Extreme Noise Terror: No Go Mexico - The Truth & The Dispelling Of Rumours!

From Extreme Noise Terror Myspace:

Regardless of who the band is occassionally concerts or even whole tours get cancelled & mostly these things tend to happen at short notice & are usually out of the control of the bands.
More often than not, surrounding those cancellations are rumours as to why such cancellations have occured & our planned tour of Mexico seems to be one of those situations!

Approximatly 10 months ago a guy named Benjamin Quirarte from Estajanovismo Records, distro & diy collective (in Guadalajara - Zapopan Jalisco, Mexico) contacted us to see if we were interested in playing a tour of Mexico in October '08 which would consist of about 4 - 7 concerts. After we checked out the web pages for his record label & distro, where he uses such terms & slogans as 'diy culture', 'resistencia anarchopunk', 'contracultura', 'coordinadora libertaria' & one of the releases on his label is from the Varukers as well as many other hardcore punk bands, we had no other reason than to think this guy was a genuine person & would be the right kind of promoter/organiser we would be happy to work with so we 'verbally' agreed with him we would do the tour & all we would want from the tour is our flight tickets paid, transport in Mexico (a van or something for us to travel around in), food on the day of the concerts, drinks & somewhere to sleep, all of which he agreed. After several more emails it was also 'verbally' agreed for Benjamin to release a 'Best Of' cd (on Estajanovismo Records) in conjunction with our tour as he explained it was very difficult (or nearly impossible) for people to buy/obtain 'official' vinyl or cd releases of ENT in Mexico. Again we thought that was a great idea of his & finally people would have the chance to buy a cd of ENT material for a cheap price (Benjamin assured us he would sell the cd for a very low price). The deal for the cd was he would press 1000 copies to sell on the tour or via his distro & for that he would give us $1000 ($1 per cd), $500 he would pay before the tour & $500 he would give to us upon arrival in Mexico, that was the offer HE made to us. We 'verbally' agreed with him (no contracts) & sent him all the music & lyrics (to be translated for the cd booklet). A few months later we received the first payment of $500.

In April '08 we played a concert in Tijuana, Mexico (as part of the 'West Coast Distortion' tour) & at that concert we were told by a few people that they had heard that ENT & the promoter were asking for a lot of money for the tour & that some people in the scene were already quite pissed off about this. Upon our arrival back in the UK we wrote to Benjamin asking him about this & if the story was true & if it was we told him we didn't want to be involved in such a situation. He wrote back to us a long email explaining the situation & that those rumours were totally untrue & he wasn't asking for lots of money per concert, only enough to cover all the costs & that he would definitly not make any money from the tour. We believed him & decided to continue.


As time went by we heard less & less from Benjamin & after writing several emails to him, all we really heard from him was that the cd artwork was finished (we received a copy of the cover artwork which was done by Sean from Protest Zine in Ireland & looks excellent!) & that not all the dates were finalised but they would be confirmed 'soon'. The last piece of communication we received from Benjamin was on 22/08/08 saying that he would be booking our flights soon & that he was just finalising the last few details but everything was ok! Then....nothing! We wrote many emails to him at every known email address we have for him asking for information regarding the tour/flight tickets etc but still we received....nothing! We really needed to know what was happening with the tour & we also asked if he was personally ok but still....NOTHING! Very strange behaviour for someone who seemed so genuine & who has paid us some money towards a supposed cd release he was going to make for the band.

In the last few weeks we started to receive concerned emails from people in Mexico asking if we were still playing the concerts (as we had listed dates for the shows here on our myspace page & our official web page) & those people were saying that they had not seen any posters/flyers for the shows in the cities where we were ment to be playing! Again, some people were saying they had heard 'rumours' that the tour was not going to happen as we were asking too much money & nobody would book us! That concerned us & we have now had some contact with the people from one of the concerts (the Let's Grind The Border Fest crew) & we asked them if they could tell us anything about what was going on or if they had heard from Benjamin. They told us that originally Benjamin was asking each local promoter to pay him an advance sum of money of 25,000 pesos (approximately £1,170) & that they themselves had actually paid this to him in monthly instalments (and in good faith) & also a promoter in Mexico City has paid 15,000 pesos to Benjamin but no other promoter was willing to pay this money to him! Now, to the best of our knowledge Benjamin has not repaid that money to those people & has essentially ripped them off & stolen their money & if he actually releases the ENT cd, he has ripped us off as well as he still owes us $500! Some days before we wrote this blog i personally wrote to Benjamin one last time asking if he would explain himself & this whole crazy mess & if he was actually ok but again i have received no reply....NOTHING! I also explained that if he would not communicate with us i would have no choice other than to write these words.

So, we would like to take this opportunity to apologise to all the people who were expecting to see us in Mexico & we hope that one day we will still be able to play some concerts there. It is not our fault that the tour did not happen & we will not be held responsible for this fucked up situation. If anybody wants to know more information about this, all of Benjamin's email address's are below so please write to him & ask him the questions....we hope you have more luck than we did!

Thanks for nothing Benjamin!

Also, to the few people from Mexico who have wrote to us calling us 'capatalist pigs' & 'scum' for 'supposidly' asking for loads of money (and to those people who would rather believe rumours than to seek the truth)....Please get your facts right before you start behaving in such a childish manner! Punk does not need immature idiots like you spreading bullshit....if you have nothing better to do then go fuck yourself's you sad fucks. You are no better than the system you say you despise! We NEVER asked for a $ for this tour.

Punk belongs to the punks NOT the businessmen & always beware of the wolves that dress in sheeps clothing!

For further questions & answers contact Benjamin Quirarte :-

www. estajanovismo. com
www. myspace. com/estajanovismo
estajanovismo@yahoo.com
benjaminquirarte@yahoo.com

RESIST - REVOLT - DISTORT
Phil / ENT