it yet. So I was really on a con roll. It was like, how much can I get away with?" Initially his repertoire consisted merely of cover versions of Elvis songs with new lyrics, and the performances were, in Lopez's words, "very guerrilla theatre". The act was mostly silly and kitsch, presenting El Vez as "the love child between Elvis and Charo", complete with a fake Spanish accent (Lopez has no such accent). He used the marketing skills he had developed promoting artists and shows for the gallery to promote his new act. "That first year was really great", he later said. "I was just making it up. It was a con. Everyone thought I knew what I was doing, but I was having fun and I had that punk rock 'Do It Yourself' attitude." A turning point came when he reworked the Elvis song "In the Ghetto" into "En el Barrio", realizing that he could use his humorous act to make social commentary about the Mexican American experience: "The first stuff was just really silly ditties, like 'You Ain't Nothing but a Chihuahua'. Then with 'En el Barrio', I realized that this guy [El Vez] can put some messages out there." As he developed a cult following in Los Angeles, he assembled a full backing band ("the Memphis Mariachis"), added a team of female backing vocalists ("the Lovely Elvettes", with the stage names Priscillita, Lisa Maria, Gladyscita, and Que Linda Thompson, after Elvis' wife Priscilla Presley, daughter Lisa Marie Presley, mother Gladys Presley, and girlfriend Linda Thompson), incorporated increasingly elaborate costuming and staging, and developed songs that mixed politics and cultural commentary with tropes from rock and roll and pop music: "I took on the banner of heralding the Chicano experience, and once I got an agenda under my El Vez belt, the show kind of changed." First El Vez recordings, Raul Raul, and reunions with the Zeros (1991–1995) El Vez's recorded debut came in 1991 with the 7-inch EP The Mexican Elvis. Consisting of "Esta Bien Mamacita" (sung in Spanish) and "En el Barrio" (sung in English, and incorporating elements of the Traffic song "Dear Mr. Fantasy" and the Beatles' "I've Got a Feeling"), it was released by independent record label Sympathy for the Record Industry, which would put out many subsequent El Vez recordings. A second EP, El Vez Calling, followed a few months later; its cover