Enrique Lopetegui - Nobody Told Me Nada: Latin Pop, Llama Poop & Other Unexpected Writings

All stories Enrique Lopetegui, after original publication by the LA Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Voice Media Group (New Times and Dallas Observer) and Euclid Media Group (San Antonio Current).

The name of this book is taken from a line in the song Nadie me dijo nada by Jaime Roos, who granted permission for its use.

Editorial assistance by Catherine Barnes.

Cover illustration by Alejandro OKif (IG @aleokif).

Gloria Guerreros Foreword translated from Spanish by Enrique Lopetegui.

First edition 2022 by Enrique Lopetegui, Yulel Media, LLC.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, except brief quotations to be used in book reviews by the press.

Nobody Told Me Nada: Latin Pop, Llama Poop & Other Unexpected Writings. An Enrique Lopetegui selection (1992-2021).

ISBN 978-1-7353457-2-7

ISBN 978-1-7353457-3-4 (e-book)

Author contact:

This ones for me.

A Little Help From My Friends

I enjoyed working with Enrique Lopetegui tremendously. He was a great addition to the Los Angeles Times pop department. Enrique is filled with the passion and dedication that you always want to see in a critic. He doesnt just write about music but thinks and cares about it in ways that help him explain the role that music plays in our lives and culture. Robert Hilburn (Los Angeles Times critic/music editor 1970-2005, and the author of Corn Flakes with John Lennon and Other Tales From a Rock n Roll Life, Johnny Cash: The Life, and Paul Simon: The Life)

Ive admired Enriques work since his days as music writer for the LA Weekly and Los Angeles Times. Hes always stood out as a singular, unique voice the rare journalist who artfully tackles just about anything you put in front of him, and does so in Spanish and English. No wonder I was excited when I learned about this compilation of his work! Enrique thrives in the busy intersections between pop music, sports, politics and film. His passion for cross-cultural criticism is palpable ... and contagious. Happy reading. Lorraine Ali (Los Angeles Times)

There are people who can write in a very scholarly and substantiated manner, but they lack that punch, that edge I love so much both in music and the written word. His personal moment [at the Los Angeles Times] and the era itself [in the 90s] achieved a phenomenon that hit me hard and was a great influence on my own professional development. Gustavo Santaolalla (Two-time Academy Award winner producer and composer)

The first thing you notice about Enrique Lopetegui is his passion. He doesnt think of music as a trendy lifestyle accessory or treat it like decorative aural wallpaper. For him, its as essential as oxygen and as deep as an ocean. You always get the sense that he resents music that fails to live up to its spiritual potential.

I first asked Enrique to contribute music pieces for the San Antonio Current because I was impressed by his knowledge of rock en espaol. His command of the musics nuances were/are formidable, and I always found myself understanding the form better after reading his work. But it didnt take long before I realized how eclectic and unpredictable his tastes were and how adept he was at writing about a wide range of musical genres.

When he loves something, he fully immerses himself in it. He showed that with Juanitos Lab, the 15-year, labor-of-love documentary he and his wife, Guillermina Zabala, created about San Antonio virtuoso musician Juanito Castillo.

Enriques passion for the music and his need to share that passion with others permeates all of his writing. And he has a way of making you care just as much as he does. Gilbert Garca (San Antonio Express-News writer and the author of Reagans Comeback: Four Weeks in Texas That Changed American Politics Forever)

In the 1990s a time of searing upheaval, of riots and reaction and a pandemic, sound familiar? Enrique Lopetegui shows up at the doors of the Los Angeles Times armed with a critics pen and a rockers heart. From impossibly distant Uruguay, he was able to listen to the sounds of L.A. as an outsiders outsider and reveal us to ourselves, without pieties but with honesty and the ruthless passion of the young writer. There is no art without the critic that lonely soul who doesnt play in the band but who pushes it along its journey into culture and history or sometimes, oblivion. Lopetegui makes his own kind of music on the page celebrating and commiserating, pleading and needling, wrestling and protesting a scene he was an indelible part of. Que viva el crtico! And long live rocanrol! Rubn Martnez (author of Desert America: A Journey Across Our Most Divided Landscape)

Lopetegui is the absolute first journalist outside of East Los and indeed the USA, with the insight and temerity to coin the now extensively used phrase A Triple Identity in defining how to look at, separate, perceive and understand what it is to be Chicano in a monolithic Latinx universe. Jess Velo (bassist for Los Illegals)

Foreword

by Gloria Guerrero (*)

Against the popular hoarding is easy belief, to compile ones historic articles in a sole paperback volume is a very, very complicated task. The scribe will have to come up with a crazy yet intelligible arrangement out of hundreds of loose yellowish pages (or open windows on a screen), and the work will be damn hard. First, the author needs to know how to choose and balance; then comes the bitterness the chronological order of the stories (it has to be chronological, he told me) will not necessarily reflect what the original intention was (History is a bitch). Then, the author will resist the temptation to manipulate the text, and this is a key point: that question, that comma, that follow-up question Would I have asked it differently today, after so many years? Since those texts were published in their time, in their days and hours, nothing can be touched. Nothing.

And what happens to the author of all this mambo? Nobody is the same person of yesteryear; its possible that the journalist thinks differently now, even better than before. Suddenly, thousands of little loose pieces, related by dates but not identical in their intensity, take the shape of a book and end up being another story, original and new. No, its no easy task.

Those interviewed in this book are not the same, either. Some may have evolved (or regressed) or even disappeared. Thats the strange nature of the telling of History. God bless the guiding thread of this story: the feathers of the person who is writing.

There are many feathers in Enrique Lopeteguis cap. There is the Feather of Thoroughness in terms of vivisecting geographies, societies, and cultures (his articles include the original accents of Hispanic last names, a welcome detail); theres also the Feather of Sports, because he really knows what hes talking about, and he enjoys it; the Feather of Clever Humor, sometimes tiny and unexpected, sometimes even grotesque, with which he crowns interviews or chronicles; and let us not forget his Feather of Music: his delirious review of the Grammy Awards (The Incredible Shrinking Grammy, 2009) is superb.