THE RAYBRAZEN.COM STORY, PART THREE

The message began with a quote from the Beatles: "You know my name, look up the number." It was a charming way to start. The letter was lengthy, written in the best English the sender could summon, filled with the expected misspellings and bad grammar, but I was able to feel and to understand every word of his truly heartfelt response to my small but sincere tribute... to the very band he had founded and led for over 30 years in Mexico, Los Dug Dugs. Yes, indeed, there he was right in my email box on my computer, the one, the only, the legendary... Armando Nava. The very one whose name was the only clue on all those records I'd found.

Time froze. Shivers went up my spine as I read his words. Armando insisted he had cried tears of joy for 20 minutes while looking at my site. He gently corrected a factual error or two I had posted, and wrote a nice little poem in tribute to him, and us as well. The message ended with his full contact information, including the address of La Reunion, the Mexico City nightclub he owned at the time, and two phone numbers with an open invitation to call him and speak with him directly. This was all too much for me to take in at first! Whoda thunk my search for Los Dug Dug's, that band I found in a Mexican record store a decade earlier, would end up like this?

So, of course, now I had a really big news update, and what an update it was, posting Armando's letter with the promise of much more to come. In the process, I took another look at the front page of the site. "Los Dug Dug's Homepage." Ugh. That name just wasn't gonna cut it anymore, especially now that Armando Nava had seen it. I pondered the matter for awhile, and then remembered a 1960s Mexican movie someone from the Bomp board where I promoted the site had sent me on VHS which had an appearance by the band. I replaced the last word in its Spanish title accordingly, and knew I had a proper name at last -- "El Mundo Loco De Los Dug Dug's." Little did I know exactly how loco that world was about to become.

Admittedly, it took me awhile to summon the courage to talk to him, but a few weeks later, in mid-December '97, I finally got up the nerve to place a long distance phone call to Armando Nava at his nightclub in Mexico City. It was very late at night, about 2 in the morning, and he'd just gotten offstage, but was more than happy to talk for as long as I wanted. I couldn't believe I was really talking to the main man on those Mexican album covers. But there he was on the other end of the line, speaking in his best English (which was actually very good) about the band's entire history for almost a full 90 minute cassette. It was the first of many conversations we would have over the next several years.

It wasn't always easy to figure out some of the details Armando was trying to give about the band, but I somehow managed to write up a basic historical overview of Los Dug Dugs from what he told me. I thought it would be sorta cool to have him record a holiday greeting for the site, it being December by then, and he graciously obliged. He was a total class act in every respect, and so appreciative of my interest in his music. It's always a thrill when you talk to someone you've admired and respected and he turns out to be a kind and generous person who deeply regards his fans. And little did I know this was just the beginning of his generosity.

Armando told me he was going to send me lots of stuff. And he said he meant a lot of stuff. Initially he told me to just watch my mailbox. Three months went by with nothing from Mexico turning up in my mail. I'd heard Mexican mail was pretty unreliable so I thought that might be why I'd not received anything. Or maybe he was taking his time, I don't know. Me, I was just happy to have been so wildly successful in finding Los Dug Dugs. But I was getting a bit impatient just the same.

That's why, when I found myself coming across an original sealed vinyl copy of "Abre Tu Mente," their mid-80s singles compilation, at a prog-rock specialty shop in NYC, I thought nothing of the 50 bucks they wanted for it, for I wanted anything Dug Dugs now more badly than ever. Besides, the back cover was a whole mess of further clues about the band, including a long list of former members and a dedication to the bassist on their amazing second album SMOG, who had died around that time. I made the best sense I could out of it all and posted updates to the history I'd already begun.

Suddenly, El Mundo Loco had become a real website. I was cooking with fire now, with the main Dug Dug now watching over it all. Or was he? I hadn't heard from him in almost four months.

When we talked on the phone in December '97, I had given Armando my phone number and forgot about it. So it was quite a shock when a telephone message came for me in early April '98. It was from Armando, and he had some major, major news for me -- he was coming to New York the following week! He didn't even have to ask me to do the honors of picking him up at Newark Airport. I knew it was my absolute date with destiny calling. I had to catch my breath after this one for sure. In just nine months, what started as a simple inquiry as to who and what and where Armando Nava was, became a full fledged opportunity to meet him in person. I never, ever thought it would ever come to this. And it would get even better still.

THE RAYBRAZEN.COM STORY, PART TWO

In early 1997 a young lady I was dating planted the seed in my mind that I should start a website. I, with my utter lack of computer literacy, thought she was nuts at first. But when I found out you didn't need much computer literacy at all to put together a basic site, I set about starting to learn how. My big mistake was paying $350 to this cheap trade school to learn HTML. It took less than one class for me to realize I could just teach that shit to myself. I finally took the "textbook" I could've just paid 20 bucks for at Barnes & Noble and did just that. (If anyone from Career Center in NYC is reading this, I still want my money back, you cheap scammers.)

Back in '97 the internet was a very, very different little beast. You had to tap into a telephone line to get online, and downloading took forever and a day. There was no Facebook, no Twitter, no Youtube, no Soundcloud. But the word was out that HTML was so easy a child could learn it, and the "homepage" craze had begun accordingly in earnest. Most of the people who were creating these pages had anything but talent and original ideas. Thus, you had 1,000 "websites" (I use that term VERY loosely here!) on the Beatles and Pink Floyd, and about half a billion Simpsons "homepages," all with the same damned completely generic content. The web in '97 was anything but a worldwide archive of everything that exists under the sun. There was no Google, only a gaggle of equally shitty search engines like Altavista and Lycos and I forget the names of the rest.

So of course, I went ahead and practiced my HTML skills by making a website about Los Dug Dugs, taking what few clues I had about them and getting to work. I honestly admit the premise seemed like a joke at first. With the web still in its infancy, I figured there was no sense in bothering to put Los Dug Dug's there. Who would even notice a tiny little site like this one, with hardly any information outside of what little I knew about them? But when I came across that ad for Geocities, the free web hosting site started by Yahoo, offering two free megabytes with which to put up my tiny test site, I began to take the idea a bit more seriously. It was obvious I had nothing to lose by putting it online, and besides, however horrible the quality of my site was, at least I'd be offering something different, instead of the 9 billionth useless Beatles fan site.

And so, on July 31, 1997, "Los Dug Dug's Homepage," the very first website devoted to a rock band from Mexico, premiered on the internet through Geocities, quietly and with hardly any fanfare at all. Naturally, creating it was the easy part. Now I was faced with the far more difficult task of promoting it. Had I started it today, I could've just posted it on Facebook, and wouldn't have had to lift a finger to get it listed on Google. Twenty years ago, though, you actually had to submit your URL to one of the lousy search engine sites I mentioned earlier, then wait several days and keep your fingers crossed that they'd get around to listing it. It took awhile, but soon my site was on Altavista and the other lame search engines of the day.

While waiting for this to happen, I took to these very same search sites to find other places on the web where I could promote the site. That's how I happened across the Bomp Message Board, a spinoff of the famed garage-rock label and fanzine where you could talk about all things related to punk and pyschedelic music. I figured it was as good a place as any to hawk my site, so I signed up and then began my first Dug Dug's site promo campaign there in earnest. This campaign paid off to a certain degree as I soon found myself entering into handshake deals with creators of other obscure rock-oriented websites, who would link my site on theirs in exchange for the privilege of their sites being linked on mine. That's how we used to do it!

It was all well and good that these linking deals led to my site being seen in countries such as Australia and the UK, but still I had my doubts that my work would ever be seen in the one country that really mattered in my search for Los Dug Dug's -- namely, Mexico. That's why I was very surprised and shocked when I received an email in early October '97 from a man named Marco Mejia. It appeared to originate from Mexico City and was in very bad English, but it was understandable enough for me to gather that this Marco worked near a bar where Los Dug Dug's played all the time and he was willing to tell Armando Nava himself about my site and my search for him. I was excited but skeptical, especially so when my initial attempts to reply to this email were all marked "undeliverable." So close, and yet so far? I kept trying and trying again, taking about a month until I finally got a message through to Marco successfully, by which time he had written again wondering why he hadn't heard from me. A few very awkward words in both English and Spanish were exchanged, and Marco told me to stand by, promising that someone "very important" with ties to the band would be in touch with me shortly. And so I waited.

Like I said, my site at the time was extremely primitive. Just three short pages consisting only of whatever album cover images I had of the band, accompanied by whatever little information I could gather from their records and an article which detailed my discovery and subsequent obsession with Los Dug Dug's and ended on a plea for anyone with information on them to step forward. As for streaming their music, all I could fit onto the tiny 2 megabytes of storage Geocities had given me to start with were a few short samples in WAV format. MP3s had come into existence by then, but with only a 56K connection through a phone line, the simplest of three-minute songs took an hour or more to download.

Indeed, my site was what it was, but ultimately, what little it provided would prove more than enough. On November 22, 1997, Los Dug Dug's Homepage received a very historic visit from the last man I ever thought would even find out about it. And that night, I checked my email before bedtime with the initial plan of just going right to sleep afterwards. When I saw what awaited me in my inbox, though, I wound up staying up half the night.

THE RAYBRAZEN.COM STORY, PART ONE

It all began in Ensenada, Mexico on July 22, 1988. That was the day I first discovered the band that would ultimately lead me to the humble beginnings of one of my greatest projects... and greatest adventures.

I was on a weeklong safari in southern California with my parents, and had successfully begged them to take me to Mexico while we were there. Rather than risk driving, we opted to take a tour bus. It was driven by a wonderful Mexican guide named Val (pictured below with yours truly during a quick pit stop in Rosarito), who was almost as entertaining as the country itself. But I didn't want to just fritter around Tijuana for a couple hours and leave quicker than I'd arrived -- I wanted to dig a little deeper than that. And so we rode that bus all the way to Ensenada, down Route One along the Baja Peninsula, where I saw the biggest, most ferocious ocean waves I've ever seen to this day. Ultimately we arrived at our destination and a big shopping strip populated by roadside taco carts (which I was admittedly too wary of to try, much though they were very tempting), sad-eyed poor kids selling penny candy, and lots of stores.

Of course, I went right for the record shops, finding them practically by instinct. I already had a basic knowledge of the local rock music through bootlegs like "Mexican Rock & Roll Rumble," and was hoping to find some records by one band in particular, Los Locos Del Ritmo. There were none to be found in that strip in Ensenada, but in one particularly dusty bin I found another very mysterious album whose cover immediately took me by surprise. The front depicted three guys dressed in cool jumpsuits that were true '70s rock period pieces, playing amidst a haze of dry ice. They looked almost like Mexico's answer to Black Sabbath. The name of the album was emblazoned in big silver letters: "EL LOCO." When I flipped it over I immediately noticed that most of the song titles were in English. Two names in particular stood right out: "Stupid People" and "We Always Hate Your Manners."

That was it. I'd seen all I needed to see. It was obvious this album stood a pretty darn good chance of turning out to be some seriously heavy duty music. I paid six American dollars at the counter for it, and in a flash, my quest for Los Locos Del Ritmo was quickly forgotten. From that day forward, Mexican rock would be all about Los Dug Dug's for me.

There would be four agonizing days of obsessive speculation about what they might sound like before I would finally get to hear them. But on the night we returned home to New Jersey, no sooner had we brought in our suitcases than I pulled "El Loco" out of mine and went straight to my turntable. Side one, track one was"Stupid People." And yes, the song rocked, all right... but in a way I didn't see coming for a second. It was a very strange mix of hard rock and mariachi music! There was even a break in the middle of the song which featured the world famous Mariachi Vargas just wailing their butts off for 30 seconds! It was a weird sound to my gringo ears indeed. But you know what? It totally worked! Beyond the mix of local and international influences was a great song with beautiful playing. And again, it rocked. As did "We Always Hate Your Manners" and some of the other songs as well, which were considerably less mariachi and more straightforward hard rock. And the title track was a quirky instrumental prog-rock parody! The album also had a couple of slow ballads that I didn't care much for at first, but would come to appreciate over time. All in all, I couldn't have asked for a better record to bring back from Ensenada.

My interest in Los Dug Dug's might not have gone much further from there if not for a chance second brush with fate about a month later. I was browsing around in a used record store on St. Mark's Place called Sounds when suddenly I came across... another album by Los Dug Dug's! I mean, really now, what were the chances? It was proof they'd made more than one record for sure, appearing to be a "greatest hits" collection of sorts. There were several photos of the band that showed them in various stages of their career, and they added to the intrigue already created by the "El Loco" cover. And it was in the one dollar bin of all glorious places. Sold!

Upon bringing this second album home I immediately jumped to "Stupid People" simply because I was quick to notice it appeared to be a shorter version and was curious about it for some reason. I waited for the mariachi rock explosion to follow... only to be greeted by a totally different, balls-out garage-rock version that stood the "El Loco" version on its side! Then, going back to the beginning, I was greeted by the experimental strains of the intro to "Lost In My World," which then became a strange psychedelic waltz like no other I've heard before or since.

That did it once and for all. I was now officially obsessed with Los Dug Dug's and there was no turning back. I couldn't stop playing either album for trying. These were two of the most uniquely brilliant records I'd found in a long time, and to think I'd discovered them in Mexico. The only clue I could gather about them was that they were led by a man named Armando Nava, whose credits as writer and producer of both records were the only information given on either one. Whoever he was, Senor Nava was now offficially my new rock idol. Both albums had just as mysteriously been released only in Mexico on the RCA Camden (!) label, and I was very determined to find out more about Los Dug Dug's.

But remember, folks, we didn't have this here thing we call the internet in 1988. Back then, if you wanted to know more, you actually had to get out there in the real world and dig for it. I had but two options at that time: the first was to send a letter to RCA Mexico at the address on the album covers and hope that someone there spoke English. They never replied. The second was to alert two close friends I knew were going to Mexico at around the same time to be on the lookout for any and all things Dug Dug's while there. One of them did report back that they'd seen a poster for a DD's concert in Mexico City. Ah! At least I now knew they still existed in some form... if not much else about them.

It was during the early stages of this obsession that I purchased a copy of a fanzine called Kicks, published by the husband and wife team of Billy Miller and Miriam Linna who also run the great Norton label. I saw both of 'em around town a lot in those days, and while I never really became friends with them, I do recall them as very nice folks. And this strange zine they wrote was also to have a profound effect on me around this time. It had the Trashmen on the cover and a massive cover story and interview with all of their surviving members. It also introduced me to all these obscure artists they'd all discovered completely through massive crate digging. Billy and Miriam would find totally unknown '50s and '60s rock 45s, then actually try to track down the folks who made them! Whenever they hit paydirt they'd interview the artist extensively and then publish it in Kicks. I was immediately drawn to the stories of Billy and Miriam's exploits and I absorbed them all like a sponge. To me there seemed nothing cooler than going from some strange garage sale discovery to meeting the men on those old, dusty 45s in person.

It may not have had any articles on Los Dug Dug's in it. But Kicks magazine put the whole situation into perspective for me. It flat-out made me determined to have a similar moment of glory with the mysterious Armando Nava. It would take me almost a full decade to get it right. But ultimately I would. And in the most accidental of ways, too.

It was in 1994 that I heard about the internet for the very first time. I remember exactly how, too: my roommate at the time had a friend of his over and I walked into their conversation just as she was starting to describe it. Even before I ever got on it myself, I could tell by the fact that this friend said she spent hours on the damn thing that this was something with the potential for maximum time-wasting. About a year later, when my mother finally got online, I found that out for myself for sure. It seemed like you could look up just about anything on it. Anything, that is, except Los Dug Dug's.

Ultimately, it would be me who would fix that.

BEACH BOYS & STEVE MILLER BAND, 1978

Seeing as how punk was influenced in part by surf music, it makes perfect sense that I was into surf music myself well before punk came along. When I was ten years old, my cousin Danny played me a little song called "Wipe Out" by the Surfaris. It blew my mind and sent me into a frenzy of discovering other surf groups like Jan & Dean, the Ventures (who became my all-time favorites), and finally, the Beach Boys. I started with "Surfin' Safari" and "Fun Fun Fun" of course. Then came the day I heard a later-period song of theirs called "Heroes and Villains." Whoa. This wasn't the Beach Boys I knew, but something else entirely. My mind was blown all over again, but in a different way this time.

The summer of 1976 was unquestionably the happiest of my entire life. America celebrated its Bicentennial that summer and the party was a total blast from July straight through to September. Swept up in the spirit of this nationwide shindig, my folks packed up the car, placed me in the back seat, and drove me to Florida, where I not only visited my current city of Orlando for the very first time, but also watched the premiere of the Beach Boys' NBC special on our hotel room's TV set. The music and the tropical surroundings combined to hypnotic effect, and there was no turning back.

Needless to say the Boys were my main soundtrack for the rest of that glorious summer, which culminated with the first two major concerts I ever attended, headlined respectively by Neil Diamond and Liberace. Those shows were a double consolation prize for my mother's inability to get me tickets to the show I REALLY wanted to see, Elton John at Madison Square Garden. Both gigs were fabulous, though, and they both greatly expanded my 11-year-old mind in different ways. I'll never forget Liberace's lightning-speed piano runs or his glittering jewels, nor will I ever forget Neil leading the audience in setting off the flashbulbs on their cameras in unison at the count of three. The resulting blinding light filled the entire stadium and to this day I swear that flash told me I was going to be an entertainer myself someday.

But anyway, back to the Beach Boys. At the end of that Bicentennial summer, Giants Stadium officially opened in East Rutherford, NJ, just on the other side of New York City. Initially intended as a football field, it wasn't long before the idea of having concerts there was successfully pitched to the powers that be. And on June 25, 1978, Giants Stadium held its very first concert, with the Beach Boys and the Steve Miller Band as headliners. A dream come true for me, as I adored both bands at the time. This time Mom was able to score the precious tickets, and so we made it my end-of-school year party. And what a party it was.

It was a beautiful summer Sunday afternoon just perfect for a Beach Boys show. We set out fashionably early and by the time we got to East Rutherford, the highway leading up to the stadium was filled with pedestrians hoofing it from the nearby bus stops to the show. Hitchhiking was commonplace in those days, and Mom and I figured we had nothing to lose by giving a small band of hikers a ride to the parking lot. The ones we picked up turned out to be a lovely, laid-back bunch of hippies who treated us like their long lost friends for the privilege. Once at the stadium, we approached the nearest t-shirt dealer in sight for a Beach Boys souvenir t-shirt. It turned out to be a totally bootleg, very badly silkscreened piece of sweatshop shit which hardly fit me despite a tag claiming it was my size. Oh well.

Our seats were in the upper tier, pretty high up but facing the stage with a nice view of the panorama of people spread out all over us. The loud, booming sound system ensured we'd get to hear everything. Some folks had brought binoculars for a closer view of the stage, and the folks sitting next to us generously shared theirs with us. The sun was beating down on us and it was hot, with Mom and I both dressed sparingly but foolishly not bothering to use sunscreen. This unwise decision would haunt us both much later.

The concert began with a local group bearing the unsavory name of Stanky Brown. Though they were briefly signed to Sire Records, they never found national fame, and with good reason -- their music was every bit as "stanky" as the name implied. We then had to endure a set by one of the lamest soft-rock bands of the '70s, Pablo Cruise, which was exactly what you would've expected, "Whatcha Gonna Do" and all. But then things got good. The buzz going around the stadium was that the Steve Miller Band's entire set was about to be broadcast live on WNEW-FM and other stations throughout the northeast. And when they began blasting 'NEW through the sound system as the stage was being set up for Steve, the crowd went fucking hog wild. The jumbo screens began flashing "HOW ABOUT THAT? WE'RE ON RADIO! LET'S HEAR IT!" And indeed, some folks were making noise as loud as possible, perhaps hoping their loved ones at home could hear them above the massive crowds. (And you thought my "radio debut" was on WFMU!)

It was the height of Steve's late '70s success with "Fly Like An Eagle" and "Book Of Dreams." Though I'd already discovered punk by then, I was still listening to some of what's now called classic rock, and I loved both those albums to death, especially the spacey, highly experimental synthesizer interludes opening and linking the songs. In that regard, Steve didn't disappoint me when he gave "Eagle" an extended space intro leading into a trippy ten minute version. He put on a great show from start to end, and I'll never forget the image of him playing guitar with the axe positioned upside down behind his neck. As much as I loathed Pablo Cruise, their bassist deserves some credit for saving the show by loaning his gear to Steve's bassist when his rig blew up midway through the set. The encore was an interesting one, starting on a new song called "Heart Like A Wheel" which wouldn't even be a hit until years later, and finishing on an honest-to-goodness reggae version of "The Joker" putting a welcome new spin on his well-worn standard. And their whole set was aired live on local radio, and you can now stream the original broadcast in full below. It takes me back there every time, as does this brief dose of silent footage of the general atmosphere of the event. 

By contrast, the day's headliners weren't aired live on 'NEW, though someone out in the field did make a bootleg recording of their set which has recently surfaced (and, alas, has very bad sound quality). But there they were, the group I'd waited so long to see... THE group, the classic Beach Boys lineup of Brian, Carl, Dennis, Mike, and Al Jardine. The REAL Beach Boys, not a cheap Mike-led knockoff. They came out and immediately launched into a killer set, filled with all their hits and then some. That shitty bootleg t-shirt I'd been scammed for in the parking lot at least now made a nifty banner to wave around in the aisles as I danced and sang my ass off. But this was no ordinary Beach Boys gig, I would soon find out.

After 45 minutes or so, everyone suddenly left the stage. Everyone, that is, except Mike. Then, a different backing band came out and suddenly it turned into the fucking Mike Love Show! Huh??? It was Mike's new, very short-lived side project, Celebration, who had a horrid new album out from which they played four whole songs. According to my sources, this was the one and only time they ever hijacked a Beach Boys show. I can't help but wonder if Mike strong-armed his cousins into letting his new band hog the stage like that. Fortunately, that part of the show was soon over and then Brian and his brothers came back and joined them and kicked right into "Heroes And Villains" of all songs, and all was well again. Of course you had the "Good Vibrations" singalong and "Surfin' USA" and "Fun Fun Fun," and I was on my feet in the aisles for the whole thing and it was awesome. I'll always be thankful I saw the classic Beach Boys lineup with all three Wilson brothers while they could still put on a rocking live show.

The sun had been beating down on my mom and I for over six hours and again, we'd forgotten our sunscreen. And so we took home the worst sunburns of our entire lives. My burns were practically second degree. On our way out of the parking lot, screaming for some lotion to put on our legs, we came across the exact same band of hitchhikers we'd driven to the parking lot and gave them a ride back to their bus stop. They were such cool people. I still remember them vividly. The atmosphere throughout the whole day had been calm and peaceful. Everyone was there to have fun. I know I did. But damn, I thought my legs would never heal.

(This post was updated with new links and photos on March 5, 2021.)