As I’ve written about a lot before, I’m a mixed kid who grew up in a bicultural household. My mom moved to the U.S. from El Salvador as an adult. My dad’s grandparents were immigrants to the U.S. from Poland and Germany (so, generic white person). I grew up listening to my mom’s Latin pop (my dad’s not really a music guy) and eventually got into noisy alt rock as a teenager (my fave bands were Sonic Youth and Sleater Kinney, neither of which sound like merengue). But I didn’t discover Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez’ Love and Rockets, the early 1980s alternative comic series, until I was in my early twenties.
I loved the aesthetic of the series, the women-centric storylines, and the punked-out Chicano characters of especially Jaime’s stories. I don’t think there’s been anything quite like it, before or since. Los Bros Hernandez were on my favourite music podcast yesterday, NPR’s Alt.Latino, to talk about the music they grew up on and how it shaped their work. Here’s the link.
Absolutely awesome. I’ve been looking to round up interviews from Los Bros over the last few weeks (Doing the bi-annual “read-through” of those old dog-eared softcover editions of L n’ R), and I happened upon this… serendipiddy-doo!
Thank you for the share, great listen.
Glad you stumbled onto this! I’m so in love with LnR. Los Bros are doing lots of press of late to promote the 30th anniversary of the series.
I had to seriously pinch myself when I originally heard that: THIRTY YEARS? Small wonder that this comic’s got such a place in so many people’s hearts, it’s turned out to be some Bizarro-world, flipside, crazy-cool story of our collective lives…