Gabriel Solis writes about how At the Drive In changed his life. At Vice.com:
“No guey, you don’t get it!” He yelled at me before pressing play, “These guys were from the border, bro—these guys are like you. They started off in high school too, guey. And they practiced here in Sunset Heights on Porfirio Diaz street. Fíjense cabrones, this is your history!”
Of all the lectures about the border I’d ever been given as a teenager, this was the one that actually got through to me. In the video, ATDI shattered my expectations of what artists could do—especially ones coming out of El Paso who looked and talked like people from my community. The band opens up with a performance of “Arcarsenal,” leaping into fits of ecstatic Dionysian madness. After rattling macarenas in a corner, frontman Cedric Bixler violently pulls his lips in all directions, asking us if we’ve ever tasted skin, while guitarist Omar Rodriguez dances with his ax flung behind his back, returning to the mic to echo the query. And to top it off, Cedric Bixler finished the set by calling out an aggressive, predominately white crowd for watching too much TV and acting like “[typical] white people.”