This was in the L.A. Times on September 8th. Another severely underrated Los Angeles band is gone, at least for now… I was fortunate to catch their last show at Macarthur Park before they left. It was a good little fix until their eventual return. If you haven’t bought a copy of their last album, “Die Cowboy Die”, you are missing out on a East L.A. classic and one of the best albums that came out in 2006.

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Quetzal breaks for a busy sabbatical


Quetzal, the ground-breaking Chicano fusion band from East L.A., is on sabbatical. Bandleader Quetzal Flores and his wife, lead singer Martha González, left last week for a nine-month sojourn in Veracruz to study the work of women in son jarocho, the fabulous, Afro-folkloric music that has long inspired them. This is primarily Martha's mission. She received a Fulbright fellowship for the trip, which could yield a CD of original works by the women of the fandango scene. Afterward, she and Quetzal, with their toddler Sandino, are headed to Seattle where she plans to enroll in the doctoral program for women's studies at the University of Washington.

 Quetzal will be busy too. He plans to form an acoustic quartet with fellow guitarist Ramon Gutierrez-Hernandez of Son de Madera, one of Mexico's best new son jarocho groups. And he continues to produce for other bands, including the recently released CD by San Diego's B-Side Players and the upcoming album by L.A.'s Monte Carlo 76, with new vocalist Marisa Ronstadt.

 "Sometimes when organizers or artists are in the trenches, you need a moment to reflect and reassess," said Quetzal, taking a break from packing at his Highland Park home. "But we're going to come back even harder."

Gil Cerezo, lead singer from the band Kinky was the guest DJ at Nativo last Wednesday. After another great set from Mexican Dubweiser, Gil went on in front of a somewhat pensive crowd of Kinky fans and just tore it up. It was a straight-up Hollywood style party set, complete with mash-ups, classic party rock songs, Latin pop and techno-house blended with such ease. Soon people lost their inhibitions and filled dance floor. I’m not a fan of 80’s music at all, but when Gil mixed the 80's Latin pop group Flans into Quiet Riot, he had me both shaking my head in disgust yet still dancing. That’s a sign of great DJ. Someone who can get you up to dance to music you don't really like. Gil (pronounced Hill) had fun and plans do another set in the future at Nativo, so stay tuned! Nativo happens every Wednesday @ Zanzibar in Santa Monica, with resident DJ's Sloe Poke, Mando Fever, Mexican Dubweiser and yours truly, Gomez Come Alive!

Every Argentino I’ve ever met has always goes on and on how their country has the best everything. The best beef, the best looking women, the best soccer team and the best music ever created, blah, blah, blah. All I can say about Argentineans is that they talk too much and sound funny when they do! Kidding aside, (It's a rite of passage for the rest of Latin America to make fun of Argentina) Argentina has provided some great music for the rest of the world. One of my favorites is someone who I’ve heard about for years but haven’t discovered until a few years ago.

Luis Alberto Spinetta is a legend in his native Argentina and well respected by rockeros all over Latin America. He is hard to describe. A lazy comparison would be somewhere between Paul McCartney (Wings Era), Frank Zappa (as a musician, not as a satirist) and Andy Partridge from XTC. His lyrics are poetic and one can tell he is someone who is well read. You might not know what he is singing about unless you have read as much as Spinetta has. His career started in the late 60’s with a band called Almendra, who along with Los Gatos and Manal, were the pioneers of the Argentine rock movement. Almendra had a garage-psychedelic sound with some 60’s pop influences. They release three albums before they disbanded. Spinetta then started another group called Pescado Rabioso (Rabid Fish), which had a heavier sound, and lyrics that were influenced by writers such as Artaud, Arthur Rimbaud, Carlos Castaneda and Carl Jung. With his next group, Invisible. (Pronounced en-ve-see-blay) Spinetta developed a progressive rock style yet he wrote some of his best ballads, full of space and sparse notes.


After three albums with Invisible, Spinetta went solo. He dabbled in Jazz Fusion (Spinetta Jade) and made one album in English called, “Only Love Can Sustain” which flopped because it didn’t appeal to the Anglo market nor did it appeal to his fans, who saw it as a sell-out. After that, he continued to make music in Argentina and continued to be an artist to be reckoned with. His son, Dante Spinetta, was in a very popular band in the 90’s called Illya Kuryaki & Los Valderamos, who were legends in their own right.

Amoeba Records sponsored the Concerts On The Pier in Santa Monica that happened every Thursday during the months of July & August. Included in the series were Patti Smith, Plena Libre, Arrested Development and Junior Murvin, just to name a few. The series ended last Thursday with East L.A. heroes, Los Lobos. Many of us that work at Amoeba volunteered to work at The Amoeba Booth that was to the left of the stage. We sold CD’s and T-Shirts and gave away discount coupons and various Amoeba swag.  It was great way to get away from the heat of Hollywood and work outdoors in the cool ocean breeze. Plus, there was the music. Los Lobos is one of my favorite bands, dating back to 1983 when I first heard …And A Time To Dance”. That night Los Lobos played many of my favorites, including; La Pistola Y La Corazon, Saint Behind The Glass, Mas Y Mas, Cumbia De La Raza, Don’t Worry Baby and a volley of cover tunes such as Cinnamon Girl, Let’s Go, Volver, Volver and of course, La Bamba.

The influence Los Lobos had on me when I was a kid was phenomenal. Back then to hear a band play Mexican music and rock on the same album was foreign to me. The Latin Rock artists at the time sounded more like bands from England then from their own country and it was understandable. When Rock music was still rebellious in America, it was even more so everywhere else. Most bands that sounded like their Anglo counter parts did it because they are tired of their parent’s culture forced on them. Why would they want to play Mariachi, Corridos or Baladas? That was their parent’s music. In the eighties, to sound like The Police was rebellious and for the young Latin Rock bands it was their own culture. With Los Lobos, both rock music and Mexican music was their culture. It was the first time I realized you could like both and not feel embarrassed by the other.
 
Side note: Los Lobos went to #1 on the Billboard charts with their version of “La Bamba” Can you name two other Chicano artists to score #1 hit singles?

I have never liked the idea of listening parties just because most of the listening parties I’ve been involved with have come off as being insincere marketing ploys by record labels. So, when it was suggested that Nativo, the club that I spin at, was to host the Manu Chao listening party I was optomistic about the turn out. First off, this is Manu Chao’s first album in six years and fans have been waiting for this for a while. Manu Chao’s fans are generally open-minded and like a diverse variety of music. So, I hoped that we didn’t have one of those listening parties where you play the album and everyone sits around and gets some cheap label promotional item.

Myself, Mexican Dubweiser and Mando Fever took turns deejaying that night, playing Cumbia mash-ups, Latin Alternative remixes and some Brazilian House. After the crowd had a few drinks in them the dance floor started to come alive. Around 11:30 we decided to play Manu’s new album, La Radiolina. I watched with a shared excitement,  the Manu fans hearing the CD for the first time. It’s been a while since I have been so into an artist where I was excited about hearing a new album for the first time. The Manu fans were dancing as if they were at one of his concerts.

Nacional Records & Amoeba who were sponsering the listening party, gave us some dope giveaways, including a $50 gift certificate for Amoeba Records that we raffled off during a slight intermission while playing the album. That gift certificate was a big hit! After the album was done playing, I expected most people to leave but people stayed until the end. Mexican Dubweiser played a straight-up Cumbia set and I finished the night with some Baile Funk. I enjoyed playing that stuff at the end of the night because people were so wasted by then that they started to dance pretty crazy.