The Demon Strikes

They say the Devil has all the best tunes but in this case it was the Demon. This Mexican troubadour was introduced to me through Karla and Demon was his name-o (pronouced Damon). Why do so many of these posts seem to start with I was at the University of Essex strumming a guitar next to the lake? Well here goes again...

This time it was a bunch of mostly Spanish speaking folks i.e. Mexicans, Peruvians etc hammering out some of the classics of their world. 'El Rey' springs to mind, a truely great, completely macho song with a kick-ass sing along chorus. Anyway some English speakers were there too so I attempted to bash out something, I've always been rubbish at remembering songs by heart. So lots of fun indeed. Demon turned up later with his guitar and a shed load of songs printed off the internet. After awhile, as often tends to happen, most people stopped paying attention and went back to their conversations. Joining in on the odd chorus if they recognised/liked the song being attempted. The most memorable of these, for me at least, was banging out a version of 'Sympathy For The Devil'. Assaulting the ears of all around, with our free style adherence to rhythm and gentle muttering lyrical lines of lingo, we managed to lose the audience completely. The only other memorable moment being the mention of Demon's band back in Mexico and more specifically their name. At this point you must remeber that this fellow was studying for his PhD in some form of Biology. The name of the band was, if memory serves truely, "Entropic Curves" (for all those needing a lesson see entropy). Another such awe inspiring name I think there has never been. It smacks of gigantic universe rock, exploding stars and unravelling the space time continuum with a single augmented chord, great celestial collisons acting as mere handclaps in a style of Rock vast enough to make even gods puke! And on the other hand have a really sleazey element also bringing to mind Pirelli calendars and crass-rock such as ZZ Top and Bon Jovi. If you could get away with it therefore the name's great but you never could. It's so pretntious it brings about thoughts of all forms of bad Prog-Rock. Said the guy with the website on which he talks about his own photos. Well I suppose we're all part of the bell shaped entropic curve after all.

And finally to the photo. I once showed this shot to a guy who was a real photographer and taught classes and stuff like that and he said I should crop out the guy in the white t-shirt. Get lost! That's one of the best things about the photo. The diminshing line of sight leading the eye from first the guitar player (Demon) down the neck of the guitar to the lady with her back to us and finally on to the guy in white who stares back at us. If anything it could do with cropping on the left hand side to reduce Demon's presence (did that seem like an odd sentance to anybody else?). I really like the way that the Albert Sloman library has also managed to sneak into the background,again drawing the eye back to the centre figure's face. The guitar also looks really fantastic. Right now this is definitely going to sound like I'm in a band called Entropic Curves but this photo has always reminded me of such intriguing paintings as Velaquez's Las Meninas and Van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait in that he has this odd element to it that something is happening that you can't quite make out. Obviously the photo pales in comparison but maybe you get the idea? Just a hint at some other complex relationship going on here.
Ok that's enough.