Orange County Blog

 
This week, as you're doing your usual perusing through the Weekly's music section, you should come across a story penned by yours truly about the scrappy upstart indie label La Chupacabra Records out of Placentia.Hanging out in front of a Starbucks in their native P-town, I sat down to discuss the finer points of starting a regional label with founders Alex Ahmadi, Tyler Jacobs ( both pictured) and Lucas Drake, resident sound engineer and keyboardist of two La Chupacabra bands: The Living Suns and My Pet Saddle.

Though you'll definitely get a feel for how this label started by a couple 18-year-olds managed to snag some of the most popular bands in Orange County and Long Beach (The Living Suns, My Pet Saddle, The Growlers, Audacity, and Gestapo Khazi), there's defintely more to learn about these guys. Hence, this little scrap of Q&A with the LA Chupacabra crew. Our afternoon conversation tackled everything from a "how to" on producing a regional aesthtic for a label to photocopying gig fliers. Check it out.

OC Weekly: Talk a little bit about what inspired you to start a record label.

 

Alex Ahmadi: Well, we're big fans of 80s underground and stuff as well as what's going on around here now. For me, and I know for Tyler a little bit, it was part of like Sub Pop indies and Touch and Go, and even as far back as Motown, all the regional labels really appealed to me. And we're from here, and we thought it would be cool for someone to do a regional label.

In less than 24 hours, 4th of July celebrations will officially be in full swing. But if you're an RX Bandits fan, you're probably busy thinking about July 8th. Only five days until the band takes the stage in front of their rabid hometown crowd at The House of Blues in Anaheim along side Dredg on the first date of their co headlining U.S. tour. The article about them (penned by yours truly) in this week's paper is still quite fresh, and if you haven't glanced at it yet, I suggest you click off this post and do so HERE.

For the rest of you, there maybe a little curiosity about the parts of my fun-filled conversation with Matt Embree and Steve Choi that didn't make it into the interview. Touching on topics ranging from their work with producer Chris Fudurich on their new album Mandala (out July 21), pictured, to insight to Embree's travels to Central and South America, there is plenty of worth-while bits that couldn't be condensed into 750 words. Though slightly edited for length and short attention spans, I'm sure you will walk away from this a little wiser, at least in regard to the band.
 

Colleague Matt Coker recently tipped me off to a cameo appearance I kinda-sorta make in Deja Vu, the new documentary flick about Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's 2006 Freedom of Speech tour of America, when the foursome hit the road in support of Neil Young's politically pointed Living With War album.

I'm not actually seen in the movie (god forbid), but I'm heard, which is where the kinda-sorta comes in. About 22 minutes into it, as you watch sweeping helicopter shots of downtown Los Angeles and the Hollywood sign, a voice-over reads a few lines from my review of the show (which actually went down in Irvine, not LA), that I penned on a freelance gig for the LA Times (you can watch the excerpt below, shot directly off the TV because I have lousy DVD editing software):

"Freedom isn’t free, the slogan goes, and no kidding—speech alone can set you back $251.50 . . . the famed quartet wasn’t advocating complete freedom of speech, though—just the kind they agreed with."

The narrator puts a strong, snarly emphasis on the word "they", making me totally seem like I hated the show, the tour, the album, and everything about it. Which I didn't. I liked the show, mostly, as evidenced by this paragraph that appeared a couple grafs later (You can read the full review right here):

"It was quite a kick during “Wooden Ships,” for example, to see the normally staid Nash caught up in the foreboding whirl of one of Young’s song-ending feedback orgies, the kind that he perfected with his sometime backing band Crazy Horse—and then Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young together, jamming in a tight circle, guitars screeching, wailing and shredding as if they were in a Sonic Youth tribute band. Young usually puts a lot of work into his shows, and this night was no exception, but his three cohorts haven’t been made to sweat this much on a stage in years—decades, maybe."

But it's that first mean pullquote which gets all the cinematic love and makes me sound like a total hippie-hating dickhead Republican asshole, which, as a proud veteran of 27 Grateful Dead shows, I feign great offense in. Who can I punish for this slander upon my good name, sputter-sputter?!?!?

Neil Young himself, turns out, since he directed the doc under his Bernard Shakey nom de plume. Wow—that's actually pretty cool! I envision Neil (I can call him Neil; he knows me) putting Deja Vu together, wrestling in an editing bay over where exactly to put "the Rich Kane blurb," my name rolling out past his wrinkly lips (just beneath his nose, where the cocaine booger was excised out of in The Last Waltz!). Rock critics tend to have an inflated sense of importance already, since they get to interview their heroes, but not all of them can piss one of their heroes off so much that they respond by taking a critic's words and spinning them out of context. I rule!

This makes me forgive Neil for getting sick back in 1991 during the Ragged Glory tour, which caused postponement of his LA Sports Arena show, which (long story short) was partially responsible for me getting beaten up and robbed at a Fullerton gas station . . .

Anyway, the clip:

I think I have to start liking Kid Rock now.....eeeewwww.....

From BBC News:

"Kid Rock said his record company Atlantic had asked him to 'stand up for illegal downloading' a few years ago because it told him 'people are stealing from us and stealing from you'."

Kid Rock has just played his first UK shows for five years

"And I go: 'Wait a second, you've been stealing from the artists for years. Now you want me to stand up for you?

"'I was telling kids—download it illegally, I don't care. I want you to hear my music so I can play live.'"

"Asked whether he was worried about illegal downloading, he replied: 'I don't agree with it. I think we should level the playing field. I don't mind people stealing my music, that's fine. But I think they should steal everything.

"'You know how much money the oil companies have? If you need some gas, just go fill your tank off and drive off, they're not going to miss it.'"

In random order...

On the first time he ate in Anaheim Hills: "I went to Esperanza Burgers, and I saw a photo of white guys on horses with baseball bats. I started getting freaked out until realizing it was the Esperanza High baseball team and that Yorba Linda and Anaheim Hills has a lot of people who own horses. I had to tell myself, 'Louie don’t get so fucking paranoid about things.'”

About living in Laguna Niguel during the early 1990s: "One time, I was in the front lawn pulling weeds, and a lady pulled up in a BMW. She looked at me and asked, 'Is the lady of the house here?' 'Yea, go right in,' I said. 20 minutes later, she left and almost ran past me because she was so embarrassed."

More Laguna Nigue: "We moved into a tract community. I bought an old car and left it in the driveway. It drove the neighbors crazy. Meanwhile, the Ralph's nearby had a valet. It drove us crazy."

About the Orange County audiences at Los Lobos shows: The reception is a little bit more reserved. It's the only way I can define it--it's not a bad thing. We do the House of Blues in Hollywood, and you get that urban ardiente. Here, it’s more laid back, it’s subdued. They’re more relaxed about things."

Learning about Orange County's geographic zones: "I went from Whittier to South County to North County. I didn’t know nothing about North County. When you live in South County, you can completely disassociate with North County. I didn’t know nothing where anything was when moving to Yorba Linda--I'm still learning.

About discovering SanTana: "When i ended up in Santa Ana one time, I had never been to the mexicanada--it was a trip. Someone from the Orange County Register told me to try El Gallo Giro. I came to the red light on Bristol just before El Gallo Giro, and i just about expected chickens to come crossing the street. It was great. And then if you hang on bristol, you go from Mexico to South Coast Plaza in a couple of miles--it’s just amazing! Later on, I read that that Santa Ana is the largest population of mexicanos in the us. I was aware of Santa Ana because when I was in Laguna Beach, everyone that worked in Laguna Beach--mezeros, cooks, cleaning ladies--Santa Ana.

On meeting Mexicans in Laguna Beach: I lived just before Emerald Bay. Right across was a Circle K. One day, I went in the middle of the day, and there was a group of mexicanas sitting on a planter and eating their lunch. I went up to them and asked '¿Porque estan comiendo su lonche aquí? Why not at the beach?' and I pointed to the ocean. 'Es porqué la playa es por los ricos,' she replied. I looked at her and said, The beach belongs to everybody.' That reaffirmed that there is some divisions between the mexicanos and whites in Orange County."

About living in Orange County: "I always lived in places where I’m not supposed to live. All the neighbors wherever I've lived tend to look and say, 'Hey, who is this guy?' My job is to educate them that Mexicans don’t carry bandannas and switchblades all the time--just some of the time."