Rock stars invade Peabody's

Café Tacuba is not well known in the United States. They are huge in Mexico, their home country. So it was with much curiosity that I went to their Cleveland debut at Peabody's Down Under, a particularly infamous grunge-hole known for hard rock shows.

The crowd was a small one and already the Corona was sloshing. It was an incredibly festive atmosphere. One felt that the Spanish-speaking majority of the crowd was thrilled to have a dose of their home culture. My only surprise of the show was that this internationally-renowned rock band was forced into a dingy, bat-like cave like Peabody's. This band sells out soccer stadiums and has groupies by the thousands. At Peabody's they were stripped of their rock-star goggles and forced to rock into the smoggy, Cleveland night. They succeeded.

When Café Tacuba arrived on stage, the crowd had already worked itself into a frenzy worthy of an overtime soccer match. The band continually flooded the crowd with extreme energy as they danced to the frenetic rhythms that came from the five-member corps. The band switched adeptly between poppy, Top 40 ballads, trip-hop electronica and songs displaying traditional Mexican instrumentals. Their ability to steam-roll through raditional and contemporary music sets them apart from generic Latin pop; they reside on a higher plane.

The sound that the five musicians emoted was torrential. Buzzes, hisses, squeaks, and screams smashed up against Duane Eddy vocals and light, airy whispers.

While Café Tecuba played enough poppy ballads to satisfy the biggest Beach Boy fan, what energized the crowd the most was their wide assortment of crisp, clear distortion - an oxymoron on paper but a harmonic reality for the band. The band used traditional guitars and an upright bass, but enhanced their sound with clean distortion as it was fed through a computer. Typical Jimi Hendrix distortion this was not. Instead, this was the cool, staccato burst of electronic music that can only come from a band with enough stage presence to enliven even the biggest soccer stadium in their homeland.

From the small stage at Peabody's, the experience was breathtakingly euphoric, as almost the entire crowd crashed, bashed and otherwise stormed their heroes. What was heartening about the Café Tecuba concert was the unabashed joy that flowed between the small, dingy walls. While the band worked the crowd into a frenetic mass, they were able to control the madness with a sudden return to the lilting pop that marks most of the Yo Soy portion of their double disc Reves/Yo Soy.

Through it all, the band was able to simply produce energetic music that made the small crowd dance with reckless abandon. While the music of Cafe Tacuba was fit for a much larger venue, they performed like the true rock stars are, even if they had to play their way out of the cockroach motel that is Peabody's.