Gordon in the morning: Mexican wave

Paul McCartney did a massive free gig in Mexico - quarter of a million turned up, which is quite a thing. Gordon was inspired:

Macca’s massive Mexican...

You can see at this point in the headline there was a scramble for the dictionary - "what's a word for 'gig' that starts with m?". After what was probably ten minutes or so of going "Mexican mmmm... mumble? merriment?", this was the result:

Macca’s massive Mexican mash-up

Mash-up?

Still, I guess we should be thankful there wasn't any lazy Mexican stereotyping.

Sir Paul said: “It was quite emotional and exciting that people who might not be able to afford to come to our shows could come to this. It was like Beatlemania all over again.”

Except with a few sombreros and tortillas thrown in.

No stereotypes until the copy kicked in, that is.

Terror threat: Extreme, Noisy

There's a new album due on December 1st from Extreme Noise Terror; meanwhile, they've cancelled their tour of Mexico which had been due to take place this week.

At first, ENT were outraged that the local promoter was ripping everyone off:

In the last few weeks we started to receive concerned emails from people in Mexico asking if we were still playing the concerts (as we had listed dates for the shows here on our myspace page & our official web page) & those people were saying that they had not seen any posters/flyers for the shows in the cities where we were ment to be playing! Again, some people were saying they had heard 'rumours' that the tour was not going to happen as we were asking too much money & nobody would book us! That concerned us & we have now had some contact with the people from one of the concerts (the Let's Grind The Border Fest crew) & we asked them if they could tell us anything about what was going on or if they had heard from Benjamin. They told us that originally Benjamin was asking each local promoter to pay him an advance sum of money of 25,000 pesos (approximately £1,170) & that they themselves had actually paid this to him in monthly instalments (and in good faith) & also a promoter in Mexico City has paid 15,000 pesos to Benjamin but no other promoter was willing to pay this money to him! Now, to the best of our knowledge Benjamin has not repaid that money to those people & has essentially ripped them off & stolen their money & if he actually releases the ENT cd, he has ripped us off as well as he still owes us $500! Some days before we wrote this blog i personally wrote to Benjamin one last time asking if he would explain himself & this whole crazy mess & if he was actually ok but again i have received no reply....NOTHING! I also explained that if he would not communicate with us i would have no choice other than to write these words.

So, we would like to take this opportunity to apologise to all the people who were expecting to see us in Mexico & we hope that one day we will still be able to play some concerts there. It is not our fault that the tour did not happen & we will not be held responsible for this fucked up situation. If anybody wants to know more information about this, all of Benjamin's email address's are below so please write to him & ask him the questions....we hope you have more luck than we did!

That was posted to their MySpace; a day later, everyone has kissed and made up:

Since then we have exchanged just two emails & have sorted out the differences, i told him it was a shame that he just hadn't contacted us sooner to make us aware of the situation he found himself in & that we would of been completely understanding. It would of also been better for the people who intended to come & see ENT to have been more aware of the truth/real situation & not for them to hear only childish rumours of what 'might' have been happening!

I would like to take this opportunity & state that in the blog i wrote i have one piece of information wrong regarding the amount of money paid to Benjamin from the promoter in Mexico City & instead of them making an up front payment of 15,000 pesos Benjamin assures me it was only 5000 pesos but i could only write what i had been told & at that point (and after asking Benjamin for the real facts but receiving no reply) i had nothing else to base my opinion/words on.

Upon our renewed contact i asked Benjamin whether or not he intended to repay the money to those promoters & he assured me he will do that very soon & that he would still like to release the ENT 'Best Of' cd on his label, Estajanovismo Records. With some deliberation i decided to allow him to do that & again, he assures me he will pay us the other $500 for the cd in the next 5 - 10 days. I am a firm believer of giving some people a second chance as we all make mistakes & we should all be given the chance to (hopefully) learn from those situations. It's good to see someone willing to make amends for their mistakes which many people would find difficult to do as it requires a lot of personal energy & admission. One of the reasons also behind my decision to allow him to continue with the release is that he, to the best of my knowledge, is the only person who has ever contacted us from Mexico & shown an interest in releasing any of our material & i think it would be a positive move if people were able to buy a cd of our material at a low price instead of paying shitty extortionate import or eBay prices! The cd should hopefully be released in the early part of '09

Ahh... don't you love a happy ending? The Mexico tour, though, remains canceled.

Gerard Way appeals for calm

There have been a few incidents reported across South America recently of people being attacked by groups supposedly because they had an "emo" look. Which is a serious business - the kicking to death of a Goth by a bunch of murderous bastards here in the UK shows how this sort of thing can get out of control.

However, we're not quite sure the best response is for Gerard Way to appeal to people's better natures, as he did at a Mexico gig:

I want to say something today before we continue. Recently we’ve been hearing a lot of stuff about some violence here in your country having to do with kids who want to wear black t-shirts…or some kind of bullshit - stuff like that,” Way told the crowd.

“We don’t want to see any fucking violence. We came here for one reason, and that’s to be at the fucking rock show.”

Wonderful sentiments, although an emo singer telling an emo audience at an emo gig that he doesn't want to see any anti-emo violence might just fall into the 'preaching to the converted' category.

I'm not entirely sure, either, that telling off an audience of Mexicans for the actions of a small group of their compatriots is fair. For example, in America in February a fifteen year-old boy was shot and killed by a classmate because of his sexuality, and as far as we can tell no Mexicans felt they should lecture Way on "some homophobic stuff in his country", did they?

New legal representation request

Up until now, the Gym Class Heroes rise to the creamy top of music in 2007 has had little more than an endorsement from Colin Murray to hold them down. Now, though, they've entered career stage two, where all their misdemeanours become public property.

So it is that we all know Matt McGinley has been arrested in Mexico. Nobody seems to know why, but he has got a local lawyer going in to bat for him, which we suppose it something.

Christian comes out

This is Christian Chavez, one-sixth of RBD, who has become (apparently) the first out Mexican celebrity - although it's not entirely clear if he's outed himself or been outed. His public statement was released because pictures of his Canadian wedding had circulated, but surely you can't simultaneously affirm your love in public and be in the closet, can you?

"Certain photographs were released that show a part of me, a part that I was not prepared to speak of in fear of rejection, of criticism," he said in a statement on the group's website. "I don't want to keep on lying and lie to myself because of fear."

Oh. Apparently he hoped to.