watching television. They would become my friends the next year." Career The Zeros (1976–1978) In 1976, at age 16, Lopez started a band with classmate Javier Escovedo; Lopez played guitar, while Escovedo played guitar and sang. Called the Main Street Brats, the group played their first show at a quinceañera in Mexico's Rosarito Beach. The lineup then changed; Lopez recruited his cousin Karton "Baba" Chanelle to play drums, and Chanelle's Sweetwater High School classmate Hector Penalosa to play bass, and they changed their name to the Zeros. As the first genuine punk rock band in San Diego, they had difficulty finding places to perform, so they frequently traveled north to Los Angeles which had a thriving punk scene. Their first L.A. performance, at the Orpheum Theatre, was also the debut performance by the Germs, and was headlined by the Weirdos. Though only teenagers, the Zeros became regulars on the L.A. club scene, playing shows with bands such as the Dils, the Avengers, X, the Plugz, the Nerves, the Wipers, the Germs, Devo, and the Damned. They performed in the area so frequently that they were often mistaken for an L.A. band; one magazine even included them in a photo-essay of East L.A. acts. "Those early shows were pretty inspiring", Lopez wrote forty years later; "I felt part of a movement, or something at least. Part of a music scene. It was a great feeling after years of misfitdom." He was drawn to the inclusiveness of the scene, which included girls, people of color, gays, and people who did not look or dress like stereotypical "punks". He became a fan of the art of Gary Panter, the writings of Claude Bessy in Slash magazine and Craig Lee in LA Weekly, and performance artists such as the Kipper Kids and Johanna Went, and idolized Tomata du Plenty and his band the Screamers. The Zeros' Mexican American heritage earned them the nickname "the Mexican Ramones", coined by a friend and solidified when it was used in a Los Angeles Times article. "I loved the Ramones, so I didn't mind the title", Lopez later recalled; "But we thought our style was more New York Dolls and Velvet Underground; after all, we had guitar solos. Yeah, we were Mexicans—so what? It wasn't our calling card. Funny enough, that would become my raison d'être for my later performing—always a "Mexican" something. Lopez played on the Zeros'