it landed them on the first WATCHA Tour, the pioneer Latin alternative cavalcade. Los Mocosos got rave review performing alongside Café Tacuba, Molotov, and others as the world was becoming aware of the neophyte Rock-enEspañol movement. But the group fell apart when it played the San Jose stopover at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds and the lead vocalist refused to go onstage. But in a matter of months Los Mocosos were back on the scene with a new singer and a new attitude. Their follow-up album,“Shades of Brown,” unveiled the dynamic voice and charisma of Manny Martinez, who helped Los Mocosos continue to ascend alongside a new crop of California Latin fusion bands like Ozomatli, B-Side Players, Yeska and others. Tunes like “Spill the Wine,” “Soy Callejero,” “Caliente,” and their tribute to El Rey, “Tito Puente”, were street anthems fusing funk, salsa, rock, rap, and ska. Proud of their Mission District roots Los Mocosos took a hard look at the gentrification of their ‘hood on “Mi Barrio Loco,” one of the first bands to address the issue.
Los Mocosos Is All Grown Up: Legendary Bay Area Band To Release First Album In 15 Years “Los Mocosos is a gumbo of everything we grew up listening to, like salsa, hip-hop, soul, jazz and the Monkees,” is how trombonist and co-bandleader Victor Castro described the sound of the band whose name translates loosely to snotty-nose-brats in a San Francisco Chronicle article in 2004. “We all love what we do, and I think it shows when we perform that we’re having a good time.” After a several year hiatuses, the good times are back for Los Mocosos as they return to the world stage with a new album to be released on September 18, 2020 titled, “All Grown Up.” But to inspire their fans until then the group is busting out with the single, “United We Stand,” that speaks to the blatant authoritarianism plaguing the streets of police brutality, immigrant persecution, deportation, racism, and protest turbulence. Los Mocosos grew out of a series of 1996 garage jams in the Mission District. Formed by bassist Happy Sanchez and Victor Castro, the band got its recording legs hanging around the halls of now-defunct Aztlan Records,
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the first Spanish-language rock label in the country. Their first album, “Mocos Locos” was an underground barrio classic with themes like “Brown and Proud,” and remakes of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’, “The Lonely Bull,” and cantina classics, “La Boa” and “Volver Volver.” Out the box people saw Los Mocosos as a continuance of the 1970s Bay Area Latin rock movement, a scene that never really went away. Santana, Malo, Azteca, Sapo, Dakila and others, served as inspirations but the group added a twist that introduced audiences to new sounds in Latin pop like reggaeton, ska and rap. “We made sure we didn’t leave out any of the sauce of the Mission District, all that Soul and Latin Funk,” says Shorty Ramos, saxophonist with Los Mocosos. “People would ask if we played Salsa and we’d say No, yeah we put a Latin beat in there, but we twist it around. We had a band member that would say we take the clave and turn it in knots.” On the strength of “Mocos Locos” (Crazy Boogers),
Rock and Blues International • September 2020
“American Us,” came next and was produced by Greg Landau, the acclaimed awardwinning producer, and featured a new band minus Happy Sanchez, who left the group in 2002 to pursue other endeavors. It was a much slicker commercialized production that include studio mixes by Garry Hughes and Donal Hodgson (Sting, Vitamin C, Tina Turner). But the synthesis was the same with Lowrider classics like “I’m Your Puppet,” socio-political songs like “Señor Presidente”, “The Beast,” and “Bacalao,” a Latino hip hop ode fusing mambo that featured Martinez spitting out politically charged verses. “American Us” was embraced by a wider public and led to tours with Los Lobos and Santana as well as playing prestigious venues like Washington’s Kennedy Center and New York’s Central Park. They were awarded a San Francisco Wammy Award for Best International Band and a California Music Award for Outstanding Latin Album, and were part of the groundbreaking compilation, “Escena AlterLatina: The Future Sound in Español,” one of the first Latin Rock compilations to crack the Billboard Latin Charts. Overall, the first of wave of Los Mocosos created a fan base and a library of songs that were the soundtrack for the emerging LatinX generation and a non-Latino audience willing to jump in the mosh pit with them. How they ascended into the pop limelight and achieved admirable success is perhaps the culmination of dreams fulfilled that were first culled as young snotty nosed brats running the streets of the SF Mission. “It’s just amazing to be making music with your friends. I started with Happy when we were 15 (years old) and we would dress up and pretend we were playing on tour in my garage,” recalled Castro. “We would have these little concerts with the coffee can lights till his mom came down and told us to knock it off,” adds Sanchez. “But it’s been a trip to play places like Des Moines, Iowa or Little Rock, Arkansas, and they never heard anything like it, a band from The Mission with horns, the funk, the montunos,
