CORNELIO: Don’t tell me you don’t remember.
RAMÓN: Well, I don’t remember all that crap, man. I think it was less complicated.
CORNELIO: We decided to be musicians, right. Yes or no?
RAMÓN: Ah, but not just any kind.
CORNELIO: Of course not. We had to be norteños, man. The rest didn’t interest us. Norteño music was and always will be the best music in the fuckin’ universe. I’ve said it.
RAMÓN: So then I got myself an accordion and he got himself a bajo sexto. But you can’t imagine, man, what I went through to get a good accordion. You love them because they are so expensive. I was saving to be able to buy one. Meanwhile, I convinced some guy to rent me one. It wasn’t that good, it had a lousy tone and was out of tune. But that’s how we learned, man. Alone. Although people would give us a little lesson here and there.
AB: Anyone in particular?
CORNELIO: No no no. Nobody in particular. And it’s about time we clarify that we never had a single teacher, and whoever says he taught us in Tijuana or wherever, we flat out deny it. There were street musicians that helped us, but that’s it, man.
RAMÓN: And so we walked from bar to bar, restaurant to restaurant, until fuckin’ Jimmy showed up…
CORNELIO: You say it like it was easy.
RAMÓN: It wasn’t easy or fast, man, we worked a lot. And it was then that my buddy here became a songwriter. Before Jimmy, of course.
AB: Okey, how did that happen?
RAMÓN: He just shows up one night at this bar where we were playing and says to me, “I have this song, man, I just finished writing it.” Right on. I didn’t know this about him. Anyway, the people didn’t want to hear it. Where we were playing they wanted the old songs or the latest hits. They asked us for José Alfredo and Bing Crosby.
AB: And you, how did you work on Cornelio’s new songs?
RAMÓN: Well that’s where it got weird, man. Cornelio hummed that first song (“Your Beautiful Eyebrows”) and I followed him on the accordion; I don’t know, it was real strange, man, like I already knew it, man, like we had written it together.
CORNELIO: Yeah, that was strange. Sometimes I would show up with a new song and it seemed like Ramón had already heard it. Really. And sometimes he would say to me, “Hey, you didn’t do this one, you heard it on the radio, man, it’s not yours.” But we never figured out whose song it was, and Ramón would start to play the rest of the song, like he had heard it before. It was very strange, man. That happened a lot.
Excerpted from Thunder and Lightning: Interviews with Ramón and Cornelio by Abigael Bohórquez.
During the day, the Strip doesn’t have a personality that sets it apart. It seems abandoned. It’s a street like any other street in a border city like any other border city. When the sun goes down, the Strip wakes up, puts on its best dress and does what it can with its makeup so nobody notices the wrinkles.
It dolls itself up with lights and bright colors, perfumes of tacos and food with too much lard. The drunks arrive on the Strip and look for the perfect place to sleep on its sidewalks. The doormen at the bars take out their stools to sit next to the doors and pass the night. The whores arrive, radiant and fresh, still smelling of talcum powder and without a single drop of sweat. The bottles and the glasses on the bars are clean and perfectly placed. The dance floors become anxious, like school girls, waiting for the happy dancing feet of not-yet-arrived couples to prance on their faces. Music swells from large speakers, musical instruments and jukeboxes. Hotel clerks check the rooms, and one or another might christen a room with the help of an affectionate chambermaid.
The citizens of Tijuana timidly enter the Strip, still without a drink to remind them that they are the kings of the night. One after another, the bars sprout from the earth. And the norteño musicians begin their eternal tour, offering songs that lift the spirit and make the heart beat to the rhythm of a Mexican two-step, a polka or a schottische.
On weekends there is no loneliness on the Strip, someone has managed to hide it away in a plastic bag, and it only returns to its owners when the sun comes up.
There’s a Tear in My Beer
Ramón and Cornelio arrived at the Inferno very early. They’re nervous because this is their first time to ask for work. They want to make a good impression.
“Are you guys musicians?” the owner asks.
“The Relámpagos de Agosto, at your service. Would you like to hear a song?”
“What for,” he answers. “It doesn’t matter whether I like your music, only that the bunch of vagrants who show up later like it. The job requires that you play something with a lot of feeling, something that makes the customers remember a lost love, maybe their momma that just died. The idea is for them to feel so much sorrow that they’ll want to keep drinking.”
Ramón and Cornelio understand that they have received their first lesson. The teacher continues: “And seeing as how you are here so early, why don’t you help me move these cases of beer?”
The Relámpagos move cases, sweep the floor and take chairs off the tables. The customers start to arrive at about nine.
“A song?”
“No.”
“Can we play you a song?”
“No.”
“A corrido, a bolero? What would you like?”
“No.”
“Something to dance to?”
“No.”
“‘Wildwood Flower,’ ‘Storms Are on the Ocean,’ ‘The Long Black Veil’?”
“No.”
“‘Pennies from Heaven,’ ‘What a Wonderful World,’ ‘Gentle Fatherland’?”
“No.”
“‘I Can’t Stop Loving You,’ ‘The Very Thought of You,’ ‘Death Without End’?”
“No.”
“‘Paper Moon,’ ‘Please Send Me Someone to Love,’ ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’?”
“No.”
“One of our own songs?”
“No.”
At three in the morning, closing time, they move boxes, put the chairs on the tables and sweep. Maybe tomorrow they will have better luck.
A HONKY
The Inferno
Club Paradise
The Tap
The