One thing I noticed right away upon arriving in Mazatlan is that it is a loud city. You can walk into a farmacia in the Golden Zone or a shoe store in el centro and find them blocking the sidewalk with speakers it takes a forklift to move, blasting out disco loud enough to loosen fillings. I keep telling taxi drivers to turn it down, I'm not one of those tequila popping head bangers anymore. Down here, it's not just the teenagers, even adults seem to have higher comfort level with this robot music of today. A wedding reception my wife, baby and I attended was a wholesome family affair, every one formally dressed and well-behaved, but hey had hired one of those soundmobiles that arrives with the latest atrocious hits and bigger speakers than Pink Floyd. Frankly, I couldn't take more than a minute or two. In order to protect my kid's tender ears and mine, I spent the night walking him around outside the building where it was still too loud. And the language in these songs can be appalling. Down here, the locals don't realize when the lyrics are raunchy and disgusting beyond belief. I have been astonished to hear XXX rated rap in the most inappropriate places. Not just wedding receptions, but public buses, kid's birthday parties and the radio. If you don't know what the words mean, ignorance is bliss. Now, when I was young, we pioneered loud, offensive, parent-baiting music, but it was kinder, gentler loud and offensive. This modern stuff is truly evil. I'm all for artistic freedom, and I think that hard core opuses have their place, on a back shelf somewhere alongside the complete works of the Marquis de Sade.

But why is the entertainment industry throwing it's promotional and distributional weight behind this decadence? Great composers such as myself can't get their songs on the radio or their records on the shelves, while Limp Biskit and Marilyn Manson are unavoidable. For that matter, why do they have the National Enquirer and other rags like it staring you in the face at every American grocery checkout stand, right alongside the candy and adultproof cigarette lighters, so children can check out the lurid headlines? There's no escaping the intrusions of society. If you live in any of the various colonias and neighborhoods around the city, you must get used to people yelling in your windows from sunrise on. "Tortillas!" "Agua!" "Tamales!" Gas trucks drive up and down honking their horns incessantly. A newspaper car equipped with a bullhorn screeches out the day's headlines. And, of course, everyone is a master of the shrill piercing whistle that can stop a speeding bus in its tracks over the roar of traffic. Let's face it, Mazatlan is a noisy place, and unabashedly so. Even though it lacks lawn mowers, chain saws and leaf blowers, there is still enough racket to make an American urbanite feel at home, and a country boy feel nervous. Being a vacation spot, I guess the idea is to overdo everything to the extreme. Maybe it makes good business sense. Nevertheless, to paraphrase Voltaire (or was it Rousseau? Some Frenchman, anyhow...) Though I may disagree with what you say, I will defend until your right to say it. But must you say it so #$%@¿&¡ LOUD? (Note: the Farmacia Moderna, around the corner from the Sports Saloon, sells earplugs for fifteen pesos. Sleep well.)