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 Need a workout? Well, you should make your way to a LOS AMIGOS INVISIBLES show and burn off thousands of calories, as bassist JOSE TORRES suggests to BIRDIE.
“For us, playing live is like going to a football game and training for it in the lead up, and then giving it a 150 percent out in the field,” explains Torres. “It doesn’t matter if you speak the language or not, if you can dance, you will enjoy our show. There’s a lot of exercise involved in the show, you’ll burn thousands of calories just like we do on the stage!”
With 2010 seeing the band’s third visit to Australia in the last 18 years, Torres claims the Venezuelan six-piece has already become accustomed to drawing audiences in their thousands – an incredible feat, really, considering not all of the group’s eight albums have been released in our country.
“Our last album [Commercial, 2009] came out in the US and Latin America so hopefully someone will release it in Australia too,” says Torres. “A lot of our set will be based around that album. It’s a bit of a contradiction and on paper it’s a bit confusing. The album is called Commercial, but it’s actually going back to basics for us, it’s going back to the Latin roots, and even though it’s called Commercial, it won the alternative category at the Latin Grammys!”
The band’s growing success since forming in 1991 has seen LIA members relocate from their native Venezuela to New York and Miami after David Byrne of Talking Heads came across their world beats and signed them to his label Luaka Bop in 1996.
“Venezuela used to be a huge music market in the ‘80s until record sales started declining and now most people just get pirate copies in the streets,” says Torres. “There’s no copyright enforcement or distribution. In the mid-‘90s we started getting offers in the US and Europe and it was getting really expensive to fly there which meant we missed so many opportunities. The fact that David’s label was located in New York was a big reason we first moved there. In 2001 we moved to the ‘States and that’s the story so far.”
And while moving to America was a turning point for the group, it was England that had the biggest impact on the band’s outlook on the music industry, following a European tour in the early ‘90s.
“The moment we got to London, it was a real eye-opener,” claims Torres. “Before we got there, it was like going to the music mecca or something, because we thought that’s the heart of the industry. When we got there we realised that musicians in London were exactly the same as us, they were struggling as much as we were and that we’re all really the same in so many ways. In some cases we even thought to ourselves, ‘man, we are doing better than you, and you’re in London!’ Going to London was our way of demystifying what we thought of the music industry. It opened our eyes to the way we looked at our career. It gave us a lot of courage and confidence.”
LOS AMIGOS INVISIBLES (with DJ Nicodemus) play Buddha Bar in Byron Bay on Wednesday Mar 10, then QPAC’s Concert Hall in Brisbane on Thursday Mar 11 (tickets via www.qpac.com.au). COMMERCIAL is available through Fuse. www.beta.amigosinvisibles.com
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