So my homie Earn UCA sent me a couple of pics today. Within those pics there was one of me holding a Jungle Green and a Plum Purple...ahhhhhhh - those colors!
I miss those colors by Krylon. Plum Purple, Clover Green, Hot Pink, Aqua Turquoise, Baby Blue, Coral, Avocado Green, Rasberry Pink, Icy Grape, Brick, School Bus Yellow....
How's that for a rack full of paint....nice right?
Man, those were some colors, specially Brick which was only around for a little bit. Other colors that were or are dope are: True Blue, Banner Red, the old Cherry Red...pssss...I can go on about the colors Krylon used to bust out with. I don't know what happened to Krylon too. Their paint got way watery and then recently converted their tips to this weak female fan tip which sucks.
I guess it is their way of "fighting and preventing" graffiti since they have, over years, claimed to be anti-graffiti even though I believe that writers have maintained them afloat and in business for years.
I can clearly remember the first time I used these colors. Any of them. And I have seen some colors that Belton and Montana put out that are similar but to me they seem to fall short of the actual shade of these colors. I get excited when I see a color by any of these brands that are similar to the colors listed above. I know you may be like, "Galo, calm down, It ain't that serious" but these colors were some of the first I used when I began rocking the walls back in 84.
Anyhow - here is the pic...what ya'll think? sitting like a king right?
I must say my Sunday was good. I had some bomb food, the weather was great, hung out with some of the homies*...chilled, laughed, ate and maintained myself well hydrated throughout the day.
Such a good day had me reminiscing. The year was about 1990. I would go visit The Montebello Town Center a lot, with one main objective...to rack* and of course check out the ladies. My homie Besk and I would spend hours or days at the Town Center racking everything possible. Our normal times to hit the stores were during the weekdays around 10:30 AM when the stores were just opening, the crowd was almost zero, security guards were perhaps still in the employee lounge getting their coffee and complaining about their job to each other while the first-shift store employees were busy setting up the store for the day. So busy, that we'd get ignored. PERFECT. So with a little handheld demagnetizer that I had racked from a Bullocks we would casually remove the sensors and either place our stuff in large bags that we'd ask for from different stores or wear them under our clothes after trying them on in the dressing room. Mannnn, we'd walk out with jackets, shirts, pants, colognes, ties, high-end boxers...you name it. Not that I am proudly boasting about it - that just was the case.
Anyhow - well one of these days we walked in to a record shop. A little one located on the second floor near the end of the mall. It was in the east wing where the first Hot Topic (before it went to caca and turned rave) was at. It sat right above Hot Topic. As I schemed through tapes in the Hip-Hop section, I noticed this one tape. It had a fist pumping upwards and the name A Lighter Shade Of Brown with a pic of three Latin dudes wearing tight overalls and caps. A Lighter Shade of Brown? WTH was this? Wellllll, I racked it.
Immediately upon getting into Besk's Metallic Blue Buick Regal with Daytons, I popped the tape in. It initiates with the first verse of the Mexican Anthem and it cuts to it's first track. I was like, hmmmmm...ohkay..my head was kinda bobbing...next we heard "El Varrio" and I liked that song a little more. The third was "Spill The Wine", of course sampling Santana but then, towards the end, this song called "Latin Active", a song that had sampled one of my favorite songs, "Radio Activity (Lets Jam)" by pioneering freestyle rappers MC Frosty and MC Lovin C. It was a dope rap song that had a jammin* beat and I totally liked how this track had sampled it and how it was composed. The song also featured female rapper Teardrop, who threw in some dope lyrics too.
I became a big LSOB fan. I can claim that Besk and I were perhaps some of the first kats bumping them. Peeps* would get in our Buick (hahaha, I said our Buick but it was Besk's) and they would just rag and laugh at the music. I didn't care, I like them, they were Mexican as I am and they repped* for the browns* right?
These dudes really introduced the entire Latin Hip-Hop movement to me. Which of course, at that time, could have been counted by hand. This was also way before Kid Frost's "La Raza" was out. Even though Kid Frost was in the circuit doing stuff and being a breakdancer for L.A.'s first rap collective - Uncle Jamms Army
The guys of LSOB had some dope rap names. ODM which means One Dope Mexican and the other was DTTX, which means Don't Try To Xerox...meaning don't bite* or copy. Which by the way, XEROX doesn't mean copy, it is actually the brand name of a copy machine. It is just often used to refer to a copy of a document. It is much so like asking for a Kleenex as opposed to asking for a tissue.
Okay okay - back to why I am writing about this. Well these guys had another track on that album that was dope. It did not peak the charts until maybe a year later. The track was "Sunday Afternoon". The song has actually been played out. It has become the Sunday BBQ anthem. But often times I can think of it when I get home from a good BBQ with al the friends.
So here it is. "Sunday Afternoon" by A Lighter Shade Of Brown.
MAKE's GLOSSARY:
homies = word used to describe close friends or acquaintances or even those that we may kinda know
rack = to steal or borrow from a store w/o the intent to return. Commonly known shoplifting. It can also apply to borrowing from someone indefinitely
peeps = short for people. form of an abbreviation
bite = to copy (like I explained above)
jammin = to be good or like "it rocks dude"
repped = short for representing and abbreviated form indicating that it is coming correct
brown(s) = not any of the sport teams such as Cleveland or Chicago etc. It means Browns, as in referring mainly to those that are of or considered of Hispanic decent..oops, I mean descent
I was going to continue my write ups on my entire PRINCE obsession that I began blogging about a couple months back. A write-up that slowly became an extensive series of memoirs. I have gotten a little lazy about. And today, as I was about to begin writing part 3, I came across some old photos of the Pacific Electric Railroad Station.
Known globally as the Belmont Tunnel amongst graffiti artists, this vacant yard once served as an outdoor gallery for urban arts. Graffiti artists from all over the world, when visiting Los Angeles, made it an effort to come and paint the massive walls of the yard or at least set foot on this soil and be visually stimulated by the multi-layered elaborate pieces done by resident graff writers or out of towners.
I began hearing rumors about 20 years ago that the lot was sold and we no longer would have this yard. Cops would even often swoop in and hassle some of the writers notifying us that the yard would no longer be open to the public and if found painting would get arrested for not only trespassing but also vandalism. Well those rumors never came true and the yard remained open.
Those rumors would resurface every five years or so so when hearing them rumors again in 2002, that the yard or property was finally sold, I took it as "one of them rumors again". Albeit, I began to see developers, construction trucks and workers slowly move in, I still thought to myself - "this ain't gonna happen!" - not sure if I was in denial.
As writers began to storm in, some coming out of the woodworks or retirement, to paint their last piece at the tunnel, more and more construction workers moved in. The walls were still in tact and no serious tear down had begun. All seemed as it was just planning and settling before they all commenced to destroy our safe haven. Stash Maleski began to round up troops to prevent the yard's closure and tear down. Still, I was in disbelief and my attitude was a shrug of shoulder and a "if it happens it happens. Oh well." thought.
Not until I saw a video that my friend Ben Higa did did I feel the impact of what was truly happening. The reality of it all. I teared up and felt complete sadness when I saw the footage of a wall being torn down and watched the chunks of concrete crumble to the ground. It was as though a piece of me was being torn with it. I just couldn't believe that this place, where I made friends, almost got shot, got jumped, painted at, first saw the pieces that influenced me, witnessed the best graff battles, met my favorite writers, got hassled and gaffled up by cops, got chased, saw COLORS and other movies filmed, or just simply chilled and enjoyed the day drinking beers, eating some tacos or carne asada, while listening to the trios play rancheras and shooting the breeze with the homies would be no longer. I was devastated.
Anyhow - that's it for now...I will write more about this on a later date (maybe). I will also upload some articles I wrote for some magazines about the Tunnel. In the interim, I leave you with those images I ran into today. I have also included some links below for additional information.
On my last post I wrote about my first encounter with the musician Prince, born Prince Rogers Nelson. I wrote how my HOT baby-sitter and neighbor had introduced me to his music and how there's a correlation of my first memories of listening to Prince to her.
In this post I will touch on albums Dirty Mind and Controversy. Not much of a review on the albums and the music itself, albeit, not a bad idea to continue as a series, but more about how they helped open my mind and roughly expose me to relationship needs and what many may consider now-a-days as "unwanted sexual urges" to a young buck at the tender age of 9.
I remember Lorena and her family had moved from their apartment. It literally happened overnight. The building was old, dilapidated and their entire kitchen ceiling had caved in. We lived in a two-story apt complex and luckily no one was at home in neither apts, hers and the one above, when it happened. All I remember was never seeing her (them) again after.
We did not move out of the building til maybe a month after. I clearly remember it was 1979 because we welcomed 1980 in our new apt, which ironically I find myself back in...but that is whole other story.
I immediately befriended some of my neighbors. Specially my boy Douglas, whom I still keep in contact with until this day. And of course some others around the hood. Now everyone during this time was either into The Commodores , Kool and The Gang or Van Halen or bands like Devo who had come out with their Freedom of Choice album and other rock bands from the 80's or 70's that were still around.
So here's is this new kid in a new hood and a new school (Laurel Elementary) who liked Prince. Now, some of the kids already thought listening to Kool and The Gang and bands of the sort, whom I may add I liked also, was kinda "GAY". So imagine what they said when I told them I was into Prince. They wouldn't really look at me the same even though I told them I also liked bands such as: Queen, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Janis Joplin etc - stuff that I had grown up listening to also cuzz my moms would listen to it.
At this age you had to be cool. I even remember my good friend Sergio asking me while in our school lunch line what bands I liked. When I told him Prince he was like "Oh!" and staring at me asked "Who's that?"
Anyhow - fast forward. There was a small record shop a few blocks away from my house. I miss the days when record shops were like liquor stores, one on every corner. I walked into one one day and saw the Dirty Mind album and at first, when I saw the album cover, I was like ehhhh. I shrugged my shoulders and a few days later asked my mom if she would come with me to buy it for me. When she first saw the album she was like "ay mijo que es esto?" and I was like "Mom, just buy it."
I'd played the album whenever my dad was at work. When I first heard the album, I was not sure if liked it. It was not as catchy, and now in retrospect, as "discoy" as the other albums. It was totally different from what I've heard from Prince. Then as I listened to the song "When You Were Mine" and I was like - Lorena. Paying more attention to the lyrics:
"Oh girl, when you were mine
I used to let you wear all my clothes [which she would. she would play with my clothes when she would bathe me - and aumm long story here too]
You were so fine (So fine)
Maybe that's the reason that it hurt me so
I know (I know) that you're going with another guy
I don't care (don't care) cuz I love you, baby, that's no lie
I love you more than I did when you were mine"
I know one can argue that other bands during this time had similar lyrics and perhaps were a bit more overt on sexual content and relationships; but as I mentioned in my previous post, it was not until becoming in touch with my feelings towards Lorena that I began to listen to songs for their lyrics and content other than simply their sound and beat.
Well I was also going to talk about the album Controversy but I guess I would have to continue with it for my next post.
And I leave you with this video of Prince performing "When You Were Mine"
Alright people...many are aware and many aren't - but I've been a PRINCE fan since I was a youngen. I remember when I first heard PRINCE, I was only 8 years old when my hot babysitter Lorena introduced me to his music. She'd play the song "Soft and Wet" over and over again and she would sing and dance to me all sexy and seductive as I watched and I was like "Hell Yeah". I didn't know what it was I felt as I watched her sing and dance but it was an immediate BAMN!!! - I'm a fan.
You should have seen her. A 16 yr old hot and beautiful Nicaraguan girl signing:
"All I wanna see is the love in your eyes
And all I wanna hear is your sweet love sighs
All I wanna feel is burning flames
Tell me, tell me, baby, that u feel the same
Tell me that u feel the same way I do
Tell me that u love me girl"
I still imagine her singing to me every time I hear that song. Oh mannnnn - the stories I can tell you about her too. pheeeeew!
She lived across from me and one day she knocked on my door and invited over to watch American Bandstand cause PRINCE was about to perform. Oh man - when I first saw the guy I was like WTH? this guy is kinda funny but the first song he sang "I Wanna be Your Lover" ...I was like yeaaaah. "I wanna be your brother, I wanna be your mother and your sister, too" those lyrics!! I may not have understood the entire lyrics of the song but I knew I wanted to be her brother. As we sat in front of the tube watching, I'd occasionally glance over at Lorena and she was there...singing to the music...looking angelic. I remember at one point she reached over and grabbed my hand tightly.
This is suppose to be PRINCE's first televised performance and interview. It was shortly after the release of his self-titled album Prince, released in 1979. He was only 19 and had already made some noise because at the age of 15, he had turned down offers from major record companies because he wanted to produce his own albums and they wouldn't let him.
In this interview it is also rumored that PRINCE seemed a bit indifferent to Dick Clark because of some of the comments Dick made when interviewing PRINCE. i.e. "You would never think music like this would come out of Minneapolis" - Dick Clark
anywho - so I became a fan and here I am to this day, 30 years later, still a huge fan of PRINCE.
This is just part one of my stories with the man and his music. The second part will be about albums Dirty Mind, Controversy and maybe 1999 and some of the stories tied in to his music and how I also bloomed at an early age because of it. yep yep
