Enjoying 'Chicano Rock'

KOCE, the Orange County PBS station hoping to grab more of the post-KCET Los Angeles audience, ran Jon Wilkman's hour-long documentary Chicano Rock tonight. As a Valley kid who somehow became a fan of Thee Midniters and Cannibal and the Headhunters, I've wanted to see it ever since learning about Wilkman's project in 2008. I missed the earlier airings on PBS, so now I'm caught up and it's great. Tons of Eastside street and concert scenes, with commentary by Lalo and Mark Guerrero, authors Tom Waldman and David Reyes, Fox 11 reporter Tony Valdez and many pioneers of the East L.A. sound. Kind of a tear jerker at the end when Lalo Guerrero — born in Tucson in 1916 — loses it admitting how he never felt truly like an American until he received the National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton in 1996. Linda Ronstadt sang at Guerrero's funeral in 2005.

Here's my 2008 video from Wilkman's talk at the Los Angeles Archives Bazaar.