Problemas, problemas.

My friend Eddie asked me to write a review of his band Deskonocido's 7"s (one of which I'm very proud to say I did the cover art for!), after much procrastinating I sat down during a sleepless night, armed with said 7"s and a lot of coffee, and this is what poured out. Lo siento Eddie.


I really don't know how i didn't see it coming.
I mean, I HAD to go to Texas. I had spent too large a part of my teens feeding off classic Texan punk rock, Pushead's work for Zorlac skateboards, wondering why my shitty northwestern Spain hometown had no decent burrito stands and constant rain, watching old western films and reading about the Texan Nationalists. I had even made some kind of psychic bond in my head about how the FBI ended their siege on Waco on the day of my tenth birthday. Fuck, I HAD to be there. I knew there was some kind of life-changing esoteric psychic experience awaiting me. Thus, I did the very un-esoteric thing of booking a flight to Dallas, where a friend of the family could host me for free, and from there on, I planned on moving around the area, looking for adventure and spiritual clairvoyance. Preferably aided and abetted by psychedelic mexican food. The plan was perfect, yet, as could be expected, disaster ensued.
I got off the plane at DFW Airport, and made my way to my host's house. They were dead. Yes, it seems the next door neighbor had some kind of issue with the main gas pipe and had blown the whole block away. Any people I knew were on either coasts and didn't know anybody in the area. I walked around for a few hours, wondered where JR would be, booked a cheap hostel, called home to break the news, ate what seemed like 45 burritos. Thought. I wasn't going back now. Adventure was not around the corner, it was right here right now, plus my return ticket was not effective for the next month, so I had 30 days to wander around, try not to die and learn the coolest accent ever. I sat in a small 24h diner, drinking cheap coffee, doodling in my notebook and, for maximum Aaron Cometbus effect, playing some Jawbreaker on my ipod. I somehow struck up a conversation with a truck driver who said he could drive me down to Austin, which seemed like a better perspective. I remembered that 80s indie film (the name still escapes me) that took place in Austin, it looked like a nice place to walk around, so off we went. Eric, the trucker, was a nice enough guy. We drank some coffee, chatted a bit, and he made me listen to David Allan Coe which, much to my surprised dismay, I found quite enjoyable. About 80 miles in, we stopped for gas and coffee, and I made some small talk in Spanish with the Mexican employee. That's when Eric flipped his wig. Apparently he didn't want no Mexicans in his truck, and apparently, he believed Spain to be a part of Mexico, a very common urban legend about Americans which I had never given much credit. Well, fuck. There went my ride. Seeing as it was almost dawn I thanked Luis for the free coffee and donuts and started walking, hoping to hitch a ride soon, and who knows what would happen then.

***

By the evening of the next day, I had finally reached Austin. In the process, I had been fined for loitering by a cop who was nonplused by my story and left me to rot in the desert after giving me my ticket, nearly run over by a bunch of cars, shot at by the passengers of one of said cars, realized i had left my food in Eric's truck, and fell into a fit of hysteria, no doubt caused by the realization that having been unable to hunt, kill, and eat a single armadillo, I was at the bottom of the food chain. I cried like a pussy on the side of the road (narrowly avoiding a rattlesnake bite in the process) until I was picked up by a very nice but very scary bunch of cholos with face tattoos who I guess were initially going to jump me, until they realized that a) as much as I looked like a misplaced tourist from Connecticut by way of Port-au-Prince, I spoke Spanish better than any of them, and b) I probably had nothing worth stealing anyway, so they proceeded to show some of that 'kindness of strangers' so common among burnouts of all kinds worldwide, offered me a ride and got me so stoned I almost forgot my name (I never smoke pot, don't ask what strain it was). I do remember all the crazy free style mixtapes I had to sit through though while hearing about meth labs, mamis, and a lot of stuff in slang that totally escapes me (thankfully, I might add).
Once in Austin, I remembered the golden rule of traveling 'light' I had been instructed in years ago by a Hungarian crustie that hung around my city for a while: always rep the punk rock. It should be noted that said crustie failed at his attempts of convincing me to feed and house him, yet his advice worked: if not for my (unbelievably dirty, and partially destroyed by armadillo claws) Void shirt, I would have never been invited to a house party,where, upon telling my tale, I was fed, drugged, and pampered like the proverbial shipwreck victim, which is pretty much how I felt, covered in dust and dirt and blood, still stoned, weak in the knees, like some thrift store version of a Cormac McCarthy character.
While all i wanted to do was crawl into some kind of sleeping arrangement and die, I made an effort to be polite to my hosts, and made my way to see the band, which I had been told (in that accent, Jesus H. Christ, that accent! how the fuck can they get anything done when all of them speak like that?) I would like. Deskonocidos. I don't know, they were, in a way, like the kind of freaks that the jocks want to beat up in high school but don't because they're somehow kind of scared of them, they looked like outcasts in their own stage, totally out of place, yet somehow totally in control at the same time. All in all, they were a mess, I could smell the booze and whatever else was in them from the other side of the room, and they sounded like the punk rock I had grown up on, which means they had a serious case of Eskorbuto damage approached with the sort of carefree, reckless attitude which only being an outcast in an absolutely inhuman country like the mighty US of A could breed. Problemas, problemas.
That's when it hit me. Maybe it was the junk food, lack of sleep, THC, dehydration, booze and God knows what else coming together in my system, but I felt like I had finally found IT. I felt connected, I felt redeemed. The 'here-and-now' was home. At last. I was never leaving this city, fuck, I would never leave this show if possible. First thing the next day (or when i could walk properly again, anyway), I was going to get a collarbone script tattoo with my favorite Eskorbuto lyric, drop out from my previous life and stay here, perpetually listening to Roky Erickson and the Geto Boys, drinking Lone Star, and participating in all the cheesy Texan clichés that I, as a migrated euro white boy could come up with.

No more nostalgia was necessary. I had finally found a time/space location where life had so very little purpose or meaning, it actually mattered. Problemas, problemas.

Deskonocidos.