Tireless rock en español promoter and De Sangre manager Raul Rodriguez tells the same genesis story today. "It was a meeting of the masterminds of Spanish rock and roll here in Houston," he says, and adds enthusiastically that "it's gonna happen again next year."
We're sitting late on a Wednesday night in the darkened Earthwire studios, and Rodriguez -- who also goes by the handle DJ Woo -- has just finished another installment of his weekly rock en español /metal/rap-rock/hardcore Webcast Alternative Scream 2. His co-host, De Sangre keyboardist Rezor-TZ, sits nearby and occasionally chimes in, as does Rodriguez's sidekick, a lean, gringo biker originally from Los Angeles appropriately known as the Thin Man. In the background, DJ Murray Fontana spins his Private Universe show, an avant-garde montage of noise and an addled John Lennon conversing with himself.
Rodriguez believes that the galvanization that occurred ten years ago will repeat itself with a new generation. The scene is a bit dull now, especially when compared to the mid- to late-'90s heyday when bands like Tribu de Ixchel, Moscas and De Sangre were drawing a thousand or two heads a night to the International Ballroom and the Lone Star Amphitheater. According to Rodriguez, the one-two punch of Pace Concerts poorly promoting shows at the Lone Star Amphitheater and Galavision pulling the plug on live remotes from Houston rock en español clubs is to blame for the current funk of the scene.
Nevertheless, he remains optimistic, some would say wildly so. "The rock en español scene in Houston is gonna be what Seattle was to rock and roll," Rodriguez says. It's an analogy he returns to often. "Most of the people are not gonna get Houston's best-kept secret right away," he says. "Most people in Seattle had never heard of Kurt Cobain until Nirvana went national. Most white people in Corpus Christi had no clue who Selena was. This woman is selling millions of records, and nobody knew who she was until she got killed. When that happened, then the white people were like, 'Oh, she was from Corpus Christi?' Excuse me, she sold two million records. Uh, yeah, she's from Corpus."
But why will it be the rock en español of Houston? Why not the other metropolis on the other coast of Aztlan? "I love L.A. to death, but the reason Houston is gonna win over L.A. is the fact that Houston bands unite, and the L.A. bands fight."
Rodriguez speaks fondly of Sugar Hill Studios president Dan Workman, who engineered many of the city's seminal rock en español sessions back in the mid-'90s. So Racket called Workman to get his assessment of the scene then and now. "It's always been so fascinating to me, because it lives on this edge of being a cultural phenomenon, but at the same time, it's regionally something we can all relate to," he says. "I grew up listening to Spanish and predominantly Mexican music in Houston just by osmosis. You can't live in Houston and not absorb a lot of that. I've always liked Latin jazz, and I thought Santana was just amazing as a kid, and I got into Latin-based rock and roll. So I brought that influence to the table and I became the token gringo."
Workman says interest in the scene has waned, though the quality hasn't. "I was very involved about six or seven years ago, but the scene never reached critical mass at that time. In the last three years, I've only been involved in one rock en español record, and that was Tribu de Ixchel. And that was just a superior record." Though Workman isn't given to fits of hyperbole, even concerning projects he worked on, he once compared Tribu de Ixchel to U2. "Unfortunately, the band couldn't get the appropriate attention for it, and so it hasn't really done anything."
According to Workman, the local rock en español scene is plagued by some of the same problems as the Anglo scene: too many miles between clubs and too many subgenres of the music. "The clubs have been few and far between, and the audiences have been diverse enough to where there was no one place and one time where everyone was gonna be," he says.
Since that Caifanes show, the movement has splintered into numerous offshoots. "There's an urban, a progressive, a metal," says Rodriguez. "Every picture you could paint. Every aspect of rock en español is covered by different bands and different fans. If El Tri comes to town, you have the urban community. If Angeles del Infierno come to town, you have the metal community. If Caifanes comes to town, you have the pop-rock community. But Caifanes is not gonna come to town because they don't exist."
And if Jaguares, the Mexico City band formed from the remnants of Caifanes, comes to town, Rodriguez won't be there. "Their manager is full of shit," he says. "She took away my camera; it took me four hours to retrieve it. I hate her guts." His animosity toward the Jaguares manager stems from the fact that she didn't let him record the band's set. Rodriguez believes that all rock en español bands should allow recording at their shows, à la the Grateful Dead and the jam band scene. Cactus Music and Video general manager Quinn Bishop disagrees vehemently. To him, CD burners and bootlegs have destroyed the genre's 1990s momentum. He would say that, of course -- it's the nature of his business. But he has a point. It was reported in these pages a few weeks ago that of the estimated 100 million El Tri albums out there, only a million were not bootlegs.
To Rodriguez, musicians should be thankful that they have fans, whether or not they pay for their music. He says he lost all respect for Metallica's Lars Ulrich after he heard him speaking out against Napster. In fact, he says that he'll attempt to beat up the drummer if ever they meet.
Until that day comes, Rodriguez is in early preproduction of a local feature film he wrote called Tejano Killers, which will star Elton of the rocanrol band Libby's Dream, Diva Karina of hip-hop/reggae/ Latin act Counter-Intelligence and DJ Captain Krunk in the lead role. "It's similar to the movie Blade," he says. "It's about a vampire who decides he hates vampires. The only difference is it's also about a struggling musician who's dealing with the fact that he's a vampire who also has to play rock and roll."
"Don't you hate it when that happens?" asks the Thin Man.
The sound track is also in the works. "Oh my God, the Lord has blessed me to put all these idiot bands" -- locals Chango Jackson, De Sangre, Libby's Dream, Tribu de Ixchel and Dallas's Vida -- "on the sound track. And not only that, but some of the top producers in Houston" -- Jesus Avila and others -- "are volunteering their time for this stupid project. They're idiots! You think I'm dumb? Come on!" he jokes. "All bullshit aside, there's an unbelievable range of people helping me help them with this thing, which is the difference between Houston and New York and L.A. and Miami. I've been to all those cities, and none of them help each other out the way we do."
Scuttlebutt Caboose
A few weeks back at Shepherd Plaza, one of you derelict scenesters out there decided that the Racketmobile's rolled-down rear window was a much better place to puke your guts out than the huge, open parking lot that surrounded it. Thanks. Now, when you get to the "making amends" stage of your imminent date with AA, you know where to find me. Just last week, Racket's ill automotive fortune caught freelance writer Greg Ellis in its web. Ellis accompanied Racket to Earthwire studios and absolutely demolished the underbelly of his freshly bought '80s Mercedes by driving over a concealed concrete abutment. Steam erupted from under the hood in a sickening whoosh, and a puddle of black oil trickled all over the concrete -- it looked like the final demise of the flivver on The Beverly Hillbillies. It gets worse. Ellis strolled away from his smoldering wreck of a car and called his folks on his cell phone to ask for a loan, and some wacky kids passing by in a car on Waugh decided that it was the perfect time to pelt Ellis with an egg. "They made me say 'fuck' in front of my mama twice," Ellis says.