Alex Lora has been writing songs about the underside of Mexican life since 1968 — the street kids, the government corruption, the daily grind — and he has not softened any of it. When El Tri arrives at the Aztec Theatre on Saturday, November 7, for the Adicto al Rocanrol Tour, they are not bringing nostalgia. They are bringing the catalog, the crowd, and fifty-plus years of evidence that rock en español was never a phase.
About El Tri
The band started as Three Souls in My Mind in Mexico City in 1968. Lora — born in Puebla, raised in Colonia del Valle — taught himself guitar against Beatles chords and steered the band, eventually and completely, into Spanish-language rock. At the Festival de Avandaro in 1971 — Mexico’s Woodstock, with somewhere between 100,000 and 500,000 in attendance — they were the first and last band on the bill. The Mexican government, alarmed by what that crowd represented, effectively shut down public rock music. For the next decade and a half, El Tri kept playing in underground venues the scene called Hoyos Funkys — funky holes — keeping the genre alive on stubbornness alone while it was locked out of stages and radio.
By the mid-’80s the band took the name El Tri, a nickname the fans had already handed them. They began U.S. touring in 1987. They became the first Mexican rock band to earn a gold-certified record — Simplemente — and they collaborated along the way with Chuck Berry, The Rolling Stones, and Joan Jett. Their catalog now runs to 53 albums, the most recent being Qué Chingon (2022). Statues of Alex Lora stand in Guadalajara, Los Angeles, and Puebla. The band has been Grammy-nominated. They are not new, and they are not coasting.
The Adicto al Rocanrol Tour covers 19 U.S. dates from July through November. San Antonio is the first Texas stop.
The Venue
The Aztec Theatre opened in 1926 as one of the country’s great exotic-theme movie palaces — decorated with Meso-American sculptures, murals, and an original fire screen depicting the 1519 meeting of Montezuma II and Hernán Cortés. The theater closed in 1989, earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992, and reopened for live music in 2009. Live Nation has operated it since 2015. Capacity is 1,477. It sits in downtown San Antonio at 104 N St. Mary’s St.
Tickets
Tickets start at $55. Showtime is 8:00 PM. Available via Live Nation and Ticketmaster.