Mexico Shopping

Here’s how it went down.

Me: At the keyboard, hands curved, ready to strike a key.

Doug: Electric guitar hanging from his strap, flipping through music.

Doug: “You want to play some Stevie?”

Me (Thinking): Oh, Stevie Ray Vaughn. Famous blues guitarist. Died in a helicopter crash. From Austin, Texas. 36 years old.

Me: “Yeah, yeah. Let’s play that song you like. You know the one. The one about Mexican shopping.”

Doug: Big-eyed: “The what?”

Me: “You know,” and then I hummed a little part of the chorus. “Mexico Shopping?”

“Mexico shopping,” I sang. “Yeah, it’s a drag.”

Doug could barely contain himself from falling on the floor with his guitar. He was laughing so hard I could hardly hear him choke out the words.

“Mexico Shopping?” he howled. “You mean, ‘Cold  Shot’?”

He then sang the same chorus back to me: “It’s a cold shot babe, yeah, it’s a drag. It’s a cold shot babe. We let our love go bad.”

And then I knew.

I knew, without a doubt, that for over ten years, I had been singing a song with an entirely different meaning than what the author intended. I had always thought it was strange that Stevie Ray Vaughn would sing about shopping, and shopping in Mexico at that. But then again, James Taylor wrote a song about Mexico … “Oh, oh, oh, down in Mexico. Guess I gotta go.” And Stevie was from Texas, and they probably went shopping all the time in Mexico. Too bad it was a drag … I used to think. He must have got some bad drugs in Mexico. So bad that he really had to write a song about it. And then, a woman was in Mexico with him too, and they let their love go bad down there. Huh. Well, that’s the blues!

Sorry, Stevie. Guess I had you wrong. If you can hear me from the blues heaven, I’m the one still singing, “Mexico shopping,” to your YouTube video. Good thing it has subtitles!