3Ball MTY, the DJ outfit from Monterrey, Mexico that is partly responsible for the pointy boot craze (and I mean pointy!), spun a long set at the Belasco in downtown LA on Thursday night. The show was part of a larger, nationwide campaign called the Premios Juventud VIP Tour happening throughout the summer used to promote Univision’s upcoming Premios Juventud (Youth Awards) awards show.
Check out the full set of photos on my Flickr.
Sin Dios was a hardcore-punk band from Madrid, Spain that existed from 1988 – 2006. The group released eight original lp’s plus a handful of ep’s during those years that outlined their anti-fascist, anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist anarchist beliefs.
The band wore its politics on its sleeve much the same way Morrissey wears his emotions as a badge of honor. The album titles say it all: Sin Dios…Ni Amo (No God or Masters), Ruido Anticapitalista (Anticapitalist Noise), Alerta Antifascista (Be Alert Antifascist), Guerra A La Guerra (Wage War On War), Solidaridad (Solidarity), Ingobernables (Ungovernable), Odio Al Imperio (Hatred Against the Empire), and Recortes De Libertad (Snippets of Liberty). The albums were packaged with booklets filled with commentary that explained the topics and themes behind the songs.
They followed the autogestion/worker self-management model were no one member held authority over the group and decisions were made and agreed upon democratically. As such, they operated without the aid of managers or agents. They self-produced and distributed all their works through their own label, Difusión Libertaria La Idea, or with the assistance of other independent anti-commercial labels such as PHC and Queimata. The band sold their albums at popular, rather than competitive, prices.
Sin Dios maintained dedicated groups of fans in Spain, Europe and Latin America despite its underground status (I’m talking pre-internet days). They also worked with a number of anarchist groups in other countries, most notably Mexico’s Juventud Antiautoritaria Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Antiauthoritarian Youth), who assisted the band in its tour of Mexico in 1999 as well as helped publish/distribute its albums in Mexico, and Brazil’s União Libertária da Baixada Santista – U.L.B.S. (Libertarian Union of Baixada Santista – libertarian in the original meaning of the word, anarchist liberty, not the modern Ron Paul/Mises redefinition), who the band supported via a benefit album.
No reason was given for the split in 2006 but the members announced they would continue their political activities via other means. It’s believed two of the members were, and possibly still are, also members of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (National Confederation of Workers).
The group’s library is also available as a free download/stream on its website. Click on an album then right-click a song title and select “save link as.”
Last year (almost a year to the day!), I wrote about chiptune fanatics using GXSCC to turn their favorite metal songs into chiptune/8-bit songs. It took a year but someone finally gave Radiohead the same treatment. YouTube user QuintonSong gave two of the band’s albums, OK Computer and Kid A, the chiptune conversion. Chiptuned “Exit Music (For A Film)?” Yes, please!!!
The past few weeks have been pretty busy for me. I have a number of things I’m working on as well as a number of things that were recently published in LA Weekly and in Remezcla. Check ’em out below!
Subsuelo Celebrates One Year of Global Bass Boogie
“With Subsuelo, we wanted to do something different than just a regular dance club,” he says. “We wanted to incorporate elements of live performance, of theatricality that was a little bit different than just playing at a big club. We also really wanted to keep the feeling of a house party, which is how I ended up in Boyle Heights in the first place.”
Don’t Call Them Hooligans: Meet Ultras, L.A.’s Major League Soccer Superfans
L.A. is currently the only city in the country hosting two MLS teams — the L.A. Galaxy and Chivas USA, who share the Home Depot Center stadium in Carson and play each other this Saturday. The former was established in 1995 and is one of the league’s first teams, while the latter was founded in 2004 and is the sister team to Mexico’s Club Deportivo Guadalajara, aka Chivas de Guadalajara.
Each team recognizes three groups per team as official supporters: the Galaxians, Angel City Brigade and the L.A. Riot Squad on the Galaxy side; and Legion 1908, Union Ultras and Black Army 1850 for Chivas USA.
Sick Jacken and Cynic Talk Terror Tapes Vol. 2
Jacken, your brother Big Duke’s still playing a huge part in Psycho Realm despite being paralyzed from the neck down.
J: He does a lot of stuff behind the scenes. He helps out with the merchandising and still helps out with the concepts. He actually got into production now. He produced a track called “Metal Rain” on Stray Bullets. He’s working on two or three records that he’s producing entirely.
When you’re paralyzed, that’s a condition that’s rare for anybody to come back from. For now, he’s using technology to get around it. That guy’s Superman. I’m glad that technology is where it’s at and it helps him let out his creativity. He’s working on beats, running websites, and designing merchandise. I tell him he does more work now than he used to do when he was walking.
Q&A: Chicha Libre’s Olivier Conan, A Musical Cannibal
You were quoted in another interview two years ago as saying that chicha music leads to “late-night drunken violence and suicide attempts.”
I don’t think I said that! [laughs] Say that again [quote is re-read]. Oh, OK, they probably paraphrased something I said but it’s kind of true. A chicha concert in Lima is not necessarily a happy thing. The ritual is that you bring a case of beer [and] put it on the floor. It’s kind of a family thing at the beginning. You’ve got the kids, you’ve got the wife, and you’re all around the crate of beer…and you drink and you drink and you drink! There’s a lot of drinking going on. By the end of the night, it gets a little bit of hardcore. Sometimes there are fights like on Saturday nights in tougher neighborhoods all around the world; people work all week and they’re a little harder edged. Chicha is ghetto music originally. The cliché in Peru is that the really hardcore chichador slits his wrist at the end of the night. I don’t know how often that happens. It’s one of those mythic things.
Q&A: Outernational, Ready for the Revolution
How does that tie in with the album, Todos Somos Ilegales? Why or how are we all illegal?
That’s the heart of the album. It’s a concept record about the border, but that’s just the focal point of these contradictions. The border signifies so much. It signifies the economic situation where businesses can move freely across the border and suck the blood and life out of people, but people can’t. People gotta be policed and hunted down and shot down by KKK-style vigilantes and it focuses on so much of that. Undocumented people in this country are kept in the shadows and kept in fear. They’re invisible. The idea about We Are All Illegals is solidarity. If you’re gonna call them illegal then you better call me illegal too, motherfucker!We’re all illegal. The foundation of this country is genocide, slavery and stolen land.
Mark Ocegueda Q&A ~ Mexicans Played Baseball Too
One of the great stories in this book is of a team from Riverside from the Casa Blanca barrio. This team was comprised of various World War II veterans. All of them may not have been World War II veterans but there were definitely some that [were] and when they would play teams that were mostly Anglo, they would wear their military belts on the field to display to their opponents that they were deserving of equal rights, that they were deserving of full civic membership. They would show these belts while they were playing to show that we served in the military and we gave our blood overseas so we deserve full citizenship back home. These discriminatory polices and segregation that we live through on a daily basis is something that should not be tolerated. Baseball provided this venue for a lot of Mexicans, Mexican-Americans in particular, to display political messages and social messages.
My friend Edyn has been working on his solo project, The Blvds., for some time and will soon be taking it on the road now that he’s added Steve and Jesse as full-time members. I joined them for their rehearsal last weekend. Below are a few of my favorite photos from the session. The rest can be found on my flickr.
Vetusta Morla is a Rock group from Madrid, Spain who like their Andalusian peers before them made their debut in Los Angeles following SXSW. Pucho, David “El Indio,” Álvaro Baglietto, Jorge González, Guillermo Galván, and Juan Manuel Latorre played at The Troubadour last Tuesday to a loving crowd filled with many Spanish ex-patriots.
The sextet visited a few cities in the U.S. and played a show in Tijuana before ending their North American tour in L.A. Morla played mostly songs off their latest album, Mapas, a collection of songs that sound like a mix of Wilco and Coldplay. After the show, I interviewed guitarist Latorre about the group’s origins and independent work ethic. Below is an excerpt from the interview, which can be read in full at Remezcla:
What about your latest album, Mapas? Was that also released independently? Did you ever consider reaching out to a larger label?
Mapas as well. Everything! Being independent gives us a type of freedom that compensates us because running a label is a lot of work and it can take time away from being a musician. There are times at the end of a week when you ask yourself, ‘what happened? I’ve spent all my time in meetings and filling out paperwork and I’ve neglected my guitar.’ It’s worth the trouble because, at the end of the day, you have lots of freedom to do things the way you want to. No one can tell you to do things a certain way, to release this song as a single, to make a video, you’re the one who decides all that. More importantly, you can personally hire the staff. You can’t run the label by yourself. You need people to help you in specific areas and the beauty about running your own label is that you hire those people yourself. If you sign with a major label, they’ll assign whoever they have. You may get lucky and work with someone you really enjoy working with, or you could be unlucky and the whole thing ends up as a disaster.
Check out more photos of the concert on my Flickr account.
As I mentioned last week, Spanish folk/pop artist Bigott made his L.A. debut last week following his trip to SXSW. I was able to meet with him and his impressive facial hair (hence the name Bigott after “bigote” [mustache]) afterwards for a brief interview. He didn’t divulge much (something he’s famous for) but there were plenty of laughs to be had.
Did you swing by L.A. because you were in SXSW a few days ago?
That’s it. We were close by and thought we’d swing by Los Angeles or Charlie or St. Raphael or whatever.
When did you arrive? Saturday?
Yes, Saturday. Well, I’m a little confused as to exactly when but I think it was Saturday.
And what have you done so far here in L.A.? Did you go to the beach?
Yeah, we rented some bikes here in the Venice of L.A.! Venice is the name of the beach. We were all over the place. Continue reading “Bigott’s a Funny, Elusive Guy With a Huge Mustache”
It was a great week for new music in L.A. as Bigott and Ritmo Machine performed at Eastside Luv in Boyle Heights for some post-SXSW action.
Spanish Folk/Pop artist Bigott made his Los Angeles debut on the 20th with some help from the fine folks at Sol Art Radio and Ku De Ta.
Bigott is the project of singer/songwriter Burjo Laudo, a native of Zaragoza, Spain, who has five albums under his belt in almost as many years. He sings in English with a voice that, amazingly enough, fluctuates somewhere between that of Donovan, Colin Meloy, and Tom Waits.
Bigott was a live wire on stage who swung on bars and hooks reserved for the burlesque dancers who are there on the weekend. He and his band played a long set that covered possibly every track they’ve ever recorded and included an encore of his current hit single, “Cannibal Dinner.”
Check out the full set of photos on my flickr.
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The following night featured the L.A. debut of Ritmo Machine at Eastside’s most popular night, Subsuelo, the monthly global bass party presented by Gnawledge. The duo features Eric Bobo, of Cypress Hill and son of Afro-Cuban jazz percussionist Willie Bobo, alongside Chilean dj Latin Bitman who released their debut album, Welcome to the Ritmo Machine, last year on Nacional Records.
Machine played their hits, some stuff I didn’t recognize, and Bobo rocked out with a few percussion solos. A few songs in and Bobo introduced a very special, surprise guest: producer/musician Money Mark!
He played guitar on a number of tracks including “Follow Me,” which he also performs on the album. Later on in the night, Bobo introduced their second guest: Sick Jacken of Psycho Realm. He rapped on a few tracks including “La Calle” and “Sabe.”
Check out the full set of photos on my flickr.
The South By Southwest (SXSW) festival is days away and downtown Austin, TX will become the center of music, art, and film hysteria for more than a week. There will be hundreds of bands to watch, movies to see, types of food to eat and more.
Navigating through the many bars and venues in downtown Austin can be mind-blowing.. Here then, in no particular order, is a list of my recommendations of showcases and venues to check out at SXSW.
Under The Radar magazine showcase:
This showcase will be hosted at the Flamingo Cantina on 6th St. There’ll be lots of other great shows here including NACO’s Official SXSW 2012 showcase and Flamingo’s Latin showcase.
Afroxander (aka Iván Fernández) 