LOS FABULOCOS FEATURING KID RAMOS Source: MonroviaWeekly.com Date: 04/2011 Writer: Terry Miller

Los Fabulocos featuring Kid Ramos to Help Celebrate Monrovia's 125th Birthday Cinco de Mayo – To be Held May 1

For the first time in Monrovia's 125 year history, Monrovia Cinco De Mayo Cultural Arts & Music Festival will be held on Sunday May 1 from 2-8 PM in Old Town Monrovia on Colorado & Myrtle. This Free Family Friendly event promises to highlight the best in latino music with Grammy Award Winners, The Mariachi Divas, Roots Rock Recording Artists, The Delgado Brothers, Latin Jazz legends, The Banda Brothers, and Tex-Mex band Los Fabulocos featuring Kid Ramos. There will be a kids interactive area and cultural stage with fine performances by folklorico dancers, youth poetry winners, Junior Mariachis and Oaxacan folk dancers. Beacon Media had the opportunity to speak with David " Kid" Ramos, guitar player and singer with Los Fabulocos Tuesday afternoon. Los Fabulocos will be the featured band during Monrovia's Cinco de Mayo celebration which, ironically on May 1. I was lucky enough to hear Kid Ramos' amazing blues style on their first CD along with his obvious Chicano roots before we spoke. The 2008 CD is eclectic in its mix of blues and Tex/Mex styles, zydeco and country if you can believe that! But it works. In fact, it really is almost ridiculous to label their music other that the way Kid Ramos said it Tuesday as we spoke on the phone. " It's music for the people…Just good Blue Collar music, man." "It's Americana music with roots from the late 50's to the 60's" he added.

Los Fabulocos, Chicanos all, is the latest – and musically all encompassing – group to emerge from East Los Angeles, home of America's largest Mexican-American community and ground zero for the musical and cultural revolution called Chicano Rock, that started decades ago and remains ongoing and as vibrant today.

Los Fabulocos' label (www.DeltaGroveProductions.com), the independent blues and roots music Delta Groove Records calls the group's sound, "CaliMex" – music that fixes a strong Southern California groove into musical DNA produced from a confluence of a Mexican heritage, a Mexican-American upbringing and exposure to one of the most musically creative centers in the country. Home and neighborhood to Los Fabulocos.

"We have the same musical heritage. We look out for each other," says drummer Mike Molina.
Many different streams of music ebb and flow within the ranks of Los Fabulocos as a glance at the titles on the group's first CD will show. From rock standards to recreations of material from classic Mexican cancionero singers, with nods to Doug Sahm, Lloyd Price, Rockin' Dopsie[ and their rock'n roll / blues vocabularies, Added to this mix are Los Fabulocos' own originals, again drawn from all these areas. Singing in English and Spanish, Los Fabulocos travel the rock, blues and Mexican routes, always laying down a good time groove. Fused together it becomes, as one critic noted "a blues barbeque at a Cinco de Mayo block party."

Los Fabulocos would not disagree.

David " Kid" Ramos said he kind of got stuck with the name Kid Ramos as he was always the youngest in each band he played with, so the name just stuck. When his friend Jesse( Jesus Cuvevas ) asked him to join the band he also "needed a bajo sexto player so he learned how to play. It's tuned differently to a guitar and very demanding and difficult to play, like a bass on the bottom strings and treble in the top strings…"You gotta play it like a MAN…" he joked. But the CD's only reveal part of Los Fabulocos. Seen live "the band can rock apparently effortlessly and endlessly. A six hour gig (with breaks, of course) is no problem. " said publicist Jerry Brown. "We don't have a set list before we go onstage," says guitarist Kid Ramos. "We react to the audience…" We just " live life to the fullest" said Ramos.

Kid Ramos

These audiences are, like the group's music, also diverse. From Whittier Blvd, East LA's most celebrated street, to the autobahns of Germany, audiences welcome Los Fabulocos. The band is particularly popular on the blues festival circuits in Europe, having made several trips there. "They love our music in Germany, the blues and all that," says Molina. "I feel like a missionary out there."

Ramos said thet Norway was where some of the best audiences seem to be in Europe for some unknown reason.
Los Fabulocos are missionaries of a sort, for the kind of gritty, relevant music that pours out of the East L.A. area
The group began about four years ago, started by Jesus Cuevas, singer and button accordion maestro, drummer Molina and James Barrios, bass, plus another guitar player. Cuevas and Molina had worked together in The Blazers, a band – with its danceable brand of Ameri-Mex styles - generally regarded as the closest rivals to Los Lobos Del Este Los Angeles, superstars of the Chicano Rock genre. Together, they spent about seven years touring and recording with The Blazers. "I think I was the longest serving drummer," says Molina.

When the original Los Fabulocos guitar player left, Cuevas kicked things up a notch by inviting friend and fellow motor cycle enthusiast David Ramos into the group.

Ramos is better known as Kid Ramos, who over the years has built one of the better reps around as a blues player (Fabulous Thunderbirds, James Harman, The Mannish Boys). And, like the other three, he comes from East Los Angeles and has been exposed to the multi lingual nuances of all kinds of Chicano music.
Ramos fit right into the Los Fabulocos family with his earthy blues guitar to the bajo sexto (sixth bass) is a Mexican instrument, a 12 string guitar on steroids. It is most often heard in traditional Mexican settings - the conjunto, norteno and tejana music - but rarely elsewhere.

The bajo sexto is just one part of what Los Fabulocos does musically but it specifies the care and attention that the quartet pays to its music and the roots thereof. Every band has its influences and its roots but, for Los Fabulocos, they seem to be wider and go deeper than most:

Take bass player Barrios, for example. Surprisingly for an East Los Angeles native, he finds Buck Owens and the country music that came out of Bakersfield, California, in the 1970s, irresistible. "As a child I was introduced to it through my dad,: he says. "I just love those harmonies." And these harmonies also find their way into the multicultural play list of Los Fabulocos. Drummer Molina, who started out doing custom art work before a set of drums sidetracked him, likes to control the tempo and the dynamics of the group, getting a steady groove going, something he learned from one of his influences, Jasper Thomas, drummer for Chuck Berry on the early Chess Records sessions.
Cuevas, singer and button accordion player, looks both behind and sideways for what influences him. There's Louisiana accordion-based zydeco (in particular the music of Clifton Chenier) and there's the music, from the 1940s, of Los Alegres Del Teran, pioneers of the harmonically rich norteno, corridos and rancheros. "Just fabulous," says Cuevas.

Ramos remains firmly with the blues although he notes, "Both my parents are opera singers," he says. "My step dad sang at the Metropolitan Opera. As a kid, they'd have these parties with people hanging around singing Arias.
"But the blues became my thing, not as a protest, I just loved the music. You go all over the world and there will always be people who love the blues. Because it's real. It transcends age and race and economics."
When asked who his key influences were when he was growing up as a young player. Ramos noted one player in particular who was his inspiration and that was Clifton Chenier: Clifton Chenier who died in 1987 was a Creole French-speaking native of Opelousas, Louisiana, was an eminent performer and recording artist of Zydeco, which arose from Cajun and Creole music, with R&B, jazz, and blues influences. He played the accordion and won a Grammy Award in 1983. He also was recognized with a National Heritage Fellowship, and in 1989 was inducted posthumously into the Blues Hall of Fame.

Beacon Media also spoke with frontman Jesus Cuevas (Jesse) on Tuesday and asked him what Monrovia can expect when they take the stage May 1: Jesse said that the Band is really looking forward to the festival and hopes everyone will v=come out and support live music.

Jesse plays a unique Diatonic Accordian/ oe whatr some call the Button Box…and always had a taste for Zydeco…. The diatonic accordion (or melodeon) resembles a small piano accordion, except where the piano-accordion has piano-style keys, the diatonic has one or more vertical rows of buttons – hence the title "button box". Each of these rows of buttons plays a major scale in one key only – so to play in more than one key means that more than one row of buttons is required if all the notes of the scale are to be available. Another characteristic is that each button plays two different notes – one when the bellows are closed, and another, usually the next in the scale, when the bellows are opened. Similarly the bass buttons play one note or chord in one bellows direction and a different one in the other. When I First heard this band, it was David "Kid" Ramos' mind-blowing guitar playing and this incredible instrument Jesse Cuevas plays with such emotion which set them apart from the pack. Ir is a unque sound, eclectic and shows that diverse cultures can blend almost efforlessly with the power of music and talented musicians who can get the best out of their chosen instrument. The Button Box really isn't used a lot in the new millenium and it's great to see a band like Los Fabulocos keeping a tradition alive and helping it evolve. The band has just returned from a few gigs in Texas when I spoke with Jesse and Dave.

Jesse Cuevas

We discissed their love of Zydeco and Tex/Mex which is very evident (hence the Button Box – which is part of their signature sound).

Jesus (Jesse) is the lead vocalist with the band in addition to being the guy behind the Button Box. He grew up loving the instrument and essentially taught himself to play at an early age.
All members of the band are family guys with wives and children so it takes a special dedication and tolerant wives for this thing to work.

And, according to Jesse, it works and works well. Asuide from being band members, these guys are friends – good friends.

For example, for festivals like the upcoming Monrovia gig, the wives and children will probably come to enjoy not only the band but also the day.

They all also have day jobs so the only time they can play is weekends, but that doesn't stop them from pumping out some of the most energetic, dancable good time music you'll ever hear live. And as for rehearsal, the only time they need to do thsat is when there's new material to add to the set.

Judging from their second CD, which has less emphasis on the blues side, they'll have plenty of material for the next hundred gigs.

Even when they made their first CD, "It was recorded mostly live, to capture that energy" Jesse told Beacon Media.
From the moment I put the CD in my car player, I had my heart pumping a little more and my toes tapping to the great backbeat. I know I shouldn't have been doing this in the car, but at least I wasn't texting or using my mobile phone. Hopefully they won't outlaw listening to music like Los Fabulocos while driving. But who knows, we live in mighty strange times so we need bands like Los Fabulos more than ever to help us forget the madness and just pick a girl to dance withj, have a couple of drinks and just get crazy for a couple of hours and let the music flow through your body like a Harley Davidson when the light turns green!

Photos of Los Fabulocos - By Kim Martin

Don't miss these guys at Monrovia's Cinco de Mayo party, May 1. They will also be playing at The Arcadia Blues Club on May 6.