Reading about East L.A. punk while in high school was inspiration. I had known about Los Lobos and knew about the 60’s Chicano bands like El Chicano and Tierra. However, these punk bands were Chicanos and around my age, playing music that I was into. It made me feel less like a freak to know there were others just like me somewhere in the barrios of East Los Angeles. Hippies wanted to move to San Francisco, rockers to the Sunset Strip and I wanted to move to East L.A.

On Saturday, The Claremont Museum of Art will present Vexing: Female Voices from East LA Punk, which will run from May 18 to August 31, 2008. There will be live performances by Vexing artists Teresa Covarrubias (Lead Singer from The Brat) Angela Vogel, Lysa Flores and Alice Bag. I have been looking forward to this exhibit since I heard about it a few months back. The women that are featured in this exhibit were the pioneers of a thriving women's art movement that is happening now in East L.A.

2008 has been turning out to be the year for Retro-Chicano art. LACMA’s Phantom Sightings: Art After The Chicano Movement is currently showing and starting June 15th, LACMA will also feature Los Angelenos/Chicano Painters of L.A.: Selections from the Cheech Marin Collection.

I found some great articles on East L.A. Punk, Vex era and Beyond. The first one is written by Josh Kun and is the story of the Vex. The second one comes from Jimmy Alvarado, who wrote about the history of all the EAST L.A. punk bands that not many have heard about. In this article originally written for Razorcake Magazine. Jimmy covers the minions of pre and post Vex bands as well as all the backyard party giants that were huge in the East Los backyard scene.

If you have read my blogs in the past, you probably noticed I'm a big fan of Cumbia. So low and behold, bubbling in the city of Norwalk of all places, comes a band that sounds like they came straight from Magdalena, Colombia. They are called Buyepongo. Most of the band is very young, yet they have a sound that rivals Cumbia legends such as Andres Landero, Lisadro Meza and Aniceto Molina.

There are many things I love about this band. They are descendants and citizens from Guatamala, El Salvador, Bolivia and Mexico. Still, it seems these guys have Cumbia running through their veins just by the way they play it. It would be easy to mistake Buyepongo for a Colombian band three times their age.

Another thing is that they are a great live band and they write their own songs. I saw them for the first time in a bar in Pasadena on Monday and I could of sworn they were playing obscure Cumbia covers.

And lastly... at last, there is another local Vallenato group that isn't Very Be Careful! I love the VBC, but it's good to have variety and more than one group in L.A. playing this type of music.

I think I mentioned before that I had the good fortune of meeting Joe Strummer a few times. On those occasions we talked about Cumbia and his love for it. I remember turning him on to Very Be Careful and he went gaga over them, so much so that he had VBC open for him during his last L.A. shows. I wish he was around for Buyepongo, he would have dug these guys.

Buyepongo have nothing released yet but you can go to their myspace page to hear some live tracks.
 

Last week it was Eric's (also known as Majix to some) birthday. You might know him as the guy who works in Amoeba Hollywood's Reggae & Soul sections.  A few of us got together on a Tuesday night at his pad to celebrate the birth of this very righteous gentleman. We had turntables, courtesy of DJ Doleak who works in our Hip-Hop section. Doleak just destroyed it on the turntables for most of the night while Ray Ricky Rivera, Eric and myself jumped in from time to time to give Doleak a breather. Some members of local bands Aztlan Underground and Buyepongo (more on this amazing group later) showed up as well.

Being a gracious host, Eric supplied a great spread & there were plenty of spirits. It was a Tuesday night that felt like a Friday night. Some of us (well..not me) even started a little freestyle session. Can't say anyone was that inspired at four in the morning, but it was fun nonetheless.

Wednesday, however...was a little rough on some of us who had to work the next day.

Check out some photos that I took at the party:

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