Mexican Shuffle was a turning point of the Brass.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Although there was a point with the Tijuana Brass where we were playing for such huge crowds that I kind of lost contact. At one point, the only connection I had with the audience was with people out there lighting cigarettes.
Orchestra had a little brass ensemble on two tracks as well, but the rest was me. I knew I couldn't continue in this direction, even if people liked it, because I can only duplicate myself.
The big turning point, really, was the Beatles' influence on American folk music, and then Roger took it to the next step, and then along came the Lovin' Spoonful and everybody else.
Mexican music runs through my veins. I loved it. Growing up, my father didn't allow us to listen to English music at home. That's all I heard. I had no choice.
It was a mystery to me, how the tuning was, or the style seemed to come out of nowhere, it obviously had roots in America going way back, there was nothing like it for me I'd ever seen before.
The first Latin music that blew my mind was bumba, which was a Puerto Rican beat.
Yeah, it's Pushaz Ink for life. Me, YG, and Mustard started a movement, and we brought back the West.
And that format was - we'd been using that format, I guess, since the late '70s, and it was starting to get very predictable. In other words, certain songs would surface in the same points in the set every so often; it was like rotation.
It wasn't until I let go of the idea of the brass ring that it showed up, and fortunately for me, it coincided with getting clean.
A lot of people said to me, 'Enough with the guest vocalists for a while. We want to hear the Mexican play the guitar!'