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LOS LOBOTOMYS

Los Lobotomys started out as a fun band in 1985 when several top-session players in LA started to jam at the Baked Potato. Among them were David Garfield, Steve Lukather, Jeff Porcaro, Mike Landau, Chris Brandon Fields, Joe Sample, Will Lee and with guest jammers or audience members including Eddie Van Halen, Jeff Beck, David Sanborn, Eric Clapton, Slash, James Rivers and others. They played a style which has been described by Lukather as "...you throw music genres like jazz, rock, metal, reggae, bebop etc. in the air, and what comes down on the floor is what we play"

Steve Lukather commented in 1991 (International musician, 1991) how much he likes playing in this band:
I play in this club band in LA called Los Lobotomys. It's different guys every time. On drums it's either Jeff, Vinnie Colaiuta, Greg Visanent or Carlos Vega. Then Nathan East, Jimmy Johnson or John Pena on bass and we have some original stuff and some jam tunes - it's freak out music. Some of the guys can bop - so you play with those guys for a few years and different ideas and phrasings come out. There's a latin thing to it too. It's like heavy metal-latin-jazz-fusion music. It's weird. Great music. We did an album all live.

David Garfield, one of the founding members of Los Lobotomys recalls the band's history:
That's a great story because Los Lobotomys was born as an off-shoot of Karizma. Karizma was together for many years with Michael Landau and the band, and we put out our first record, which Steve Lukather played on as a guest artist. And after that he asked if he could play with us at the Baked Potato, so one night he came in and sat in on one song. He thought it was a lot of fun and would like to play a whole gig so we started our first gig and we just called it David Garfield And Friends, with Steve Lukather and Jeff Porcaro, Nathan East and Lenny Castro.
And after we played a few gigs, one night Lenny goes 'I have a name for this band: Los Lobotomys !' And that was inspired by the name Los Lobos, who was a band from Los Angeles. So Lenny came up with the name, we all loved it and started calling the band Los Lobotomys and from there it just became a real band. We were known for being crazy and wild, and we played long songs, intense solos and very hard rock flavored jazz things. We thought the band was very nice, it was more of a jam band whereas Karizma was a band playing more original music.
[...}When we started out it was just an instrumental band, and later it became a little different when Simon Phillips joined and we made the second record (=> "Candyman", DH) and started vocal tunes. (from an Kenneth Bremer and Thomas O. Høyer interview, 2000)

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