Phoenix’s Latino Rockabilly Set Turns the Beat Around

Outside, the scene is livelier than it was at noon. The crowd's grown from a hundred people to a couple of thousand, and everybody seems to be taking photos of pinup girls posing with cherry cars and drunken buddies posing with beers.

Once Curse of the Pink Hearse starts playing inside, a small crowd begins to gather around them, including members of local bands the Rhythm Dragons and Dirty Dan & The Distributors, who move in on Polo's microphone and sing along to parts of the song "Johnny Danger." A blond woman in a black dress tears down the chain separating the band from the audience so she can dance on the floor with them, then grabs more people and pulls them in.

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More About

• Marco Polo
• Phoenix (Arizona)
• Mario Moreno
• Hispanic and Latino Issues
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

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By the time the band begins playing its second song, the crowd around them has tripled. Even the people who were playing pool in the adjacent room have stopped to watch.

Polo's as animated as a Saturday-morning cartoon, injecting his Mexican accent into every lyric, growl, and scream. As Curse of the Pink Hearse wraps up their fiery set with the song "No Megusta Santaclos" (roughly, "I Don't Like Santa Claus"), he yells, "This is a song from the ghetto! Olé! Olé!"

There's a white guy in shorts and a fisherman's hat on the dance floor in front of Polo, enthusiastically swaying from side to side and running in slow circles, beer in hand. He's laughing and looking around for a dance partner.

"I've never heard anything like this before," he says, grinning. "This is some crazy Mexican psychobilly. I fucking love it!"