About Me
El Destroyo is the brainchild of Jimmy Friedman, a veteran of the San Francisco alternative scene dating back to his days in the late '70s with the Wolvarines. His lead vocals vary in approach, depending on the material; sometimes he sounds like a higher-pitched Lee Hazlewood, at other times a bit like Lou Reed ala Berlin. The band's songs have a heavy '60s pop influence, with elements of psychedelia and novelty pop. The music has a light-hearted, lightweight feel to it. If you can imagine a cross between the 1910 Fruitgum Company, Love, and the Ramones, David Bowie you might get an idea of what Jimmy Friedman & El Destroyo sounds like.The band features some well-traveled veterans in its lineup, including Brian Ritchie of the Violent Femmes. Ritchie produced and played bass on El Destroyo's third album, Power of My Mind, as well as ensuring a spot for the group as an opening act for the Femmes. Other notable members of the group include guitarist Roger Rocha (Four Non-Blondes), drummer Shig "33" (Plastic Ono Band, Hot Tuna), and permanent bassists Ari "the King" Gorman & Kurt (Mushroom). If there is a place for bubblegum pop in the alternative music scene, El Destroyo has the position sewn up. ~
Revue of Power of My mind.Posted on Fri, Apr. 05, 2002
There's no classifying Friedman's El Destroyo
THE SHOW GOES ON
• A little bit folky-alternative and a little bit rock 'n' roll, the group's releasing its second album
WHAT DO the Violent Femmes, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and the Dead Kennedys have in common?
They all have a member who's played music with Jimmy Friedman, the soulsonic singing and songwriting force behind El Destroyo, a San Francisco band celebrating the release of its indescribably wow! second album, "Power of My Mind" (released on the S.F. label Weed Records) Monday night at San Francisco's Make-Out Room.
El Destroyo's folky-alterna-roots-rock sound rises above just about anything in my disc player these days. Yet it seems that the extraordinary quintet, in its fifth year as a band, is one of the music world's best-kept secrets. Maybe that's because zeroing in on the secret sauce that makes the band is no easy task.
One might be tempted to describe it as an art-rock troupe, but that would be doing a big disservice to the band's songs and their punky poetic rock 'n' roll sensibilities, fed by Friedman's love of Jimmie Rodgers, Bob Dylan and David Bowie.
A ragtime ditty like "Those Kids" fits neatly beside silly and naive love songs like "Hey Everybody" and "Christen Brett," named after Friedman's wife.
"'Those Kids' is about the suffering of children in the Third World, taken from the soundtrack of a movie ...," Friedman says. "The movie's going to be released soon. The song was partly written by Howie Epstein, the bass player from Tom Petty."
Somehow, the sparky combination of inalienable truths set to a wacky rock beat and a backup story to match works: It's entirely serious, yet rooted in the comic-book rock 'n' roll style of the Ramones and the Archies. And yet, it aspires to nothing, except to entertain.
"We don't get too many blasé reactions," says Friedman, who incorporates the martial arts moves he's learned over 20 years of professional practice into his performance. "I've heard people say, 'What do they think they're doing up there?'
"I love when people's minds tell them something intense about us."
Which brings us to the "Power of My Mind." Is the title a reference to the idea that whatever you think is what you are?
"Er, I've heard it put more clearly than that," laughs Friedman, a longtime student of Zen Buddhism. "Ask them what they think," he says, pointing to his bandmates gathered around a small table at a cafe near San Francisco's Dolores Park.
I ask where the album's cover shot -- an in-your-face image of a person eating an ear of corn -- came from.
"Oh, that's Jimmy when he was 15. He was working in the circus as a juggler," says guitarist Roger Rochas.
Other ideas on the portrait range from Friedman's mother to a Dylan-obsessed Friedman (with the T-shirt and hair to prove it) at a local carnival corn-eating contest.
Friedman lived for a time, with his parents' blessing, in a commune in Kentucky, where he took to performing late-night sets of hillbilly songs 'round the campfire. This was in the '70s, well before Friedman came to California to form the punk band Wolverines (known to anyone who frequented the Filipino nightclub-cum-rock-palace Mabuhay Gardens in the early '80s).
Clearly, then, there are no easy answers, but there are a few facts as to how this traveling minstrel show got together to play rock 'n' roll.
Classically trained keyboardist, violinist and vocalist Yoon Ki Chai had never been in a band before El Destroyo; she had barely even heard rock music.
"I'd never even seen the band before. Well, except one day when they played in front of Safeway," recalls Chai. This I know to be true, because I saw it, too.
"Yoon Ki told me the only thing she remembered about that show was that every song has the same three chords," says Chai's boyfriend/ bandmate Rochas. The guitarist's pre-Destroyo résumé includes time with 4 Non Blondes during its chart-topping tenure.
"My friend Max Butler (Red Meat, Chuck Prophet) said, 'I met this guy at a party, he's super-charismatic, and you gotta call him,'" explains Rochas of how he hooked up with the Destroyos. That wasn't Jimmy," he adds, with perfect vaudevillian timing. But after attending one "rehearsal," Rochas came away feeling that though the songs were great, "It certainly didn't sound like a band." It took a couple of years, but he eventually volunteered for Friedman's goofball brigade.
"There are so many people who can play or sing like crazy, but the hardest thing to do is take a risk, reveal yourself or be spontaneous," says Rochas. "I'm always looking for the person who's going to inspire me to reveal myself and communicate, too," he says. "Sometimes we play acoustic, sometimes people sit in with us, sometimes Jimmy talks for 20 minutes, other nights we play 30 songs; we never know what's going to happen."
Maybe that's what also appealed to the band's former personnel, a who's-who of San Francisco rockers, from Vudi of American Music Club and Ben Cohen from Sister Double Happiness to Bruce Slesinger from the Dead Kennedys. The current lineup is completed by Shig 33 (who once played with Hot Tuna) on drums and Kurt Wagner (who jams with prog-rockers Mushroom) on bass -- that is, when Violent Femme Brian Ritchie isn't sitting in. Ritchie is credited as producer on the new album; he was acquainted with Friedman's brother in their hometown of Milwaukee, Wis., where Friedman grew up playing music with Epstein and Tom Recht, his songwriting partner.
"Jimmy and Tom's demos sound really askew. Our whole job is to keep it sounding as off-kilter as possible," says Rochas.Photos next to song taken by;Bobby Neel Adams
