Nine Songs: Mariachi El Bronx

BEST FIT: Tell me why you’ve started with this one?

MATT CAUGHTHRAN: Iron Maiden was the first band I actively remember hearing and that had an impact on me. My sister was a Sunset Strip Rock and Roll girl, I grew up on her record collection and Iron Maiden, specifically the Powerslave album and the song “2 Minutes to Midnight”, were seared into my skull.

My mom makes an appearance on this list twice. One day we were going to church, and she’s never done this since, but I distinctly remember this was the first song she ever told me that I couldn’t listen to.

So you're thinking, ‘I'm definitely listening to this.’

It was the words - “The golden goose is on the loose / The hands that threaten doom / The blind men shout ‘Let the creatures out.’” There's so many great lyrics in it, but she was convinced it was satanic. In her very cute way she used to say, ‘Please don't listen to this song, I don't like the message.’ I was really young, maybe six years old.

That's pretty young to be listening to Iron Maiden.

I was super into metal as a kid, and I still am, but that song encompassed the full musical experience to me, as far launching my ears at the inquisitiveness of ‘What is that?’ It was the sound and the alluring beat of metal, Bruce Dickinson's voice and the lyrics, that were dangerous and something I shouldn't hear. Iron Maiden are almost Mariachi-like in their storytelling, their lyrics are so heroic, visual and epic.

They were a big, big band for me growing up, and they still are. All through my childhood I was watching Iron Maiden videos, and listening to them, but that song kicked it all off for me.

It’s pretty serious stuff for a six-year-old to listen to. The title is a reference to The Doomsday Clock, the current forecast is 85 seconds to midnight, the lowest it’s ever been.

It's incredible and sometimes I think, especially at that age, that it feels very real and very scary. And there are also certain Maiden songs I go back to now and I kind of laugh at them, even though I still love them.

I’m guessing “Bring Your Daughter... to the Slaughter” would be one of those?

(Laughs) Exactly, but at that time I was holding the record, looking at the pyramids on the cover and I was, ‘Oh my God, what is this?’ I was hooked.

I've seen them a bunch of times over the years, and as a singer and a vocalist Bruce is right up there. Me and my buddy Scott from the band 400 Blows had this thing called ‘vocal mountain’, where we'd picture who's on top of vocal mountain, and Bruce Dickinson is definitely up there.

With bands from England, anything from overseas - The Scorpions are on the list too and they were another massive one for me - there was something so obviously foreign, mysterious, but almost kind of goofy about them. I would open Hit Parader magazine or RIP magazine and everyone's got their spandex and their bulge, and they're drinking beers.

It was so cool, it made such a big impact on me.

MATT CAUGHTHRAN: Pennywise are a Southern California punk rock band. I would say it's in the third wave of punk, because if you're looking at the first wave, it was The Weirdos and stuff like that, the second wave was bands like Circle Jerks and Fear. I was in high school in the ‘90s, so I missed all those bands.

When I discovered punk rock I loved Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Fear, early Suicidal Tendencies, I never had a chance to see them but there was a new generation of punk rock that happened in the early ‘90s in Southern California, with Epitaph Records and Bad Religion, bands like NOFX.

Pennywise were the next generation after Black Flag and Circle Jerks. They were the torch bearers, and growing up in Southern California discovering punk rock, their first self-titled album was a massive record for me. Over the years we've become friends, we've gone on tours together, and it's really cool.

This is from their second album called Unknown Road. “Homesick” is about the neighbourhood you grew up in turning to shit, and the world turning to shit.

BEST FIT: It sounds like it could be written today.

Oh, it definitely could. The video was all over the video zines that were going around. There's a breakdown in the bridge, in the video there's this big mosh pit, Fletcher Dragge is playing guitar, and there's a punk rock maniac losing his mind. It was another very formative song for me, a very formative video, and it had a big impact on me.

That was my peak discovery of punk rock, and everyone has that era of their life, when they're discovering music that impacts them for the rest of their life for the first time. During the early to mid-90s, I was going to Pennywise shows all the time. I was a young kid, probably fifteen, and I'm still seeing them today.

“Homesick” reminds me of discovering punk rock and going to local shows with your friends. We were trying to sneak beers, getting into shows and causing trouble, and they’re great memories.

Going to concerts in your teens for the first time is a really pivotal moment isn’t it?

It's amazing. My first official concert was the Beach Boys. I didn't start going to concerts until I started going to punk shows, and it was an all-encompassing movement. It was like, ‘I love the records, I love the bands, I love the music, I love the shows, I love the people, I love the culture.’

I was all in, and it's pretty much everything I've been doing since.

MATT CAUGHTHRAN: This is around the time I started singing a little bit, grabbing the microphone in punk rock bands and playing covers with my friends in high school. Phil Anselmo’s voice had a huge impact on me, especially on this record and in this song, it’s as tough as nails.

There’s those moments when you find the song that’s the reason why there's a parental advisory sticker on the album. It's like the first time you heard Zack de la Rocha say ‘Fuck you. I won't do what you tell me’, when you didn't hear the radio edit of “Killing in the Name.” When I first heard “Fucking Hostile” from Vulgar Display of Power, I was like, “Oh my God, this is the fucking most insane band.”

Their aggression and anger, his confidence and the sound of his voice, especially in the early days, when he was lean and mean and fucking going for it, is hard to beat. I wanted to sound like Phil Anselmo when I was younger, it was, ‘That's what I want to be.’ He was tough, he looked cool, he had an incredible voice, and he was a fucking party animal. He knew how to turn any room completely upside down.

Pantera shows were totally insane. It was like Slayer but more rhythmic and punk rock, it was that perfect mix of punk and metal. It was so tough, so badass, and his voice was so big. Phil Anselmo and Henry Rollins were my two goalposts for wanting to sing in a punk rock band. I thought, ‘if I can land somewhere between those two guys, I'll be alright.’

BEST FIT: What was it about this song in particular?

With “Mouth for War” it was the outro. If you're running, working out, or anything, you just lose your mind, it gets you so amped up and I love that about music. I love that about metal and punk rock, where there's that part in the song that kicks it into the next gear - whether it's the bridge, the breakdown, or the outro - that's ‘Boom, step on the gas. We're going 200 miles into this fucking brick wall’.

How old were you when you discovered it?

I was in high school when the album came out. I remember this guy, Ryan Garcia, brought it to me. He's like, ‘Dude, you’ve got to check this band out.’

Ryan was a trip, his family had this local veterinarian practice, and they were really well off. He was a straight-A student, he was always stressing about his grades, but he had the darkest taste in music. He was always, ‘Dude, have you heard Suffocation? Have you heard Cannibal Corpse?’ He was a death metal guy, and it was the weirdest thing.

It's a beautiful thing about being at school, where unlikely friendships can be formed by tastes in music.

It's amazing. You would never in a million years think that would be the music he’d listen to, but he was all about it. I got turned on to so many grindcore and death metal bands from this strait-laced, straight-A student, Ryan Garcia, so shout out to him.

BEST FIT: Is it fair to call this hair metal?

MATT CAUGHTHRAN: This is most definitely hair metal. In the metal realm, there's hair metal and Tesla maybe falls a little bit into the white trashy kind of realm.

I remember the Christmas morning when I got the Five Man Acoustical Jam CD, because I loved Tesla, and I loved that live record, it was recorded the Trocadero in Philly. I listened to it non-stop.

"Love Song” was originally on an album called The Great Radio Controversy and it's got a special place in my heart because the version on The Great Radio Controversy is incredible, and the version on Five Man Acoustical Jam is incredible, it's one of those songs.

It's like, ‘if you know, you know’. If you're a fan of this style of music, this is one of the best songs ever written, this is the ballad. Tommy Skeoch is on guitar, and the guitar intro is two or three minutes long, going into this incredible, perfect ballad with the most insane outro. It's one of those songs that if you put it on in the right room, people are going to go nuts.

What's the right room to put this on in?

The right room is… well, now the room is an old room, let's be honest. This is not a young person's song, I think even me saying I like this song, I'm probably too young for it. But it's definitely a hair metal classic, it's up there with songs like “I Remember You” by Skid Row, “Goodbye to Romance” by Ozzy Osbourne, and all the great ballads of the era.

I know the hair metal genre hasn't aged well, but the people who love it are so loyal to it. I could listen to Poison and bands like that all the time. My wife is younger than me and she gets it. I don't think she really likes it, but hair metal is a special thing, it's a special genre and this is a very special song.

Did it make your wedding playlist?

Yes. This is definitely a wedding playlist song, it's a classic. If you put this on, whether you're on vacation, cleaning your flat or taking a long walk, you can't help but feel this song, you’ve got to love it.

You’ve got to let your guard down with hair metal, you can't approach it as an elitist or as a professional taste maker music listener. You’ve got to let the song take you where it's going take you.

MATT CAUGHTHRAN: Los Lobos are probably in the top five impactful bands of my life.

My life forever changed when I met David Hidalgo Jr. and his younger brother Vincent in high school, and their dad is the singer of Los Lobos. We started playing music together in high school, just messing around, and they're so talented. David plays drums in Social Distortion now, and Vincent plays guitarrón with Mariachi El Bronx. We've been playing together for 30 years.

When we first started El Bronx, singing to this music felt natural. I'll be honest, I approached it with my hair metal roots, because I looked at these songs as ballads.

BEST FIT: Mariachi El Bronx started when you were you were asked to do an acoustic set as The Bronx on TV, but given your dislike of unplugged sets, you decided to do it mariachi-style?

That's exactly what happened, and then we started writing original music and a lot of traditional mariachi stuff. Those songs have been passed down from generation to generation, and there's not a lot of new songs being written, so that's why we came out with the sound, singing in English and all original songs. It really turned some heads, and people were like, ‘This is crazy’.

I leaned on Los Lobos for a guide as to what to do, because David Hidalgo is on vocal mountain as well. He's up there with Bruce Dickinson; his voice is so beautiful, there's so much compassion and love in his voice, it’s so powerful, so smooth and effortless. It feels like he's singing to you, that he’s consoling you, saying ‘It's going to be all right.’

If you listen to Los Lobos, especially some of their Americana stuff where he's singing in English, you'll hear me ripping it off. His voice is everything that I want to be and that I want to sound like in El Bronx.

Why did you choose “La Pistola y El Corazón”?

This song is so beautiful, and the album is so beautiful. It’s all in Spanish and I think he only sings two songs on it, I think Caesar sings a lot of them. This song in particular is another one where when it comes on, you have to stop and listen to it, because it's such a beautiful piece of music. And the way it's recorded, with the thumping on the acoustic instruments, it's super organic, super raw and super real.

Los Lobos is definitely a band I talk about a lot with Mariachi El Bronx, because they’re my North Star of how to do it right. I'm learning Spanish right now and I'm trying to get to a point where when we record the next album, I can sing in Spanish comfortably. It’d be something that can take the band to the next level, a new direction for us, and a natural evolution for the band.

BEST FIT: When did this song come into your life?

MATT CAUGHTHRAN: This is from when we started touring. Every band says they toured non-stop, but in the early days of The Bronx we really did tour non-stop. We were playing shows ten months out of the year for the first ten years of the band, and we were living our best lives. We were kicking ass every night, traveling the world and having the most fun we could have.

When The Bronx became a band, I was friends with Joby, the guitar player. We were playing in another band, and we’d reached the top level of that realm of playing music, where it's your friends you grew up with, playing covers and having fun. There was nothing professional about it, and I didn't really know if I could do anything outside of that.

What happened then?

Joby wanted more, he wanted to be in a band for living. He had a couple friends that were signed to Indie labels, that were trying to make a push - Jorma Vik who became the drummer for The Bronx and James Tweedy - who were working with Joby at Vagrant Records at the time.

He was jamming with them, it was coming together in a way that he was really stoked about, and he asked me if I wanted to come and sing. We all became friends right away, and the chemistry we had musically was automatic.

The Bronx took off pretty quickly, we got right into the studio and chased that momentum and inspiration. And because those guys had a little bit of experience in the industry, they knew who to get it to, so, boom, that happens and The Bronx ends up getting a record deal within the first year and a half of the band.

All that happened super quick, and I say that to reference the fact that when we were in a van and touring, there was still a lot that we didn't know about each other. I'd known all the friends I grew up with for 15 years at this point, but I'd only known these guys for two or three years. Because we'd been so busy, we didn’t have the chance to learn about each other in the ways that best friends and people who hang out every day know about each other.

We're touring in this green Ford Econoline E-350 van and we're listening to music non-stop. Jorma and his dad would go to jazz fest, to blues fest. Jorma had really cool taste in music that was blues and funk driven, a lot of stuff I’d never heard.

He showed me The Meters and this record Rejuvenation, and we wore it out, we played it non-stop driving coast to coast all over the United States. There’s so many songs on that record that are so incredible, but I always think about that bass break after the third chorus of “People Say”, it's so good.

I smile whenever I listen to The Meters, because it takes me back to a carefree time in all of our lives, when we were just winging it. We were in control of our own destiny, literally four dudes in a van driving to gigs, playing music, drinking beers and having the best time.

I think about The Meters and The Rolling Stones a lot in that era, because we were also listening to an ungodly amount of Rolling Stones, which is never a bad thing. But I wanted to put The Meters on here just in case any punk rockers, or anyone who isn't familiar with the band, the record, or the song “People Say”, because it's an instant mood enhancer, you put that record on, and your spirit just lifts.

BEST FIT: Where does your spirit go with this song?

MATT CAUGHTHRAN: This is a bit of an embarrassing story, but going with the moments and songs that have impacted your life, this is definitely one of them.

I’m a Pearl Jam fan, they're definitely a polarising band, and I get that, but I dig them and I like Eddie Vedder. VS. is an incredible record, I was into it a lot, and it was at a time in my life when there was a lot of a change happening. I grew up in Pico Rivera, California, a Mexican neighbourhood and it’s an incredible place to grow up, it was dangerous for sure, but I wouldn't have had it any other way.

At this point, my older brother and sister had moved out, I’d finished high school, I was living with my mom and my dad, and it was that awkward stage of, ‘What's next? I'm not going to go to college, I'm just hanging out with my friends, when am I going to start my journey into being whoever the hell I'm going to be?’

I'm at that moment of being ready to start my own journey in life, and at that point my parents had been on the verge of divorce for quite some time. My dad was a great guy, but he wasn't really emotionally available. My mom was a really hard worker, and she took care of us most of our lives. You could tell it was coming to an end, but they had an opportunity for my dad to work in San Diego. They decided to sell the house and move down to this little condo in Carlsbad.

How were you feeling about it?

It was going to be a time of great transition, and I knew that was going to be the end of their relationship, and I was going to have to be there to witness it, because I had nowhere to go.

I was twenty at this point, but I was still very much a kid. I had a girlfriend at the time, and she was going to college. We get to this condo, and it's just miserable. It was going from a house to a really small, two-bedroom apartment, and the energy there sucked.

I was moving away from all my friends. I had this job that I hated, but that was close to my house, so now I'm going to be driving from Carlsbad, five days a week every morning, to come to this job that I hate. My life felt like it was closing in and it was becoming a very sad picture, and I had all these emotions mounting.

I’d gone into my room and gotten the last of my stuff, my punk rock posters, clothes, and anything I'd spent my whole young adult life collecting, and all these memories in this house and this neighbourhood. I'd come of age in this neighbourhood, had my first drink in this alley, my first fight, all these different things. My whole childhood was ending and I felt it.

We got in the car, I put on the CD player, “Rearviewmirror” came on, and I'm not ashamed to admit it, I started bawling. A whole lifetime of bottled-up emotion came pouring out as I was driving down to San Diego for what was going to be an unknown amount of time, in an unknown future.

There were so many things happening at once, so many emotions hit me at once, and I just lost it, but that song was there for me in that moment. It was like it wrapped its arms around me. I'll always have a special place in my heart for that song, and I still get emotional when I hear it. Now I can look back and kind of laugh, but at that time it was like it was the fucking end of the world.

The recording of “Rearviewmirror” was very emotional, you can hear the drummer throwing his drumsticks against the wall at the end of the song, and then he punched his snare drum and threw it off a cliff.

That's amazing, I didn't know that. It's a beautiful song, and the outro has so much emotion in it, just like “Corduroy” does on Vitalogy. Certain songs just know how to hit that emotion, and that's the thing I love about music, is when bands can do that, that's a super powerful thing, and they're one of the best at it.

BEST FIT: This is from the excellently titled album, Love at First Sting.

MATT CAUGHTHRAN: You might be shocked by this, but Scorpions are the band that I've seen the most. I love the Scorpions. One of the coolest things is that Michael Schenker’s son Tyson, is a Bronx fan and he’s a really good dude. I've known Tyson since our first tour in the UK in 2003, we hit it off and I was like, ‘I'm the craziest Scorpions fan.’

One of the main reasons I've gotten to see them so many times is because Tyson always tells his uncle Rudolph to put me on the guest list. I've gotten to meet them multiple times, and luckily for us they do residencies in Vegas now, so we get to see them all the time.

Why did you choose this one?

With this particular song, I'm a big fan of Rock and Roll themed songs by Rock and Roll bands, and this is a song about a guy leaving to go on tour - ‘Girl, I'm leaving you. I've got to go tonight.’ And the chorus is (sings), “Keep me in your mind / til’ I come back to love you / Keep me in your mind.” It's so good.

This is definitely a deep cut, but any Scorpions fan knows how great it is, the chorus is so melodic, but it's like an anti-chorus, it's super stripped down. This is them in their prime. Love at First Sting is an incredible album, the rockers love the early Scorpions; they love Blackout and that version of the band.

I love that version of the band too, but the hair metal part of me loves this era of the Scorpions. This has been my favourite Scorpion song forever. I've had moments where I've been going on tour, and I've had the exact moments this song describes, it's so awesome.

Every couple years they do a residency in Las Vegas. They were doing the anniversary of Love at First Sting, so I was like, ‘Holy shit, this is my chance, they're going to play it’, because they never play that song, they've got a zillion songs and they're not going to play this one. But they said they were going to play the album front to back, so it's like, ‘Oh shit. They're going to play “I'm Leaving You.”

Tyson hooks us all up, me and my brother and our guitar player Ken, they're my co- metalheads. We go to Vegas, we’re at the casino before the doors open, we're gambling and drinking beers. I hit a royal flush on video poker and win 1,500 bucks. I'm so stoked, I'm so excited.

We had meet and greet passes and we got in line to meet the band. It's so funny, the people signing up in 2025 to meet the Scorpions are a real who's who of complete freaks. You have this guy that has this homemade award he's been trying to give them since 1970. We get to meet them and it's not like they know me by name or anything. I tell Rudolph that Tyson sent me and I get to see Klaus, who is yet another person on top of vocal mountain.

We go inside, and I could tell by the set-list right away that they're not playing the whole album front to back, and I'm like, ‘fuck…’

Please tell me they played it.

...But then the moment happened. They say, ‘We’re only going to play a couple more songs and this song we haven't played in a long time. It's called ‘I’m Leaving You.’

I have the whole thing recorded and it was a top 10 moment of my musical fan existence. It’s an incredible song, and they’re an incredible band. If you want to talk about all time rockers, they're still doing it, they're still putting out records and for the most part, they're pretty fucking good.

They're a band that I idolise for their dedication and longevity. They love playing music. They love being the Scorpions, and I love them for that. I want to be in a band that I love being in, and I am. That attitude really stokes me, how long they've been doing it and they're one of the best bands ever.

MATT CAUGHTHRAN: This is where my mom makes her second appearance. When I was going to high school in my super formative punk rock years, my mom was working three jobs. She was always doing whatever she could to support the family, but also, she was always there emotionally for the kids, with what was going on with us.

Our moments that were her and I were when we rode to school in the morning, because I was always the last one to go as I was the baby of the family. There were a couple of years where it was just me and my mom driving to school in the morning, and she would let me listen to whatever music I was listening to.

BEST FIT: What were you listening to?

I was listening to punk rock, she jumped into punk rock with me and she’d be like, ‘Oh, I don't like this band’, or ‘I like this band.’ We'd listen to all kinds of stuff, gutter punk, street punk, pop punk and she loved all that stuff, she's awesome.

She loved Bad Religion because they were the punk rock band that had the most impact on me, so we would listen to them all the time. They were a Southern California band, just like Pennywise. This song is on an album called No Control, which is one of their great records, it's one of their slower songs, and it’s one that my mom liked specifically. It hit her in a way that I know she wasn't prepared for, and it became one of her favourite songs.

What was it like to have that musical connection with your Mum at that age?

It's telling listening to it when you step outside of the mother and son relationship, and you look at each other just as humans. I look at what was going on in her life at the time, the relationship she had with my dad, the work that she was doing and everything that she was putting into her life to be there for her kids to put food on the table and to try to save her marriage.

The song is about trying to maintain your sanity, I know that was a real thing for her, and I thought it was so cool that we were able to have genuine moments over the same song as two human beings

We toured a lot with Bad Religion over the years, she came to see the shows and hear the song live. It's an important song for me, and I know it's an important song for her. I love my mom, and it's one of those things where we had this band and this song that we could connect over.

Earlier you said she wouldn't let you listen to Iron Maiden. What made her let you listen to Bad Religion!

Well, I think that's because I was sixteen then versus being six!