Joe King Carrasco & The Crowns

In the late summer of 1979, Joe "King" Carrasco formed a stripped-down
four-piece combo to replace his Chicano big band, El Molino. Dubbed the
Crowns, organist/accordionist Kris Cummings, bassist Brad Kizer, and
drummer Miguel Navarro backed up Carrasco at Raul's, the famed punk
club, and the Hole-in-the-Wall, and other University of Texas-area venues in
Austin, quickly gaining a following around their revved-up Tex-Mex brand
of punk rock, harkening back to the classic Vox and Farfisa organ-driven
sound first popularized by the 1960s Texas bands Sir Douglas Quintet
("She's About A Mover"), Sam The Sham and The Pharoahs ("Wooly
Bully"), and ? And the Mysterians ("96 Tears").

In November 1979, Joe "King" Carrasco & the Crowns made their first trip
to New York City where Joe "King" almost gave the Lone Star Café's owner,
Mort Cooperman, a heart attack when he jumped off the club's balcony onto
the stage. The band was such a sensation, they were invited to play the
storied Mudd Club downtown, and returned to Austin with critical praise
from New York's music press including Lester Bangs and John Rockwell of
the New York Times.

Armed with a 45 rpm single "Party Weekend" b/w "Houston El Mover" that
was financed by ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, the band returned to New York in
the spring of 1980 to record a demo album for Warner Brothers Records and
play two weeks worth of dates at CBGB's, Hurrah, TR3, which would lead
to more bookings at the Danceteria, the Peppermint Lounge, and the Bottom
Line, as well as appearances in Washington, DC, Boston, Toronto,
Providence, and other cities in the northeast.

By the end of the summer, Joe "King" Carrasco & the Crowns signed a
recording contract with Stiff Records in England and embarked on the Son
of Stiff Tour with Tenpole Tudor, Dirty Looks, the Equators, and Any
Trouble, an extended three-month tour of the United Kingdom, Europe, and
the northeastern United States, promoting their debut album and the single
"Buena," a Top Ten hit in France and Sweden that charted in the Top 40 on
the BBC.

While overseas, the band filmed a video of "Buena" in London, and taped
television appearances in Spain, France, and on Musicladen in Germany,
which was broadcast across the Continent.

In January, 1981, the band issued their first US album on the Hannibal label
for music empresario Joe Boyd and appeared on the television series
"Saturday Night Live" and was a featured act on a new cable television
channel called MTV. Later that year, JKC and the Crowns made their West
Coast debut at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go behind their Hannibal EP "Party
Safari" and played a date in the basement of Hollywood's Cathay de Grande
where they shared the bill with Top Jimmy & The Rhythm Pigs and Los
Lobos, making their West LA debut.

Joe "King" Carrasco & The Crowns played a critical role in exporting the
Austin sound and Texas music around the world, while establishing the band
as one of the most popular music-makers in the Lone Star state in clubs, at
Spring Break in South Padre Island, and in arenas and outdoor venues such
as Red Rocks, the Frank Erwin Center, the Summit, the Ritz, and Southpark
Meadows where they shared the bill with the Talking Heads, the Police,
REMm UB 40, the English Beat, the Go-Gos, George Thorogood, and
Culture Club.

Thirty years later, the band that exported Tex-Mex Rock-Roll around the
globe has reunited, toured across Texas and gone back into the studio to
record an album of all new material QUE WOW! performed at South By
Southwest and were inducted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame. Once
again, their rolling Party Weekend roadshow is touring the nation,
demonstrating to old fans what they had heard all those years ago was no
mirage, while turning on a whole new generation of fans to the obvious: Joe
"King" Carrasco & the Crowns rock like no one else before or since.