At night in March, the temperature in Monterrey, Mexico, can dip below 50 degrees—cold enough that attendees at MtyMx, the three-day Mexican-American music festival organized by New York concert promoter Todd Patrick, were using stray pieces of wood to light fires on the several-acre gravel lot that made up the festival’s grounds. In front of the venue’s two side-by-side stages, 300 people or so—mostly Mexicans, punctuated by scattered, grizzled-looking refugees from Austin, Texas’s South by Southwest conference and fans who flew in from New York, Colorado, Canada, and elsewhere—gathered, encircling Baltimore spazz-core hero Dan Deacon. It was Sunday, March 21, day two of the festival; Patrick, since arriving late the night before, far later than he’d planned, had been forced to deal with everything from security issues to the depleted morale of his own staff, to say nothing of the fact that nearly half the American bands he’d booked, including many of the headliners, had dropped off the bill in the 36 hours since MtyMx began. The crowd was understandably upset. Todd... More >>>