Ramon "Chunky" Sanchez

September 9^th, 2004.

My grandfather passed away that morning. Though he had been in hospice care and we knew it was coming, it didn’t make things much easier. My dad had come to pick my brother and I up that morning to be with the family. As we climbed into the truck my dad slid a CD into the player and said “I want you guys to hear this song, this song is for you.” The song?

Pocho…

I first heard of Ramon “Chunky” Sanchez from a newspaper article I read sometime in the mid-to late 1990’s. The article told of his activism in the community, the Chicano Movement and most of all, his music. I don’t recall a whole lot about the article other than it piqued my interest in Chunky and Los Alacranes. This was a new thing for me, I had never gained interest in a musician or group without hearing them first. I honestly don’t know what drew me to him, there was nothing in the article that stood out and made me say to myself “I need to hear this man’s music.”

Whatever led me to him was most definitely bigger than me and my thought comprehension at the time. Either it was something within my subconscious, within my soul that led me in his direction, or a force outside of me gently nudging me. What it was I will never know, and that’s not very important to me. What is important to me is why I was led in that direction.

Sometime after the dawn of the new millennium I was out for some shopping on a warm Sunday evening. The radio was on 92.5 and that’s how I remember it being a Sunday, it’s the only day of the week I listen to that station. A song came on, unannounced by the DJ. The warmth of the guitar immediately caught my attention, an attention that went far beyond my ears. Before a single word was sung my soul was touched by the undeniable spirit of the music. Then, when Chunky said “In the city of San Diego, under the Coronado Bridge…” I knew the song to be about Chicano Park.
Most of what I had known about the park came from word of mouth, local papers didn’t talk much about it. But there it was, the true story from a man who was in the middle of it all. Still then, I wasn’t sure who sang the song and they went immediately into another song, title and artist I do not recall. Later, I thought of that article I read a few years before and decided it must be from Los Alacranes

Back then, less than half the people I knew had internet access and YouTube was still half a decade away. I couldn’t find a copy of “Chicano Park” anywhere.

Weeks later, there was another media mention of Chunky, this one about his work in the schools. I turned the TV up, hoping to catch some of his music as they played a soundbite from one of his many performances for schoolchildren. I watched the jovial man with the mustaches talking to the kids and I suddenly remembered, “I’ve met him before!”

It was in the summer of 1998 and we were going full-bore on the Ballpark Campaign. My fellow Pad Squad mates and I were canvassing the Gaslamp District, going into every bar a restaurant to promote the ballot measure. We met Chunky sitting at the end of the bar at Baja Lobster and he gave two of us a lecture I will never forget. With a furrowed brow, he asked us “When that ballpark is built, what’s going to happen to the homeless people who are there now?”

They had trained us to answer nearly any question we could expect when promoting the Ballpark, but this was one question I had no answer for. My coworker and I looked at each other then back to Chunky, who waited patiently for our answer. “It will be a good thing for the City of San Diego, for the fans and for the community, but the homeless are part of the community too, que no?!”

His words sank deep into me, changing my perspective of the homeless in that very instant. Before, I had a stereotype of homeless people as drunk, maybe on drugs, begging for money all the time and sometimes causing trouble. In other words, I did not see them as humans.

Chunky didn’t criticize me for wanting the ballpark, he didn’t accuse me of not caring about the homeless. In fact, he informed us he was going to be voting “Yes on C” that November. What he did do was ask me to think. He asked me to think about my fellow man.

My perspective was changed forever that night. After all, we are all just one house fire, one major earthquake, one riot away from being homeless ourselves. Aside from the change to a more compassionate human being, the thing I take from that night was the way Chunky spoke to us. He spoke with truth, he spoke with conviction and most of all, he spoke with love.

Fast forward six years to that warm September morning when my grandfather Rudy Gonzales Sr. passed away. Throughout grade school, I was made fun of by the Mexican kids for not speaking Spanish and I was made fun of by the white kids for having a Mexican last name. There were even similar insults from within my own family and punishment for showing resistance to such insensitive and ignorant remarks from grown adults, because they were “just joking”.

After a lifetime of being insulted by the word Pocho, that morning I learned it was a title to be proud of. I learned there was nothing wrong with being a product of both sides of the border, even though I spoke only the language of one side. I learned there were others who had suffered the same insults, and turned those insults into their own inner strength. Most of all, I learned why I was so drawn to the man and the band I read about in a newspaper article nearly ten years before.

When a loved one passes, we are often filled with nearly as much regret as we are grief. The grief comes from such a tremendous loss and quite frankly, I feel the San Diego community has not been hit so hard since we lost Tony Gwynn and Jerry Coleman mere months apart in 2014. In a way, I think the Chicano Communty has been hit even harder than our baseball community was two years ago. I don’t think I would get any argument from someone who not only knows but feels the gift of love Chunky gave to us all.

We grieve and at times, we regret. We regret because we think of all the times we wish we would have said what we wanted to say, or done something we wanted to do before a loved one’s time came. I have a long list of people who have passed without my telling them how much they meant to me, how much they have made my life better for having them in it. I am eternally grateful this is not the case with Chunky. For you see, I told him the story of the first time I heard “Chicano Park”. I told him about the morning my grandfather passed away and how I hadn’t been so moved by a song since well, the first time I heard Chicano Park. I told him how I try hard to look at not only the homeless but all human beings with compassion as a result of the conversation we had in the Gaslamp in the magical summer of 1998.

In short, Ramon “Chunky” Sanchez, pillar of the community, musician of the people and Chicano Icon made me a better man. It was always a joy to see him at the ballpark, it was not uncommon for me to leave my position on the field before pregame ceremonies to hit up my beer connection and bring him a few Miller Lites. No matter where I was in the ballpark, I would recognize that mustache from across the field.

In my life I have made a few decisions I am not proud of; I have turned right when I should have turned left, I have gone to the liquor store to look for a drink when I should have been out looking for a job. But one of the most important decisions I have made was following my heart when I read that newspaper article so many years ago. It led me to wonderful music, it led me to being a man with a bigger heart and most important, it led me to my friend Chunky…

Sincerely,

One Grateful Pocho

End of an Era (?)

Late one Saturday night, 1987. My best friend Richard Pope and I are watching “Headbangers’ Ball”. Yes kids, there was such thing as music videos on MTV and better yet, those music videos actually involved musicians. This was pre-Guns and Roses for us, so we anxiously awaited the next Motley Crue, Ratt or egads!, Poison video. Sometime around midnight, we switched back after the commercial break and saw three mean, dirty looking bikers playing a mean guitar, furious drums and an angry growl unlike anything I’d heard before or since. With my every-sentence-must-include-an-f-bomb teenage attitude, I asked Richard “What the fuck is this?!” He shook his head and with the same stunned expression I surely had, then turned his attention back to the TV.

This band was most definitely not from the spandex and hot chicks scene we were into at the time. Far from it. They were louder and faster than anything in our meager cassette and vinyl collections and before the final verse, they were something we knew we wanted more of. Something we needed more of. As the song was winding down we watched the bottom left corner of the screen. As the final unified bass, drum and guitar notes emanated from the tiny speaker, the caption read Motorhead. Ace of Spades.

We looked at each other again. “Have you heard of these guys?” “No! You?!” “No.” Again, “What the FUCK was that?!” No lipstick, no hairspray and not a trace of bullshit. Just pure, loud and aggressive Rock & Roll. Every band we had seen up to that point had their whole image and wardrobe painstakingly created, down to every last bullet belt and studded wristband. Hell even Angus Young, lead guitarist of one of the biggest no-frills, in your face bands in history had his little schoolboy outfit and satchel. But not Motorhead. These guy looked like they just happened to be sitting at the bar and took (or maybe even stole) the stage.

Lemmy, the name; and Motorhead, the attitude; soon entered the lexicon of our bored yet ready-for-anything teenage lives. Any time someone would say “Lemme get…” or “Lemme see if…” we would shout in unison “LEMMY!!!” During an early scene of the Blues Brothers when Dan Akroyd’s Elwood is admonishing John Belushi’s Jake, Jake replies “Well what do you want me to do, MOTORHEAD!” Suffice to say, we roared as if the Chargers had just scored a touchdown. At church summer camp throughout my teen years Lemmy himself was as revered as any guitar hero we had known, at least among my brother, Richard and I. And everyone seemed to want to get on the Motorhead bandwagon.

It didn’t stop there. Not much later, our neighbor knocked at our door and asked “What the hell is that noise?!” “Motorhead!!!” my brother and I responded in unison. From that day on, he referred to my brother and I as Motorhead and my mom was known as Mrs. Motorhead.

Lemmy’s death, the death of Scott Weiland preceding it and the later death of David Bowie has churned up some long-brewing thoughts on the state of music. Technology has made music and for that matter any type of media and information readily available. Gone are the days we would wait anxiously by the radio to hear our favorite songs; no more are we required to wait in line for a midnight album release. Every song we could want can be found online. Bands don’t start in the garage anymore; they start online and god forbid, on Youtube and the myriad talent/reality shows. Most of what is popular out there is music only in title; even the least discerning ear can tell there is little musicianship involved. As a society we have come to rely on processed, non-organic foods, so it’s no surprise we have done the same with our music.

The old posters used to show singers, guitarist, bass players and drummers in their element, thrashing about as they churned out screeching vocals, face-melting guitar solos’, thumping beats and pounding drums. Now, we see either choreographed lip-synching (to auto-tuned tracks) or even worse, some guy with his hands held high over his head, as if he actually accomplished something; while standing over two computers made to look like turntables.  I hope that somewhere, out there is some kid who saw his uncle mourning the loss of Scott Weiland; a young girl who took notice of how her parents have been playing David Bowie the past few days; a disenchanted teenager who keeps looking at the Motorhead banner in his neighbors garage. They are the hope.

This may sound like a typical “Back in my day…” diatribe. Every generation spews them to the next. It’s what we do. But if we keep it up, real music will end up being what we don’t. Rudy Valee was the first “Pop” superstar, and his fans couldn’t understand why their bobby-soxer children listened to Frank Sinatra. The Bobby Soxers couldn’t understand why their kids listened to Elvis, Little Richard and Chuck Berry in the 50’s. Their kids couldn’t get the Who, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. Bands like Aerosmith, AC/DC and Guns n Roses helped bond a few generations until the last real musical movements, grunge and the full-circle re-emergence of the singer-songwriters like Jewel, Jack Johnson and Dave Matthews.

The music over the past century has varied as much as the cars we have driven, the foods we eat and the way we communicate. But it all had one common vital thread little seen these days.

Actual musicians writing and performing with musical instruments…

As you all know, my dreams of rock and roll superstardom never came to be. But years ago at that church camp, we had a few moments of glory at the end of the week “talent” show. We did what they call an air band performance. We didn’t have the balls to do a Motorhead song as we knew they would never allow it. Yet had we known about Jim Morrison’s performance on the Ed Sullivan Show we probably would have went ahead and done some Motorhead. Instead we chose a few of our late 80’s idols. One year we did something from Skid Row and the other was naturally Motley Crue. The name of our band?

The Ace of Spades…