The Zeros - Beat Your Heart Out 7inch
August 30th, 2008
The Zeros - Beat your Heart Out // Wild Weekend (Bomp) 1978. This one goes out to Mike, Otto, Ben, RG, Texas Bell-End, Tom G and Scott. It’s the second Zeros 45 and its not as good as the first (Don’t Push Me Around / Wimp). However, it is featured on the amazing and easy to find Bomp compilation The Zeros - Don’t Push Me Around. A lot of people, myself included, have mistaken The Zeros for an East LA band because of their Latino heritage. However, The Zeros were actually from San Diego. They were younger than the Hollywood punks of the time and were sorta looked upon as cool, upstart, little brothers to a lot of the Hollywood bands. As pointed out previously, the Zeros were a combination of a lot of disparate elements; they combined a nascent garage punk look and sound with real Class-of-77 song themes. They used to stay at the Tropicana Motor Inn in LA when visiting and co-resident Tom Waits used to refer to them as “these Mexican kids with pointy shoes”, which I think sums it up.
The lead singer of the band was a guy named Javier Escovedo. His brother Alejandro was in The Nuns up in San Francisco so there was a lot of musical cross-pollination with these guys all up and down the Pacific seacoast. After The Zeros ended, Alejandro (who was at that point playing with Rank and File) and Javier formed the highly underappreciated True Believers in Austin, Texas. Perhaps even more interesting is the story of guitarist Robert Lopez who, after a short stint in Catholic Discipline, went on to become El Vez. Possibly one of the greatest live acts in the history of the world.







