Back in the early days of this Brazenblog, I began to write the story of my years as manager of my now-defunct website, RAYBRAZEN.COM, with the intention of telling the story in full. For many reasons which I won't bore my dear readers with here, I only got as far as the third chapter, which ended on a high note, with the news that Armando Nava of Mexican psychedelic rock legends, Los Dug Dugs, was actually about to fly all the way from Mexico City to New Jersey to spend time with me and thank me personally for starting a website devoted to his band's music.
This month marks the 20th anniversary of the truly historic and surrealistic 11-day period where Armando stayed in the NYC/NJ area and connected several times with me during those 11 days. Having found the full diary I kept of that adventure on an old CDR I was smart enough to back up my original website's files onto, several computers ago, I have opted to reissue this diary (which has been offline for quite a long time now) as the long awaited fourth part of "The RAYBRAZEN.COM Story." As such, the diary will be run here on the Brazenblog in four installments over the next ten days, the 20th anniversary of Armando's visit, as it appeared on my original EL MUNDO LOCO DE LOS DUG DUG'S website way back in 1998. Before reading this truly incredible diary, you may want to go back to the first three chapters of my story (which I still hope to finish someday) to read about how this whole crazy tale got to this point. For your convenience, here's part one, part two, and part three.
OK, here we go now... enjoy!
MONDAY, APRIL 20, 1998:
Of all the times for panic, of all the times for things to suddenly seem in danger of going completely wrong in the altogether, I woke up this morning to find my mother in a panic. It turns out she had decided to check out the flight information with Continental Airlines to confirm that everything was on schedule for flight #744, the flight Armando is supposedly coming in on, only to discover that flight #744 was a flight out of Puerto Rico instead. I was ready to tear my hair out right then and there. I woke up nervous as hell as it was... now this happens. But my mom, who took the original call from Armando last Thursday afternoon, suddenly remembered that he seemed a bit confused at the time over which flight he'd be in on. We checked out Continental's website and eventually stumbled across the schedule for flight #204, out of Houston. When Mom remembers that Armando had given her a few numbers of possible flights and that 204 seemed like one of the numbers he had given her (if memory serves), we used deductive reasoning to assume that it was a connecting flight Armando would wind up taking in after he got there from Mexico City.
Already worried that things would go wrong, I waited until around 12:30 and then hit the road, stopping for an all-too-fast quickie lunch on the way (that I didn't have much of an appetite for anyway). By 1:30 I was at Newark Airport, and inside Continental Airlines Terminal C. The flight from Houston finally landed an hour later. I proceeded to the gate with nervous excitement on overdrive, keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for a trace of Armando. No sign of him there. I next made tracks for the baggage-claim terminal and loitered around there for 20 minutes. People came and grabbed their luggage until the carousel was completely emptied. Still no Armando. Now I was really worried. I had no idea which flight he'd be on, and there was no way of getting in touch with him. There seemed literally nothing I could do.
So I decided to play it on a hunch. I checked the arriving flight schedule again and found that not one, but two, flights out of Mexico City were landing at around 3:00. So I made tracks next for Terminal B, avoiding the monorail and sweating out the walk there in every way possible. I got there just as the first passengers off the two Mexican flights were making their way out of customs. All of a sudden, I saw what appeared to be a very familiar face. Dressed in a white sports jacket, acid wash jeans and a fresh pair of Adidas sneakers, carrying a big blue backpack, a box marked "RCA Discos Fonograficos," and a separate bag full of several papers. Just one look and I knew it was Armando Nava! Up until that point, I was nervous about a million things, including the moment when I would finally meet him face-to-face. Well, here that moment was. And Armando's curious face broke into a wide smile when he saw me standing there in my homemade Dug Dug's T-shirt. He knew. Just like I knew when I saw him, before a single word was spoken. And in that moment, every trace of nervousness in my system was instantly forgotten.
We shook hands, I helped him carry his bags, and he apologized profusely for the confusion he had caused me. We made our way to my car, I threw his stuff in the trunk, and we climbed in. As he entered the car on the passengers side, he happened to notice my copy of the NY Daily News on the seat. He picked it up and looked at it, with its huge headlines trumpeting the news of Linda McCartney's death this past weekend. I noticed him brush a small tear away from his eye as he saw the news. "I thought I heard something about her on the news back home before I left," he said solemnly.
The temperature in the car was a bit on the hot side so Armando removed his sports jacket, under which he was wearing a New York Mets tank top shirt. Now, usually I look upon people who wear Mets insignia with a fair amount of disdain, as I am a lifelong Yankees fan. But Armando's reasons for sporting the dreaded Met logo were completely innocent. "I just thought it would be appropriate to wear a New York shirt of some sort, since I was coming here, after all," he said. I decided to let the matter slide!
After I found my way out of the parking lot and paid the parking fee on the way out, I asked Armando his plans. "I've got plenty of time to hang out!" he beamed. Since it was already approaching the evening rush hour by the time we made it out of the airport, I suggested we go to my place and hang out for a few hours. This sounded lovely to him. "We should go somewhere where we can talk," he said. "I want to show you what I brought you. I've brought a LOT of stuff!" Already my mouth was watering at the sight of the ever-omnipresent bag full of papers he was still clutching at his side, which I now noticed also contained a record album. Armando noticed that I was curious, and said, "Oh, you want to see what record is in here?" When my answer was affirmative, he pulled the record out of the bag. It was an original, sealed, vinyl copy of SMOG! I almost died... and remember, I was driving at the time, it's a wonder I didn't crack up my car right then and there!
We finally arrived at good ol' Mom & Dad's house. It was there that Armando played Santa Claus in the midst of April. It took him over 20 minutes to show me everything he had brought me. A ton of pictures, from every era of Los Dug Dug's existence. The aforementioned original vinyl copy of SMOG, to me the Holy Grail! A copy of a recently released Dug Dug's compilation CD. A copy of another recently released compilation CD called ROCKIN' TONIGHT, featuring (among other cuts) four new Dug Dug's recordings, all covers of popular American rock hits. The aforementioned RCA box, which Armando opened, extracted three sealed copies of ABRE TU MENTE from, then gave me the rest of, saying, "You do what you feel like with the rest of these!" Two original Dug Dug's t-shirts. Two Dug Dug's baseball caps. A few original Dug Dug's concert posters. I was a kid in a toy store. Armando just kept on giving and giving and giving. And yet, even after all these things, he suddenly paused in the midst of ruffling through his blue backpack, and started to recoil in horror when he quickly realized that "Oh, man, I'm so sorry -- there are a few more things I forgot to bring for you!" I accepted his apology!
Following this, we proceeded to my computer, where Armando got his first look at the website since last November, and told me that he had recently purchased a computer of his own, and that the Internet is still in its infancy in Mexico compared to other countries. I went into AOL and brought up Manuel's e-mail address, and with me helping out a bit with the typing, I had Armando write a special message to send out to him.
After awhile we got hungry, so I had Mom cook us spaghetti, which Armando helped himself to two heaping plates of and pronounced delicious. Mom and I conducted a little interview-type thing as we all ate, and Armando spilled a few anecdotes. He told us of the tragic death from a drug overdose of bassist Jorge Torres Aguayo, to whom he dedicated ABRE TU MENTE. He said that the original versions of "Stupid People" and "Joy to People" which appear on 15 EXITOS were originally released on a freebie 45 included with early copies of the first LP. He spoke of his work producing other bands for RCA (a 1974 album by Pajaro Alberto y Conjunto Sacrosario and a 1978 LP by Five Fingers), and showed us photocopies of a few album covers. I showed him a few of my Mexican rock reissue albums and CDs, which he looked over with interest. And of course, I got him to sign all my Dug Dug's albums!
By this time it was past 7 PM, Armando had successfully established contact with the folks he would be staying with in Brooklyn, and it was time to drive him there. After I jokingly instructed my mother not to wash any of the dinner utensils Armando had eaten with, Armando and I were off to New York, a good, hour-long, and very smooth cruise with minimal traffic. We talked the whole time, comparing New York to Mexico City, sharing what turned out to be remarkably similar opinions about music and the music business, and just generally discovering that we had so much in common, we could very well be kindred spirits brought together by a simple twist of fate! At last we found the place where he was going to stay, I was introduced briefly to Armando's gracious host (who did not speak English, so we didn't get to talk much!), Armando and I shared a big hug, and we made plans to hook up again on Wednesday for a full afternoon's worth of activity, Armando sounding more interested in seeing all the great music stores he's heard so much about than in the usual tourist fare. And then I was off, flying down the highways and byways of NYC back to my home in Jersey, which I made it to in record time, doing a solid 65-70 MPH throughout without a single police radar in sight, feeling one with the road, feeling the gentle hand of fate guiding the steering wheel for me.
But the day was still not quite over yet. Armando had said that he would be bringing his girlfriend along with him, but upon showing up all by himself, he explained that the usual mix-ups and what-not would likely prevent her from getting to come over with him. So it was quite a shock to pick up the phone 45 minutes after I got home and find a mysterious woman, who spoke no English at all, at the other end of the line asking for Armando! It was Armando's girlfriend, Alejandra, trying to find him, and we tried our best to deal with her to little avail. So I called Armando back in Brooklyn and told him to call her and deal with that one himself! It turned out he already had a dilemma on his hands as it was: in his rush to hook up with me at the airport, he had forgotten one of his items of luggage, an empty keyboard carrying case. A few minutes later, the phone rang once more. This time it was Alejandra's daughter, who spoke much better English and politely explained that Alejandra would eventually be flying into New York to join Armando sometime within the next couple of days!
By this time I was so far gone on the whole experience that it wasn't until half an hour after I got home that I remembered my favorite psychedelic-music radio program I always listen to without fail every Monday night was on, and it wasn't until I woke up the next morning that I remembered that there was a Yankees game that evening, which they had won in extra innings. Furthermore, though I arrived back home exhausted after devoting a full-on ten hours straight to this whole mission, insomnia soon set in, just as I was hitting the sack. My body wanted to sleep, but my brain refused to shut itself off. There were just too many thoughts running through my mind all at once. Sleep came late, and was very sporadic, on-and-off, all night. By the time I had to get up the next morning, that's when I finally felt like seriously sleeping. But by then it was too late.
TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 1998:
I took the time to have at least one normal day this week while Armando spent a day wandering around with the friends he was staying with, getting lost for a good long spell in the process. I returned home from a day's worth of tasks expecting anything to happen, expecting the phone to ring at any given time. I was home only half an hour when the phone rang the first time. I had the radio on as background, and it was playing the Troggs' "Wild Thing," by sheer coincidence the best of the four new Dug Dug's tracks on the recently released comp CD they're on. Of course, it was Armando, and he had two pieces of news to report to me: firstly, he had located his missing piece of luggage and they were holding it for him at the airport (though I was later to learn that he had to go to great pains with some very rude Continental employees to get his assurance). Secondly, it looked like it might be a possibility that his girlfriend would be flying in by the next day. I asked him if everything was still on as far as sightseeing on Wednesday and he said yes, so we immediately set it for noon the next day. I told him to call if he needed anything, and to call as late as he wished.
A few hours later, after writing the account of Monday's activities and firing off a few e-mails, I finally settled down to the real fun of this second day of Dug Dug's week, listening to the records and CDs Armando had given me. My listening session was immediately preceded by another phone call from him. This time he sounded worried about whether his girlfriend would make it to New York, fearing that her plans were falling through. I told him to call again later if he had to, gave him the best reassurance I could, and calmed him down to the point where he finally just said, "Well, if you don't hear from me, I'm alright and everything is still on for tomorrow." That's the last I heard from him all night.
CLICK HERE FOR PART 2!
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