[Omar] Test, test, test. I'm just testing.
Why can't I hear it?
[loud punk music playing]
El tratamiento mas...
[Lo-fi acoustic guitar playing]
[electric guitar strumming]
How long do you think
it's gonna take us to get there?
- Like an hour.
- Three.
- Like an hour?
- Three.
Three.
[both laughing]
Now look, he has to fit in there because
we moved all our, like, you know,
because we're going
to be up there for six weeks.
[Omar] We bought up, like,
all our stuff, the record player...
[Cedric] With my childbearing
hips and whatnot. It can be hard.
[singing] I didn't have to play.
[Omar] Like regular, you know...
Today is January 17th. Monday.
And it's raining
- [imitating accent] Omar, who are you?
- I'm...
- Me?
- Yes.
I'm a Puerto Rican love child.
We're on our way to the studio.
We're on our way up to Malibu.
[Cedric yelling]
Okay, so I brought a typewriter,
my sleeping bag and pillow. Clothes.
Uh, I brought my Puerto Rican flag.
Um, some pictures of my family.
Let's see. This equalizer.
That doesn't work.
I brought, we brought Cedric,
so he could, you know,
I guess, do something on the record.
[Cedric] Are you making fun of me?
What do you mean?
- Like, why... Can you shut up or no?
- Um. I'm not...
- What do you mean? You... I'm not doing...
- You can drive, right?
Drive, man, just drive...
- Hey!
- I was just...
[Omar] Before I took off to drive again,
I said, "Hey, if this ever gets weird,
promise me that we can just stop.
This is not more important than loving you.
Like, if it ever gets weird, like,
tell me we can just stop, right now."
And he's like, "I promise you."
I say this just to illustrate, like,
how exciting the whole thing was,
but also how beyond us it seemed.
[ethereal ambient synth playing]
[gentle guitar notes playing]
Omar, Cedric, Omar, Cedric,
Cedric, Omar, Cedric.
[guitar playing continues]
[wind noises]
[Omar] It's a beautiful rainy day.
There's a guy behind us.
Probably pretty annoyed.
[radio] Oh, yes.
We got this car full of stuff going on.
Just got off the 1.
And we have to ride this for like
30 minutes now to go up to the studios,
- in the middle of nowhere.
- [Cedric laughs]
To give you an idea of
what's happening to us.
Oh, poor little van.
[Cedric] Oh, man.
[Omar] We were in a band called
At the Drive-In at the time,
and we were on our way
to record our third record.
We were still a small band with
an intimate, loyal following.
Making that album, you could just
tell everything was about to change.
Um, we just didn't know or understand
how it would alter our lives.
Like, how radical and permanent
the change would be.
[Omar putting on a funny voice]
Hey, guys, good luck on your record.
Remember me?
Good luck on your record, guys.
[Omar] Are you good?
[Cedric] It's OK. Let's
get out and check it out.
Just finished loading,
so we're going to move in.
And now we're going to take a look at,
um, our rooms.
[distorted feedback noises]
[Omar] This is the main
room. This is my bed.
[distortion continues]
Cedric's bed.
[Cedric] My dream in bands is always
to go live in the place
where you make your records,
because that's where
the true sh*t comes out.
Living with someone
and you're going to document that.
[Omar] You can eat them, they're edible.
[Cedric] Want some?
Mmm, pretty good.
- You like that?
- Yeah.
It's not edible, you moron.
[Cedric imitating a frog]
Louis CK, but...
[Omar] But the fridge
was full of veggie burgers.
They also got us the best weed
we ever done smoked.
It was all luxury sh*t that, like,
sounds stupid and superficial,
but in terms of being a band that was like
starving and surviving off of bullshit,
to have a stocked fridge and like an SUV
to drive down to the ocean on.
We were like, "This is
like the movies, huh?"
There's Tony's car.
[Cedric] It all sounds
like really simple things,
but you have to realize
we came from a different world.
["Cactus and Honey"
by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
[Omar] When my parents made the decision
to come to the United States,
they moved to South Carolina, which at the time
was a very strange and outwardly r*cist place.
I had the experience of coming home
and not knowing what the word "Spic" meant,
but just they called me it so much
that I said to my dad,
like, "Oh, they changed my name to Spic",
and I said, "What does it mean?"
And he goes, "Oh, it
means a really cool guy."
My parents decided that we needed to leave
and the final straw was when we came home
to see the trash on fire
and spray-painted on the wall was
"sp*cs go home."
And my mother was screaming,
and it was so striking to me as a child.
And my parents just thought,
"There must be some other place
in this country that we can go."
When we moved to El Paso, I was like 11.
It looked like "Mad Max".
So seeing desert...
Everything was wide
and everything was dirt.
[song continues]
It's United States of
America, but it's not.
And it's Mexico, but it's not.
It's a world between two worlds.
It's sort of, uh, a no man's land.
But it was predominantly Latino,
and we felt like we
were closer to our people.
That said, it still had plenty of racism
in the white community there,
and the social structure of white America
over minorities was very clear.
These things start to form,
no matter how young you are,
these things start to form and make sense
and you start to make sense
of the world around you.
And then I met the kids
with the Siouxsie and the Banshees shirts
and the Dead Kennedys stuff.
These friends played punk rock for me,
and I immediately knew
that I had found some sort of place
where things made sense.
["Head is Made of Straw"
by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
[Omar] You know, shows back then
were for the most part in backyards.
Drinking and sh*t, and they're like
slam dancing on a half-pipe.
I saw Cedric right away.
And he was little like
me, but he was in the pit.
And I just thought that was so cool.
[Cedric] When I grew up,
it was always trying to prove like,
"Hey, I'm one of you. I speak Spanish too."
In my head, I had a really hard time
fitting in because, you know, like,
my dad is light skinned, blue eyes,
and I'm light skinned blue eyes, so
we always had the assumption
that we weren't part of the culture,
but it was always kind of like
a chip on my shoulder, you know?
I'm like, we all don't have to look alike
in order to be Mexican here, you know.
[song continues]
Once I found punk rock
in such a desolate place like El Paso,
it was mind-blowing to me.
I'd finally found my reason for living,
my tribe, you know.
[song continues]
[Omar] He was playing with the older guys
and what he was doing was like
super interesting, and it was very obvious
that he was just more advanced
and that he had something else
going on in his brain,
he operated by some other...
by some other rules.
And that was very inspiring.
[song continues] [loud clock ticking]
[Cedric] And I remember seeing him
and he was little, really little.
And I was like, "Oh, a
punk, a little punk. Cool."
And then the next time I see him again,
my band is sharing a garage
to rehearse with another band.
[song continues]
[Omar] I went to go
rehearse at this garage.
I've always looked younger than I am,
and so they were all making fun of me.
I had taken a white Dead Kennedys shirt
and it was too big for me,
so I cut the sleeves
and I wore a black shirt under it,
and Cedric stood up and he's all,
"I think it's cool. It's cool, man."
From being picked on to, like,
having someone standing up for me...
He gave me a lot of confidence.
[Cedric] What I saw in him was me,
and I hope maybe what he saw in me is him.
[Cedric speaking in a French accent]
The chateau. That is the chateau.
I could see the chateau.
The chateau, the chateau. Chateau.
Stop it! Stop it!
[Cedric] It just, it got
weird because, you know,
we were the only two
staying there as well, Omar and I.
Everyone else was staying somewhere else.
They weren't really taking advantage
of the fact that you could
truly "Lord of the Flies" this sh*t.
So we just stayed there
and just had a blast doing
a lot of weird stuff and filming stuff.
[Omar] Then that, that's all "Excalibur".
That's "Blair Witch" right there.
[Cedric imitating a donkey]
[Omar] Cedric, we're like, we're like...
[Cedric imitating a donkey]
We're like little nature boys.
You know what? I wish you would
f*cking leave me and go, just...
Yeah, exactly.
[Omar makes donkey sounds]
[drum loops playing]
[TV static noise]
[TV] She'll testify to that?
[Omar] We start the guitars pretty soon.
[TV] You know, the kid
has the thing that's going on.
Do you think we should come out?
Or should we wait till the album comes out
to come out,
about how we are a couple?
I don't know.
Do you think we should wait? Huh?
I think we should, you know,
depending on how the record does,
then we wait and then.
- Oh, amigo.
- Alright.
- [Omar] No.
- Aw!
[Cedric] Oh, b*stards!
[Omar] Little tree! It didn't do anything.
Aw.
Make it better.
- Oh, you can't. There's no hope.
- [Cedric] It's good.
[Omar] Leave it.
- [Cedric] Oh, b*stard, timber!
- [Omar] No!
Oh. That's nice.
[Cedric] He was super straight edge,
and I just remember,
I think a lot of his friends
got upset with him because
he started dropping acid
and smoking pot with us.
[Omar] I was outed basically
by someone I really trusted,
and I, just, it was such a big betrayal.
And then you can
imagine after that, just like
being called "f*gg*t" and all this stuff.
The potheads did not
care about that at all.
["Salvo" by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
I took one hit, I walked out of her house
and then the sun was very big.
I just remember the sun was so big,
I couldn't believe how big,
like, and important the sun was.
And the street was so long and I tried
to drink water and the cup was so deep.
Then this whole new door opens.
[high-pitched synth sounds]
- [TV] This is...
- [Man] They can't.
[sounds get louder]
[Omar] Cedric, I know
you. I know you, Cedric.
[TV] Let's go over there.
[Cedric] We were able to connect heavily
and tripped a lot together,
you know, and had these just alchemic,
kind of like, obscurity moments
that defined two people going,
"Yes, we're on the same page."
[babies screaming]
[distorted static noises]
[distortion gets more intense]
[cacophony of animal sounds]
[Omar] I know it's a clich, but it's like
there was an opening of something,
there was an understanding of something.
It was a very positive experience.
[children laughing]
[effect modulation sounds]
[bell rings]
[putting on a voice] Welcome to our show.
We are not your friends.
We come here only to dance.
[drum beat loop playing]
[robotic vocals playing]
[flute sounds]
[Cedric] We record, and then at night
we would make our little short films,
and then we'd hike all day and smoke weed
and, you know, do some coke.
It was a very nice, productive
and, like, super creative time.
[speaking through robotic sound effects]
[Cedric] We were just freebasing all night.
[speaking through robotic sound effects]
It was crazy. It was truly, truly crazy.
[both laugh]
[drum loop and flute playing]
[robotic vocals playing]
- You want some pee?
- Pee?
[making donkey noises]
[Omar] Cedric always had that button.
He knew to stop and
be like, "Okay, I'm out."
[television] What did he tell you exactly?
[Cedric] And me, I couldn't...
I had ash all over my mouth
because I had resorted to even licking
the pennies and the razor blades
that I was making the rocks with.
Like licking on them, licking the mirror,
So my my mouth was ash
and I just had to, like, go in the shower,
and I thought I was going to die.
I just like, slept for 12 hours
and then I went and tracked guitars.
[playing "Non Zero Possibility"]
["Vondelpark Bij Nacht"
by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
[Omar] At 17, I left home
and took off hitchhiking across the US.
[song continues]
I needed to discover
what America really is.
I wanted to know who I was
outside of the context of my family.
Was I my father? Was I my mother?
Am I my community? Am I Latino?
Am I the guy who plays in punk bands?
Like, when I was out there, I'm no one.
Nobody cares about me and nobody, like,
wanted to help me
unless they truly wanted to help me.
[saxophone playing]
I went down to LA for a while
and that was awful at the time,
and then hitchhiked over to
Reno, Nevada, Austin, Ely, Utah.
[saxophone playing continues]
I made friends with the Hare Krishnas,
and I made friends with
the people of Food Not Bombs,
and learned sort of that whole system.
And I ended up in Baltimore.
There was America.
There was like all the poverty in my face.
Economic inequality. White, black.
Nothingness. Opportunity.
Got it.
[saxophone and sitar playing]
And there was my first
interaction with heroin.
[instruments continue]
Heroin was much
cheaper than buying a joint.
[instruments continue]
I had like basically pawned
everything I owned to be sh**ting dope.
I just remember saying like that,
"Okay, I think the journey has ended here."
And I called Cedric.
[Man] Yes, hello?
[Omar] And I was just crying to him about
everything I'm describing to you now.
And he said, "Why don't you come back here?
I started a new band.
Come back. There's a place for you here.
Like, get out of there."
[show intro music plays]
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
Here they are, The Drive-In.
From El Paso.
[playing "Grand Mox
Turkin" by At the Drive-In]
# We were born to self-destruct
On birth row... #
[Cedric] I was always in search of him.
I wanted him to come back home,
and eventually he makes his way back,
and joins what is At the Drive-In.
["ZIM" by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez
and John Frusciante plays]
[Cedric] And I just needed him to come in
because it was a little too straight
for my taste, you know?
[Bill Lowrey] What's the most
that guides you on religion now?
What do you think about religion?
- I've been going to church a long time.
- Yeah, you have?
[Cedric] And I knew that
since Omar wasn't there,
the only other serious person was Jim Ward.
I'm like, who can I make a band with?
And he was the first person on my mind.
[Omar] Before that, pretty much everyone
that I played with was Latino, you know?
And now I was joining a band
of all white people, besides Cedric,
and just a very sort of different approach
to art and definitely politics.
So I came back and we
started writing together.
[song continues]
[Cedric] Him and Jim just butted heads
from the from the get-go.
[Omar] So I thought,
like, "Okay, it's different."
It's a different cultural
thing. Like, it's cool.
But then we went on the tour.
I'm telling you,
this is 1995 and still in East Texas,
like, there was a place I
went in and tried to pay
and the guy wouldn't look at me
and wouldn't take my money.
I was pissed, I got the money and I go,
"You f*cking deal with that guy."
And he goes in there. And Jim was like,
"Hey, he's fine, what's your problem?"
He thinks I'm just being overtly sensitive.
And I'm like, "No, this is
like, what's really happening."
We couldn't have been more different.
[song fades to silence]
[Cedric] All right, um, here we go.
From the top again. Yeah?
[Jim] Yeah.
I'll keep the first two tight.
[playing "Mannequin Republic"
by At the Drive-In]
[Producer] Too loud!
Don't play it so loud, Jim.
[continues playing]
It's too high!
It's too loud!
[playing "Enfilade" by
Omar Rodrguez-Lpez]
[Cedric] So, over the years.
At the Drive-In definitely went through
a lot of lineup changes, you know.
Paul and Tony come into the mix.
It was just like a no-brainer, like...
Those guys want what we want.
There was this fire
and that fire, the common fire,
was to get out of here.
[playing "Rascuache" by At the Drive-In]
[Omar] Before Paul and Tony came in,
At the Drive-In was volatile.
We were a total mess,
and Cedric had kicked Jim out of the band
after the very first tour.
I was f*cking off and not taking it
seriously at a certain point.
But once Paul and Tony joined,
they started riding with us
and began to lead us as a serious band.
That vision drove us towards that.
[song continues]
[Omar] Hey.
[song continues] [loud chewing sounds]
# Fences with switches... #
[Omar] It felt like a really exciting time
to be in a band.
More and more people seemed
to actually be interested in us.
# Moats of your hopes... #
We're just touring non-stop.
[song continues]
You know, just that energy
stops going where, like,
you're just racing towards something
and you don't know what it is.
# Shimmering #
# Pacemaker pace yourself #
# You were slowly clawing your way out #
# Slowly, slowly #
# Pacemaker pace yourself #
# You were slowly clawing your way out #
[song fades out]
[Cedric] We're broke. We have $2 a day
between all of us to feed off of.
We sleep in the van. I cook for everybody, and
I have little burners that I bring with us,
and we steal food from
outside of the grocery store.
# Pacemaker pace yourself?
? You were slowly clawing your way out #
# Pacemaker pace yourself?
? You were slowly clawing your way out #
- [Man] Thanks for everything.
- [Man] Thanks for coming.
- [Cedric] Good show guys. Good show.
- Thanks.
[Cedric]And we get signed to Grand Royal.
And that was like,
"Holy f*ck, we got picked up by somebody."
So that was a big deal for us.
We had, in our little minds, had arrived.
# On my way, nails broke and fell #
# Into the wishing well?
? Wishing well, wishing well #
[Cedric] There's this little guy
named Ross Robinson
coming in and out of the story,
being like, "I need to work with you."
Label people, "This guy, you should
work with him. We should work with him."
But everything in his catalog made me say,
"No, I don't want to work with you.
I don't want to work with someone
that worked with Vanilla Ice.
I don't like Limp Bizkit.
Korn is not my jam."
We get roped into basically, like,
"Just do a session with them
and see what it's like."
[plays "Cosmonaut" by At the Drive-In]
[Cedric] Just made it sound so tough
and it was so cool and we were all, like,
blown away. Like, "Yeah,
who cares if he worked with Limp Bizkit?"
[Ross Robinsons] Remember, this has got...
This is that f*cking "puh", you know.
[Omar] So this was new, you know.
Before we had someone who documented us.
Now we had someone who was producing us.
[playing "lnvalid Litter
Dept" by At the Drive-In]
[playing "Enfilade" by At the Drive-In]
- [Ross] We're going to mark it and cut it.
- Class is over.
[Omar] Just when we thought
something couldn't feel more exciting,
that album coming out
was even more exciting.
Our next guests are a wonderful
rock and roll band from El Paso, Texas.
Their CD "Relationship of Command"
was named one of the top 20 albums
of the year by Spin magazine.
Here they are. At the Drive-In.
[playing "One Armed
Scissor" by At the Drive-In]
# This is the campaign?
? Slithered entrails in the cargo bay #
# Tease this amputation
Splintered larynx, it has access now #
# Cut away, cut away #
# Send transmission
To the one armed scissor #
# Cut away, cut away #
# Send transmission
? From the one armed scissor #
# Cut away, cut away #
# Send transmission
? From the one armed scissor #
# Cut away, cut away #
["Big Day Out Intro Sting" plays]
[Cedric] Being in the van and hearing
"One Armed Scissor" come on the radio
in New York at the first time...
Now we're on the f*cking radio
in a mainstream way.
That blew my f*cking mind.
[Omar] I remember getting to Australia.
Our record was in a big stand
at the airport. Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta,
all the same record over and over.
It was amazing.
[bird chirps]
We each have our own room and we still
ended up me and Cedric in the same room.
And like, I can't believe it,
after like, staying in the van where
you can't even turn around like, to this.
[show intro music]
[Presenter] Got any bands lined up
that you're really keen to see?
Because you were on earlier, you
get to go and party the rest of the day.
We're gonna go watch At the Drive-In,
I think you'll find.
At the Drive-In,
unbelievable band to go and see.
I want to go see At the Drive-In.
[Interviewer] Let's discuss NME touting you
as the best new rock band of the year.
Too much hype. Hopefully, well, people,
people will just ignore all that and, uh,
come to a show and enjoy it for what it is.
[Omar] We appreciate them.
[Cedric] They put a lot of
f*cking stupid hype on us
that wasn't necessarily f*cking true.
You don't call a bunch of kids
from El Paso the next Nirvana.
We were not that.
[playing "Arcarsenal" by At the Drive-In]
# I must have read a thousand faces #
# I must have robbed them of their cause #
[Omar] The record again, like, is not exploration
that I would have liked it to have been.
But at the time it felt
good, but I was scared that
it was going to group us in with this like
heavier macho band thing.
# I must have read a thousand faces #
[Cedric] It's scary the kind of sh*t
that we were attracting at the time.
It just felt like, "Whoa, just calm down."
You know? Like,
we don't have to f*cking hurt each other.
I don't want people going home
with f*cking lacerations.
Like, that's cool for some bands,
but I don't want that on my watch.
[Omar] You gotta remember, this was 2000.
Think about the misogynist, h*m* crap
that media like "Rolling Stone"
was championing at the time.
[loud droning distorted sound]
[crowd]
Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit!
[Omar] Bands getting bigger, so the
bigger your audience, the dumber it gets.
And by dumber, I only mean that the
further away from what your intention is,
you can't translate
your intention that far.
[Cedric] Stupid.
[Omar] We're playing all of a sudden
for this big, Korn, white jock audience
that's never going to be able to truly
understand or decipher our intentions.
["Avin Apestoso"
by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
[Cedric] When you're hot,
and your management's telling you
you got to hit it now, you work so long,
so hard to get to this actual moment,
now's the time
not to f*cking take your foot off the gas.
[song continues]
[Cedric] We were tired, man. We were tired
of the road. We were tired of each other.
We were tired of
all the bullshit we were dealing with.
No, sir, you're a f*cking idiot.
You guys should beat each other up
right there in that corner.
It'll be like WWF.
[Cedric] I didn't see eye to eye
with a lot of the tough guy,
straight edge, one dimensional thing.
It's scary because that element
is coming in your show
and for as sober as they might be,
the high is violence and I don't want that.
[Omar] We were kids.
We have the narrow view
that we've been fed by media
about what it is to go to a punk show,
and we just, like, emulate that.
Then we had an awakening about,
like, well, actually that's not cool.
And it hurts the smaller people.
Me being one of them.
We are not a hardcore band.
[crowd screaming and cheering]
[Omar] Macho aggression is like
any sickness, it becomes contagious.
And so we have this
stupid reaction of, like,
breaking our own stuff that we paid for
because we're so upset.
[droning ambient sounds]
[Omar] Touring for so
many years, for so long,
for nine months out of the year,
for so much time around each other,
and constantly battling
back and forth about
how to push the band forward
and what direction that actually was.
- Hey, Jimmy.
- Hey.
[man] Jim, that was f*cking sweet.
I'll see you in a second.
Yeah.
[Omar] Yeah. Whatever
you're doing, I'm doing.
- Where's it at?
- Apparently it's next door.
Holy sh*t.
Do you know if the after show is next door?
[Omar] We had been hitting it hard.
Non-f*cking stop.
So you get what you want when it happens,
but you got to be careful, because
once that thing that you want happens,
you can't control it, man.
It starts here. It starts here.
What does my wallet say about me?
[rapping on cassette]
And I'm down because
I have a bunch of stuff.
I have this frequent flyer thing,
and I have an ID that says who I am.
You know, makes me someone.
And I have all these papers.
All these memories that maybe make me "me".
Maybe all these things
that make up who I am, maybe.
[cassette] You've only got a liar...
No, none of it.
["I Bet He'd Like That"
by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
Playing in Groningen, which is an amazing
little town there in the Netherlands.
Look over and Omar's just standing there,
and I was like, "sh*t, that's not good."
[emotional string orchestra playing]
[Omar] And this show,
for the first time in my life,
I was just so mad and I just didn't
want to be there, and I just faced my amp.
I felt like I'd cheated myself somehow,
and I felt like all my hypocrisy was made,
was just in my face all of a sudden,
like all the concessions I made for
playing in the group
or being okay with certain views,
uncertain language from other people.
[string orchestra continues]
[Omar] I felt that it was
my own corruption staring back at me
that put me in the situation.
[string orchestra continues]
All this stuff that had
been building up over the years
now just seemed like unsustainable to me.
[Omar] That night at
that moment in Groningen,
we decided, "Okay, we are going
to pull the six-month rule."
Like, just make sure that nobody
calls the band personally.
[Cedric] We'd always talked about
if anyone gets into the point,
we have a six-month rule, six month being
like, take six months off. It doesn't matter
how hot the band is right now,
like, pay attention to your sanity.
[string orchestra continues]
[Omar] The rule was don't even talk
about the band. For six months, nothing.
Now we recognize the signs,
instead of ruining our band.
All this sh*t's gonna
do is make us stronger.
Like, we'll come back, but double strength.
You know what I mean?
[Man] Yeah.
[Cedric] We were just at that point
as well where it's like,
we need to go do something different,
you know?
Because this is a T-shirt
that don't fit anymore, you know,
and it's very painfully obvious, you know?
[string orchestra continues]
[Cedric] Only person I could trust is Omar.
So I just think Omar was always
thinking one step ahead.
[music fades to silence]
["Blacklight Shine" by
The Mars Volta plays]
I'm from Borinquen,
which most people know as Puerto Rico.
[Omar] It's very specific,
between Bayamon and Naranjito.
Naranjito is literally one street.
There's a church, there was a theater,
and there was the bar
where my grandfather hung out
and played dominoes.
Puerto Rico is just a name
given by the Spaniards, the "rich port".
In other words,
it means the place we can exploit.
It's definitely always
been a thing of pride,
to know these are your ancestors.
These are your roots.
Sure, it's Spanish also by way of conquest,
but it's the Tano people that's inside of
you. This is where our culture comes from.
The Tano, where the indigenous people
of the Greater Antilles,
who populated all of the Caribbean there.
And you can read the letters
that Columbus wrote at the time,
saying these are the most beautiful people
we've ever encountered on the Earth.
They sing all the time.
They have so much dancing.
They share everything.
They don't have a sense of violence.
They'll make great sl*ves.
And that was always very important
to my mother, was to preserve
that part of our culture.
When they made the decision
to come to the United States.
["VTA" by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez
and John Frusciante plays]
The thing is, growing up in America,
you're asked to assimilate.
And fair enough, that's the great question about
identity when you're from a different culture.
When I got into punk rock, and I thought
that it had the same feeling as salsa music,
I naively thought, you know, I showed
my friends salsa records and go like,
"Look, this feels the same."
But even they would laugh, you know?
And in fact, one of the first and probably
only people was Cedric to say,
"Oh, that's really cool, what is this?"
[song continues]
It's an important part of
every single thing that I've ever done,
I think that we've ever done.
And At the Drive-In, it was an area
where we were being held back.
Those were all things that
we had to fight for along the way.
[song continues]
My worst fear was if we do become popular,
then I'm just stuck in this situation,
that my artistic life would
be forever just inside of those confines.
[Man] Got this one right here, chief.
- Oh!
- Oh, broken. Broken.
[Omar] The vibe the
next day was very positive.
It was like we're going to save our band.
We had said like we're going to stop.
Jim, go the f*ck home.
Goodbye, man.
[Jim] Goodbye. Have a good tour, dude.
["Descarga De Facto
(Live)" by De Facto plays]
Me and Cedric, I had booked
a tour with us with De Facto in Europe.
At the Drive-In wasn't the only band we had. We
played in lots of other bands the whole time.
The main one was De Facto,
which we started in the mid 90s
with our good friend Jeremy.
[Cedric] De Facto was born out of being
really good friends with this dude,
who has always influenced me and always
schooled me on music, which is Jeremy.
If I can just run through,
like maybe with everything off.
He was just like
the one cool white kid, you know?
He was a tall, burly, skated and
already into different types of music
that were really interesting.
We get Ikey in there
and that completes us as a whole,
and then we're able to start touring.
[loud bumping bass feedback loop sounds]
[loop gets faster]
["Descarga De Facto
(Live)" by De Facto plays]
[high pitched keyboard effect sounds]
[Omar] In order to decompress and deprogram
from what we do in At the Drive-In,
we need to do this.
And it was just always
like this breath of fresh air,
like, this is really us, you know?
This is what we do for fun.
[effect sounds continue]
[Cedric] They hit Omar with
a closed can of Coke in the face.
That's how much people hated De Facto.
It took ba*ls to be in that band because
people just wanted At the Drive-In.
[singing with reverb vocal effect]
[Omar] That is the band that got
the brunt of people being, like,
"These guys are g*y, on drugs,
they're playing reggae f*cking music.
f*ck them."
[playing "120E7" by De Facto]
# Topics that had... #
Something... happening here.
What it is, it's not quite clear.
["Echo Beast" by Omar
Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
[Omar] And then literally nine days later, I
get an email from the manager of At the Drive-In
that says, "Yeah, you've been outvoted.
You're going to do some shows now."
It didn't make any sense to me,
because Jim had constantly
complained about wanting to go home
and sort out his wedding
and then a couple of weeks later,
he wants to go on the road again.
We can't come for Greece and Israel,
unless we do other festivals.
[Cedric] All of a sudden, Jim coming back,
being like, "I'm ready, I'm ready to go now."
But we said six months.
[Omar] I said, "This makes me
not want to play in the band, like,
I'm telling you right
now. Like, cancel all this."
Looking back on it now, I understand it
from Paul and Tony's perspective.
Like, we were finally blowing up
and they had come from nothing.
Paul was from the projects.
Tony had literally come to America
from a w*r zone in Lebanon,
and they had worked
their f*cking asses off.
[song continues]
[Omar] But at the time I was like,
"I don't even want to play
with those m*therf*ckers anymore."
And he goes, "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying we don't
have to play with them.
Like, why have we been
putting up with this for so long?"
[Cedric] So I was always like, "I'm on board.
Of course I'm on board. Like, yeah, okay, cool."
[Omar] So I pulled Ikey aside and I said,
"I'm going to form a different band."
Cedric's going to be singing.
Jeremy's going to be in it.
I want you to be in the band." You know?
And it was like,"Okay, this is it.
This is the breaking point."
[Genie machine] I see your future clearly.
Now let us see what
the crystal ball reveals.
[song fades out]
["0" by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez
and John Frusciante plays]
[Cedric] At the time,
Jim was getting married,
we played his wedding as De Facto,
and the very next day we sat at a park
and we said, "We're leaving."
I guess a relief, and it was scary too,
because we made a lot of people angry.
You could tell that everyone
who started to get on board with it
was just upset. It felt like
we pulled the rug from under them.
[Omar] Jim, he's like,
"So you're starting a new band, huh?"
And you're going to be in charge
and you're going to organize everything,
"just you and Cedric, huh?" And he's like,
"I'm going to have a good time
seeing you fall flat on your face,
and that will make me happy."
"So when you come crawling back,
we'll have the conversation then."
[song continues]
[Omar] I found this warehouse
for 500 bucks a month we had.
I forget it was like
1000 square feet or something.
We named it Anklp after Fela Kuti.
[breaking noise] [Omar gasps]
I built the rooms, I built the studio,
and Jeremy helped me.
And then Cedric would help paint.
[song continues]
And then Papi came down sometimes.
We built the part that had
a window in it, for the studio.
And it was finally like our home base,
our headquarters, our creative space.
Come on! Join! Join!
Join!
There was a focal point, which was
the music and what we were doing.
I just said, "Listen.
I just want to discover
the culture of our group.
We need the time to, like, know what it is,
know how we feel about it.
Know what we wanna do."
When we were first just
talking about everything conceptually,
we each get to pick one theme.
[playing djembe]
Mine was to honor our roots.
There's got to be more Latin rhythms,
guajira, banco, b*mb a
or Afro Caribbean percussion.
And that I want you to
sing more in Spanish.
[playing shakers and percussion sticks]
His was to honor our dead.
[Cedric] Having been in a situation
like where a lot of people
that I played a lot of music with
passed away at young ages.
And so I guess just culturally this thing
embedded in me to honor your dead.
[song continues]
[Cedric] That's how in sync we were.
It's one and of the same thing.
To honor your dead is to honor your roots.
To honor your roots is to honor your dead.
To remember is to live.
[song continues]
And I called it The Mars Volta.
[Cedric] After several false starts
and some discarded recordings,
I finally called Jon Theodore.
- [Jon] What's up, dude?
- What's up, man?
[Omar] I picked him up at the airport
with a little boombox in my car
so I could play him the demos.
I said, "I want to do all these, like,
Latin rhythms, all this salsa stuff",
but I want it to be in the context
of an angry punk band.
He was like, "I will, but just so you know,
Tony Allen says that the harder you hit,
the less intellect you have."
[playing drums aggressively]
[Omar] Great. I want no part
of your brain, no intellect at all.
I want only your bleeding heart.
Like if it had just been
pulled from an Aztec sacrifice
and was bleeding down the arm
and we set it on fire.
That's the sound I want.
[screaming]
[playing "Bassline" by Eva Gardner]
[Cedric] Ikey had introduced me to Eva,
who was majoring in ethnomusicology
with a focus on Latin rhythms. So a perfect
match and yet totally overqualified.
[playing continues]
People still have this sort of mystical,
esoteric understanding of what Jeremy did
and the best way I
can describe it is, like,
if you see Roxy Music and you see
what Brian Eno is doing on stage,
that's what Jeremy did to my vocals,
not on stage, but he's very much
a part of the band, you know,
and he's very much a part of,
like, the stuff I'd be writing,
because like I said,
he would invent language, you know.
[Cedric] The analyzer,
mixed in with a delay.
[singing] You shaking your... You know?
To trail or through the whole thing?
Uh, not through the whole thing,
just, um, like, thrown, you know?
Okay.
[Cedric] Like, now we can really apply
a whole different vocabulary to this band.
[playing "Cut That City" by The Mars Volta]
[Male vocals] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
[playing continues]
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
Should we do it again?
Were some of them off?
We'll rewind it, it's in
the middle of a section.
- You won't be able to know where you are.
- I know, go ahead.
[playing keyboard faster]
[songs stops]
I can miss that one.
- No, we already talked about it.
- Like, it wasn't like I was just...
["Psychedelic Sounds"
by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
[Omar] I felt it was important
to stress how DIY this all was.
[Cedric sings loudly
with reverb vocal effect]
[Omar] Just like that but for five seconds.
Just like that, but
throughout the whole song
and we'll just bring it in and out.
[Cedric sings loudly]
[Cedric] I put out our records,
I printed up our shirts. I bought a van.
We designed what would be the
The Mars Volta logo for that whole period.
[Omar] It was just such
a huge time of growth.
Even though we were, like, starting over.
- [interviewer] What's your name?
- I'm Rob.
- Have you heard The Mars Volta yet?
- Yep, downloaded a few MP3s.
- You like it?
- Very much.
Mars Volta, cause they're from At the
Drive-In and I never got to see them before
they, like, split up,
so I've come down to see those two.
Have you heard The Mars Volta yet?
Pretty good, maybe not
quite as good as Sparta,
but they have to prove
themselves to me tonight.
[playing "Inertiatic
ESP" by The Mars Volta]
[playing "Eunuch Provocateur"
by The Mars Volta]
[playing "Cut That City" by The Mars Volta]
[playing "Cicatriz ESP" by The Mars Volta]
Cedric. Omar. Cedric. Cedric. Omar. Cedric.
[Cedric laughs]
[knock on the door]
Hello?
Excuse me. Very noisy.
Okay, sorry.
- We can't sleep.
- Okay.
- Okay.
- Sorry.
[playing "Eunuch Provocateur"
by The Mars Volta]
[song ends]
[Cedric] Love, love, love, commentary.
- [Eva] I do love Travis.
- [Omar] I told you.
["Son et Lumiere" by The Mars Volta plays]
[Cedric] We'd been blacklisted by certain
outlets who had self-released our record
and toured the world with no crew,
just the six of us in a van.
Our shows had only been a couple
of hundred people to that point.
And then we show up to Coachella
in a daytime slot
to a packed crowd. It was insane.
[playing "Son et Lumiere"
by The Mars Volta]
[audience cheering]
[Omar] The next day in the LA Times,
the big headline was,
"The Mars Volta steals the night."
It felt like we had
become a bona fide band.
I sobered up to make the thing happen.
I'm like splitting my brain in half,
writing and producing all our tracks,
all our music,
and then doing, like, business stuff.
["Roman Lips" by Omar
Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
[Omar] Jeremy and Cedric, when I'm like,
"Yo, you guys need to get to bed.
We got early call
tomorrow, blah blah blah."
They're like, "Okay, Dad."
[makes bong inhaling sounds] You know?
So sorry for everything I've done.
[Omar] That was a
difficult transition for me.
We're gonna help you. Ready?
[Jeremy] I'm all right.
[Cedric] Are you sure?
You got to pack up your sh*t, then?
- I know.
- [Cedric laughs]
- [Cedric] Are you ready?
- [someone laughs]
Alright.
Okay. Your stuff's still up.
Okay. You need to get it right now,
cause everyone's waiting for you right now.
[Jeremy] Oh, okay.
[Woman] No, no, no, come!
[Omar] It was really
difficult to see his drug use,
and I took on this sort of
tough love approach with him.
And a lot of the times,
there was moments where I was like,
"g*dd*mn it,
you can't be f*cking doing this here.
Why would you do that in the first place
during this important time?"
And "I beat the sh*t out of you
if you do this again", you know?
["Cut That City" by The Mars Volta plays]
[playing "Drunkship of Lanterns"
by The Mars Volta]
# You've got the lot to burn #
# A shelf of pig-smothered cries #
# Is there a spirit that spits?
? Upon the exit of signs #
# Is anybody there? #
[playing "Roulette Dares (The Haunts Of)"
[by Flea]
[Cedric] Eva's father had passed
and she wasn't in the band anymore,
so Flea came in and took over on the bass.
[Flea continues playing]
John had just gotten back from
a tour with the Chili Peppers,
and he literally was coming from LAX,
and he called me like,
"What are you doing? Want to hang out?"
I said, "We're at the mansion recording,
but do you want to come over?"
He literally had his driver drop him off at
the mansion before even going to his house.
[playing "Cicatriz ESP (demo)"
[by The Mars Volta]
[Cedric]? Baby, baby, baby?
[vocalizing]
["Inertiatic ESP" by The Mars Volta plays]
[Omar] John and I had met at a De
Facto show and quickly became very close.
And I can't stress enough
how much he, Anthony, Flea and Chad
championed us as a band at that time,
and they put us on everyone's radar
in a mainstream way
and introduced us to Rick.
["Ominous sounds"
by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
[Cedric] Right around that time,
we're working with Rick Rubin,
and so it's already a big deal, you know,
I feel like we're just a bunch of nobodies,
and we've scored
this f*cking thing with Rick Rubin.
He's going to do our record.
[loud distorted ambient sound]
f*ck you then, record.
["Water Sounds"
by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
Is it the best water
take you've ever heard?
[vocalizing with vocal effects]
[lowering the pitch]
[Cedric] Oh.
["Eunuch Provocateur"
by The Mars Volta plays]
# The Al-Sirat hides #
# Behind a wardrobe of eunuchs #
# Seconds collide #
# Till the Padisha scandal #
Where were you on that one?
[Cedric] Do you have any notes, Omar?
We didn't touch anything
on the last ones, Jeremy?
When they were just going... [vocalizing]
Will you make it sound really far away?
[Cedric] I remember Jeremy
pulling me aside and he was like,
"Please, don't be mad at me,
but my abscesses and my wounds
from sh**ting up
are really f*cking bad right now."
And he showed me and
I was f*cking horrified.
I freaked out on him because in my mind,
I'm like, "Rick was gonna come in,
see this and be like",
I'm not working with these guys.
Like,"Oh my God, he's going
to think that we were all like this."
So, it was like a big
deal. We're like, "f*ck."
And then, you know,
everyone who's had our back financially,
all our people that jumped ship with us
from At the Drive-In,
to stick with us, to manage, I'm like,
"Did they choose the wrong band?"
When did I say...
[Omar] My relationship with Jeremy
was very complicated, to say the least.
["Metallic Sweating for the Rich"
by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
[Omar] We had been romantic partners
at one point, he and I were very close.
It looks so cool.
Great. Yeah.
You should stay right in the middle.
[Omar laughs]
Come back here
and do this close one over here.
And you don't want to be doing that
if you're in a band together, you know,
it's just like,
the whole thing was like chaos in a way.
[song continues]
[Omar] Jeremy's drug
problem got out of hand.
And because of Jeremy and I's relationship,
I really had to go to Cedric and basically
introduce the concept of, like,
what if he goes to rehab?
If he goes to rehab, can he stay?
There was this like sad moment
of sending him off to get better.
[singing "Eriatarka" by The Mars Volta]
? Stung the slang of a gallows bird?
# Sanctioned a dead letter pure #
[Cedric] I shouldn't be well versed in
learning how to deal with f*cking junkies,
but that's my friend. But I was
so, so f*cking afraid for his life.
["Vipers in the Bosom"
by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
Call and see if I'm available,
that would be fine because, you know,
any little bit extra that I
could get would be great.
f*ck George Bush!
f*ck George Bush! [Crowd cheering]
[strumming guitar chords]
[Omar] When he came back, he was good,
but something was different.
Jeremy performing off stage.
It created a lot of issues for him.
They treated him like a roadie
and people would come in and be like,
"Give me a beer" and go do their sh*t.
And that weighed on Jeremy.
That f*cked him up,
because he's writing lyrics.
He's like painting a picture for us
visually of like, you know,
some of our most iconic titles and words
and themes come from him, you know,
"Inertiatic", "Televators", "Eriatarka",
"De-Loused in the Comatorium."
["Drunkship of Lanterns"
by The Mars Volta plays]
[audience noises] [band starts playing]
[high pitched guitar playing]
[intense drum playing]
[Omar] We just played
Madison Square Garden.
It's the most beautiful night ever.
My mother and my father
and Eli and Papi are at the show.
Chino, my little brother, has just
come out. Paul Hinojos, I invited him out.
And it's just this moment of, like,
we're doing this thing and it's beautiful.
It's like it's all come
together and it's like,
"Ahh, like, I'm no longer
some loser, junkie Spic."
[audience cheering and screaming]
["Televators (Live)" by
The Mars Volta plays]
[Omar] Everyone flies home except
me and Cedric. We stayed out in New York.
Jeremy goes home by himself.
[song continues]
[Omar] I get back to Los Angeles and like,
the phone keeps lighting up.
And finally I look at it and I answer it
and it says Roommate Anna.
She's just like,
"Jeremy's not paying attention to me."
And then also, she's saying things
that aren't coherent,
and I just don't understand her.
And then it just hits me, I just knew,
some part of me knew in that moment.
# Just as he hit the ground #
# They lowered a tow #
I race down there and I go inside,
and these cops.
I'm like, "Is everything okay?"
And he's like, "I guess
so. Your friend's dead."
[Cedric]? Fragments of sobriquets?
[Omar] "I guess maybe
you shouldn't be playing with drugs."
[Cedric]? Riddle me this?
[Omar] They were just so
indifferent and cold about it.
And one of the officers,
he just, he was just laying back
in Jeremy's chair with his feet up
on the dining room table.
# Stop the ground #
[Omar] I open the door. And there he is.
And it's like this beautiful painting,
his body there,
and there's vomit out of his mouth,
and there's a trail of ants
coming from his hand into his mouth.
And he used to have all these flowers,
so there's flowers around him.
It's just so surreal, you know.
# ...hobbled sway, auto-da-fe
A capillary hint... #
[Omar] I give him a
kiss and I close his mouth
and I say my last things to him
that I have to say.
Everything about me
just went down to my feet
and out from there,
and I just, I went outside and I cried.
[loud distorted guitar feedback sounds]
[Cedric] I had to go for
myself. I had to go see.
So I took my girlfriend
and I get into the driveway.
I just want to look through the window.
I don't know what I'm looking for. I don't
know if I'm looking for a ghost or what.
# The house half the way #
[Cedric] He'd like relapsed, you know.
I just think he was so f*cking lonely
at the end of that tour.
And we were all so on edge,
trying to keep him away from that sh*t,
trying to do this band.
It's like we lost him.
# One day this chalk outline?
? Will circle... #
[Omar] There isn't a day that goes by
that I don't think about him
and miss him.
When he passed,
that was just the most
f*cked up thing ever, man.
# The curse that flew right by you #
# Page of concrete... #
[Omar] I've just looked
up to the dude so much.
And through the years, I don't think
I ever let him know that, you know.
[Cedric singing]
? Everyone knows the last toes are...?
[Omar] He never got
to see the record come out.
Smell the paper from the vinyl, you know,
and put the needle
on the record for the first time.
That was the end of another era.
He was very special, sensitive being.
I loved him in all sorts of ways
that could never be described.
Every death is a mutilation.
And so that was a very heavy mutilation.
[distorted guitar playing
with reverb and delay guitar effects]
[sounds fade out]
[Zack de la Rocha] Buenas noches.
It is rare within music
that a band recognizes the past
and refuses to ignore it.
A band that honors the spirit of people
like Celia Cruz,
like Fela Kuti,
and the MC5,
not with nostalgia,
but with their own inventiveness.
A band that is more interested
in creating moments than creating hits.
This is that band and this is that moment.
This is The Mars Volta.
[crowd applauding and cheering]
[playing "Drunkship of Lanterns"
by The Mars Volta]
# You've got the lot to burn #
# A shelf of pig-smothered cries #
# Is there a spirit that spits #
# Upon the exit of signs #
# Is anybody there? #
[Omar] The most difficult part of it was
the very first day on rehearsal
and seeing that there was an empty space.
That was really difficult, that...
That was really, really...
["White Smack Cramps"
by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
Yeah.
[song continues]
[Omar] To lose Jeremy at the moment
when we did, with the irony of like
what was happening, finally on this thing
that we had all embarked on together,
was a very
beautiful and dark thing at the same time.
Surviving something like that,
and the guilt that comes with it
definitely brings people together.
[song continues]
[Cedric] We mourned for a little bit
and grieved for a little bit,
and then we get back on the road
and start playing.
[song increases in volume]
[Omar] Some of the best shows,
if not the best shows, we've ever played.
To go to Mexico where, like, people
are just understanding certain things.
It was just like, okay,
we're being understood now.
I remember distinctly at that time
feeling like there was no turning back.
[song fades out]
["Een Ode Aan Ed Van Der Elsken"
by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
[Cedric] I learned so much from Rick,
and I'm grateful and in awe of him
as a producer and as a person, but
I needed to go in a different direction
with our next record.
Rather than going to,
like, a professional studio,
I rented this small place in Eagle Rock.
It was just an absolute sh*t show,
so I had to bring in all of my own gear
and have the place rewired.
I hate wires.
[Omar] And I don't blame you. I'm looking
at this mess going, "I hate it too."
[Cedric] It's in the middle of summer
and then not even the AC worked
and I could hear the pigeons
on the roof and it was just dirty.
Nothing worked. And I said, "This is good."
It was literally just like, "Leave us
alone, we're going to make this record."
[Ikey improvising on the keyboard]
[Cedric] Stop me if you
don't... if you don't like it.
Okay.
["Cygnus... Vismund Cygnus"
by The Mars Volta plays]
# Chrome the beetle mirage #
[Omar] f*ck. Yeah, man.
This is what it needed.
["Miranda That Ghost Just Isn't Holy
Anymore" by The Mars Volta plays]
[Omar] Cedric said he had writer's block,
so the whole concept of "Frances"
was taken from a film script I had written.
It was about a woman who discovers
very late in life that she was adopted
and is thrown into this quest
of locating her birth parents,
and she receives a clue
in the form of an old vinyl plate,
which is a recording
that she has to piece together.
And so finally she comes to realise
her mother was abducted by
a rich, white elite sect that makes
women give birth in mass,
25 at a time, in a lake.
In order to abort that baby
by way of cannibalism,
ensuring generational
power and immortality.
So she's the ab*rtion that survived.
Then she finally tracks down this cabal,
which is controlled psychically
by an old, withered man in a coma,
but she realizes that
she's fallen into their trap.
It was her who was tracked down
and manipulated right back to them
so that she can finally be sacrificed.
[song continues]
And so Cedric loved it.
And he said, "I'm going to... Okay",
we're going to use that, and I'm going
to make it that all of this story
was found in an anonymous journal
by Jeremy when he was a repo man.
"Let's make that this next record."
[song continues]
[Cedric] We were able
to make all of "Frances", really,
after the mourning and the grief
of all that stuff, you know?
I always took it as,
like, we created a world.
We didn't just create a f*cking record.
It's an audio book. It's a f*cking movie.
Best way I can ever deal with any
of that kind of f*cking heartache is
I let my art be the f*cking confessional,
be the f*cking shoulder to cry on
or whatever, you know?
# My, my, my nails peel back
When the taxidermist ruined #
# Goose stepped the
freckling impatience... #
[Omar] It just felt like
the whole thing encompassed
just what we wanted to
be doing, on every level.
Music, film, drama.
Like the journal in itself. And then
all sort of centered around Jeremy.
[song fades to silence]
[Omar plays a piano chord fortissimo]
[crowd cheering]
[synth arpeggio playing rapidly]
[Omar] The lights went out and slowly,
I just felt people just start coming down
the sides of the arena,
just trying to get closer to the stage.
And he said, "Something's happening."
And I'll always remember that.
"Something's happening."
[all band instruments playing frantically]
[Cedric] At that point, we're getting
that kind of audience who was like,
"Yes, be indulgent. Go."
It was the weirdos.
The weirdos f*cking won, assholes.
"Here you go."
[playing "Roulette Dares (The Haunts Of)"
[by The Mars Volta]
# Transient jet lag, ecto-mimed bison #
# This is the haunt of roulette dares #
# Ruse of metacarpi, caveat emptor #
# To all that enter here #
[gentle guitar lick with reverb pedal]
[aggressive guitar strumming]
# Open wrists talk back again?
? In the wounded of its skin #
# They'll pinprick the witness?
? In ritual contrition #
# The AM trinity?
? Fell upon asphyxia-derailed #
# In the rattles of #
# Made its way through the tracks?
? Of a snail-slouching whisper #
# Half-mast commute?
? Through umbilical blisters #
# Specter will lurk, radar has gathered #
# Midnight nooses from boxcar cadavers #
[playing more aggressively]
# Exoskeletal junction?
? At the railroad delayed #
# Yeah #
# Exoskeletal junction?
? At the railroad delayed #
# It's because this is #
[playing faster]
# Oh, yeah #
# Yeah #
# Yeah #
[song fades out]
[Omar] I think some of us get
a feeling of being alive
the closer we can be to absolute terror.
That feeling is like being
so close to something so beautiful
that can destroy you in a second's notice.
[playing "The Widow" by The Mars Volta]
# He's got fasting black lungs #
# Made of clove splintered shards #
# They're the kind that will talk #
# Through a wheezing of coughs #
# And I hear him every night #
# In every pore #
# And every time he just makes me warm #
# Freeze without an answer?
? Free from all the shame #
# Must I hide? #
# Cause I'll never, never sleep alone #
[screaming]
[saxophone solo]
# Said I'm bloodshot for sure #
[electric guitar solo]
# Pale runs the ghost #
[electric guitar solo]
# Swollen on the shore?
? Swollen on the shore #
# In every night, in every pore #
# And every time he just makes me warm #
# Freeze without an answer?
? Free from all the shame #
# Then I'll hide #
# Cause I'll never #
# Never sleep alone #
[instruments playing]
# Freeze without an answer?
? Free from all the shame #
# Let me die #
# Cause I'll never #
# Never sleep #
# Alone #
[crowd cheering and applauding]
Thanks, guys.
[audience cheering]
[Cedric] Goodnight.
["Ariel" by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
[Presenter] The Mars Volta took home
their first ever Grammy Award
at Sunday's pre-show ceremony
at the Staples Center.
[song continues]
[Male presenter] Our next guests
are a talented group of musicians.
Please welcome The Mars Volta,
ladies and gentlemen.
[Omar] Things are successful,
but what's successful then?
So the band gets bigger,
but if the human connection falls apart,
is that really success?
Eva was gone. Jeremy was gone.
Only Jon and... Jon and Ikey were left, and
Jon was soon to be gone out of the picture.
And so the dream slowly starts
to sort of wither right in your hands.
[song continues]
[song fades]
[Omar] We lived together
from before At the Drive-In,
through At the Drive-In, through De Facto
and then after De-Loused.
We live in two separate places.
Realities become different.
[Cedric] Once we lived together,
I would wake up, go downstairs, play drums,
make art, make art, make art,
and not living around the person
that is really inspiring like that,
I just go f*ck off and do all the cliche
things that you do, being in a popular band.
And it started to create
friction between us, you know?
[song continues]
His life was he was having
great parties at his house,
living a very carefree life.
[guitar playing with effect pedals]
[Omar] And I was carrying, like,
all the responsibility of the group.
[playing "Unreleased Amputechture session"
by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez]
[Omar] Exactly what you just did, then.
You're not... It doesn't matter. Don't think of that.
Just play exactly what you're playing right now.
Ready? It's almost eight.
- Eight.
- Eight.
Eight. And like halfway through eight.
You know, when it gets to that G.
[playing "Day of the Baphomets"
by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez]
It's the end of the eight,
it's when it gets to that...
[drumming sounds]
I don't know what the f*ck' deal is
with these f*ck' sticks.
[Omar] I don't see
what you're getting upset about.
[Omar] You're playing it well, like...
["Zophiel" by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
[Omar] I was working
all the time in hotel rooms,
backstage before the shows,
after the shows. No days off.
[song continues]
[Omar] Cedric only has to show up
for one hour and sing, you know, like,
our realities are just going to be
different and we're going to be influenced
by the circumstances
and what we're hearing.
[song continues] [police sirens]
[isolated synth notes]
[Cedric] I'm just living
in my own bubble world,
and I'm not acknowledging a lot of the hard
work that he's done or that he has to do.
I would give him the okay with stuff,
and I'd come out of nowhere being like,
"I don't like the way sh*t's going."
Like a f*cking teenager.
Throw a wrench in a lot
of the hard work he did, you know,
and I think that as well would...
It really stressed him out.
[synth notes then fade]
I think everyone in the band thought,
"He doesn't even want to do this anymore."
[synth notes]
["Nuclear Mysticism"
by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
[Cedric] My wife's name is Chrissie Bixler,
and I met her at this bar called Bardot,
which is right above...
It's right across from
the Capitol building.
It's just this kind of corny a*s f*cking,
like, magnet for celebrities.
And I've just never, ever had, like...
I just never had that kind of confidence.
But she was the one person who
was, like, attracted to me, and I'm like,
"This f*cking 6-foot f*cking goddess
wants me, wants my number?"
What the f*ck? I didn't trust her.
She'd call me and I'd be like, "You're putting
me on, someone's putting you up to this."
Anyways, I meet her and, like,
it was just love at first sight.
And I met someone who really
wanted to f*cking help me out,
and who could understand that
I was sort of short-circuiting.
My indulgence and the amount of weed
I would smoke at that time
was a sort of band-aid
to keep it all together.
My anger was really
getting the best of me and...
["Singing in Hotel Room"
by Cedric Bixler-Zavala plays]
So my wife starting to
see, like, the red flags
and this kind of behavior with me
and how I basically medicate
until the point where she's like,
"I know this one thing that might help."
[scat singing]
["Thoughts and Ashes"
by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
[Cedric] For the longest time, she would
kind of try to hide that
she used to be a Scientologist, you know,
and I loved her enough to be like,
"I trust you, I'm going to go try this."
[song continues]
Take my first meeting.
I just let it all out.
It's the first time I'm
able to vocalize, like,
"I've not dealt with the death of Jeremy."
Their whole thing is,
"Well, we have a solution for that,
we can get you a new lease on life,"
as their term says.
"But we need you to get sober first."
That's okay. That doesn't sound cult-like.
Sobriety. Okay, cool.
It was intense. I did
it for 30 f*cking days.
There's no set time. You come up
with the idea of when you're set free.
I went in there to do that,
to get a handle on my life.
So I have a pretty good
relationship with them, you know,
they're always, like,
park in the president's office,
special parking for you,
because this is just self-help stuff,
you know, there really is no alien stuff.
[computer and radar sounds]
[song continues]
[Omar] It's interesting because
when he first started doing Scientology,
I thought, "This is a great thing."
He's going to discover
certain things about himself
and, like, it's just going
to make everything evolve.
I, probably myself and my brother,
are the only people who didn't find it weird,
uncomfortable, who didn't make fun of him for it.
I never judged him for any of that
because of the way I was raised.
["Archangel" by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
[Omar] Before going to the States
we lived in Puebla, Mexico
inside of a cultural community
called La Gran Fraternidad Universal.
And I would rarely tell people about this,
simply because
when I'd try to explain it, they just say,
"Oh, you were raised in a cult."
And it's not, it's
non-sectarian, it's non-religious.
It's the opposite of a cult.
A cult tells you that they
and only they have the answers.
And La Gran Fraternidad says the opposite.
It says that truth is not
exclusive to one religion or culture,
that every group or philosophy
has part of the truth,
and only through the blending of ideas
and tolerance do we evolve.
I say that because that meant,
despite some reservations,
who am I to judge Scientology?
I had to have an open mind
to that group having
some part of the truth,
and who was anybody
to judge Cedric for his choices?
[song continues]
But the part I had a problem with was,
the Scientologists
would, like, show up to the shows.
And these are higher up people,
you know what I mean? These are like
the people that were
around Cedric influencing him.
They come to the backstage
and on the bus and blah blah blah,
like, they had this air of royalty,
and you're essentially in my home.
This is the home Cedric
and I share together.
[Cedric] Our relationship
wasn't very strong back then.
They have a term in Scientology
called a "suppressive personality",
and usually these are the people
that are responsible
for what is going wrong
in your f*cking life.
Scientologists are
famously anti-psychiatry,
and Omar's father is a psychiatrist.
Well, the reason things
are going wrong for you,
his dad's a psychiatrist.
He's a suppressive personality.
[Omar] The church had him convinced
I was a suppressive personality, an SP.
And I would go into this,
"God, is he the problem?"
[song continues]
Everybody that's f*cking, especially you,
Ikey, just calm down for a minute, dude.
You're getting me all excited, dude.
I don't want to be, like...
What I'm saying is, like,
but when I'm going to do those things,
I make it a point. You can't see him,
but you're standing, like...
You're in the drums and
you're back there, like...
So when I go like this with, like..
No, it wasn't the ending.
Wasn't the ending.
- I just showed you.
- Do it again.
I go like that, when I..
When, a full swing with a guitar.
So that's what I'm saying,
sometimes you stop before me, like...
You gotta remember, I'm trying to get
the attention of all these m*therf*ckers
and make sure everybody
sees, dude, because,
I mean, if it's not him, then I was like,
for sure, I was over here.
[vocalizing]
[Cedric] But I had people
in the band being like,
you know, "He's a little Hitler, or he's...
He's just using you and f*cking..."
It just got really
so blown out of f*cking proportion.
[Omar] Then you stopped, and I was like...
We would have never just go and say like,
"Yo, are you saying this?"
Are you thinking this, like,
someone's telling me this? Is that real?
I never understood it because
they knew the deal from the beginning.
They were hired musicians,
they were well paid,
and Cedric and I carried
all the risk of the band.
[Ikey] You understand,
like, I'm far back and.
- Omar, dude...
- No, no, no, you know what? No...
[Omar] It becomes everybody
trying to get out of it
what they can while they can.
They're just destroying
the whole environment.
They don't realize the work it takes to, like,
create a good, cohesive artistic environment.
All this is going on.
The band isn't fun anymore.
And then, you know, my mom gets sick.
["VTA" by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez
and John Frusciante plays]
I've never called my mother
"Mother", "Mom", "Mami."
My dad explained to me that
I came from her, I came from her womb.
And he said, she gave you life,
and from that day on,
I called her "Mi Vida". My life.
[song continues]
She had a cerebral hemorrhage, and then
she was in a coma for a long time.
I went and lived with her,
and we had to take these classes
to learn to take care of her.
Just as she was getting
really so much better,
she had another hemorrhage.
Then she passed.
[song continues]
I was mutilated completely
and a piece taken from me
that I can never come back.
[song continues]
[Omar] What am I going to do?
You know, what I do is
I go straight into the
pain rather than to avoid it
and straight into my therapy,
which is my work.
I was making a film.
We had been on this roll and we were
doing scenes, and then all of a sudden,
I just felt the whole
energy change on the set.
I noticed everyone just keeps looking at me
and they won't look me in the eyes.
Then my editor comes over to me and says,
"It's all out there on Twitter.
Cedric's quit the band.
And that's why everyone's looking at you."
And then so I took some of my medication
and I kept trying to work on the film,
but obviously it was a no go, yeah.
And it was just...
I had to cancel the whole thing.
[song continues]
[Omar] I had, I feel, like a panic attack,
like my spirit was trying
to escape from my body,
and some how I had to hold on to it
just by the tip or something,
so I wouldn't go out.
It was back to back
the worst things I've experienced.
It was an immense betrayal
by the person I needed the most,
trusted the most when I needed them.
I couldn't understand
what was happening in his life
to make that be some sort of sane choice,
especially when I was so weak.
[song continues]
[loud distorted sounds and ambient noises]
[sounds fade to silence]
["Angel Hair" by Omar
Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
[Omar] I've loved them all my life.
Before I even knew I
had my own life to live,
and I was fortunate enough to very early on
recognize it in like,
like a fraction of a passing moment.
And to be able to act on it.
And fortunate enough to have it,
to be correct about it
and have it come back at me.
And through that
reality through that understanding,
I was able to... We, I guess, were able to
share like a language
that is neither Spanish nor English,
that was neither
physical nor
completely ethereal and,
and we were able to
sort of just... Yeah, I don't know.
[Cedric singing]? See through you?
["Worthless" by Bosnian Rainbows plays]
[Omar] To do something for someone
and to be so passionate about it
and like really to want to elevate them
and then to have them
sort of disembowel you
and one more while
not even looking at you directly.
That's what made it... traumatic.
[song continues]
[Teri speaking Spanish]
[Omar] I met Teri when
I was living in Mexico,
And I had this friend who came in from BF
and his band was playing,
and so I go to the show to go see him play
and then they're going to play,
but the electricity goes out in the club.
So everybody starts packing up
their stuff and they're going to leave.
And I'm about to leave,
and then I just hear this racket.
[singing "Necklace of Divorce"
by Teri Gender Bender]
And then I just Teri that like
yelling at her drummer and going like,
"No, we're going to play, come on!"
She's grabbing the bass drum
and she's putting it up there.
[playing "Worthless" by Bosnian Rainbows]
She just starts performing the songs,
but just yelling it
and I just thought,
"There's a real artist."
# Two, one #
# Boom, boom, boom #
[Omar] I thought she was
some unknown artist, a little bit.
I know she was already
somewhat of a feminist icon
in the underground scene there in Mexico.
["Gold Notebook (Live)"
[by Le Butcherettes plays]
[Omar] At a time when feminism
was not popular even among women.
# Your gold notebook is gone #
# Miles away and non existent #
["A Good Kind of Blue"
by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
[Omar] And then we're just sort of hanging
out and we start talking about cinema,
and we start talking about Fellini,
she tells me her favorite Fellini movie,
I say my favorite Fellini movie is
"Satyricon", and she had never seen it.
And so we start to watch "Satyricon."
And again, we've just
been friends this whole time
and just respecting her as an artist
and just thinking she's so great.
And then this weird thing happened
where I went to grab the remote and then
my finger touched part of her hand
and it felt weird.
Like I remember it touched
and then it just felt weird.
It didn't feel like, if that happens
with someone else or something.
And when that happened,
I just felt very strange
and I couldn't stop thinking about it
and we said goodnight and I went.
I just kept thinking about
how it felt weird, and I called her
and then she said the same thing,
"That felt strange when our hands touched" and
then we realized that we had fallen in love.
[song continues]
[Omar] I felt the same thing that
I had in my relationship with Cedric.
Just the same connection
and the same outpouring of feeling
and emotion and art
and being allowed to like
be who you are and not
considered strange or something,
it was like somehow things just made sense.
[song continues]
[Omar] In 2012, Cedric sat us down and told
us he wanted to focus on a solo career.
He'd been working on a record since 2008
and he felt this was the moment for him.
But he demanded that I stop
making solo records or tours
and it put me in a weird situation because I
had a solo tour coming up in a couple of weeks
and I couldn't cancel that,
so I didn't want to make anything worse.
So I scrapped that and and did
a non solo collaborative band called
Bosnian Rainbows with Teri and Dea.
It was just traveling and making art
without all this drama about the past,
without like At The Drive-In Reunion, Mars
Volta. Where's it going? What happened?
Definitely without
Scientology being involved.
That's a big one.
[song fades out]
[Omar] Like I said, my
mother had just passed.
We kept playing with Bosnian Rainbows.
For reasons I still won't
be able to understand, like
he chose then to attack me publicly
and for better for worse, like, well,
Cedric commands a lot of attention
in this in the way that people
just in the way that I do like idolize him.
And so, if he goes says, "This person
is bad." Like I was getting death threats.
Like I'm going to like
playing these club shows
and just doing what
I think is just right for me in my life.
["0... 2" by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez
and John Frusciante plays]
[Omar] It was just that
part of it was very bizarre.
It was cruel, because Cedric
knew how much that would hurt.
He knew it would send
so much hate in my direction
to insinuate that
he tried to get Volta back on tour,
when in reality he was the one
who put us on hiatus to do a solo thing.
[song continues]
[Omar] People think that love
is just supposed to be like
just this magical thing.
No, it's like any other thing in life.
You have to work at it constantly.
You have to communicate. You have
to hear the other person, you know.
So for me it was like,
"OK, he's obviously going through something
if he's attacking me of all people."
So I just choose to love him and to...
When he needs me, he'll reach out.
[song fades to silence]
["Distorted Sounds"
by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
[Omar] Eight months passed
and I get a call from a mediator,
Paul from At the Drive-in, telling me that,
for us to play together again,
Cedric wanted me to do
the initiation process of Scientology.
So for three weeks I sat
in the sauna for 8 hours a day
and was pumped
full of vitamins and pills and stuff.
["Un Caf Atonal"
by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
[Omar] It's the only way he felt
that he could trust speaking to me,
given what his beliefs were at the time.
Through the mediator was sort of like,
"This is the answer.
This is the only thing that can fix you,
you have to do this before we can speak."
I don't have any fear of it at all,
because since I moved to the States
I had already been inundated
with white institutionalism, codification,
conditioning, and indoctrination.
Exclusively white male point of view.
I mean, this is just more of that.
[screaming]
[Omar] I just thought
it was f*cking bananas.
Why did I say yes?
Because if it's the only
way for him to see me
and just like, see my face
and hear my voice and remember, it's me.
To think of me the way I thought of him
as Rosa and Dennis' son,
you know, as Jenna's brother,
as my lifelong best friend.
I know I was being asked to it to save me,
but I just felt I had to go
do it in order to rescue him.
Because knowing him his whole life, like I've
never known him to subscribe to absolutism.
[song continues]
Then Cedric got word from, you know,
the Scientology people that I had,
you know, that I had aced my course.
And then, so I was sent word
that I could meet him.
[Cedric] We're estranged,
which is very bizarre
to be estranged from him.
Because I was in that f*cking spot where
I wanted to work on myself and I didn't
I got to the point where
I didn't know what or who to trust.
Just so f*cking pigheaded about it
where I was like,
"No, he's an SP", you know.
Then even at that point I got Omar
to come down and start doing courses.
Just really f*cked up.
Most people would say I would never
fall for that f*cking stupid sh*t,
whereas I would say "I'm at a point in my
life, where I'm vulnerable and I need help.
I'm going to go into the lion's den and
try something that's off the beaten path."
And yeah, it f*cking came back
to bite me on the a*s.
[song fades to silence]
["VTA" by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez
and John Frusciante plays]
[Cedric] I remember the day vividly.
He came over with Teri.
And they were in tears,
holding my children.
And I knew, and I should have known.
I should have known before then
that they were my true friends.
To see them holding my kids that way.
[song continues]
[Cedric] All those f*cking venomous
whispers in my ear just disappeared.
It's funny, we're yin and yang,
and we had a yin and yang and kids,
and that's what brought us together.
Like, whoa.
[Omar] We're just instantly drawn to them
and for some reason,
even though they didn't know me
or who knows what
they were being told about me,
they were instantly drawn to me.
[Cedric] I was so overcome with emotion.
I still am to this day.
Something as beautiful like that.
Life coming full circle
and bringing us back together.
There was an intense, f*cking
beautiful day, like the clouds lifted.
His mom had just passed away
and I handled that so f*cking poorly.
Letting f*cking Scientology
get into my head.
That sh*t haunts me
every f*cking day, you know?
It's the shittiest thing
I've ever been a part of.
[song fades out]
[drumming]
[Cedric talking using vocal pitch shifter]
Hey, sorry. Hey.
Hold on, hold on. Just a second.
Oh my God, it's madness
in these headphones.
Oh, that's up the click.
[djembe playing]
[Omar] Then Cedric said,
"Would you want to do another project?"
And I said, "Well, if by another project
you mean like make something new,
that sounds interesting, but I'm not
interested at all in doing the Mars Volta."
And he said, "Okay, so how about
starting a new thing?
And I said, "Definitely, just come over."
This is a shorter one.
We'll stop for him and then,
and you can even abbreviate where
you're doing, whatever feels good there.
["4am" by Antemasque plays]
[Cedric mumbles unfinished lyrics]
[Cedric screaming the lyrics]
[Omar] I just sort of thought about
what would be fun for him
and what would be sort of like that,
it would just be a fun thing
the way De Facto was a fun thing.
That's also a thing
where I'm just doing that for him.
That's not necessarily the style of music
I would have chosen, you know.
[Cedric] Let's go ahead and do it
what you really, really want.
[Omar] Which is? Wait, what?
Which of those three options is it?
[Cedric] Read my mind.
[singing "I Got No Remorse" by Antemasque]
? But do I look further?
# But do I look further #
[Cedric screaming] [playing intensifies]
[song ends]
[Cedric] Just the embrace was
really intense and it was like
nothing had happened almost, you know.
["5:45am" by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez
and John Frusciante plays]
He allowed me back into his life
and was just... and vice versa.
It was like like two magnets
coming together, you know? It was cool.
Really the whole point to make the band
was just to be traveling together
and like and use that time
to like, talk about stuff.
And because, like he said, he had a point,
there was a whole hill to climb.
[Omar] We'd made huge strides with
Antemasque and we were having a great time,
but that can make you forget that
death is never that far away
and before our show
in one of our shows in England,
before going on stage,
I get the call that Ikey
had passed away in Mexico.
[guitar playing with reverb
and phaser effects pedals]
[Omar] Yeah, I have absolutely
no regrets whatsoever about
breaking up At The Drive-in when I did.
But there was definitely
a lot of loose ends left there
and with Paul and Tony specifically,
who were always so, you know, great
and led the charge in that band
and we're so great to us.
["Un Recuerdo"
by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
[Omar] After Ikey's repast,
Cedric very humbly came to me and asked,
could we reunite At The Drive-In?
We could use it as an opportunity to heal and
in order to do that, it had to be all of us.
Jim very quickly showed us that he was
still like playing these same games.
He would show up unprepared.
He would show up late, constantly.
He would leave early.
The reality is he was threatening
to derail all of the work we were doing.
And even then I tried my best
to give him a second chance
and I cast my vote that he stayed,
but I think Cedric just got sick of it.
We decide not to be held hostage
by what is going on in Jim's life.
It just got to the point where I
had to be... I fired him, you know.
His exact words was like,
"This is going to financially ruin me."
And I was like, "Well."
You know, I don't want
to be spiritually ruined
because I don't want to crush
anyone at all. I love him, but...
f*ck, It's not easy
f*cking working with him, you know?
[intense droning ambient sound continues]
Then it was like the clouds parted.
[playing "Arcarsenal" by At the Drive-In]
[Cedric playing the shakers]
[all instruments stop abruptly]
[fast and intense drumming
and guitar strumming]
# Must have read a thousand faces #
# And all these voices won't give up #
# Sickened thirst, sickened thirst?
? Keeps it together #
# A catatonic leisure #
# At 1000 miles per hour #
[crowd cheering]
[Cedric] You might see it as like
a cash grab or f*cking just playing music,
but if it was us trying
to be therapeutic with each other
and understand each others
points of view at the time.
["Colmillo Castrado"
by Omar Rodrguez-Lpez plays]
[Omar] For me it was
a very humbling experience
and I think something I really needed, because
it was the first time in my creative life
where I had to think like that.
[Cedric] Being able to get in a room
and just to repair the old g*ng,
the original g*ng, you know.
[song continues]
[Omar] Had a really fun time,
traveled all over the world, you know,
played to our fans and it was like
a really nice three years.
Obviously, besides the stuff
Cedric himself was going through
with the Church of Scientology.
[intense droning ambient sound]
[TV static noise]
Actresses Marie Bobette Riales
and Chrissie Cornell Bixler
say actor Danny Masterson,
an active Scientologist,
sexually assaulted them.
Bixler, a former girlfriend of Masterson,
reported it to police in December 2016.
Three other women also reported assaults.
In his own statement released through
his attorney, Masterson says in part.
"This is beyond ridiculous.
I'm not going to fight
my ex-girlfriend in the media
like she's been baiting me to do
for more than two years."
It's unclear how much in damages
the women are seeking,
but they are asking the
judge for a trial by jury.
In the newsroom, Jordan Bowen, Fox 13 News.
["Lost in the Gold"
by Teri Gender Bender plays]
My wife used to date this guy
by the name of Danny Masterson.
And...
He would...
He would drug her and r*pe her
while she would sleep.
She reported it to them
and their response was,
"Well, don't report it to the police,
we'll take care of it internally."
Because it is a high crime to report
a crime to the police
on another Scientologist.
Then I started seeing,
"Oh, what the f*ck is that about?
What the f*ck is this about?"
And then, you know,
we left the church immediately.
[song continues]
I decided to support her in the best way
I could possible in any way she needed.
You know, whether it be lending my voice
and, you know,
kicking up a bit of a storm in order to...
For it to be understood that this was
her truth coming out and it was like
the first time she was really facing it,
and so it came along like
a f*cking freight train, you know?
Once she f*cking reported it,
our f*cking lives were
turned f*cking upside down.
To see my wife go through this sh*t.
Just the amount of pain
and how it's affected her.
It sucks to see my kids be affected by it.
Just felt like this
non-stop fast roller coaster ride of,
you know, sadness, anger, paranoia.
It can be a very difficult process
trying to get anyone to believe you.
For the past five years, I've just
been blasting away on social media,
lifting up the f*cking carpet
to see the roaches, you know?
They're f*cking out there.
There is nobody crying wolf here.
[song continues]
The fact that he even f*cking got arrested
was the biggest vindication.
And I called Omar and we were in tears.
Called my family, we were in tears,
my sister, we were in tears.
I've never seen such gut wrenching,
f*cking unnerving, brutal,
ugly f*cking truth than the way
all the women involved in this case
and how f*cking brave they've f*cking been.
Such is the fight.
This truth that these women have is...
It's enough to burn
f*cking cities down, man.
[flames crackling] [cicadas chirping]
[Omar] We've done all this talking
and all this emotional experiences.
At the end of it, Cedric asked me
if I would want to do that again,
if I would want to do the Mars Volta.
And for the first time in a long time,
I could see a future in it, a rebirth.
Because now we had a purpose.
We could broadcast her story,
because it is her story. It's important.
[Cedric] As much as I sound like a hippie
for f*cking saying this,
the universe was asking us to do this
and to come together now.
[strings playing]
[Omar] My understanding of the life
that I've lived up until this point is that
those things that are the most hurtful
and they're the most scariest for you
are actually the ones
that hold the greatest treasure.
What kind of a life would that be,
you know, to say like,
"I tried this thing and I got hurt,
so therefore I'll never try that again."
[Cedric] I really, I can't stress
how valuable my friendship is with Omar,
because he can write
something that I can go,
"That's exactly the vehicle
I need right now to express
what it is I see happening around me."
[Omar] Once I met Cedric in 1989,
whatever it was,
my purpose in music became
giving him a foundation
to sing and to articulate things through.
Goes back to intention.
There's an intention there
that's very real that you can...
If there's ever any doubt about what
that person and his family went through,
it's coming through in just his delivery.
[emotional strings continue playing]
[synth arpeggios and lead playing]
The music has always healed us
and so there was such a mountain
that we had to climb, of emotion.
[Cedric] It's just amazing to have
him in my life. It's amazing to have him.
To be able to sh**t ideas with,
because he is the person
who can finish my sentence
in art and in spirituality,
just in f*cking life in general, you know?
[Omar] To give myself completely
to another person.
I think I'm at my best
when I behave in this way.
[Cedric] Well, he's the air that I breathe.
He means more to me
than sometimes I let on,
but it's really difficult, I think,
in life to find someone that could
that could match you in the way
that the term soulmate means.
And I'm glad that God put us
in the same place at the same time.
At least this time, I guess.
[emotional strings playing]
[Omar] I just see all the records
as just photographs.
Just photographs of what
you're actually going through in your life.
It's just a result of a process.
If I come into a place
and they're playing a music,
instantly I can smell things,
touch things, see things,
remember things that I had forgotten
because it's the photograph is there.
I started out wanting
to capture everything, to film everything,
to keep everything,
and now I just want to let it all go
and I want it to be
completely part of the path
and for Cedric and I, our families,
to be able to just move on.
[emotional strings playing]
[lead synth melodies]
[Omar] I said, "If this ever gets weird,
promise me that we can just stop.
This is not more important than loving you.
Like, if it ever gets weird,
like, tell me we can just stop."
And he's like, "I promise you."
["Vigil" by The Mars Volta plays]
# I know the way he makes you hide #
# Even when the dose is fight or flight #
# And the orbits wait for a perfect name #
# Clean all the webs he left behind #
# And if you want, I can bury him out #
# By the salt of sea, in an empty grave #
# The past has a way of coming clean #
# If I didn't know any better #
# I could have sworn you said #
# There will come a day?
? For his reckoning #
# It's the want of the weight?
? When it crushed #
# All the centrifugal ways our lives?
? Fall in and out of place #
# One day you're gonna see #
# That everybody who claimed?
? That you were loved have left #
# Because one by one?
? They would disappear #
# Claiming all your wolves?
? Were symptoms of deceit #
# Don't let your tongue?
? Slit your throat #
# That's what they always said #
# This is one last chance?
? That you gotta take #
# It's the want of the weight?
? When it crushed #
# All the centrifugal ways our lives?
? Fall in and out of place #
# It's the want of the weight?
? When it crushed #
# All the centrifugal ways our lives?
? Fall in and out of place #
# Underneath your doubt #
# Laid a serpent's egg #
# Hissing his way out #
# You were told severed tongues #
# Can't fall onto their swords, because #
# You're the only voice that calls #
# It's the want of the weight?
? When it crushed #
# All the centrifugal ways our lives?
? Fall in and out of place #
# It's the want of the weight?
? When it crushed #
# All the centrifugal ways our lives #
# Fall in and out of place #
# I know it's almost over #
# I'll be with you #
# Say you, say you will, say you will #
# I'll be with you, I'll be with you #
# Say you, say you will #
[songs fades out]
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Omar and Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird (2023)
Moderators: Maskath3, GabrielAlejo2341, sidolanters, Maskath3, sidolanters, GabrielAlejo2341