Weather Underground buries name; meet Red Cortez
Kevin Bronson on
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The Weather Underground, one of the most promising young bands in the L.A. orbit, is burying its name. The quartet makes its debut — well, on the Internet, anyway — today as Red Cortez, with a new batch of songs and a new member.
“It was simple,” frontman Harley Prechtel-Cortez says of the name change. “We have a new band member, and after a prolific period over the summer of writing and intense creativity, we decided we need to keep the focus on the music and didn’t want to share our identity with anyone or anything else.” Indeed, in early attention the band received, interviewers were as curious about the name — derived from the Vietnam War-era leftist group — as the music. So, distraction gone.
Over three self-released EPs, the quartet earned plaudits for a brash, literate take on soul-rock, and Prechtel-Cortez, bassist Ryan Kirkpatrick and drummer Diego Guerrero had gone … well, undergound in recent weeks to pen 10 new songs. In the meantime, 22-year-old Calvin J. Love, a native of Edmonton, Alberta, joined the band as guitarist, replacing Sho Bagley.
The band’s new MySpace presence debuts two of those songs, “All the Difference” and “World at Rest.” Its first proper show will be the Nov. 11 debut of Indie 103.1’s “Check One Tuesdays” night at the Echoplex, opening for Earlimart and Afternoons.
Here’s a video introducing the band name, shot at a party at which Red Cortez played “World at Rest”:
Photo by Sonia Onate
[…] As reported at Buzzbands, the L.A. rock ”˜n soul band the Weather Underground have undergone both a lineup shift and a name change””guitarist Sho Bagley has been replaced by Calvin J. Love, and the Weather Underground has become Red Cortez.” A message from the band is after jump , two new tracks featuring Love, “World At Rest” and “All The Difference,” are playing on the band’s Myspace page, and, as for the name, hopefully it will push writers to actually mention the band’s music within the first few paragraphs of a review/ interview, rather than a series of breakdowns about the group’s heady influences. […]
According to foldsilverlake.com Red Cortez are also slated to play Silverlake Lounge on October 29th.
[…] As reported yesterday, the Weather Underground are no more, having been rechristened as Red Cortez, as well as amicably replacing original guitarist Sho Bagley with Calvin J. Love. And, to ignite a new era for the band, they have released two new songs (recorded with Love) on Red Cortez’s Myspace page: the meditative “All the Difference” and the ripcord rock of “World at Rest.” Either song would have been at home on Bird in the Hand, the band’s hyper-eclectic and earthy 2008 EP, with both tracks inverting the sounds of everything from Exile on Main Street-era Stones to In Person at the Whisky a Go Go-era Redding with a punkish zeal that doesn’t preclude subtlety and dynamics. […]
[…] can go here for details on the new lineup (featuring guitarist Calvin J. Love), and here for our review of two […]