THE STORY OF DEIMOS

The band Deimos was just a thought around the year 1998. But in 1999, It was started with my anxiety for music and with a lot of time to spare after school. The band has five main members (including me) all which have been my life long friends. We play Ska/Rock and we don’t obey the rules of traditional Spanish Ska bands, because we don’t have 4 or 6 people playing wind instruments and another 6 playing the rest, instead, we have only one person playing the wind instruments, his name is Oscar and he plays the sax, trumpet, and flute. Then we have the lead guitarist Caesar, Armando in playing the bass, and in the drums Flip. I’m the lead singer, and rhythm guitarist of the band, and I write and compose the lyrics and music for about 90% of the songs we have so far. My lyrics are full of imagery populated by animals, by obscure expressions and political complaints. But in the middle of this obscurity, there are many shining moments, and those universal, transcendent halos of light have touched many human beings, or at least I’d like to think so. I record my songs on a small recorder because I don't know how to read or write music. Fortunately, the melody, the lyrics, and the harmonies come to me at the same time; I sit down and begin to play and that harmony suggests what is coming and I can put it together and out of that comes a song. I polish the lyrics later, but the main idea comes from the recorder. In fact, when there is a song that takes me a long time to write, I let it rest and go back to it in a year or so. I don't write so people will talk about me, nor to gain followers; I write because I need to do it, because since I have use of knowledge it has been a wonderful therapy to cleanse my conscience, to understand human beings, and to complement my spirit. That's why I write-I believe that this necessity and that baring of myself is what the people feel and see every time we play a gig. To be part of band you need to get rid of that feeling of being a victim, and make ourselves more men than men and more women than women, in other words we have to learn how to believe in our inner strength and capabilities to let those melodies flow out of soul’s without anything to stop it. You also have to be dedicated, and open-minded, you have to love music in general. I began to write a lot of things from which songs started to emerge, with a three-stringed guitar, it was fun though. My friends followed each and every melody with such precision, it’s a chemistry that cannot be explained, no one in the band knows how to read or write notes, chords, riffs, or any other type of thing used to play instruments. Instead, we like to close our eyes and let our instruments speak our frustrations, sadness, and happiness. Every member has tried working with other bands to put music together, but it just doesn’t work, it seems that the band is meant to stay together or not play at all. A lot of times, what keeps us going is the people that go see us play, it seems that they are tied together, sometimes I think that what ties them together is not the band, nor the alcohol, but a magic that becomes a ritual in every show that we have. The people are what keep this going, they build up this invisible force that goes beyond music and makes the band grow stronger. I'm not talking about record sales, because we're not a group that sells millions of records, but in our concerts, we make magic. The stage is the most important space on the level of experience, because you have direct contact-you can see the eyes, the attitudes, the facial expressions of people and it is there where you have to let out everything you feel, you have to give yourself to the music, and to the people. I believe that such things are what makes a show special and keep you going for more, the passion in which an someone performs is felt by every single person in the audience, and something like that is hard to find. Being called a musician or an artist is hard to understand, because we don’t consider ourselves artist or musicians, or entertainers. All we do is speak what others are afraid of saying, and we use music to get our message across. I tell my parents, “All I’m doing is trying to live a beautiful life, so I can have a beautiful death.” And that’s what a band is all about; it’s about having fun, and enjoying what you do, no matter what people tell you, the poetry in music is what keeps this world going, and like in marriage, you enjoy, and stick together in good times and in bad times. Peace!

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