El Vez

Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go's had just moved out of the Canterbury Apartments, a 1920s apartment building on Hollywood Boulevard inhabited by a number of L.A. punk musicians and located across the street from punk club the Masque, and left her apartment to Lopez.

He supported himself with a job at a nearby Pizza Hut.

That winter, he and Margot Olavarria, who had recently been dismissed from the Go-Go's, traveled to New York City, where Lopez stayed for a few months with friends who had transplanted from Los Angeles.

There he met various local punk performers; attended shows at clubs such as CBGB, Max's Kansas City, and the Mudd Club; and went to Studio 54 "to pick fights with Steve Rubell."

On his return to Los Angeles, he moved into an apartment just west of La Brea Avenue vacated by Screamers lyricist Gorilla Rose, and worked as a cashier at El Coyote Cafe.

Settling into Los Angeles, Lopez joined a band called the Johnnies as well as the short-lived group Catholic Discipline, in which he played a Farfisa Combo Compact keyboard.

Consisting of personalities from the L.A. punk scene, Catholic Discipline was fronted by Slash magazine editor Claude "Kickboy Face" Bessy and also included Phranc of Nervous Gender as well as Craig Lee, music writer for LA Weekly and guitarist in the Bags.

Robert Alan Lopez (born 1960), better known by his stage name El Vez, is an American singer-songwriter and musician, who performs and records original material and covers classic rock songs.

Mixing the styles of Elvis Presley and many other American rock artists with his own Latin-American heritage and music, he is known for expressing revolutionary views through the satire and humor in his songs.

Lopez was born in Chula Vista, California in 1960.

His family "floated somewhere between middle and lower-middle class. Our diet included government cheese and something we called 'poor people's Chop Suey' a few times a week."

He later described himself as a misfit in his youth, saying that he cried easily, did not have many friends, and "was a very, very chubby kid who had found his nest of salt in Warhol, Dalí, and the arts. I would spend my lunchtimes in the school library."

His mother, Gina, recalled that "He was always artistic. He was first on his block to have platform shoes. They were about a foot high."

His family was highly political, including an uncle who was in the militant Chicano group the Brown Berets.

His grandparents were born in Mexico, and he frequently traveled there as a youth, visiting its museums and Mesoamerican pyramids, experiences which would influence his later musical work.

He would become more conscious and appreciative of his Mexican heritage later in life, but did not learn any Spanish until he took a few classes while attending Chula Vista High School.

Lopez attended his first concert in 1974, a performance by Led Zeppelin.

His second concert was the New York Dolls, whom he much preferred.

He became interested in rock music, reading Creem and Rock Scene magazines, but could only imagine what the bands sounded like.

His first exposure to punk rock came from watching PBS, on which he saw Iggy Pop perform, and from his older sister Rhoda.

The PBS series An American Family was also an early influence on both his musical tastes and sexual identity: "That is where I was introduced to Lance Loud and Kristian Hoffman (both of whom would go on to form the NYC-based punk band the Mumps). They too were Southern California guys who loved rock music and Warhol and knew that New York was the place to be. In 1975 they would be my first gay role models from watching television. They would become my friends the next year."

In 1976, at age 16, Lopez started a band with classmate Javier Escovedo; Lopez played guitar, while Escovedo played guitar and sang.

Called the Main Street Brats, the group played their first show at a quinceañera in Mexico's Rosarito Beach.

The lineup then changed; Lopez recruited his cousin Karton "Baba" Chanelle to play drums, and Chanelle's Sweetwater High School classmate Hector Penalosa to play bass, and they changed their name to The Zeros.

As the first genuine punk rock band in San Diego, they had difficulty finding places to perform, so they frequently traveled north to Los Angeles which had a thriving punk scene.

Their first L.A. performance, at the Orpheum Theatre, was also the debut performance by the Germs, and was headlined by the Weirdos.

Though only teenagers, The Zeros became regulars on the L.A. club scene, playing shows with bands such as the Dils, the Avengers, X, the Plugz, the Nerves, the Wipers, the Germs, Devo, and the Damned.

They performed in the area so frequently that they were often mistaken for an L.A. band; one magazine even included them in a photo-essay of East L.A. acts.

"Those early shows were pretty inspiring", Lopez wrote forty years later; "I felt part of a movement, or something at least. Part of a music scene. It was a great feeling after years of misfitdom."

He was drawn to the inclusiveness of the scene, which included girls, people of color, gays, and people who did not look or dress like stereotypical "punks".

He became a fan of the art of Gary Panter, the writings of Claude Bessy in Slash magazine and Craig Lee in LA Weekly, and performance artists such as the Kipper Kids and Johanna Went, and idolized Tomata Du Plenty and his band the Screamers.

The Zeros' Mexican American heritage earned them the nickname "the Mexican Ramones", coined by a friend and solidified when it was used in a Los Angeles Times article.

"I loved the Ramones, so I didn't mind the title", Lopez later recalled; "But we thought our style was more New York Dolls and Velvet Underground; after all, we had guitar solos. Yeah, we were Mexicans—so what? It wasn't our calling card. Funny enough, that would become my raison d'être for my later performing—always a "Mexican" something.

Lopez played on The Zeros' first two singles, "Don't Push Me Around" backed with "Wimp" (1977) and "Wild Weekend" backed with "Beat Your Heart Out" (1978), both released on Bomp! Records.

By mid-1978, however, the band was beginning to fracture: "Javier was complaining that Hector was playing in too many different bands", recalled Lopez in 2016; "That seemed to be the main complaint, though there were others."

By that August, Penalosa had moved to Los Angeles and was replaced on bass by Lopez's younger brother Guy.

Both Lopez brothers soon quit the band, also to move to Los Angeles, and The Zeros briefly disbanded.

"I suppose I was ready for a change", said Lopez; "They re-formed the next week without me and then moved to San Francisco. I don't remember being too broken up about it."

Having graduated high school early that year, and turned 18 by that summer, Lopez moved to Hollywood on September 28, 1978.

"I think we saw Catholic Discipline as a 'postpunk' band", said Lopez in 2016.