La Plebe

La Plebe formed in early 2001 around childhood friends Lupe Bravo (bass, vocals) and Augie Aguilera, with trumpeter Alberto Cuéllar and drummer Mark T. Harris; Alberto's brother Antonio came in on valve trombone soon after. Between early 2002 and mid-2004 the band played more than 180 shows across California and down into Tijuana, Mexicali and central Mexico. Aguilera left in 2004 and Adam "Pags" Paganini took over guitar and half the vocals, a lineup that held until the last show on October 15, 2016.

The records: the EPs Conquista 21 (2003), Exploited People (2004) and Entre Cerveza, Ritmo, y Emoción (2005), the last two produced by Faith No More's Billy Gould; ¡Hasta La Muerte! (2007, Red Scare in the US, Koolarrow in Europe); Brazo En Brazo (2010, their first vinyl); and Been Drinkin' Again (2013), a Pirates Press picture disc shaped like a lotería card. The band's own label for it: "bilingual punk with horns 'n vomit."

La Plebe toured Mexico repeatedly, the Balkans from 2006 and Western Europe from 2008, where Mick Jones of the Clash joined them on stage in London for Guns of Brixton. Over ten years they played 17 countries outside the US but only six states. In 2010 the San Francisco Bay Guardian gave them an editors' award in its Best of the Bay issue.

Bands of the Bay ran a feature on the band in April 2008, written by Titania Kumeh with photos by Robinson Kuntz, after a show at the Blank Club in San Jose. It singled out Mi Tierra, a song about an immigrant who cannot go home to a sick mother, as the band's own favorite, and had Bravo explain the name as meaning the common people. Wikipedia cites that feature.