Name: El Muchacho

Genre: Surf / Punk / Garage

Geographical Area: NYC

Interview by email with Mike Muchacho on 4/28/08

1. What is the current line-up of your band?

Mike Muchacho [guitar]
Mikey Muchacho [bass]
Jim "El Palo" Muchacho [drums, electric kazoo]


2. How and when did you get started with your band?

I've known Mikey since high school and Jim since we were in college.  Mikey used to work at a bar that had live music every night and a few years ago we started doing a few gigs there, playing random cover songs just for fun with various different band members and lineups.  At one point we had a lead singer who was originally from Columbia - we got the name "El Muchacho" from a local underworld kingpin in the village where he grew up who met with an unfortunate and untimely demise.  We finally decided to go all-instrumental after he moved down to Texas.  I really wanted to get a saxophone player to replace the singer, but we had a hard time finding someone who could really rock out on the sax and would also be available for all the gigs and rehearsals and stuff, so we wound up deciding to just have Jim play the electric kazoo instead.  Looking back on it, the whole thing was kinda ridiculous and it was pretty much done just strictly for our own entertainment.  I don't think anybody really thought we were ever going to get any serious gigs or radio airplay or anything with a band playing surf and punk rock covers and featuring an electric kazoo as the lead instrument, but somehow that didn't manage to stop us.
 

3. What bands or music have influenced you most?

Too many to mention!!!  Old surf/hot rod instrumental stuff like The Bel Aires, The Lively Ones, Link Wray, The Rumblers, T-Bones, Speedy West, Booker T & the MG's... early 50's rock 'n' roll like Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee, Bo Diddley, The Coasters, The Shirelles, Collins Kids, Del Shannon, Gene Vincent... 60's garage bands like The Monks, The Sonics, Question Mark and The Mysterians, MC5, The Stooges... 70's punk bands like The Ramones, The Clash, The Cramps, The Dead Boys, X-Ray Spex... classic rock stuff like Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, The Kinks, Black Sabbath...  Mikey is a former metalhead and reformed jazz drummer who has been studying traditional Indian music for many years, but since he started playing bass he has become a big-time James Jamerson/Motown fanatic.  Jim used to play bass in a punk band called "Genocide" and when he's not streaming WFMU over the internet he likes to listen to all sorts of weird and esoteric stuff - everything from Alice Cooper, Kiss, Alex Harvey and Frank Zappa to crazy noise/art rock stuff like The Residents, Sparks, Negativland and Melt Banana.  Right now in my car I have cassette tapes of The Ramones, The Coasters, ZZ Top, Sly and the Family Stone, Black Sabbath, Motorhead and Digital Underground.  I'm also obsessed with collecting 60's Lounge/Exotica and old-school Latin Soul records.  I do actually dig some more current stuff too.  Sasquatch and The Sick-a-billys are a killer band to see live and I try to catch them whenever they come to town.  I saw the 5.6.7.8's in Tokyo and they were awesome - the show was in an impossibly small, packed club and the kids over there were so out of control that I thought we were gonna get trampled to death!  We played a show last summer with an absolutely outrageous band from California called Punk As A Doornail - they're two-man outfit with a drummer and a lead singer who uses an empty whiskey bottle to play a skateboard that he converted into a slide guitar.  I'm also always discovering far-out bands from far-away lands online as well - some of my recent favorites include the Ultrasonicas from Mexico, the Torpedo Monkeys from Germany, Blaq Mummy from Czech Republic, and Mambo Hammer from Finland.  Kat Bjelland from Babes in Toyland is one of my all-time favorite guitar players [she has a solo project now called Katastrophy Wife], also Joe Baiza [from Saccharine Trust and Universal Congress Of] and Billy Gibbons, who's still playin' with "That Little Ol' Band from Texas" after all these years and just keeps gettin' better and better...  Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the infamous Paul Anka "Integrity Kick" meltdown tape where he's chewin' out all the guys in his band - we can never get enough of that and the majority of our conversations at rehearsals and stuff are conducted using quotes from that tape!


4. What is the breakdown of cover vs. original material in your live shows and/or recordings?

We started out just playing covers exclusively [everything from old instro-surf classics to 50's, 60's & 70's rock, punk and heavy metal], but now it's getting to be closer to a 50/50 split.
 

5. What recording have you done?
 

We recorded a couple of singles last year and just released our first full-length record this year.  We recorded and produced the whole thing ourselves at our studio in New York, which turned out to be a pretty major undertaking.  The record features several original tunes, covers of classic punk/rock songs by The Ramones, Black Sabbath and The Strawberry Alarm Clock as well as some old surf standards.  We were fortunate enough to have a really cool and super talented surf/hot rod artist from California named Tom "BigToe" Laura do the artwork for the record cover - check him out at http://www.bigtoeart.com

 

6. What kind of gear do you use?

Mikey Muchacho uses an old Fender Precision bass and a vintage Ampeg SVT tube amp.  I usually use a cheesey old 60's "Kapa" hollowbody guitar and/or a home-made Telecaster copy that I built myself, which gets plugged into a slightly hot-rodded old Ampeg accordion amp, three different distortion boxes and a "decimator" pedal to kill all the resulting noise and feedback.  Jim plays an electric kazoo that goes through a fancy multi-effects unit and is strapped around his neck with one of those "Bob Dylan" type harmonica holders so he can still play drums at the same time.  He also uses a sampler and a sequencer for certain songs and whenever possible he uses somebody else's drums so that we can manage to cram everything into the car for gigs!
 

7. What is your band’s favorite food/beverage?
 

We pretty much run on a steady diet of beer and pizza.

 

Mostly through folks finding us on our website or just through word of mouth and playing other gigs and going out to shows and meeting people.  Local concert promoters like Unsteady Freddie, Frank Wood and Bob D who runs "Surf Nite" up in CT have also been kind enough to book us for a bunch of gigs.
 

9. What are the difficulties you find playing your kind of music in your area?
 

Because we're sort of a genre-bending band I think the kind of music we play has actually helped us to be able to fit in relatively well with a lot of different types of shows - we've played gigs with other surf bands as well as punk, rock, metal, rockabilly, psychobilly bands and somehow it still seems to work, so I guess we've been kind of lucky in that sense.  The whole music scene in New York has been getting tougher and tougher though - rents keep going up, places like CBGB and the Continental have gone the way of the dodo and it seems like every year there are fewer live music venues left in town and more and more musicians wind up having to move farther and farther away from the city.  If they had "Starbucks" locations on every street corner downtown back in the 70's and a crappy little studio apartment went for $2500 a month when bands like the Ramones and the Cramps were first starting, out the whole early New York punk scene that was so influential to so many people might have never been able to get off the ground...

 

10. What positive attributes does your band have that sets you apart from other bands (of any genre)?

Well, we jokingly refer to ourselves as "The Only Surf/Punk Electric Kazoo Band That Matters" which I reckon is a fairly unique distinction right off the bat.  We also have a pretty unusual sound and a certain underlying sense of humor and willingness not to take ourselves too seriously, which I suppose some folks find sort of refreshing.  We may not exactly be the most virtuoso musicians on the planet, but we try to have a good time and make it fun for the audience, which I reckon is ultimately more important.
 

11. What have you found to be the single most effective promotional tool you’ve used to further your band’s musical path?

I guess it'd probably have to be the internet - that's made things so much easier than back in the day when you'd have to hand out demo tapes and nail posters to telephone poles and stuff.  It's also important to get out there, hang out and talk with fans and fellow musicians and make an effort to make it out to shows and try to support the other bands and folks who help keep the local music scene alive.
 

12. What’s the most interesting performance experience you’ve had?

Well, recently we had a record release show with Trauma Team 666, the Gorgeous Ladies of Bloodwrestling and an all-star surf band fronted by Rattlesnake Ralph from The Octomen and backed by members from Strange But Surf and The Outpatients.  We put together an extended-family El Muchacho lineup with our good friends Bloody Mary from Trauma Team 666 on percussion and Chris Cheek on baritone sax for the show, which was something we'd been wanting to do for quite a while.  Last month we went out and played Pittsburgh and Cleveland with The Memphis Morticians, who are a really great psychobilly band from here in New York and that was a helluva lot of fun.  In Pittsburgh we played at an awesome event called "The Rock and Roll Spookshow" where the first Saturday of every month is Halloween all over again and they show old horror movies while surf, punk and rockabilly bands play.  In Cleveland we played at an old German beer hall and ballroom called "The Sac" - the folks out there were pretty wild and super cool.  They really seemed to respond to El Muchacho for some strange reason and they've already invited us to come back and play there again.  Not to mention, they had fabulous burlesque dancers, cheap booze and the best damned grilled cheese sandwiches this side of the Mississippi!!!

 

13. What do you hope to get out of being a NESMA member?

I hope to actually be able to give something back, but so far it's been swell just having the opportunity to meet so many cool fellow musicians and surf music aficionados and to be able to see and play at so many great surf shows.