Twist and Shout and, as is apparently customary in Latin America, "I Saw Her Standing There".

Not only did my inability to salsa dance not get in the way (for the first time in Mexico...gimme one more week and I'll salsa that ass off) but everyone was so damn carefree.  Everybody got their dance on, the band got paid, and at long last the night was a success.  Thank you John, George, Paul and Ringo.  You are truly homies.  As Peruvians would say "Estan mi bateria" - "You're my crew" (bateria means drumset). 

This is not The Beatles.  This is a bachata band that was playing at the Museo Dolores Olmedo outside of Mexico City.  It's a museum entirely dedicated to the works of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.  Bachata, wikipedia tells me, is a hybrid of bolero, son, merengue and cha-cha-cha music.  Thanks wik.  Pictures were not allowed, but this museum was one of the highlight of the time in Mexico City. 

More highlights to come.  For now, babies sitting atop the pyramids at Teotihuacan, the ancient Aztec city.