patrick joel jimi edwin and j.p. ..................................................................FOR BOOKING CONTACT: Andrew Ellis, mrhappy@macconnect.com.
About diosdiosdiosdiosdiosdiosdiosdiosdiosdiosdiosdios
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Where we’re from has a lot to do with our approach to our music, and with who we are. We’re all from the South Bay in Los Angeles. That’s our bond.
We understand that being from L.A. has its stigmas..... Well, fuck you. I, personally, am an L.A. aficionado, and I resent the fact that true Angelinos have to put up with fucked up labels and misconceptions because people who move here from other shitholes to act, start shitty bands, and/or get in “the business” junky up the place. L.A. is more than just rats’ nests like Hollywood, Silverlake, and the Westside. It has a tremendous amount of culture and history that is simultaneously ignored, exploited, and trashed by these fuckheads. Luckily, we’re from a different part of L.A - an L.A. that is usually disregarded for its artistic contributions to the city. The South Bay isn’t the suburbs you see in movies or T.V. It’s beachfront ghettos, airports, refineries, ports, you name it. It’s a pretty diverse part of town - Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Polynesians - all in the same schools and working the same jobs at the mall. We’re friends with surfers, skaters, gangsters, musicians, artists and 9 to 5ers we grew up with. A couple of us grew up near the fabulous forum in Inglewood, home of the Showtime Lakers, minutes from the Beach Boys’ childhood home in Hawthorne. A couple of us grew up near some of the prettiest tide pools and cliffs in Southern California, minutes away from where Black Flag practiced and played their first shows. And a couple of us grew up in and around Long Beach, from Cerritos to San Pedro occasionally seeing Mike Watt driving down the street to buy lottery tickets.
There’s definitely a little musical history here, and we’re proud of that. Because of the musical history, and I guess, to some extent, the isolation from the better known artistic areas of L.A., we had a lot and a little to learn from. What the hell else is there to do if you don’t want a 9 to 5 and you suck at school, when you don’t like shitty Westside and Hollywood hotspots and the even shittier music scene going on in the Eastside? You stay home, get drunk in the backyard with your friends, listen to music and form bands. Which is exactly what we did. We sucked at it like everyone else, but we kept at it and here we are.
Our influences range from Chavela Vargas to Os Mutantes to Karp. I grew up listening to Run-DMC and LL Cool Jay on K-DAY, early-90’s Ice Cube and “The Chronic”. Other members of the band grew up listening to South Bay punk like Black Flag and The Minutemen to stuff across the pond like Northern Soul, The Small Faces, and Wire. I’m sure it all comes through one way or another in what we do now.
As for the “sun-kissed-California-easy-breezy-beach-pop” label we were plastered with in the past, we feel it's always been tremendously shortsighted, cliched and misrepresenting. We're probably at fault for giving lazy journalists those Beach Boys, and every cliche relating to California, taglines because we constantly gave The Beach Boys and Hawthorne huge shoutouts. But they never really got it. (which is my excuse for not doing interviews anymore) Our connection to the Beach Boys is very simple. We respect the Beach Boys for Brian Wilson’s experimental compositions. It’s about “Heroes and Villains”, not “Fun, Fun, Fun”. Hawthorne isn’t Surf City. Pat isn’t playing the bongos at a fire pit. Our existence has absolutely no resemblence to an episode of The OC. (gotta pay rent) If our sound is reduced to a catchphrase, or some California postcard-like description, the range of mood and innovation in our albums is lost. We’re just trying to write good songs and we’re trying to dress them up or down, creatively and interestingly. Keep ourselves satisfied first. Fuck anybody else. So far it seems to be working.
In the past few years we’ve played with many great bands and played some really big shows that we never expected to play. We’ve had the opportunity to travel around the country, go to the UK and Mexico City on someone else’s dime, and we greatly appreciate that. Now we just want to record the rest of our backlog and write bigger and better things. We want to learn to play them live, be as good we can be and hopefully not self-destruct in the process. We are still trying to get our act together, we’re still evolving, trying to figure out who we are and what we’re doing. Hopefully we’ll never figure it out, because we’ll always be doing something a little different. Never forgetting that a good song is first and experimentation is a must.
We aren’t into fads. We don’t give a shit about what’s going on in Silverlake or Williamsburg, and we generally despise hipsters, posers, and the like. We like things that are genuine, soulful, and dirty. It isn’t always beneficial for a band to defy categorization, which is why we are generally disregarded in L.A., and at war with douche-bag promoters that don’t know shit anyways. Despite all that, somehow, someway, there are kind folks out there that support us and come up to us at shows, or on our website, and really make us feel good about our efforts. And that's what keeps us going. We’ve definitely had a few good years and things are looking up. Not bad for a shitty little band from the South Bay. Love Joel Morales.
p.s. i remember when i wrote parts of this draft a few years ago and our Label Boss was worried that it sounded too negative. what a douche.
p.p.s. we are looking for a new label.
p.p.p.s. fuck it, i think we'll just start our own.
*********************8either most of our "friends" are fake or most of you are retarded, for better or worse were stuck with each other, lets make the most of it and build a rainbow made out of all the ugly colors while french children run up and down the sandy beach cursing at god for making everything backwards
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diosdiosdiosdiosdiosdiosdiosdiosdiosdiosdiosdios has 7873 friends.
I really like you guys! I agree with what you say about Los Angeles. I've become quite fatigued with the whole pretentious image thing that seems to have become more important than the music itself these days. I thank you for being real people...not some polished turds pretending to be artists. You guys are rad.
i just read joel's message to the people for the first time,..(i don't know when it went up). I like the south bay angst. I got a hit off of it!! I will be out of town for the troub, but i trust you will kill, as well on the whole tour. I like the impressive festival crowd wallpaper, but it makes all the info really hard to read,.....especially at 3:54am.
Dios! love& miss u guys SO much! cant wait to see in next month =)"You'll get yours" is really hitting the spot right now>=) Thank you for creating something different. MUAH! jm
I got the raiders dios shirt in denver but can't wear it here in modesto cause I get harrased too much by the 9ner/christian folk. Some mexican dude offered me $20 bucks for it one time though...that was cool.
