Top Jimmy & The Rhythm Pigs

Top Jimmy & The Rhythm Pigs were a rock and rhythm and blues band that emerged out of the Los Angeles punk/roots music scene of the late 1970s and early-mid 1980s. This scene also produced bands such as The Blasters, Los Lobos, The Gun Club, Phast Phreddie & The Precisions, The Knitters, and The Plugz. [We Got The Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk, Mark Spitz & Brendan Mullen, Three Rivers Press, 2001.]

The band had a residency playing "Blue Mondays" every Monday night at the notorious Cathay de Grande nightclub (formerly a Chinese restaurant) at the corner of Argyle and Selma in Hollywood for 3 years, and was an important part of the Los Angeles rock scene. Top Jimmy & The Rhythm Pigs concerts often featured guest appearances by such artists as Tom Waits, David Lee Roth, Stevie Ray Vaughan, members of X, The Blasters, The Gun Club, The Circle Jerks, The Plugz, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and many more. [Make The Music Go Bang!: The Early L.A. Punk Scene, Don Snowden, ed., St. Martin's Griffin, 1997.] D.J. Bonebrake, who appeared on Pigus Drunkus Maximus, was a member of X. The band was saluted in the Van Halen song Top Jimmy, and mentioned in "The Call of the Wreckin' Ball," on the The Knitters album, "Poor Little Critter on the Road" and the X album, "Live at the Whisky a Go-Go".

Live, Top Jimmy & The Rhythm Pigs usually consisted of:

*Top Jimmy (James Paul Koncek) - vocals
*Carlos Guitarlos (Carlos Daniel Ayala) - guitar and vocals
*Gil T. (Ruben Gilbert Isais) - bass and vocals
*Dig The Pig (Dick Aeilts) - guitar
*Joey Morales - drums
*Tom Fabre - sax
*Steve Berlin - sax (originally)

On their only record, "Pigus Drunkus Maximus", released in 1987 (Down There Records, distributed by Restless), the musicians were:

*Top Jimmy - vocals
*Carlos Guitarlos - lead guitar
*Gil T. - bass
*Dig The Pig - rhythm guitar
*D.J. Bonebrake - drums
*Joey Morales - drums
*Tony Morales - drums
*Steve Berlin - sax & percussion
*Gene Taylor - piano

Track listing

#"Dance With Your Baby" (Carlos Ayala) – 3:35
#"Eleven Months And Twenty-Nine Days" (Little/Sherrill) – 2:41
#"Homework" (Otis Rush/Al Perkins/D. Clark) - 2:48
#"Obviously Five Believers" (Bob Dylan) – 2:16
#"Hole In My Pocket" (Carlos Ayala) – 3:07
#"Spanish Castle Magic" (Jimi Hendrix) – 3:28
#"Do The Do" (Willie Dixon) - 3:01
#"Framed" (Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller) - 3:15
#"Workingman's Blues" (Merle Haggard) - 2:24
#"Backroom Blues" (Carlos Ayala) - 3:31
#"Ballad Of A Thin Man" (Bob Dylan) - 5:30

Top Jimmy got his nickname because he at one point worked at a fast-food stand called "Top Taco", located across the street from the A&M studios in Hollywood. [http://www.cosmik.com/aa-june03/carlos_guitarlos.html] At some point after that, he got a job working as a roadie for X, and at the end of a soundcheck one day, he sang a version of the Doors "Roadhouse Blues", which garnered the attention of the band and Door's member Ray Manzarek and led to Top Jimmy performing an encore version of the song with X and Manzarek during a May 1980 X show at the Whisky-A-Go-Go. [http://db.etree.org/myshows_detail.php?showid=6782903]

Koncek died in 2001 in Las Vegas, Nevada from liver failure.

Discography

# "Pigus Drunkus Maximus" (1987) - Top Jimmy & The Rhythm Pigs (only actual TJ & Rhythm Pigs release)
# "Long Distance Call" (1994) - Top Jimmy Lineup
# "The Good Times Are Killing Me" (1996) - Top Jimmy solo

External links

* [http://www.carlosguitarlos.com/ Home page for Carlos Guitarlos and his solo projects]
* [http://www.carlosguitarlos.com/latimes.pdf L.A. Times article outlining basic history of Rhythm Pigs from Carlos' perspective]

References