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LOCAL BANDS

Garage rockers rev up

 

The Jacuzzi Boys are, from left, Diego Monasterios on drums, Gabriel Alcala on guitar and Danny Gonzalez on bass.
The Jacuzzi Boys are, from left, Diego Monasterios on drums, Gabriel Alcala on guitar and Danny Gonzalez on bass.
PETER ANDREW BOSCH / MIAMI HERALD STAFF

IF YOU GO

What: The Jacuzzi Boys headline the Wow Pow. The show will also serve as the release party for ``No Seasons''

Where: Churchill's Hideaway, 5501 NE Second Ave., Miami

When: 10 p.m. Saturday

Admission: $5

Info: 305-757-1807

Special to The Miami Herald

To most locals, Bill Baggs State Park on Key Biscayne is a lush, green escape from the work-week grind. It's not a place where you'd expect to find a rock band, and certainly not the most significant band Miami has produced in years -- one that has reinvigorated the local live music scene, recorded a half-dozen records and put the city back on the rock 'n' roll map.

But deep inside the park, down a narrow path, beyond a ``Do Not Enter'' sign is the double-wide, three-bedroom mobile home where the Jacuzzi Boys -- bassist Danny Gonzalez, singer-guitarist Gabriel Alcala and drummer Diego Monasterios -- compose, rehearse and plot world domination.

In its non-rocking hours, it's the home of Gonzalez and his parents, who run Bill Baggs' Boater's Grill and Lighthouse Café.

Park life has seeped into the band's lyrics, most notably the funkiness of cohabitating with wildlife.

``For awhile, every song had an animal in it,'' says Alcala, 24. ``Rats, possums, snakes, crocodiles . . .''

``I had a snake die inside the walls of my bathroom,'' says Gonzalez, 28. ``It smelled so bad that I didn't even go in there for a week, and then one day I walked by and thought `Hey, the smell is gone' and I walked in, and there was a blanket of flies covering the whole tub and the window.''

His struggle with the funk became the track Smells Dead on the Jacuzzi Boys' debut album, No Seasons, which will be released Tuesday on the Orlando label Florida's Dying. The band has had five singles in its two years together, but this is its first long-player.

``They are super exciting,'' says Miami ex-pat Mike McGonigal, publisher of Yeti magazine, who included the Jacuzzi Boys track Black Sand on his latest Yeti CD compilation.

McGonigal filmed them at this month's Scion Garage Festival in Portland, Ore., for his nuevo garage rock documentary, In Love With These Times.

``They bring this psychedelic energy and a pop sensibility to the music. And they clearly are having a good time.''

When cultural gatekeepers like McGonigal sing your praises, it's a good time to be in a garage rock band. But Miami is a place where it's difficult to gain traction playing any kind of underground music. In fact, it's usually a dead end.

``We don't have a bunch of clubs and local record stores or local labels,'' Gonzalez says. ``So if you want it, you have to make it happen.''

Even before Alcala and Monasterios, 23, hooked up with Gonzalez, the pair were forcing the action. After a couple of local gigs as a two-piece, they caught the eye of Florida's Dying boss Rich Evans in 2007 at the Backbooth in Orlando. He immediately offered to put out their first single, Ghost, Ghost.

``Musically they were pretty rough,'' Evans says. ``But I'm not one to hold a sloppy show against someone. I've played plenty of them. And the songs were definitely there.''

They returned to Miami, hooked up with Gonzalez and added his bass parts to their recordings. Within a few months, Evans booked the Jacuzzi Boys a tour of the South.

Meanwhile, an opening slot at Churchill's for garage rock icon King Khan's two-man act, King Khan & BBQ, earned them an invitation to open up for the 2008 tour of his 11-piece R&B act, King Khan & the Shrines. It sold out large clubs and theaters all over the United States, making the Jacuzzi Boys a legitimate contender in the garage rock scene.

``We have balls,'' the normally soft-spoken Alcala boasts over a Budweiser on Gonzalez's front porch. ``Everything happened quickly. We played shows to 30 people, and then suddenly we're in huge venues. . . . We played the Great America Music Hall in San Francisco, and our name was on the marquee and we had our own dressing room. It was crazy.''

The tour paid musical dividends as well.

``We developed a way to make our songs blend into each other,'' Gonzalez says. ``No time in between songs -- if you don't like that one, here comes another one. We get in, do our thing and get out.''

And the Jacuzzi Boys thing is a spectacle to behold. As the songs were set up and knocked down like bowling pins at a recent Churchill's gig, Alcala's eyes glowed like the demon baby in Angel Heart.

The largely female audience was mesmerized. They danced for the up-tempo numbers, then rocked back and forth as Alcala droned the lyrics from No Seasons' hypnotic title cut, a salute to the timelessness of their music as well as the Magic City's climate: ``Seasons come and seasons fall, but I ain't got no seasons at all.''

At 1:30 a.m., the Jacuzzi Boys finish the set. Their diehard fans trudge toward the stage to shake hands and stumble home. Gonzalez thanks them for coming, a satisfied smile on his face, like Hugh Hefner the morning after a pajama party.

``That was pretty good,'' he says. ``See you guys in a few weeks.''

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