Mario G

Continuation:

It all started with a painting scholarship at Luchetti Art School in "El Condado" P.R. at the age of 12. In the school they had a guitar teacher and I really loved his playing and he told me to take music serious and I did. I studied for 3 years in the art school, but the real break came when my family went to New York and left me behind in my mother's friends house, the Bodden family. They hooked me up with brasilian music, mostly bossa nova. I started listening to Joao Gilberto, Jobin, Airto Moreira, Baden Powell, Stan Getz and a whole bunch of brasilian cats. Wow, what a musical trip. I could call those days with Osian, Daura and Colma, the best time of my life. One day after school, I went to play baseball with some friends and they had a radio on playing top 40's. It really changed my life again. For the first time I heard The Beatles, they were playing "Let It Be" and Jimi Hendrix's, "Purple Haze". When I heard Hendrix forget it, he re-arranged my guitar playing. That moment was special, I wanted to play guitar like that at any cost. I fell in love with the stratocaster, Hendrix's guitar. Then came the 1969 World Series and I fell in love with the Mets too. After that I had no choice, Hendrix and the Mets, I needed to travel to NY to be close to both. I wrote to my mother and begged her to take me to NY and she did it, I quit Luchetti and left for the Big Apple.

New York freaked me out, it was the opposite of Islands but I loved it. I enrolled immediately in English classes, piano lessons and Newtown High School. My mother never liked Hendrix, so in my free time, I studied him. I was very controversial from the start, my mother bought me a piano and I wanted a stratocaster. I didn't get it. I got mad and went to work in a restaurant after school until I got my strat and a my Marshall amp. I became sort of a hippie, lol..but I finished High School with an 86 avg. and my mother helped me follow my musical dreams.

High School was over, now what. Well what happened was this. I started a band with Jairo Lopez (drummer), Alfredo (my brother in bass, who later was replaced by Tom Tierney) and our first big gig was for the city, Major Lindsay needed a band and he liked us. The cops used to pick us up in a big bus and everybody though we were getting arrested, lol. We did gigs in the city and in High Schools mostly, it was a great experience and we were playing mostly originals with a heavy metal sound, a mixture between Led Zepellin and Hendrix. I never liked to play top 40's. In the winter of 1975 I went to Dominican Republic with my friend Tom Tierney and played lots of rock concerts sponsored by King Sanchez and got to know a lot of great musicians who became my new friends. Some of those friends today are famous musicians and artists for example: Manuel Tejada, Juan Luis Guerra, Roger Zayas, Alex and Luis Mansilla, to name a few. The band thing was ok but I needed to study more. I started studying solfeo with the director of the National Chorus, Amable Botello. I got gigs in the hotels backing up local singers and after sometime I got bored and came back to NY.

Back in NY, a friend introduced me to Dario Estrella, a nasty piano player from D.R. and he got me into jazz. Bud Powell and Joe Paz freaked me out. Dario's band was mostly a latin jazz band, mostly merenguejazz. The band members included the late Mario Rivera on sax, Angel Fernandez on trumpet, Mario Campo on drums, Enrique Breton on bass, Catarey on tambora, yours truly on guitar and the leader was Dario on the piano. We gig in N.Y. and then did concerts in D.R. I owe a lot to Dario, he really took me under his wings, he showed me the necessary discipline to be an accomplished musician. I felt in love with merengue and started writing popular songs.

To write and arrange merengue music was hard so I learned a lot from my great friend and soul brother, Jacin Perez. Jacin was the bass player of Johnny Ventura for a long time and also recorded in various of his albums. I didn't understand latin dance music at the beguining but doing gigs and backing up singers help me a lot. But I didn't want to play in hotels all my life and I decided is was time to come back to N.Y.

In New York at the age of 24 I got married and had my first kid with a dancer, Dario's wife (Carmen) introduced me to her. Her name was Marcia. Been married was tuff. I had to drive a cab in the day and played music at night. I learned something called responsabilities and priorities. I kept writing songs anyway, studying and gigging. One day I got a call from Jacin and he told me there is a chance to get a record deal from Combo Records(Johnny Venturas's record company), if we had they right songs. I saw an opportunity to start something going and sold my race car (mazda rx4) for 2,000 and bought recording equipment. I recorded a bunch of demos (my original songs and Jacin got me some merengue writers). I could find a singer so I sung the songs myself to see if we get the recording deal. I sounded terrible, we needed a singer badly. But Ralph Cartagena liked the idea and we got the deal. I quit the cab and the gigs and went to D.R. to record. We chose to record in Emca, a famous recording studio in D.R., we also started recruting writers, arrangers and singers. We gave our demos with all our ideas (horns and rythms) to Ramon Orlando (the top merengue arranger in those days) and we also hired Manuel Tejada, Juan Luis Guerra and Joe Nicolas. I started learning the merengue business and how to arrange the songs from the best. When you think you are the best you are going to get in a lot of trouble, I learned from experience. I believe that is important to be honest and to give everybody a chance so one day I told Jacin to check this two writers that showed up in my house when I was blasting my strat. They were Alex Mansilla and Palmer Hernandez. I all ready knew Alex, he was mostly a balladeer, but Palmer had songs that could be turned into merengues and salsa. Palmer almost moved into my house, we were glued to writing and recording, we became great friends. We started doing merengue demos and sending them to Combo, (Chichi Peralta helped us with the percussion). Ralph loved Palmer and told us to sign the songs to the company. All together we only had 9 good songs and Jacin got Manuel Sanchez Acosta (an established writer) to give us a song "Pastora", then we did the demo and gave it to Juan Luis to do the arrangement and the rest is history. We finish our album and titled it Grupo Fantasia. We went back to tour in the US, including touring together with El Gran Combo and doing lots of gigs opening for famous artists including Willie Colon, Johnny Pacheco, Johnny Ventura, and a whole bunch of latin superstars. Palmer became one of D.R. great composers with 6 number one hits including Devorame Otra Vez (sung by Lalo Rodriguez), Aquel Viejo Motel (sung by David Pabon) and Amame (Grupo Fantasia and El Gran Combo). Chichi Peralta, Juan Luis Guerra and Ramon Orlando became international superstars and Manuel Tejada one of the top arrangers/pianists in the world. I'm very lucky to be part of that history. Taking chances in life and giving opportunities to others is a must. Never steal knowledge. Everybody deserves a chance, my real friends are forever. I got he chance to be Jaco Pastorious, Elvin Jones and Hilton Ruiz friend and always took their advice serious.

Thanks to Frank Valiente and Daniel Guillermo (two of my best friends), I got the break to play for Amanda Miguel, La Sophy, Leonardo Fabio, Nelson Ned, Basilio, Carlos Mata, Olga Lara, Anthony Rios and a whole bunch of local artists.

Thanks to the late Juli Ruiz, Hector Cornielle, Anthony Roberts and Danny Garcia, I learned to engineer merengue and bachata sessions. I recorded lots of bachata cats including sessions with Luis Vargas, Robin Morel, el Cieguito de Nagua, Joe Veras, Robin Morel, Aventura and other prominent bachata stars. I also worked for Vinny Iturbides, (RMM/Atlantic/Warner), got the break engineering 3 Reaggeton/hip hop albums for Warner/Primo labels and one for Jellybean Benitez title DOMINGO.

My friends Jose Sanchez (Tommy Mottola's engineer) and Frank Rodriguez (producer) gave me the chance to play guitar and do the solo for Jennifer Lopez's hit album. Worked with 2 years with Filthy Rich (Masta Ace producer) and James (coach) Stewart, recording and producing hip hop.

Worked in the hip hop album "Pa Mi Gente" with Domingo, featuring Full Nelson, El Mejicano, Majic Juan and ToneDef to name a few.

In 2002 got hired by Vinny Iturbidez to record latin 3 hip-hop albums for PRIMO/WARNER labels, Sexologia, Crooklyn and NY Urbano with artists Spagga, La Raza y Baby Q.

Worked 3 years recording hip hop and rhythm and blues and producing for M27, (the late Hilton Ruiz last recording label),thanks to my friend Marco Matute. I have thousands of hours playing guitar, arranging and producing for various independent artists and for myself satisfaction. I've worked with Angel Fernandez,(Mar Anthony and J-Lo musical director), scouting for new writers and recording original songs.
One of my best projects is Xecreto, on which I did the music (beats) for the songs Dominicano, Madre, Chichi's Back and co-wrote and arranged Fiesta and I Just finished my friends Marc & Ita's a gospel album, Rocking In The Lord.

Music work is endless. Only God can stop the creative mind, only God can stop the music.

I love all kinds of musical genres, love to fuse rhythms and melodies. Love cd 109.9, New York's soft jazz radio station, is great music but I never forget the roots. Me encantan los artistas y músicos originales (hate copycats. These are some of them: Chopin, The Beatles, Mozart, Stravinsky, Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Tupac Shakur, Snop Dog, Bob Marley, Dylan, Chic Corea, Juan Luis Guerra, Ramon Orlando, Manuel Tejada, Marcos Witts, Luis Diaz, Dario Estrella, Andrea Bocelli, Dream Theater, Marvin Gaye, Bill Withers, Nora Jones, Ravi Shankar, Allman Brothers Band, Credance Clearwater Revival, The Band, Johnny Ventura, Don Omar, Xecreto, Marc Anthony, Alexa, J-lo, Shakira, Julian Oro Duro, Luis Miguel, Pavarotti, Baden Powell, Joao Gilberto, Stan Getz, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Stanly Jordan, Chris Botty, Chuck Loeb, Michael Camilo, John Coltrane, Joe Paz, Rick Braun, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, AC-DC, Eric Clapton, Steve Ray Vaughn, Johan Strauss, Angel Fernandez, Ricky Gonzalez, Celine Dion, James Brown and ALL THE Great Ones...the list is to long.