LOCAL Houston | The City Guide FEBRUARY 2016 | Page 39

FOOD | ARTS | COMMUNITY | STYLE+LEISURE

By Lance Scott Walker

Barry Manilow

Sunday, March 13, will be Go Tejano Day at the Houston
Livestock Show and Rodeo. If you’ve never been to Rodeo
Houston, what happens is you show up early and watch men on
horseback chase calves and wrestle steers, and then women ride
horses around barrels, and then more cowboys come out and
ride bucking broncos and angry bulls. That’s the rodeo part. But
the big attraction is the concert after that, when they roll a big
stage out into the arena and men with shovels go out there and
plug it all in. This is where the flavor of the night comes in. On
Go Tejano Day, much like on Black Heritage Day, they show up.
The place is electric, and the rodeo’s usual pallette of country is
replaced by big bass guitars and beautiful shreiks of accordian
in what has proven to be the rodeo’s biggest night. Plenty of people end up at the rodeo on random days, regardless of the performer, but plenty still make a special trip to a particular show;
and for Go Tejano Day, they have showed up in greater numbers
than for any other artist on the Rodeo Houston stage. Last year’s
Go Tejano Day was the largest concert audience in Rodeo
Houston history, when 75,357 people came out to see La
Arrolladora Banda El Limon and La Maquinaria Nortena. This
year, Go Tejano will feature the Mexican group Banda Los
Recoditos, who got together the same year as the Dixie Chicks
in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, and Los Huracanes Del Norte, a
Mexican Norteño band that formed in 1969 west of Mexico
City and then finally relocated to San Jose, California. Between

Los Huracanes del Norte

the two groups, they have released dozens of albums, and are
among the most popular groups playing in their genre. It should
be a tremendous time.
Before I’m out of time — on Saturday, May 14, at the Toyota
Center, it’s entirely possible that you could see The Cure play
“10:15 Saturday Night” at 10:15pm on a Saturday night! That’s
even the first lyric of the song (“10:15 on a Saturday night/...”).
I don’t want to get your hopes up, but imagine if they timed it so
that when Robert Smith sings that first lyric, you dig your phone
out of your pocket and look down and it’s exactly that time. That’s
something that’s only possible once a week if the band is even
out on tour, which isn’t that often anymore. The Cure has been
doing this for a while. Robert Smith formed the band in 1976. I
wasn’t there, but I did start listening to them about 12 years later.
And I saw them live 4 years after that, and then 12 years after
that, and it’s been 12 years now since I’ve seen them. If there is
some valuable math in there that leads you to the show, be sure
and get there early. 10:15 will arrive sooner than you think.

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