Tag: LA Weekly

Buyenpongo Go Beyond Cumbia To Forge Their Own Sound, “Buyangú”

Buyepongo photo by Edgar Robles
Buyepongo photo by Edgar Robles

There once was a running joke among folks in L.A.’s Latino music scene that went something like this: “Wherever you are, Buyepongo’s there, too, jamming out.”

For years, the group performed anywhere and everywhere it could at any and all hours of the day. You could find them playing Mariachi Plaza during the day, then catch them later the same evening at the Mayan opening up for Ondatrópica. That ubiquity was necessary in developing the group’s core sound and style: a fusion of Latino, African and American sounds, grooves and rhythms, which has finally been compiled in the group’s long-awaited full-length debut album, Todo Mundo.

Read the rest of the article at LA Weekly.

Ondatrópica : Colombian Supergroup Spans Generations Of Cumbia

Ondatrópica is a supergroup from Colombia that represents the face of cumbia, the traditional music of Colombia, today. The group is led by Mario Galeano of Frente Cumbiero and Will “Quantic” Holland who gathered more than 40 musicians, veterans and fresh-faces alike, in Disco Fuentes‘ recording studios for a weeks-long recording session that resulted in an amazing self-titled debut that covers the spectrum of cumbia (traditional, modern, international, etc.) from its golden age to the present day.

I had the privilege of interviewing Galeano and Quantic by e-mail for Remezcla and the absolute pleasure of watching Ondatrópica live at The Mayan Theater in L.A. with opening acts Very Be Careful, Buyepongo and Chicano Batman.

An excerpt from Q&A: Ondatrópica, Conquering the World with Cumbia:

Who came up with the idea of covering Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man?”

Q: Covering “Iron Man” was something that came out of thinking about doing versions of English songs. Naturally, we started thinking about Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath. Out of Black Sabbath, we thought it’d be really cool to do a metal song, like a heavy rock song, especially because Colombia is so into Sabbath. There was “Paranoid” and a few other options, but “Iron Man” just seemed like the most useable for a banda. We always imagined a brass band playing that, and I think it came out to be more elegant than we imagined. We thought it was going to be quite drunk and the rum/ron wordplay just came out of being in the studio. I remember we had a bottle of rum at the time and it was just like a quick moment: “Hang on. I. Ron. Man.”

M: Yeah, it was just something very fresh that came out in the studio, as a lot of other things. We were not following a script or something that was prepared 100%. We were laughing, making jokes, playing around, and chilling out. These types of things happen in creative environments, like here in Discos Fuentes studio. I’m pretty sure “I. Ron. Man.” is one song Ozzy Osbourne didn’t imagine having it covered this way. We definitely have to show it to him, and have him drink some Colombian rum.

A few photos from their concert at The Mayan that I took for LA Weekly:

Keeping Up With The Frodashian

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.

Highlights of the Week: Big Sir, JotDog, Gustavo Galindo

Three of my stories went up this week:

Big Sir Had Serious Health Scares. So They Made an Album About Life and Death.

Right around the time they were finishing their last album Und Die Scheiße Ändert Sich Immer, they both fell ill and were diagnosed with serious diseases. Alderete discovered he had polycythemia vera, a rare bone marrow disease where the body produces too many blood cells, while Papineau was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. “The bottom fell out,” says Papineau. “In the midst of this juncture, Juan dreamed a song, woke up, recorded it and emailed it to me in Paris. He said, ‘I know it may be corny to say this, but from now on everything we do really has to make a difference … even if only to us … there’s no point any more to do less.'”

Q&A: Jotdog, From Rock en Español to Sci Fi Über Pop

With Jotdog, we’re doing this for the right reasons. The right reasons to be in a group, for us, aren’t money or fame. The right reasons to be in a group, mainly, are to have a good time. Every time you write a song, you need to enjoy yourself. Every time you go on tour, you need to enjoy yourself. When you write a song with the mentality of writing a hit to make millions, you’ve lost the purpose of songwriting.

Gustavo Galindo Says Fuck You to the Latin Grammys

“Once the Latin Grammys happened,” he continues, “I thought ‘well, that’s it for this record cycle. Let’s go focus on Mexico and launch the album down there.'” He cut those plans short in December when, while sitting in traffic, he received a ton of tweets congratulating him. He had no idea what for; when he found out he was nominated alongside huge acts like Mana and Calle 13, he thought there must have been a mistake.

Los Abandoned: A Chronicle of a Reunion/Resurrection

Los Abandoned was a latin alternative rock group from L.A. that quit before it had a real chance to thrive. Their debut album Mixtape showed lots of promise from the talented quartet but, unfortunately, a number of issues led to their abrupt and sudden dissolution in October 2007.

Thankfully, Ricky Garay and Mucho Music convinced Los Abandoned to reunite for a special, one-time-only Day Of The Dead resurrection concert. I spent a good portion of the past two weeks covering the band for LA Weekly and Remezcla. Stories and photos are linked below:

Los Abandoned To Perform For The Last Time, Again:

The group had ruminated on a reunion since last year, when conflicting schedules forced them to turn down a benefit performance in Chile. They kept the dialogue open until earlier this year when Mucho Events promoter Ricky Garay brought everyone around to his idea for a Day of the Dead reunion.

Garay’d had the idea since promoting a few shows for Diaz’ solo project. “I would always casually mention it,” said Garay, “but I would never bug them about it because I knew it was a personal thing. It was something that I was trying to wrap up before we left La Cita.”

Q&A: Los Abandoned, One Night Resurrection Only:

We were very honored by [Gustavo Arellano] putting us such on a high pedestal. We worked for so many years and we went through so much just to get the little that we had in the economic sense, but it all paid off when we’d get great write-ups and people telling us that they were influenced by us, or that we helped them get through a breakup, or helped them feel better about themselves. We had a big queer following and there were a lot of kids that came out of the closet and thanked us because our music helped them do that. It was those things that made it all worthwhile when we were all living on sleeping bags on the floor.

Los Abandoned – The Echoplex – 10-28-11:

Los Abandoned took a 20 minute intermission after the second encore, and returned to the stage covered in zombie make-up and fake blood. Verde kicked off their final set — a bunch of covers — with the opening lick to Oingo Boingo’s “Dead Man’s Party.”

They finished with Simple Minds’ “Don’t You Forget About Me.” All of it had me secretly hoping that more bands would break up, so that they could later reunite for a proper send-off.

Photos// Los Abandoned @ The Echoplex, LA: One Night Only Resurrection:

From Post-Punk to Latin Romance: How Diego Garcia Got His Groove (and Girl) Back

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KCRW launched its first installment of its Summer Nights series in Pasadena with a
concert by artist Diego Garcia this past Saturday. KCRW DJ Anne Litt introduced Garcia
and his well-dressed backup band of musician friends to an adoring crowd that packed
the European-style courtyard of the One Colorado shopping area.

The show, Garcia’s last in his week-long tour of California, covered every track off his
freshly-released solo debut album, Laura, as well as a cover of The Kinks “This Strange
Effect” for good measure. Amidst the setting sun and gentle breeze, Garcia poured his
heart out as he shared the pain of lost love, the comfort and release provided by time and maturity and the triumph of love regained.

Head over to LA WEEKLY for my full interview with Garcia and concert review.

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More photos HERE!

Nortec Collective’s Bostich + Fussible at CSULA’s Luckman Arts Complex

I was at CSULA this past weekend and caught a performance by Bostich + Fussible. Click the photo below for the slideshow.

From Tijuana con amor. Photo by Ivan Fernandez for LA Weekly

The duo also released a new video the day after:

As Fussible (Pepe Mogt) explains in the video’s description, the video was filmed as a joke. They had their masks and camera in the trunk of their car and shot the video in no more than 15 minutes with less than an hour spent editing it.

Barack Obama is Definitely Not a Socialist, Says Joseph Kishore, National Secretary of the Socialist Equality Party

​Socialism returned to the United States in an odd way three years ago when pundits took to the airwaves to scream about gulags and breadlines, but the talking heads never actually explained what Socialism as a political ideology stood for. What better way to find out than to ask a real socialist, which is what we did this weekend when the Socialist Equality Party met at King Hall on the CSULA campus to discuss “The Fight for Socialism Today.”

Joseph Kishore (right), Socialist Equality Party National Secretary

We spoke with SEP National Secretary Joseph Kishore about his organization, the USA’s favorite taboo word and what an actual socialist wants for the country. (Hint: It’s a little different than what Barack Obama wants.)

Read the full interview at LA Weekly.

*This is my first story of LA Weekly’s “The Informer” news blog.

Latin Alternative Music Club Mucho Wednesdays at La Cita to Close, Promoter to Launch Monthly Concert Series at The Echoplex

Latin alternative music fans were dealt a heavy blow days ago when club promoter Ricky Garay announced the end of his much-loved club night Mucho Wednesdays at La Cita. The weekly, bilingual dance party was the only place in town where people could dance to equal doses of Depeche Mode and Plastilina Mosh. This is the second party to announce it’s departure from the downtown club in recent weeks. As Nightranger Lina Lecaro reported,Mustache Mondays just moved to The Belasco.

The news proved to be bittersweet as, days later, Garay announced Mucho’s move to the Echoplex this July June where he will host a monthly concert series featuring Latin alternative acts. “We have something extra special scheduled for July,” said Garay of his upcoming partnership with the Echoplex. “It’s going to be a celebration of us doing Latin alternative events in Los Angeles as an independent group of people.”

Read more at LA Weekly.