TIJUANA’S CLUBS ALWAYS CHANGING

Hector Lam is sitting in a back booth of Loreto’s restaurant on Paseo de los Heroes, sipping his favorite drink: Scotch and water, no ice.

He has spent the last three nights leading a group of Americans on a tour of Tijuana night life. Few people know Tijuana as well as Lam does. Born and raised in the city, he worked for the Tijuana Chamber of Commerce, the Cultural Center, and various restaurants and hotels before going independent as a liaison for American tour groups.

Tonight, however, Lam and his memory are the star attractions, and once he gets over his initial bashfulness of being in the spotlight, he’s all talk.

“Tijuana night life today is a lot more sophisticated than it ever was,” he said, emptying his glass and starting in on his seafood dinner.

“It’s true that there are a lot more fancy nightclubs that cater to Americans, but at the same time, there are also a lot more places catering to Mexicans.

“And even though the two cities--and the two countries, for that matter--are so close, the night life is pretty much apart. There are places where you see hardly any Americans, and there are places where you see hardly any Mexicans.”

Most popular with Americans, Lam said, are high-tech rock discotheques like Oh! Laser Disco, Marko Disko and Rio Rita, where the music is the same mix of high-energy Top 40 and dance tunes that is heard at San Diego discos.

Mexicans, on the other hand, have returned to the traditional, favoring a handful of nightclubs that feature live singers or bands performing indigenous music like Norteno, cumbias, tangos or romantic ballads.

Lam laughingly recalls that when he was growing up in Tijuana in the 1960s, the night life scene was as segregated as it is today, although in a substantially different way. Back then, the Americans who came down were mostly sailors, and their destination was the topless joints all along Avenida Revolucion.

The Mexicans, meanwhile, flocked to the bars farther south along Revolucion, where more than a dozen local bands played American and British rock ‘n’ roll.

Lam, 35, vividly recalls that, at the time, Tijuana was considered the rock ‘n’ roll capital of Mexico.

“Like the rest of the world, Mexico was intrigued with rock ‘n’ roll,” Lam said. “And any rock band that wanted to make it in Mexico usually came to Tijuana first.

“For one thing, Tijuana was about as close to the American border as you could get, so you could hear the latest American and British rock hits long before they made their way south into the interior of Mexico.

“And for another, Tijuana was a duty-free area, so you could buy instruments like electric guitars and drums for about half the price they were going for in, say, Mexico City.”

Popular hangouts for Mexican rock fans, Lam said, were such long-gone clubs as the Blue Note, Old Mike’s and Tequila a Go-Go. The star attraction at the latter nightclub was none other than Carlos Santana, who played guitar there nightly with a variety of local groups before his late-’60s move to San Francisco, where he formed a band called Santana.

“I remember seeing him dozens of times, playing mostly copy songs by bands like the Beatles, the Monkees and the Kingsmen,” Lam said. “American and British rock was so big then that it was pretty much all the Mexican kids wanted to hear.”

By the early 1970s, Lam added, the fascination with rock had started to wear off. And when disco fever hit the United States around that time, Mexican nightclubs were quick to follow suit.

“Down here, though, it was more a question of economics,” Lam said. “Instead of paying mediocre salaries to five members of a group, a club owner could pay one really good salary and get a top-notch deejay.”

Lam knows that from first-hand experience: In 1973, he was the first disc jockey at what he claims was Tijuana’s first disco: a place called Machu Picchu, on the top floor of the Inca Imperial Hotel.

“It was so simple back then,” Lam said, comparing Machu Picchu with today’s flashy discos. “All we had were a couple of turntables, a mixer and a button for lights. And I was basically a one-man show, running the whole system by myself.”

Gradually, Lam said, more and more discos began springing up all over Tijuana, although their clientele was mostly Mexican and the music they played was primarily soul ballads and Latin dance tunes.

But then, a few years ago, the peso devaluations began, and in their attempts to attract more Americans, nightclub owners began sprucing up their establishments and incorporating more new wave and rock tunes.

Their efforts were buoyed by the demise of the strip joints, which for years had been the sole outposts for Americans in search of nighttime entertainment. At the same time, their success hastened that demise.

“Five years ago, there were maybe 20 topless places along Avenida Revolucion alone,” Lam said. “Now, there are only about 10. And the only new ones that are opening up are a cheaper variety that are opening up farther north in the Zona Norte.

“They’re dying dinosaurs--for one thing, there are less military coming down to Tijuana because of the curfew and the rule that sailors may no longer come down in uniform.

“Aside from that, there are so many new clubs catering to Americans that the strip joints have a lot more competition in the fight for the American dollar.”

His meal completed, Lam stood and shook hands with his American guests. He spotted someone else in the restaurant he knew, and after an acknowledging smile and a wave, he returned his attention to his departing amigos.

“You know, things down here are starting to come full circle in terms of live rock,” he said. “Discos are the most popular with Americans right now, but so are a growing number of live groups, like Genny Silva and the Crash.

“And if a Mexican band can delight American audiences with American music, naturally they are looked up to by other bands elsewhere in Mexico.”