Radio Fig Jungle to Albuquerque: Don’t be Haitin’.
You’ll find reggae, rock, grunge and funk if you go to the benefit concert for Haiti earthquake victims at El Rey Theatre on Saturday.
Four bands — the Ground Beneath, Good Old Hiroshima, Stain Glass and Radio Fig Jungle — are giving all of the proceeds to the Red Cross and Food for the Poor.
Radio Fig Jungle bassist Bill Espinosa said he wanted to do a benefit show for victims of Hurricane Katrina, but never got a response from the Red Cross. This time he asked his aunt for help in getting local businesses to support the band’s show.
“We needed to pay this $800 to set up the venue for the night,” he said. “Within a week we got plenty of sponsors and raised plenty of money for it. Now we got in touch with the Red Cross and the Food for the Poor organization, and they’re both going to be sending representatives to the show to help take money.”
Guitarist/vocalist Roman Wagner said the bands are centered on involving the businesses in the community, like Wagner Farms, and creating awareness about the victims’ situations.
“Everybody in each country is important,” Espinosa said. “And I was hearing recently that the count of orphans in Haiti now is really close to the million mark. I was thinking that is just too much. Anything we can do to help raise money for that kind of cause is totally important.”
Wagner said this gives college students an affordable way to donate to the cause and dance to local music at the same time.
“The earthquake has had a major impact on us,” Wagner said. “I’ve been keeping up with it on the news and I’ve been following it, it’s a real tragedy. We’re going to raise money through admission charges and then we’ll have a box for donations beyond that if anyone feels like doing that.”
Wagner said he encourages anyone from the UNM community who wants to help to do so by showing their art at the show.
“We kind of lean towards the artsy side so we’re leaning towards help from anyone at the University,” he said. “People that work in video, people that do artwork, anything like that. We’re really just trying to help the community and get people involved. Radio Fig Jungle doesn’t have to be four members, it can be a lot more.”
The band’s first studio album should be out by the end of summer, Wagner said.
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“You can go to MySpace and we have three of the tracks up from our album,” he said. “A track called ‘Run’ would probably be my favorite one. But our music just gets people moving and that’s the biggest rush in the world.”
BOX:
Radio Fig Jungle
The Historic El Rey Theater
620 Central Ave. SW
Saturday
6:30 p.m.
$10
All ages
