From Arkitip No. 0047

Regarding Tommy Guerrero. One of my older associations, still evolving, ever amazing. From the beginnings he always had that penetrating curiosity about things. That DIY integrity. And a crazy grasp of harmonics and improvisational deconstruction. I’ve made some notes. Have no clue about structure though. Maybe I could talk it through. Ala: Circa mid 70’s Tommy touted as a comer by the visionary Fausto Vitello during his Nomad Cycle shop period. Segue to Fog Town Fat Carlos the Bail Bondsman’s sponsorship days. Guerrero winning big in the Golden Gate Park Street Open Pro Contest as an amateur. Playing occasionally with Free Beer. Opening for Fear and Bad Brains. Turns professional at the Bones Brigade, a dichotomic intervention of high performance riders meeting a toy engineer, a constant clash of progressives and college wonk managerial types. The Search for Animal Chin was the cinematic equivalent of the Dead End Kids being miscast in a send up of the Brady Bunch Goes Hawaiian on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. Only Chin had Monty Thomulka as a mystic guest star instead of Vincent Price. Time would also deliver thespian performances and more in such theatrical releases as Police Academy, Gleaming the Cube and the Seedling Entrepreneurially Guerrero and Jim Thiebaud were soon after grafted into Vitello and Eric Swenson’s Deluxe, launching Real and an industry was rearranged in the process. This saw TG spending his time in the design atelier and in the sonic chamber honing his musical composition. Art galleries began to hang his output. The world began to see, listen and to groove to rhythmic social conscience. Along came greater things, wife Melissa, son Diego, turning the big forty at Club Verdi with a taco truck in attendance and eventually ten album offerings. On the afternoon of Return of the Bastard’s drop I was standing with the man on a Haight street corner. A passerby shouted out, “Hey Tommy, is it true that you are running for Mayor?” Stranger things have happened.