I’ll spare you the diatribe about how Los Angeles aughts-era heavy rockers Totimoshi — before the social-media-everything cultural takeover — have been unjustly forgotten and lost to time. The truth is that the only reason I haven’t written more about them is that their earlier records aren’t streaming. Their last album was 2011’s Avenger (review here) and I was crazy fortunate to see them live as they toured to support it, and I’ve been glad to follow guitarist/vocalist Antonio Aguilar and bassist Meg Castellanos as they’ve pushed forward with All Souls, initially as four-piece and subsequently returned to a trio format as Totimoshi was, at least temporarily.

But Totimoshi were killer, in any case, and if you’re not yet on board with All Souls, I’ve included below the stream of their 2020 sophomore album, Songs for the End of the World (review here) — still their latest release — for you to get introduced even as I enjoy digging back and hearing an extra-raw Totimoshi dive into “Reasons Why” as a lost artifact of their tenure. It’s a short track, kind of a footnote that former drummer Donny Newenhouse apparently stumbled upon, but as a nerd for the band that was and the band that is, I’ll take it and enjoy hearing the differences between Totimoshi‘s half-punk take on heavy and All Souls‘ more melodic reach and complex songcraft.

And maybe if we all listen they’ll put 2003’s Monolí up on Bandcamp and I can finally do a Friday Full-Length for it.

From the PR wire:

https://totimoshi.bandcamp.com/track/reasons-why

Our old drummer Donny Newenhouse recently unearthed the tune while transferring DAT’s to digital from his storage space. He came across an unlabeled DAT tape. No notes – not even a date, name of song, etc. At the time of the recording, Donny lived above the music venue Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco. We tracked this song in his apartment – drums were set up in the kitchen, bass in the living room and guitar above the stairs in the hallway.

Donny also played guitar and wrote music. He is also a really amazing recording engineer. He would go on to engineer Monolí along with our friend Lars Savage (RIP Lars, we all miss you).

When we heard this track for the first time this week, Antonio was reminded of the inspiration to write the riff to this song:

I’d been an AC/DC fan since I was a kid but had never seen them live. I finally got the chance to see them at the Oakland Colosseum.

in the fall of 2000. At that time it had been a while since I had had a real rock and roll experience. By this, I mean losing myself at a show; that feeling of being in a time warp and nothing exists except for what is going on at the moment because it is so so good.

Those experiences were the reason I devoted my life to playing the guitar. I spent 6 hours a day playing scales and positioning chords and dreaming of playing on a massive stage someday. Sep. 20th, 2000 I had that rock n’ roll experience.

Meg and I went from being slightly bored watching Slash’s Snake Pit open the show to being up on our feet at the first loud bell of “Hell’s Bells” to screaming every lyric at the top of our lungs for the rest of the set. We could not believe what we were witnessing. The sheer might and volume that is AC Fucking DC, and Angus running back and forth the whole entire time… it was mind blowing.

That show really effected me. This initial riff was probably written around the time of the AC/DC experience.

Why I never did second guitar parts and put a solo over the overtone solo I will never know – but in a way it preserved that AC/DC rawness of this song.

I must admit, it is weird to hear this song. I had forgotten about it. I was a completely different person then.

Here we are, 20 years later, and we are all still playing music.

Meg and I got to play the Apollo in Glasgow where AC/DC filmed “If You Want Blood, You Got It”.

While Totimoshi played, I couldn’t stop thinking about Angus and Malcolm.

Totimoshi on “Reasons Why”:
Antonio Aguilar – guitar, vocals
Meg Castellanos – bass
Donny Newenhouse – drums, engineer

https://www.facebook.com/totimoshi
https://totimoshi.bandcamp.com/
https://totimoshi.bigcartel.com/

https://www.facebook.com/allsoulsband/
https://www.instagram.com/allsoulsband/
https://allsoulsband.bandcamp.com/
http://allsoulsband.com/

All Souls, Songs for the End of the World (2020)