Referenced in the second verse of the Old 97s song “Desperate Times” (first verse references Abbie Hoffman. I know who he was.)
Last night I dreamt of you
Pepe Lopez strung out on the stage
It don’t even look like you
Smiling like a sawed off twenty gauge
I still remember
The Telecaster down around your knees
It’s late November
And I think I smell tequila on the breeze
Old 97s are a band from the Dallas area. They’ve been around for 30 years - this song was from their debut album in 1995. I’m guessing Pepe Lopez was someone in a Dallas area band in the late 80s/early 90s? Any Dopers out there know who this guy was?
Makes sense as far as the tequila reference (I’m not a big tequila drinker so I didn’t recognize the name). And it’s not like the Old 97s don’t have plenty of songs about drinking. But the rest of the lyrics sound more like a person than the liquor.
It’s most likely a reference to the singer of the Loco Gringos, Pepe Lopez (stage name). He was a heroin addict who died in 1990. The Gringos weren’t exactly huge, but if you were in the Dallas music scene in the late 80s when Rhett Miller was starting out, you knew about the Loco Gringos.
They were one of the best drunk rock bands. Their tour/show vehicle was an old hearse with a mohawk of liquor bottles glued to the top of it. If you’ve ever seen a shirt that said this on the back:
FUCK YOU!
WE’RE FROM
TEXAS
The people who made that shirt were saluting the Loco Gringos, who were the first use that. I still have one of those Gringos shirts running around the house that I have no hope of fitting into.
And an article about the stuff Pepe and the Loco Gringos got up to. I met them a few times, they were some of the nicest folks you’d ever meet, and the band was pretty legendary.
Sorry about the serial posts. But if you want to see the man himself in action, here’s one of their appearances at the Fry Street Festival in Denton, TX (I’m not sure about the year, but it was assuredly at least a year before my time in Denton). I’m actually a little surprised I don’t recognize anyone in the crowd. I do remember all that hay, though. It was like a storm, you always ended up with hay in your mouth.
Thanks for asking this question. I hadn’t thought about the Gringos or Pepe in a few years, maybe more than a decade.
Forgot to say thanks @scabpicker! It’s always nice to be able to connect some of these dots.
One of the places I went to try to get more info was the Old 97s website. Back in the day, they used to have a message board and also a glossary with explanations of various references in their songs. And I’m sure that glossary had an entry for Pepe Lopez. But they revamped their website about 10 years ago and all that fun stuff went away. Now it’s just upcoming shows and a merch page mostly.
Hehehe, that song goes through most of what I said. It mentions the hearse, and calls out Pepe by name. If anything, it’s underselling the madness.
The Rev covered “Nurture My Pig”, as well.
Man, it does suck that the Old 97s shut down their message board. I suppose they felt it was probably being supplanted by social media, but it stinks they ditched a compendium of knowledge.
Thanks again for the excuse to traipse down memory lane!
