Back in - oh - 1985 while in Laguna Beach for the Pageant of the Masters, my wife and I killed some time at the Sawdust Art Festival across the street. I've always had a weakness for the wet guitar sound, and the duo Romantic Guitars (Ruben Nash Martinez, Ramiro Garcia) were playing to that weakness in the middle of the festival grounds, while family members sold prerecorded cassettes nearby. I picked up a copy of "Moonlight Romance" and "North American Western World", and put myself on their mail list. Back in the day, the MacPaint-based layout and LaserWriter-printed inserts were reasonably cutting edge for a garage band. This is about the same time that Mike Saenz published the first all digital comic book "Shatter", using the same tools.

I bought their third album when a mail announcement came out a year or two later, but I've since lost track of it.

I also lost the first two tapes when we relocated to Hawaii in '99, but finally dug up them up during our '12 spring cleaning, one empty, one with tape. I immediately picked up a used deck, hauled out my Roland UA-1G, and dubbed the survivor to MP3. Ahhhh, electro-acoustic bliss returns on my sound system.

You can't find these cassettes anywhere. I've found one other gentleman on-line who bought a twin of my missing tape from a street vendor in Santa Monica years back. Neither of us is in the habit of passing around copyrighted work. But, the band seems lost to the mists of time, so we made the trade. Given that these releases predate MP3 and cheap CD burners, we may have the only copies not in the band mates' attics.

Got any current contact info? Ramiro tried to reach me via a previous version of my web site, but we were in the midst of another move and the message didn't survive. I believe he still lives in the Inland Empire. Ruben lived in Yucaipa, CA and passed away January 25, 2016. See this notice from the February 9, 2016 Riverside County Board of Supervisors memorial acknowledgements. I'd love to hear from Ramiro or the families, and at least send them a check or Venmo for the duplicated tapes.

I can be found at cmholm on Gmail.