“˜Mad Decent’ tropical punk hits the national stage

At the ripe age of 16, four guys from the Inland Empire got together and started messing around with a guitar, bass and drum kit. Four years later, they’re on an international tour, spreading their tropical punk love across North America.

Abe Vigoda started out as a project to fill spare time, but has turned into a lifestyle for band members Juan Velazquez, Michael Vidal, David Reichardt and Reggie Guerrero.

“I don’t think anything that has happened has been planned.” Velazquez said. “There’s no big story, we just thought (being in a band) would be fun.”

Even the name was impromptu.

“We were talking on AIM, and said “˜Oh man, it would be funny if we named our band Abe Vigoda,’ because he’s a weird guy on Conan,” Velazquez explained. “I don’t think it’s the best name, it’s just kind of silly. I mean, we came up with it when we were 16, but we can’t change it now.”

The four crossed paths by chance in high school when Velazquez approached Vidal to comment on Vidal’s Smashing Pumpkins shirt. Their training in music was very informal ““ Guerrero had never touched a drum kit before he began playing with the band.

But with passion, perseverance and talent comes success, and the group soon found themselves driving Velazquez’s parents’ van to their first gig.

Their most frequented venue was downtown Los Angeles’ the Smell, where they encountered Dean Spunt and Jim Smith, who would release their first three albums.

The group’s music has been appropriately described as a “frenetic punk ballet,” and with the relative success of their three albums, “Sky Route/Star Roof,” “Kid City” and “Skeleton,” the dance has arguably been perfected.

Their tracks are often permanently wandering across a broad and twisted spectrum lined with jabbing guitar chords and entrancing vocals, but kept in place by perfectly timed drum work. Most don’t have any sort of chorus, and end somewhere far from where they began with regard to their melodies and cadences.

It’s tropical punk, or punk with Afro-Caribbean and Latin influences.

“It’s hard to explain how our sound developed,” Velazquez said. “We’ve been a band for a long time, and our influences have changed and blah blah blah, but it’s kind of more punk than other things. … We play whatever our skills allow, that’s just the way we’ve been able to write songs. It kind of just organically happens, which sounds stupid.”

Currently the group is billed as part of the Mad Decent tour, headlined by Diplo (founder of the Mad Decent record label), best known for his bass and sample-saturated, trip-hop remixes of innovative names like Kanye West and MIA, which rival Girl Talk in the category of chaos.

The pairing admittedly juxtaposes very different artists, but while some see this as a nuisance, others are able to appreciate the presence of variety in contrast.

“It’s kind of a weird tour, but we thought we’d do something different,” Velazquez explained. “Some places really liked us, some didn’t care for us, but in the end, it’s all about having a good show, whether that means people are just nodding their heads, or moshing. Either way it’s been a really cool but surreal experience.”

The tour presents a new opportunity to the group: that is, performing in front of sometimes overwhelmingly large audiences. But through the success, the group has managed to remain grounded and thankful.

“Before we played to 50 or 60 people a night, now on tour, we have two to three hundred,” Velazquez said. “It’s cool to have these opportunities because we recognize that not everyone does. Even if it’s not what we expected, it’s still like, “˜Wow, we got to play to that many people’ or “˜Wow, we got to play at the Wiltern.’ Playing shows is great, making music is great, everything else is icing on the cake. And it still beats going to work.”

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