Banda Juvenil de Jazz del Centro Municipal de Artes

The snappy title for a vibrant band of jazz and big band music students that we have been hanging around with lately sitting in on their lessons, taking pictures and recording and just having a great time. Here the guys play a classic Santana song called Soul Sacrifice that was made famous at Woodstock in which the band played a 12 minute set. Carlos Santana was reputedly peaking on Mescaline and the drummer Michael Shrieve being the youngest musician at the festival.

Here the band directed by Carlos Betanzos Martínez do a great version and Gabriel the 8 year old percussionist really shines on the drums. My recording meter in that small room was going way off the chart but it really got an audience outside the windows on that steamy Friday evening tapping their collective feet.



Banda Juvenil de Jazz del Centro Municipal de Artes Mazatlán Mexico from Matt Mawson on Vimeo.



Check it Hi Def Here

The D-6 From El Caimanero to El Walamo

 More pics after the jump

A Little Bit Of El Roble

Rafael laughing in the face of the sun.

Rafael, that well known artist who exhibits his linocuts and other great art works at La Luna Gallery, has been a resident of the smallish village of El Robles just outside Villa Union outside Mazatlán in Sinaloa state has been a native of that village all his life and so have his family. He took us on a tour....

This is not a horse petting zoo but the real ranch that one could only access if you knew the people and Rafael knows everyone and is even allowed the sniff a 3 hour old calves. I had a sniff and there is nothing like the smell of a 3 hour old calf in the morning.

 Pretending to point at things is always in the formula when taking pictures for a client. They sometimes email and ask why the hell you haven't got the subject to point at something off camera. This email conversation can go on - because it looks posed - that's the idea - ok i'll do one and that's it - no do them all pointing because that's what people do when hiking, point at things, it's natural - well it doesn't look fucking natural, sniffing a new born calf is natural i do it all the time like sniffing a new born baby's head - no it's not, you can still see its dead umbilical - now that is natural - no it's gross - well fuck you too. It can go downhill from there and you've lost a client. However in my experience sometimes they come back.

More great non pointing stuff after the break

Mexican Politics, TV and Dirty Tricks Reveiled

Mexico's biggest television network sold prominent politicians favourable coverage in its flagship news and entertainment shows and used the same programmes to smear a popular leftwing leader, documents seen by the Guardian appear to show.

Enrique Penne Pasta Nieto or 'Naughty" Nieto as he is often called, seems to be indicating that he either has a heart burn or it really wasn't him doing whatever he was caught doing - buying time on less than honest TV company primetime to smear rivals when in fact it was his smug looking sidekicks and arselickers who should take the blame. "Not me." he is saying tapping his chest,  " I am not called Honest Enrique for being dishonest. In fact I am called 'Naughty' because I am like a cheeky schoolboy who wears kiddies green stuff and has a parrot symbol and kisses lots of people while smiling on the side of all buses in Mexico. And I must reiterate this, my ideologically nebulous Institutional Revolutionary party is not ideologically nebulous and you must never loose sight of the fact that TV is a business and they will take money to do anything you want. Even retake Las Islas Malvinas for that dodgy Presidenta de Kirchner of Argentinalandia or whatever that screwed up country is called that eat too much meat for their own good." He went on to say indignantly '"What me? Me the well dressed man in sharp suits, my immobile hairdo, and my telenovela actor wife, as well as my inability to name three books that had influenced my life and I haven't a clue what is the price of tortillas or the minimum wage and I am, I tell you just a little more than a TV product." He turned to his chunky, bearded left hand man who was kissing his polished and tasseled loafers at the time and asked if that all made sense. "From down here it does your grace." said the grovelling boot-licker.

Editor comment: This makes bugger all sense to me.

Colour In Plaza Machado Mazatlán

 More colourful swirling after the jump

El Caimanero near Villa Union Sinaloa State Mexico

More great shots after the jump

Termites Make Artwork Out Of Bertrand Russell First Edition

Fucking Termites have eaten my first-ish edition of my favourite writer and philosopher's book Portraits From Memory And other Essays by Bertrand Russell.

Descriptions of House Invasions are one of the times when extreme profanities of the F-word and  C-word, should be used. Robberies, Kidnappings, Peeping Tomisms, Spouse Beatings, Termite Sightings, Crap through Letterboxes, Police Door Smashings and Unwanted Guests of friends and families are all justifiable occasions. Especially when they destroy or harm everything and everyone close to you.

We just got back from a month and a lifetime away in various Latin American countries and termites have invaded and grazed a number of books including this by that great man and pacifist and socialist and thinker and conscientious objector and philosopher. This book was given to me by my dad and it was given to him by Bertrand Russell himself.

This man ought to be read. His ideas were far ahead of his time and should be taken up by all right minded and right wing politicians. But they never will because Bertrand Russell pleads for the rights of the common man and woman and for the end of aggression and war. And as a philosopher he argues his case in clear words that would leave those lacking social conscience lost for words.

 R.L Barrett, a good and great man himself, and my Dad (really my step-dad who kind of raised me) was given this book in 1957 and it was given to me years later when he passed. His signature and date luckily untouched by those little fuckers.

Signatures and dates that people in those days wrote on the fly covers of books they read because they appreciated and loved this rectangle of pulped wood that had woods printed on it. Something they could hold in their lap and feel and flip pages wherever they were from steaming jungles to steaming cities. They could write comments on those pages  and underline words and sentences that meant something to them. Future generations could handle the same book and feel the presence of the original owners now probably long gone and six feet under.

 more destruction after the jump