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Music

From the Ashes of the Mars Volta Rises One Great Band and One Crappy, Sad Band

Here's what happens when Omar Rodriguez-Lopez's new band plays the same venue two days after Cedric Bixler-Zavala's band plays it.

On a weekend anticipated to be the hottest in recorded history, Zavalaz played to a nearly sold-out crowd in Santa Ana, California. The major draw, which every flyer and Facebook post highlighted, was the involvement of Cedric Bixler-Zavala, the voluminous-haired screecher that spent the previous decade making albums with unpronounceable titles in the Mars Volta, after spending the decade before that shooting smack with At The Drive-In.

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"Turn on the air!" someone yelled after the first song, but everyone on stage was focused on the soundman, much as they had throughout the first number; an uninspired mid-tempo venture into bar-rock sung by what sounded like Rob Halford. But the young woman would not be ignored.

"It's fucking hot!" she yelled.

"Sorry guys," Zavala offered, his first words to the audience. "You get to a venue and soundcheck and it's all different when there are people filling up the room, plus there are these curtains everywhere and it looks like the room was just poorly designed. They should really take these curtains down for bands."

At 10pm, it was rumored to be 115 degrees inside the venue, so, you know, no one really gave a shit about the curtains. The 300 people there love Zavala's old bands enough to endure. Truth be told, Zavalaz could have been playing Carnegie Hall and it wouldn't have helped. Shit songs sound like shit no matter the mix, no matter the temperature, and no matter the acoustics of the room.

In the same venue two days earlier, At the Drive-In and the Mars Volta's other creative leader, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, saw his Bosnian Rainbows as the headliner. Well, technically the same venue. Santa Ana's The Observatory houses two separate stages, a 350-capacity club called The Constellation Room, where Zavalaz played, and the the much larger 1,000 cap main stage, which featured Bosnian Rainbows. Zavalaz managed to nearly fill their small area, while Bosnian Rainbows show looked more like this:

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Bosnian Rainbows barely out-sold Zavalaz, moving about 1/3rd of the room's allotted tickets. Regardless of the actual ticket sales, out of the gate Bosnian Rainbows have considerably higher expectations placed on them, as they are doing an intense number of media appearances and now have their self-titled debut album available for purchase. The recent demise of the Mars Volta holds to the same truths as romantic relationships, like how the dumper always comes out looking better. And, regardless of how unlikable Omar Rodriguez-Lopez has made himself over the years, the takeaway from his career is that talent doesn't depend on people liking you.

Now, with their two well-known projects abandoned, neither artist could attract even half of what would fill The Observatory, a venue recently filled by acts like Devendra Banhart, Limp Bizkit, and Riff Raff. A far leap for two gentlemen that sub-headlined Coachella just over a year ago, in what was a reminder you can't go back again for At the Drive-In's fans and members.

The breakup of At The Drive-In at their peak of popularity was a shock to everyone that wasn't close to the band. With the release of

Relationship Of Command

in 2000, the five-piece, El Paso-bred post-hardcore outfit were seen as a next-big-thing. "One-Armed Scissor" earned regular rotation on MTV and alternative radio, and the band had toured with Rage Against the Machine, allowing them to be seen as likeminded activist-artists. The group was also known for its "no moshing" policy, encouraging people to dance through their own example, particularly Rodriguez-Lopez and Bixler-Zavala, whose live presence and acrobatics was often talked about in the same high esteem as their songs. Tell me there isn't something special and way druggy going on here:

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Maybe that was just a fluke? No, that was the band, day in and day out. Same song on Jools Holland with a little context from Zane Lowe:

AtDI would be broken-up just months later, with the drug use of Rodriguez-Lopez and Bixler-Zavala being admitted as a bigger factor in the band's demise the farther we get away from that time. But, the hype they received also gets some blame, which is funny because this was five years before YouTube and right in the Napster sweet spot. Imagine if YouTube did exist and that Letterman performance was put on the web? These guys would have exploded like Arcade Fire or Odd Future.

But the end of At the Drive-In doesn't accurately portray the band as a whole. For years their legend grew from the underground, as they toured relentlessly and lived on shoestring budgets. Albums were made of less than a band spends on a single guitar. But, seeing the flame-out makes sense considering how it began. Omar Rodriguez-Lopez to Mojo in 2005:

"All I did was shoot heroin. That's all I was doing. I sold my guitar. I sold everything. I called Cedric, crying, wanting to come home. That's how I joined AtDI. But in El Paso, it's easy to get some every once in a while. I thought I had it all under control, though in retrospect I was doing lots of fucked up stuff to people around me. But seeing how it affected Jeremy changed our whole view on the situation."

Jeremy Ward, their bandmate in the Mars Volta died of a heroin overdose a month before their debut, De-Loused in the Comatorium, was released. He was 27. Both Cedric and Omar were able to quit drugs around this time and never look back, but that period had already cost them friends and one of the great bands of that time-period.

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These days, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez generally takes the blame for everything, both from himself and from others, involving the break-up of both his former bands. "As far as the creative element went, it very much was finished business," he told The Skinny in 2010, "that's why I ended the band! Now, thank god, fucking ten years later, we're not holding a grudge and we're all cool with it.

But, the Santa Ana shows spoke to something beyond the band's relationship to each other. As might have been perceived from the names Rodriguez-Lopez and Zavala, both Omar and Cedric come from Latin-American heritage, and Santa Ana boasts a population of more than 324,000, of which 78% are Latin American and 2/3rds of all the households in the city speak Spanish as the first language at home. Not to be able to draw here speaks to a missed opportunity, as connecting on a cultural level is a reward that can't be undersold. Ask Morrissey. Or, even ask Chino Moreno, whose new band Palms played the same venue soon after and drew a sell-out, with die-hards lining up for hours to get a good spot to watch. Sure, Deftones were bigger at their prime than either Mars Volta or At the Drive-In, but the loyalty that Moreno has seen amongst Latin-American fans is something At the Drive-In could have matched, or even exceeded.

But for something like that to happen, a concern for the audience would have to be present. Rodriguez-Lopez, though, had different concerns. "For some people, 'self-indulgent' is a criticism," he told The AV Club in 2008. "but for me, it's a huge compliment. I'm in this to be self-indulgent."

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After At The Drive-In broke up, the three silenced majority members—Jim Ward, Paul Hinojos, and Tony Hajjar—went on to form Sparta and now, a little over a decade later, they are a footnote in rock and roll history. For as selfish or impulsive as Rodriguez-Lopez's breaking up of the band, he was right. The others did not have the ideas or creative vision or personality or something that is needed to build a fan-base.

Watching Cedric Bixler-Zavala and his three new bandmates, though, and Sparta begins to look like Nirvana. The voice we hear is familiar, as Bixler-Zavala's best asset isn't how good he sounds, but how familiar he is. Even when singing acoustic-based psych-blues that would be more appropriate on a grassy knoll, there is a comfort in his voice, though other times he struggles to maintain his pitch and sounds like he hasn't been drinking his hot tea nightly. Or, that after years of doing hard drugs and screeching his semi-lucid fever-dreams, his voice is fading.

Somewhere down the line he started sounding like Heart and looking like Jack Black, and while it is better to lose your creative edge in favor of not letting drugs kill you, the question is there wanting to be asked: Was Omar Rodriguez-Lopez carrying the band? And if so, how long? And for as direct and blunt as Omar can be in interviews, I'd bet that he would never admit to it, for Cedric's sake.

Maybe even better than his songwriting is Omar Rodriguez-Lopez's ability to recognize a sinking ship and evacuate with the only lifeboat. Or, maybe he really does think that his former bandmates' "own thing is amazing." Regardless, Bosnian Rainbows is the the opposite of Zavalaz. It is energetic, progressive, captivating to watch, and finds the creative force showing a renewed energy and focus. On stage, Rodriguez-Lopez isn't as insane as his AtDI days, but he's more animated than he has been in years.

There is almost a cruelty to this truth, that his longtime partner is forced to go it alone and try to draw from a dry well, while Rodriguez-Lopez has found a new singer to write music for, and the similarities between Teri Gender Bender and Cedric Bixler-Zavala are striking, despite their different genders. Mostly it is in their wild stage antics, and though this show at the Observatory draws a fraction of its capacity, the sense is that the word should, and will, spread.

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez has broken up two bands loved by a lot of people, and his reward is a third great band. As much as the story might be a happier one with a different ending, art and amiability are not contingent on each other. While the motives and circumstances for both bands' endings are not considered oblique, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez has remained steadfast in his belief that they were the right thing to do. And with Rodriguez-Lopez, the reality is that there are no endings, as he recently told Billboard, "I'm open to anything as long as there's positivity involved. I love music, and it's not like this is politics or something where lives are at stake. It's so much fun, and we're lucky we get to do this for a living. I'm open to collaborate with anyone that'll have me. It's so much fun."

Philip Cosores is on Twitter - @Philip_Cosores