It was mid-December 1997, between the time I received Armando Nava's first thrilling email contact and conducted my first telephone interview with him, when I got an email from a young Chicano college student based in Detroit named Manuel Magaña. He was the first American-based Mexican fan to find El Mundo Loco De Los Dug Dug's online and he was very complimentary to both my work and the music of Los Dug Dug's in his first message. He then went on to say that he was "searching for recordings of Avandaro." I had no idea what he meant at first -- was Avandaro another classic Mexican rock band of the '70s, or something? So when I interviewed Armando for the first time, I ran the name by him -- and that's when I first learned of the extraordinary music festival which took place in Mexico in September 1971 and was known by the name of the resort in which it was held -- Avandaro!
Naturally, I was quite intrigued. I was just starting to unravel the mystery of Los Dug Dugs in the wake of my nearly decade-long obsession with them up to that point, and now there was another mystery on top of that to solve! Of course, with the internet in its infancy then, it was just as tough to come across information about Avandaro. I had found just one short article on the festival, which I had translated into English with the help of some Mexican fans of the site, and published this translation as part of my Dug Dug's website.
Then, sometime in 2000, I received an email from a gentleman named Alberto Cruz. He was a lifelong Dug Dug's fan who had actually attended Avandaro, and he was quick to point out that the article I'd posted on my site was full of factual errors which he was eager to correct. I was apologetic about having posted such misinformation, but he was fully understanding of the situation at hand -- me, a gringo Dug Dug's fan, going along with whatever tidbits I could find out there. One thing led to another, and soon we were conspiring together to create the official sequel to El Mundo Loco -- a separate site on the Avandaro festival which would finally get the story told right.
Our intention to create such a site soon started a buzz which reached other participants of Avandaro, including members of two other bands besides Los Dug Dug's who had performed there -- Felipe Maldonado of Peace and Love, and Jacobo Aragon of El Epilogo (both of whom have recently released CDs of their performances). To me, the most intriguing part of the story was the fact that thousands and thousands of people had descended upon Avandaro to see a concert consisting entirely of Mexican rock bands. No world-renowned acts flown in to headline (not even Santana!), just local bands based in Mexico City and its outlying areas. Try drawing huge Woodstock-like crowds with a festival of YOUR city's local bands! It was just the world-inspired power of rock and roll and countercuture at that time, what can I say?
To get the ball rolling on our new site, Al Cruz requested my street mail address, promising to send me original Avandaro artifacts on the condition that I send them back to him when I was finished with them. In a few weeks, an envelope containing two very major souvenirs arrived all the way from Mexico City. One was a Spanish language edition of Rolling Stone magazine (Piedra Rodante, their ill-fated Mexican counterpart which only lasted a year) devoted entirely to the festival; the other was a picture book of the fest called NOSOTROS, independently published by a member of Tinta Blanca, one of the bands which played at the fest. Having only seen a few tiny photos online up to that point of what Avandaro had looked like, these artifacts were eye-opening and stunning to look at. I also got in touch with Eric Zolov, a fellow student of Mexican counterculture who wrote a great book on the topic called "Refried Elvis," and he sent me VHS video of actual footage from the event -- mindblowing stuff.
By now I had a nice little team of like-minded folks involved, such as Lalo Garcia, who'd played bass for Los Dug Dug's in the '90s (and later on for Chuck Berry of all folks), Roberto Ruelas (a "gardener to the stars," so he told me his occupation was), and Ulises Mavridis, who provided moral support and a box full of vintage Mexican rock magazines with a little surprise in the middle of the pile -- an original pressing of the "Cinco de Chocolate y Una De Fresa" movie soundtrack EP on which Angelica Maria is backed by Los Dug Dug's. Thanks to these gentlemen, I now had a team of contributors as well as translators who graciously volunteered their services so I could have these precious documents translated, and in turn publish both the Dug Dug's and Avandaro sites in Spanish for my ever-growing Mexican audiences. I still recall these people most fondly, and have even been back in touch with some of them in recent years and months. I hope all of them are doing well.
The goal was to have everything ready just in time to launch in celebration of the 30th anniversary of Avandaro. We worked on the site from late 2000 right up til the end of spring 2001. A highlight of this work was the weekly online parties which me and my team had going for awhile at the peak of production: every Friday evening we'd all get on the instant messenger and talk about Mexican rock, discuss angles on the online presentation of Avandaro, and trade digital files of old Mexican rock albums. Roberto Ruelas put together his own "sister site" to mine, which consisted of reprints of the original articles on Avandaro in Mexican Rolling Stone, and which hit the web just prior to my site. (Alas, his site is now offline.) We were all having a great time leading up to the site's launch and its tie-ins with the celebration to come -- the 30th Anniversary of Avandaro!
My Avandaro site officially hit the internet in June 2001. And it would have turned out to be all well and good and wonderful a celebration, had it not been for one very, VERY big problem which would arise very soon after the site was launched: namely, September 11, 2001. Which, by sheer coincidence, just so happened to be the very date of the 30th Anniversary of Avandaro.
I was taking the bus to work in NYC that morning, and up until we approached the Lincoln Tunnel, nothing seemed amiss. But we were forced to turn around at the last exit before the toll booth because of an emergency situation which had literally shut down the city. As we took that last exit, I looked across the Hudson River and saw clearly with my own eyes the horror of the two twin towers of the World Trade Center burning. As the bus returned me home, I could hear others on the bus sharing the details they'd heard on their cellphones. I got back home just in time to see both towers collapse on live TV. It was all too much to bear, on the worst possible day for it to happen.
I went online and almost immediately received an instant message from Al Cruz. It said simply, "What's happening?" I promptly answered back with "Do you really want to know, Al?" It was then that I found out how fast the news had traveled -- they were covering the twin towers' collapse on Mexican TV, and Al already knew everything that was going on. Thus, my "day of celebration" of the 30th Anniversary of Avandaro consisted of exactly one very sad and sobering online chat between me and the man who had initially encouraged me to start the Avandaro site. That was that.
So what was I to do now? All our hard work seemed to have just been ruined in the mere blink of an eye, and I at first felt guilty about continuing to promote a freshly-launched website marking September 11th as a joyous occasion, regardless of which September 11th it was celebrating. I even briefly contemplated taking the site down altogether. But the next day, after a great deal of reflection on the matter, I started thinking that as sad a day as September 11th had now become, it would be even more tragic if the memory of Avandaro wound up forgotten in the wake of it. I finally decided to update the site with a new introduction which made note of the terrorist attacks, and explained my decision not to cancel the website.
"It makes more sense to me, and I hope to all of you, to leave this site up as a necessary reminder of the beauty this day once meant in the hearts and minds of so many people," I wrote. "Even in the face of human tragedy, we cannot allow ourselves to forget September 11th of 30 years ago, and I hope to God that somehow, in years to come, we can all still remember what this day once stood for, a brighter September 11th where peace, love, happiness and music reigned supreme for one glorious night and 250,000 people in Valle de Bravo, Mexico." My audience agreed, and I received praise for my words and for my decision. The Avandaro site was a hit nonetheless.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. It also marks the 55th anniversary of Avandaro. I'm pleased to report that even in light of the 9/11 anniversary, Avandaro is not only still remembered, but celebrated as strongly as ever. And you can still celebrate it right now, folks, that other September 11th. I returned my
original Avandaro website to the web as part of the 25th anniversary restoration of El Mundo Loco De Los Dug Dug's, and also to counter poor-quality bootleg reissues of my sites on servers of very questionable security. (It could use some updating, but it is what it is!) There are several recordings from the festival available; you can hear
the entire performance by Los Dug Dug's online, and
El Epilogo and
Peace and Love have issued official albums of their performances. All are very much worth checking out, as is
a 2-disc set of various highlights of the fest which came out in late 2003. There's also several Avandaro documentaries of varying quality on Youtube. In short, Avandaro is all over the internet now... but we were there first! And to this day I still feel there is room on September 11th to celebrate a happier time which happened on that same day, so many years before. I hope you agree.
