Further proof that Los Suziox is the real deal, Andres Torres AKA “Mono” or “Monkey”, the long time drummer (Baterista in Spanish) of the band recently won the Yamaha Music contest for best drummer. Andres bested drummers from all over the country of Colombia in all genres of music in the online contest and was gifted with a nice framed photo, a brand new Yamaha Drum Kit and other goodies.
Last Friday, the band was a feature of a live, televised special on Telemedellin, the excellent local cable channel, performing a concert at their stomping grounds in the north of the city, near Castilla and Bello.
The weather was absolutely perfect (not a rain drop in sight), as I arrived early when the camera trucks were setting up. I was super impressed at the setup.
When I arrived there were at least 4 camera operators, a sizable crew with the camera truck, 3 on air presenters, the Yamaha music promotions team and of course, Los Suziox, their fans and members of the community (including dozens of cute kids who cleaned out my supply of Punk Outlaw Stickers in about 10 minutes flat).
As cameras began rolling live, I unsuspectingly wandered into the background of one of the shots (ala a blind NYC Governor David Patterson on a Saturday Night Live skit) and rather than being shouted off the frame, was simply told “tranquila” (don’t worry). Gotta love Colombia!
After a couple of interviews with Yamaha Promotions and Mono, it was time for Los Suziox to work their magic live. For this gig, they enlisted a 3rd guitar to give the sound more richness and fullness for their national audience. After some brief sound issues with the lead vocals missing during the first song (Revolucion, one of my favorites), the rest of the sets went off without a hitch.
As soon as the 1st song began a band of 50 or so punks descended seemingly out of nowhere and began an enthusiastic circle pit and they kept it up the entire time.
After the concert, I noticed a cute little rocker kid with long hair pounding skillfully on Andres’ newly acquired drum kit. Dude had skills and turns out that he was one of two of Mono’s kids, both very able on the drums.
Looks like it runs in the family. Congratulations to Andres and Los Suziox for their success and thanks to the fine folks at Yamaha Music and Telemedellin for a great evening of punk rock.
