GYPSY PISTOLEROS release ‘Forever Wild, Beautiful & Damned! Greatest Hits Volume 1’ on April 9th & single ‘Livin La Vida Loca’ on March 26th.
“The Pistoleros are sheer musical escapism” – Classic Rock
“a thrill-a-minute collection of melodic eye patch swagger that smells of exotic spices and forbidden concubines” - Sleazegrinder
Lee Pistolero – vocals
Iggy Pistolero – guitars
Kenny K Doll – bass
Jeff Pistolero – drums
The mongrel offspring of fiery flamenco passion and gritty gutter glam, the Gypsy Pistoleros’ were born roamin’ somewhere between Barcelona and Birmingham, brought into the world to a soundtrack stack-heeled anthems of sleazy 70s America. Standing alone in musical ancestry and sum sound, they’re one of those most rare acts who honestly can claim the tag ‘unique’.
The insane inspiration came from frontman Lee Pistolero, who struck on fusing his roots in the British glam punk circuit to the traditional sounds of Spain when living in Zaragoza during the late-90s. The classifieds rarely being cluttered by musicians who might share such a vision though, Lee left his idea just that for a few years, leaving the recruitment of a fit foil to complete the Toxic-Twins-sloshed-on-sangria core this bizarre band demanded down to Fate. And so, eventually, arrived Iggy, a guitarist so plentifully inked and perennially tanned he practically charts on his hide his and Lee’s shared journey, from stale-beer scented Midlands rock dives, to the majestic Med-coast just upwind of exotic Morocco. Even before some six-string skills of impressive versatility (and surprising virtuosity, even after a dozen vodkas) could be tested Iggy simply looked indispensable to the hard-living gang of highwaymen that would be the Gypsy Pistoleros.
Today rounded out by the rhythms of bassist Kenny K Doll and drummer Jeff Pistolero, the band present as a stranger-than-fiction mob, who defy direct comparison, but who may be best described as being the ideal house band for the fictitious Titty Twister bar of Rodriguez’s From Dusk Til Dawn. Between the nods to Morricone’s tense, tumbleweed atmospheres and the Gypsy Kings’ manic Mediterranean energy, a New York Dolls raw glam spark and a surplus of prime G ’n’ R attitude, the Pistoleros‘ sonic style has roots has a widespread as the global fanbase it’s been gathering since they began playing in 2006.
First facing Spain, and surely the toughest crowd a few English ex-pats playing fucked-up flamenco could hope to find, yet still winning over the national rock press, the Pistoleros have readily found fans almost any place they’ve fleetingly laid hats since. In the UK’s spit ‘n’ sawdust saloons, they’ve earned a reputation as one hard act to follow by undertaking tireless rounds of support tours, and in the real couldn‘t-make-it-up twist to the tale so far, they’ve claimed a spiritual home at annual US 80s rock fest Rocklahoma. Although in a tiny minority of groups formed this side of 1990 to have played the festival in its 5 year history, the Pistoleros are nonetheless the only band to have played all 5 years – becoming a fixture from the moment a show-stopping set at 2007’s 100,000-attracting inaugural event confirmed their fresh take on glam an unexpected Rocklahoma favourite.
The passport stamps the Pistoleros have picked up to date are so many and varied it’s impossible to predict a limit on where they may take ‘flamenco glam’ next, on issuing a new album later in the year. In the meantime, an anthology out on April 9th titled ‘Forever Wild, Beautiful & Damned! Greatest Hits Volume 1’, should be regarded as much as a primer for new Pistoleros converts as a memento collection for the established following. Packing in prime cuts from 2008 debut ‘Para Sempere!’ and 2009’s mini-album ‘Welcome To The Hotel de Muerte’, and tangling Spanish and English tongues through a dizzyingly array sounds, ‘Forever…’ encapsulates the energy, excitement and explosive collisions of unlikely influences which make the Pistoleros so captivating.
On calling card number ‘Un Hombre Sin Rostre Pistolero’, hollers of ‘Pistolero!’ announce the band’s arrival cockily as a round of bullets blasted skywards, before they show-off sharp-shooting skills to back the big mouth, as Iggy slips from sleaze-Santana strokes of Spanish guitar into a last blaze-of-glory Slash solo. Still, the Pistoleros do not easily settle to the Sunset Strip show-offs’ side of the glam spectrum, and when half the notes and twice the pace will suffice, Iggy competently wields the sinewy wired ‘n’ electrified guitarlines that Thunders’ and his waifish, hard-livin’ amigos gave East Coast glitter punk. Dicey tales of edgy encounters on the wild frontier ‘Hotel de la Muerto’ and ‘1234 Kiss Me Then I’m Damned For Sure’ are then completed by some frantic vocal takes from Lee, where he channels Dolls’ descendents Hanoi Rocks in the prime of their wasted youth.
Getting still wilder, faster ‘n’ looser with the curveball influences, ‘Sangre de las Roses’ could be Mariachi El Bronx; if they did American arena ballads and had the cheeky British wit to drop references to South London into the continent-crossing mix! ’Un Para Todo es Bandido’s brass-embellished anthem for restless outlaws could then be the sound of Gogol Bordello’s cousins from warmer climes, but it’s ’Shotgun Kiss is Ay Que Dolor’ which may best put the case for the Pistoleros’ fusion-genre being more vital musical missing link than contrived try at contrariness. Squeezing flamenco’s fire and sleazy rock’s unsubtle sexuality cheek-to-cheek in such style, the tune leaves them looking anything but unnatural bedfellows.
Lead single preceding the album on March 26th will be a live favourite cover of ‘Livin La Vida Loca’, which with cinematic spaghetti western intro, punk’d up pace and tongue-in-cheek humour convincingly retools Ricky Martin’s Latin pop classic as a theme for the Gypsy Pistoleros’ own tornado-like approach to hard ‘n’ fast nomadic living. Its accompanying video appropriately offers a snapshot of the sort of saloon-silencing spectacle to be anticipated when the Pistoleros next hit the stage in March, for a run of regional album release parties. With one of the first confirmed being a wild night in the wandering band’s UK base of Wolverhampton, promising “strippers, burlesque performers and midgets”, it seems proof the Pistoleros’ really do possess the powers to bring the Titty Twister to West Mids could soon finally be at hand.
Fri 23rd March – WOLVERHAMPTON, The Fixxion Warehouse (Club Hell)
Sat 6th April – NOTTINGHAM, The Salutation (Wildside club)
Weds 11th April – LONDON, St Moritz (album launch with *very* special guests, inc. rock legends, ‘Maidens’, burlesque performers, vampiros, strippers, clowns & magicians!)
Sat 26th May – ROCKLAHOMA (US), Headlining the AEG Hard Rock Stage at midnight
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Power Plays w/c 15 April 2024
ENMY The Ledge (FiXT)
KAROBELA Get Hard (indie)
KATH & THE KICKS Neptune (indie)
THE BEE TELLERS River Poem (Black Sand Records)
LAUREN FREEBIRD Like A Bomb (indie)
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09:00-12:00 The Best of 2003-2023
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2023
14:00-16:00 KATARINA PEJAK – Pearls On A String (Ruf Records)
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