El gran corso de WONG + Música

confetti
Originally uploaded by rswells.

I went to the big national parade yesterday here in Lima with a few friends. We saw thousands of limeños pushing each other and witnessed a few insults thrown back and forth between two full-grown women, but didn’t see much of the parade itself. For me, the highlight was this state employee, dressed to deal with toxic materials. The crowded avenue quickly overwhelmed us, however, so we went into a café where I drank a ginger ale and ate some strawberries with cream. The spectacle concluded the afternoon with some nice fireworks viewed between buildings and accompanied by “Darth Vader’s Theme” and Beethoven’s “Symphonty No. 5—Allegro con brio.”

On Saturday, Tali took me to an arcade of sorts: music, DVDs, not-so-clever t-shirts, and paraphernalia sold out of little, entrepreneurial shops. About every fifth shop or so specialized in “todo lo que es…la estética de heavy metal.” Almost all of the music and movies were burned—part of the piratería phenomenon that runs rampant here—and all of the shops with música indie continued to manifest this country’s obsession with early 80s Britpop, especially The Smiths. The last place we checked out made me feel like I was being confronted by Pitchforkmedia Perú. The dude’s walls agreed with everything current that the website touts (and, admittedly, I tend to tout from time to time as well): Four Tet, Of Montreal, Iron and Wine, M83, The Futureheads, LCD Soundsystem, Antony and the Johnsons, The Boy Least Likely To, The Arcade Fire, Belle & Sebastian (+ singles from DEAR CATASTROPHE WAITRESS), Interpol (+ numerous live European bootlegs, even though anyone who’s seen Interpol live knows that the difference in sound between studio and live show is slim to none, but that the light show is blinding, and not necessarily in a good way [of course, had I not seen Interpol in Detroit a few months ago, I pry would have purchased one of the burned live European bootlegs myself]), Sleater-Kinney, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Fiery Furnaces, Cat Power, Beulah. Dude even had Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, for crying out loud.

The current Lima mixtape—gleaned from taxi rides, bus rides, restaurants, discos, and bars—includes the following:
-“Love Will Tear Us Apart” Joy Division
-“Boys and Girls” Blur
-“What if God Was One of Us?” Joan Osborne
-“Gasolina” Daddy Yankee
-“Careless Whisper (I’m Never Gonna Dance Again—These Two Feet Ain’t Got No Rhythm)” George Michael
-“¿Marica quién?”

Tomorrow, Tali and I will do a little rusticating when we bus out to a few towns that linger in the Lima countryside like Canta and Obrajillo. Thursday, I leave for Cuzco for 10 days; while there, I’ll be staying with an old college friend from KU, Adam Huggins—or am I still to young to characterize it like that? On August 2nd, I return to Prairie Village, Kansas.