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I was born in Miami, Florida, and raised by a pack of wild immigrant Cubans who taught me how to eat rice and beans, play dominos, and roll a good cigar. They made me listen to old Cuban folk music at home. But at school all the kids were eating burgers, riding skateboards, and listening to heavy metal skate-thrash. Like a lot of immigrants' children, I grew up with one foot in each culture, which turns to be a full-blown culture of its own. If you've ever watched Que Pasa, USA you know what I mean. ("What's all this got to do with Second Set?" I hear you clamor. Quiet down, and read on.)

People sometimes ask me to describe our music. I usually say, "It's hard to pin down. But it's sort of a blues-infested rock with lots of exceptions. We've got some straight country, some straight funk, some straight this and some not-so-straight that. Often in the same song." What I don't tell them, because it would turn into a philosophical ramble much like this one, is that our sound can be described in one word: schizoid.

(So if you were to ask me right now what I like most about being in Second Set, my answer is this: it feels like home -- all schizoid and lost between voices and styles, which turns out to be a full-blown voice of its own. But there's more:)

Sure, if you pressed me I might qualify "schizoid" with something like "straigh-faced" or "palatable" but it really does just boil down to "loony." Think of Second Set as one entity, with five or six different personalities all fighting for a piece of the collective consciousness, like that junkie you see in the Haight, arguing with himself and making strange jerking motions with his head, the voices within constantly agreeing on compromise rules and constantly breaking those rules on a whim, one of them belaboring for hours the importance of the numbers 5 and 23, another asking the others what breakfasts are best, a third thinking out loud, deducing calculus from first principles, someone else doing jumping jacks and push ups and counting in crisp military barks, a little one in the corner screaming and crying in a miserable rage, and more, and more still, and all of it happening in an old worn-out elevator built for two people to stand in, all shaky and rickety and making deep rumbling noises.

Because at the end of the day, (and at the beginning, and all in between,) we do what we do because we're just like that junkie, no less addicted because our drug of choice has a key, a tempo and a time signature instead of a needle, a belt and some juice. And no less lost in pure holy ecstasy when it's pulsing through our veins.

So, that's it then. I like playing with Second Set because it's the perfect drug -- not that watered-down methodone cut with baby powder they try to push on you elsewhere.