La Orquesta de Baja California joined forces with Nortec Collective artists Bostich and Fussible on Sunday for a free concert in the plaza outside Tijuana’s cultural center. It was the final day of Entijuanarte, a three-day contemporary art festival featuring work ranging from painting and photography to digital and performance arts.

I’ve seen Nortec Collective artists perform before and it usually involves a lot of sitting behind laptops. But Sunday was a much improved live performance. Nortec’s signature sound comes from layering samples of banda brass over electronic beats. And for a city increasingly recognized for cultural hybridity, it’s only more fitting to have a high-brow orchestra perform pop culture riffs alongside electronic music for free in the public space.

The concert started with “Tijuana Makes Me Happy,” which garnered cheers despite a bad audio mix early on. “Tijuana Sound Machine,” the title track from the latest release by Bostich and Fussible, was well received; the song’s music video recycles the city’s campy heritage in a fun, sequin-covered spectacle.

In its early stages, the Nortec Collective seemed to be more widely received internationally than on its home turf. But that seems to be changing as the youth embrace the city as their own, taking pride in Tijuana’s cultural identity.

YouTube videos from Sunday, October 4, 2009:

Here’s a very rough track. I’m recording using the laptop’s built-in mic and an acoustic guitar, then processing it with Garage Band effects. It’s quick and easy, but not exactly pretty. I added some drums to fill it out a bit, which points out my wandering rhythm. You can grab the full mix, guitars, effects, or rhythm track to use as you will.

This work by Nathan Gibbs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

A few weeks ago, the progressive Tijuana magazine ZETA published a candid interview with Pepe Mogt (Fussible). In the interview, he expresses his outrage that fellow Nortec Collective member Roberto Mendoza (Panóptica) individually trademarked the name “Nortec” as his own:

Nortec isn’t something between just the five of us. Nortec is part of the same people of Tijuana that made it possible to define the sound and its own cultural movement. Nortec is a sound. Nortec isn’t a brand, nor is it something that belongs to one person alone, or a specific group of people. At least to those of us in the collective it’s ours in the musical sense, but Nortec came from many people that gave an aesthetic and musical life to this movement; and if we have to mention names, we’d say Torolab, Acamonchi, Ángeles Moreno and an uncountable group of others. (Translation of Pepe Mogt’s comments in ZETA)

Mogt describes the name Nortec as an abbreviation of “Norteño Techno.” He clarifies that the collective registered the name “Nortec Collective” for international distribution, but says he’s unsure of the legalities in Mexico. He says this all came out of nowhere; he was notified on paper and hadn’t yet spoken to Mendoza.

Another collective member, P.G. Beas (Hiperboreal), blogged about the controversy. He confirms the group had no plans to tour in 2008 as each member works on individual or duo projects.

I haven’t the least idea of Robert Mendoza’s plans with his band named Nortec Panóptica Orchestra. The use of the name Nortec like this pisses us off; it’s already disingenuous that a band that isn’t the Nortec Collective uses the name Nortec. It’s obvious that no one in the collective knew that Robert Mendoza would register the name Nortec in Mexico as his own. This would seem obvious, but in some news it wasn’t made clear. Another thing that would seem obvious, but I’d like to underline it, is that we have said a thousand times that without Tijuana, Nortec simply wouldn’t exist. It would be nothing. (Translation of P.G. Beas’ blog post)

Bloggers (BeamTV, Xeelee) clearly agree with the anti-Mendoza sentiment, using words that just don’t have the same ring in English :)

Here’s another diddy, mixed in Garage Band. I threw in a few of the default drum loops for fun. Download the individual tracks for your mixing pleasure: Guitar, Wah, Rhythm.

2 x o o x x x – 4 x o o x x x – A
F#m – A – E – F#m
G# – A – C#m – B
F#m – D – A – E
C#m – A – C#m – B
C#m – A – B – G#

This work by Nathan Gibbs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Here’s a track I’ve fiddled with the last few days. I’m posting this for you musicians to remix. I’m licensing it under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. That means you are free to use it as long as give me credit (attribution), don’t make money with it (noncommercial), and license any work you make under the same license (share alike). Contact me if you want to use it outside those parameters.

For your mixing pleasure, download the individual pieces (recorded at 72bpm): main guitar riff (mp3), accent guitars (mp3), bassline (mp3) and reversed cymbols (mp3). The bass and cymbols came straight out of Garage Band, so feel free to discard those and come up with something better. If you use these pieces in some way, post a link in the comments.

Bm7 – A – D
G – B♭ – D
Bm – G♭ – A – E
Bm – A – G – A – G♭

This work by Nathan Gibbs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

I’ve played the piano and guitar most of my life. I’ve improvised an endless number of riffs that never materialize into songs. I’m going to try and start recording and posting them online with a flexible copyright, hoping that the creative geniuses out there will make something out of it.

It had been more than 10 years since my last letter went unanswered. It was harder to keep in touch after he moved back to Chicago when we were 15 years old. I’m left with a deep sense of loss; I always hoped we’d reunite one day, reminiscing about the good old days and share where our lives had taken us.

The Krause family drove from Chicago to San Diego in the early ’90s. Benson’s father preached at the 7th & Orange Church of Christ in Escondido. One evening, a group from the church came over to my parents’ house. Benson and I sat in my room to avoid the crowd, learning about each others musical tastes. He picked up my keyboard and began teaching me the chords to “One” by U2. I played and he sang. We may have stumbled through it like an awkward first dance, but it changed my relationship with music forever.

One night, we stared at the ceiling in sleeping bags on the livingroom floor of his parents’ house. We threw out ideas for naming our new band. We had the concept down pretty quickly — something that embodied the idea of being out of place, just a step outside the circle. We settled that night on The Third Half.

Benson wrote the music and lyrics, I played along and generally followed his lead. Kenrick Buchanan joined the mix and we recorded some tracks. Soon after we released our first album “Thirsty,” which we sold for $5 at church.

One Sunday morning, his father Jim was preaching. He spoke about being corrupted by the world and used his youngest son Timothy’s innocence as an example. He said Tim was sitting in the pew making gestures with his hands and wound up being fascinated with his middle finger. Jim explained how it meant nothing outside the context of the world’s negative influence. What he did next is something no one in the audience that day will forget. He rested both wrists on the pulpit with two middle fingers extended upward. “Does this offend you?” he asked. I applaud the man’s courage, but needless to say it caused controversy. Not long after, the family returned to Chicago.

A year later, I boarded a plane at age 16 for my first flight alone. I brought the keyboard and an electric guitar that Kenrick had been teaching me to play. Benson and I recorded sessions that become “Water Compan and the Go-Go-Gadget Arms” and “Join the Family.”

The group in California kept practicing, adding Javier Ortiz and my cousin Josh Gibbs. Meanwhile, Benson sent a solo tape called “Wit’s End.” Through the following year, we recorded music and sent it to Benson to add vocals and mixing. He sent us a tape with the album title “Satisfied: The Final Reunion (version one and two).” It had become harder to stay in touch at a distance and somehow we knew the title was appropriate.

Later that year, I made another trip to Chicago for his sister’s wedding, though we hadn’t spoken in months. Seeing him again, it was clear we were growing older and apart. We recorded a couple of tracks but there was no album coming in the mail.

A year or two later, I got news that Benson’s mother Benja was killed in a car accident. The yearly updates that followed included a lot of ups and downs. The last letter I sent included a Delirious? album “Live & In The Can.” I told him I loved him and tried to send a message of hope. I never heard back and feared it ended up in a box, dismissed as an overly spiritual message.

Music was an ever-present part of his life. In the years since we lost touch he continued to make music as as the vocalist for the band Ophur. Their website allowed me to follow him a bit closer, watching live performances and listening to their latest recordings.

The Benson I knew was a passionate friend, a talented musician, and a loving son and brother. He inspired me creatively and played a crucial role in my adolescence. I wouldn’t be the same without his influence and he will always be a part of me.

[ temporary note: I'm going to update this post in the coming week as I reconstruct some details, upload more images, and add audio from the albums ]

This is the one and only public performance from the group we called Floating Point: Andrew Lynn on cello, Stephan Moore on laptop, Naomi Ture on violin, and myself on guitar.

After recently getting my video groove back on, I pulled out some video archives. The perspective in this video adds an extra layer to it — a live improvised composition of its own. Video artist Sarah Smiley documented this for me in May of 2002.

I had been doing a series of piano experiments, with the main goal of playing back reversed piano. There’s something magical about the slow build of blended notes played backward. Looking back, I’m proud of what I was able to do with the technology. I have my critiques of the performance itself, but overall I’m happy with it. I miss having access to a piano, and both the technical and creative support that school provides.

The night sky in one of Tijuana’s neighborhoods explodes with energy in the early hours of 2007. My nephews and I share in the improvised community pyrotechnics to welcome the new year. The spirit of celebration emanates all around us.