Antemasque Wrap Debut Tour With Energetic Set At The Roxy

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala performing with Antemasque

Note: This review was originally written for another publication three weeks ago. That website never published it nor did they ever inform me as to why they didn’t publish it despite previously accepting the pitch. In the industry, we call this situation “bullshit.” So I’m publishing it here.

The concert at The Roxy in Hollywood this past Wednesday, August 13^th was a homecoming and a public display of reconciliation for singer Cedric Bixler Zavala and guitarist/producer Omar Rodriguez Lopez, the founding members of Antemasque, who wrapped their debut US tour that night. The duo had been here before 14 years ago with At The Drive-In as the opening act for Rage Against The Machine.

A lot happened during that time. Zavala and Lopez left hardcore outfit At The Drive-In and formed the much more experimental The Mars Volta a year after that show. That much-loved, Grammy winning band came to a sudden end in 2013 when Zavala lashed out against Lopez on Twitter and officially ended TMV. Two lifelong friends were suddenly enemies much like Morrissey and Johnny Marr.

But then, earlier this year, the two reconciled and announced Antemasque, their new project together. They quickly released their debut self-titled album online and announced their first tour featuring Le Butcherettes as the opening act.

If anyone ever had any doubt as to the duo’s reconciliation, those doubts were put to rest the instance Antemasque stepped foot on the stage. Zavala and Lopez, flanked by drummer Dave Elitch and Lopez’s brother Marfred on bass, performed together as they have for years.

If there’s one word to describe Antemasque, that word is “freedom.” The duo have long been tied down to one genre or another for much of their careers: Hardcore Rock/Punk with ATDI, Dub with short-lived project De Facto, and Progressive Rock with TMV. As Antemasque, they’re free to do as they wish jumping from Classic Rock to Pop-Punk/Pop-Rock to Punk to Acoustic ballads.

Age has yet to slow Zavala down as he jumped, shimmied, leapt off Elitch’s drum kit, and smashed his cymbals on the floor as he’s done since his days with ATDI. Lopez joined on backup vocals a few times throughout the hour-long set where the band played all but one song from their debut album. They performed an untitled new song in its place.

Lopez, who in the past had a reputation for noodly guitar antics, kept the guitar solos to a minimum until the second-to-last song of the night, “Providence.” Halfway through the song, the band gave its Volta fans a nod with a drawn-out jam session during which Zavala ad-libbed new lyrics on the fly.

Openers Le Butcherettes set the tone for the night as singer/guitarist/keyboardist Teri Gender Bender (Teresa Suarez), drummer Lia Braswell, and tour bassist Chris Commons fired up the crowd for an hour playing a mix of tracks from their latest album, Cry Is For The Flies, and their debut, Sin Sin Sin.

Luis Nariño and the Strange Behavior of his Noble Creatures

Dedication is the best word to describe Luis Nariño, the founder and frontman of Latin Alternative Rock/Pop group Noble Creatures. Today, September 2nd, marks the end of a five-year quest to complete and publish his band’s debut album, Strange Behavior.

The journey began about a decade ago when Nariño arrived in L.A. from Kansas for the sole purpose of launching his career as an artist. A rotating cast of musicians and a debut EP for the Luis Nariño Band eventually gave way to the solidified lineup of Nariño (lead vocals/rhythm guitar), Marcos Mora (drums), Ruben Salinas (Tenor Sax), Evan Mackey (trombone), Brina Simon (trumpet), David Bowman (bass), and Cliff Beach (backup vocals) in Noble Creatures.

I spoke with Nariño at a restaurant in the Farmer’s Market about the album and how his Colombian-American upbringing shaped his life and music. The edited interview is below as a playlist.

Strange Behavior is now available on iTunes and other major online distributors. Noble Creatures will play a album release party at The Virgil on Saturday, September 6th.

Viva Pomona 2014 Photos

Viva Pomona is a small, two-day music festival in the city of Pomona packed with lots of local and international artists with a focus on independent and upcoming artists.

I interviewed the festival’s founder in this piece, Viva Pomona Festival Celebrates A City Unfairly Overshadowed By Los Angeles, for Remezcla.

As always, I shot some photos. Below are some of my favorites. The full set is available on my flickr.

The Doorless Bathroom Stall Of The Sacsara River

Back in 2012, I took a trip out to Machu Picchu in Peru. My group’s trek to the ancient city included a stop at Cola De Mono zipline near Santa Teresa. We had about an hour of time to kill before the employees returned from assisting the group before us and, somewhere along the way, my breakfast was ready to escape my intestines.

I walked around the large, outdoor waiting area and found the sign for the restroom. The bathroom was many feet away from the entrance facing the Sacsara river that borders the park on one side.

I walked over to a small paved area where a lone, single-person stall stood under the shade of a number of trees. Three of the stall’s sides were dressed in thin bamboo reeds and foliage and the entrance…had no door!

“Where’s the door?” I asked out loud to no one because everyone was near the entrance killing time by playing a bean-bag toss game. There was no door, no curtain, nothing to spare the world, especially the river of gorgeous, crystal-clear water, the view of my answering nature’s call.

I figured the bathroom was out of order but a flush of the toilet showed me wrong. Meanwhile, my stomach continued to warn me there’d be no chance of flying over the Sacsara on a zipline with irritable bowels (all those damn potatoes!).

So be it.

I sat down, pulled my pants down far enough and went to town.

There I was, sitting on and shitting in a toilet facing the Sacsara river, various exotic birds singing their songs amid the gentle rush of the running water, the cool mountain air doing its thing as the greatest air freshener money will never be able to buy.

It was the most unexpected place to find bliss.

machu_huayna_029 — You can see the roof of the stall in the lower-left corner.

The World Cup Reader

The World Cup is less than two weeks away and I’ve found myself neck-deep in compelling and insightful stories/articles about the event, the sport, and host nation Brazil.

I’m going to share my favorites in this post. Bookmark this link because I’ll be updating it with new stories as I come across them.

Bellas Artes, Zocalo and the Paseo de la Reforma

These are the last set of photos from my trip to Mexico. I spent the last two days of my trip at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, the Zocalo (Main Square), and the Paseo de la Reforma. There are more photos HERE.

From Mexico City To Teotihuacán

I skipped the last day of the Vive Latino festival for good reason: to take a trip to the city of Teotihuacán de Arista. The city is home to the Pre-Hispanic City of Teotihuacán, an ancient, Pre-Colombian city important to the Mayans and Aztecs such as the Nahua, Otomi, and Totonac people of southern Mexico (the exact information is still debated by scholars).

The ancient city includes many large and important structures such as the Avenue of the Dead (Calzada de los Muertos), the Pyramid of the Sun (Piramide del Sol), Pyramid of the Moon (Piramide de la Luna), and many others.

Unfortunately, my trip was cut short by a sudden and powerful thunderstorm that occurred the moment I step foot on the summit of the Pyramid of the Sun.

Below are some photos of my journey from Mexico City to Teotihuacán. The full set can be found HERE.

Tlatelolco & the Plaza De Las Tres Culturas (The Square of Three Cultures)

The Plaza De Las Tres Culturas in the Mexico City neighborhood of Tlatelolco is one of the most important historical sites in the country. The site is known by that name because it is home to the three cultures of Mexico: Indigenous, Spanish, and Mestizo (Native & European descent). There’s a large stone slab that marks the area as the “painful birthplace” of Mestizos and, thus, the birthplace of modern Mexico.

It’s also the site of Tlatelolco Massacre of 1968. Thousands of students convened at the plaza on October 2nd of that year to continue their protests against the policies of president Gustavo Diaz Ordaz and the PRI. Military snipers fired at their own servicemen in order to provoke their attack on the protestors. The exact death toll is still unknown but numbers vary between 30 to over 300.

I spent a few hours at the site shooting photos. Click here for the full set and a few of my favorites below:

The Politics of Identity and the Chavez/De La Hoya Fight

Back in February, I spoke with artist Ernesto Yerena for an interview that appeared in Remezcla.

One interesting tidbit that I was unable to include in the article was a portion about the boxing match between Julio Cesar Chavez and Oscar de la Hoya in 1996. Yerena talks about how the fight exposed him to the complexities of identity among Mexicans on both sides of the US/Mexico border, which he lived near in El Centro, CA.

Listen to the audio below:

Rafi El Debuts at La Cita

It took a few years but L.A. artist Rafi El finally felt comfortable enough in his own skin to create and release his first solo work. He and his band debuted at La Cita on January 30th where they performed tracks off his debut album Ay De Mi.

You can read more about him and the album at Voxxi and check out photos of the concert below.