watching DMBQ last night. at tacoland. they are in this continent, this state, for SXSW. and graced us san anto residents (we who are too lazy to make the drive to austin and tolerate the masses) with a show. and kicked my ass. they rocked like they didn't care. but i could tell they did, because the drummer was so focused. serious. stern. and she bowed so gratefully when they had finished playing, when the last song terminated with a sort of ad hoc drumset surfing over the crowd. the drummer in her chair, bending over as not to hit the ceiling. the snare, tom, cymbals arranged and floating in front of her, each guided by different hands. me, i became the vocalist with the microphone that didn't work right but had enough reverb to not matter (and even if all their equipment had failed, going a capella they would have still stunned us) the mop-hair ceiling-kicking guitarist strapped his gas mask on my face. with some sort of weird ass metal implement where the air filter goes, cord trailing to some amp or something. it shocked me, electrical current flowing through whenever i touched it, and it was just at the voltage level that i couldn't tell: was it some kind of modified guitar pickup with a bad grounding problem? or actually intended to emit shocks? as the guitar headstock hit my abdomen, as the bass player's twin headlamps scanned the crowd, i let it go. but no, not out of control. never out of control. within my control -- but just barely. like a hot hot coffee cup, almost -- but not quite -- to hot to hold. you can hold on, it only feels like its hurting. try it. DMBQ.
this is about my translation of the Manu Chao song "Me Llaman Calle." [ video below ] i'm reasonably close to a literal translation, with changes to fit the rhythm and number of syllables per line. "baldosa" is like ladrilla (a brick to build a house) except flat like a tile. based on context, i translate it as "cobblestones." Chao also uses "maquinita," literally "little machine," but this implies a small device in english (a machine that does something, but does not move itself - such as a laminating machine, a blood-glucose meter, or an ATM) - so i use "little engine" instead, to imply movement. the one line i'm not happy with is the translation of "no me rebajo"; if i wasn't worried about rhythm, i would translate it as "it doesn't dig ruts into me." the tricky part is that this word, rut, is almost never used as a present-tense transitive verb in english. we generally use it as a noun (
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