Expect to find the unexpected in Mexico City (DF) with Marcela Viejo, keyboardist/vocalist of Mexico’s praised electropop ensemble, Quiero Club. Mexico’s capital is a lively, rich, and diverse place where one is bound to find oddities, novelties, and underground movements of sorts. In this weekly column, Marcela takes you along on her musical quest to find these rare gems and obscure scenes via reviews, interviews, and profiles. The idea is to search.
If you live in Mexico and you still haven’t heard or seen announced (in almost all the posters/flyers of the most important festivals in the country) the group The Wookies, then I suggest you pay more attention to your surroundings. For some time now, this group has been giving people stuff to talk about and has been dedicated to live up Mexico City’s most exciting parties.
Cholula’s 72810 Festival, Vive Latino or Corona Capital (which will be in October) are just a few of the big festivals that The Wookies have been invited to play. Though it is rumored that they are ex-prisoners from the Imperial Dathomir Prison of Planet Kashyyyk, the hairy chewbaccas quartet have travelled in a galactic ride to earth to find inspiration in Acapulco, where they created their EP Discotecno at the end of last year.
I first saw them in the Cholula 72810 festival, in which I also played with Quiero Club. Although they caught my attention and woke my curiosity to keep listening, I couldn’t pay the attention I would’ve liked due to the lack of time I had to set up my own show. As they were playing, I needed to get ready to go out in a parallel stage.
Then I saw them announced in a thousand posters, as well as on some facebook pics of their DJ sets in Rhodesia club. But it wasn’t until the past Friday, August 17th, that I had the opportunity of seeing their show from beginning to end. Thanks to the fact that a few months ago, I met the major Wookie during one of his walks around earth and we became friends immediately. I’ve always liked rockers who wear their manes long, so I invited him to my birthday party. Asides from coming to the party and sending me a lovely congratulations email, he had the great gesture of writing me a letter in which he explained to me that asides from making electronic music, he underlined about a thousand times that he is NOT a hippie, and that he knows how to read the Mayan calendar and its oracle. He also described with what Kin I am as a birthday gift. I loved the detail and so our friendship began.
Thanks to that friendship that developed this past Friday, I received an invitation via text message to go to a show where The Wookies would open up for MIS (aka Instituto Mexicano del Sonido). While I ate in a cantina near Navarete, I texted back with lots of excitement confirming my assistance. After a couple of tequilas, I arrived at Metropolitan Theater along with Joel (Remezcla friend who is visiting DF) and Mateo Lafontaine (great musician and friend of whom I’ll tell you later). We went inside the theater and sat in some good seats in the 10th row, so we could enjoy The Wookies from the first few seats of the theater.
Four hairy beasts moving their manes at the beat of their music. Roland keyboards, drums, computers, and electric pads made their music sound almost perfect, and they managed to make the audiences get up from their chairs during their whole set. I still can’t describe the songs they sang that day because I don’t know their titles, but I can describe in great detail the great taste that more than one person in the theater took with themselves. Without a doubt, The Wookies are a group that is kicking off with the right foot and that will keep giving us great music for some time.
At the end of the show, the concert continued and MIS, who was headlining the evnt, got on stage. More thanks to the tequilas and whiskies I drank in The Wookies’ dressing room, I didn’t make it in time to see most of MIS’ show. I saw the first songs and performance of the “two” Camilo Laras I was seeing (due to alcohol’s effects). It sounded good though! I also noticed a super special guest on the keyboard, Alejandro Rosso from Pastilina Mosh, whose talent gave that night’s show a plus.
Translated by Julia Tavernas
Download The Wookies debut EP Discotecno for FREE below:
To read more articles by Marcela Viejo in D.Fining, click HERE.