until she was forty. When I was seven years old, I stole one of her cigarettes and showed my brothers how to smoke. We were standing by the back bedroom window. Both Juan and Peto started coughing, and I looked up to see Moms standing at the window giving us that Gardere look. We were in big trouble.
We got spanked with a belt big-time. She folded us over herknee as we yelped in pain, and we weren’t allowed out of our room. Sometimes she’d catch the back of our legs with her hand while we were walking past. I’m sure we deserved it most of the time, because we were bad—lying and stealing and taking money to buy soda or bubble gum. If we weren’t doing that, then we were yelling and fighting and getting into some other kind of trouble.
Pops was never a disciplinarian. Having suffered violence as a child, he could never raise a hand to us, which would have hurt him more than it hurt us. He couldn’t even kill a spider or a fly, and he usually cried about things more than we did. He didn’t want to be mad at anyone, hurt anything, or be hurt. Listening to us singing and dancing and laughing together was what really made him happy. That was all he’d ever hoped for when he was a boy, imagining a family of his own one day.
So we focused our energy on music and dance instead and couldn’t wait to show off our routines to him and Moms, who were always proud to introduce us at the next family gathering. Both parents got a kick out of our musical collaborations, but it was Moms who mostly encouraged us to perform for others, even if those “others” were our grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins—not exactly paying customers.
Not yet, at least.
“Okay, everybody, gather round!” she’d cry, clapping her hands. “The kids are going to do their latest number for you!” Guests at every party—at least once a week—knew they were going to get some entertainment from the Escovedo family, whether it was us kids, Pops jamming, or Moms tap-dancing, singing, or being goofy. It was a given that they’d be in for a treat.
None of us knew it at the time, but our childish song-and-dance impressions were setting the stage for our future careers. The way we learned to work, dance, and play together back then inthe sixties taught us invaluable lessons about being in a band that would serve us well for many decades.
In spite of her boundless enthusiasm for what we were doing, Moms was no stage mother and had little interest in our entering an industry she’d witnessed Pops struggle in. He, too, actively discouraged us from thinking of a career in music and constantly warned us how tough it was to live without a guaranteed income.
He sometimes went so far as to lock his instruments away when he left the house so that we wouldn’t be tempted to jam with them. It wasn’t hard to pick the lock, and Juan definitely had the knack. So when Pops left, we’d run to the closet, pull out his instruments, play our hearts out, then quickly return them the second we heard his car pull up. As he walked in, we’d exchange triumphant smiles, the beats still reverberating in our ears.
There was unlimited access to live music beyond our walls too. In Oakland back in the day, it was as if the streets had their own soundtrack. As a second grader, I became obsessed with a band that rehearsed in an apartment on the corner of the next block. Rather than play with dolls or try on my mother’s makeup—the preferred activities of most little girls my age—all I wanted to do was listen to that band rehearse. Whenever I heard the distant bass of their kick drum as they started riffing on a James Brown number, I was like a kid in a candy store and would race over to where they were.
The band rehearsed on the top floor of a house halfway up a hill. When I got there I’d listen for a while, and as soon as there was a break in the numbers, I’d yell: “Hey! Can I come up and listen?” or “Won’t you let me play?”
One of them would
We got spanked with a belt big-time. She folded us over herknee as we yelped in pain, and we weren’t allowed out of our room. Sometimes she’d catch the back of our legs with her hand while we were walking past. I’m sure we deserved it most of the time, because we were bad—lying and stealing and taking money to buy soda or bubble gum. If we weren’t doing that, then we were yelling and fighting and getting into some other kind of trouble.
Pops was never a disciplinarian. Having suffered violence as a child, he could never raise a hand to us, which would have hurt him more than it hurt us. He couldn’t even kill a spider or a fly, and he usually cried about things more than we did. He didn’t want to be mad at anyone, hurt anything, or be hurt. Listening to us singing and dancing and laughing together was what really made him happy. That was all he’d ever hoped for when he was a boy, imagining a family of his own one day.
So we focused our energy on music and dance instead and couldn’t wait to show off our routines to him and Moms, who were always proud to introduce us at the next family gathering. Both parents got a kick out of our musical collaborations, but it was Moms who mostly encouraged us to perform for others, even if those “others” were our grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins—not exactly paying customers.
Not yet, at least.
“Okay, everybody, gather round!” she’d cry, clapping her hands. “The kids are going to do their latest number for you!” Guests at every party—at least once a week—knew they were going to get some entertainment from the Escovedo family, whether it was us kids, Pops jamming, or Moms tap-dancing, singing, or being goofy. It was a given that they’d be in for a treat.
None of us knew it at the time, but our childish song-and-dance impressions were setting the stage for our future careers. The way we learned to work, dance, and play together back then inthe sixties taught us invaluable lessons about being in a band that would serve us well for many decades.
In spite of her boundless enthusiasm for what we were doing, Moms was no stage mother and had little interest in our entering an industry she’d witnessed Pops struggle in. He, too, actively discouraged us from thinking of a career in music and constantly warned us how tough it was to live without a guaranteed income.
He sometimes went so far as to lock his instruments away when he left the house so that we wouldn’t be tempted to jam with them. It wasn’t hard to pick the lock, and Juan definitely had the knack. So when Pops left, we’d run to the closet, pull out his instruments, play our hearts out, then quickly return them the second we heard his car pull up. As he walked in, we’d exchange triumphant smiles, the beats still reverberating in our ears.
There was unlimited access to live music beyond our walls too. In Oakland back in the day, it was as if the streets had their own soundtrack. As a second grader, I became obsessed with a band that rehearsed in an apartment on the corner of the next block. Rather than play with dolls or try on my mother’s makeup—the preferred activities of most little girls my age—all I wanted to do was listen to that band rehearse. Whenever I heard the distant bass of their kick drum as they started riffing on a James Brown number, I was like a kid in a candy store and would race over to where they were.
The band rehearsed on the top floor of a house halfway up a hill. When I got there I’d listen for a while, and as soon as there was a break in the numbers, I’d yell: “Hey! Can I come up and listen?” or “Won’t you let me play?”
One of them would
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