I keep coming back to this film over and over again. I've probably watched this doc 50+ times (no joke). There is something amazingly profound about what it captures. It's about the 80s and rock music and bands, sure... but, man... It captures something so much more than that. I'm not smart or eloquent enough to put it into words, but it really hits home for me, something about human life, people's dreams, and when things just... don't quite work out perfectly, and the way we all can sometimes latch onto the past. How quickly time passes, how we all chase after happiness, and how sometimes we get *so* close to our dreams, and yet it's never quite what we thought. I'm mangling my words trying to describe it, but this is seriously a fantastic film that really hits deep on so many levels. Thank you so much for this documentary!
Excellent film!! I'll always love Bang Tango!! Actually, I'm rockin' it in my car as we speak. Joe's badass as an entertainer and was super cool when I met him at Rocklahoma in 2009!! Keep kickin ass guys!!
Wow, Thank you Drew for this film... I loved Bang Tango growing up... In '89-90 I was in 10th grade, fkn screaming Someone Like You in the car on the way to school.... Just amazing inspiration for a kid pretending to wanna be a rock star... 5-6 years later (summer '96), I got a college summer job at Urban Outfitters in Pasadena, CA... Joe had a sister named Julie, who was the GM. She was so gorgeous. I had massive crush on her, and always asked her about Bang Tango... Towards the end of that summer, she fired me, for always being late to work... But man, I miss those days, Nicola, Kamlin, Cal, JP, Christine, and gorgeous Julie... And especially Bang Tango... Loved that band and love this documentary... Cheers!
Bang Tango was a very special band for me, I discovered them when Dancin On Coals came out and worked my way backward into the catalog, buying all of the albums immediately. I did this with a number of bands when I was in high school. I graduated in 93, and when Dancin On Coals came out, I had a girl I was really "in love with" and so Bang Tango tattooed itself on that girl. And now I think of her every time I hear Midnight Struck. Dancin On Coals blew my mind. Then I was in college when Love After Death came out and I met a band from Austin, called Seed, who had come to Milwaukee. They knew of of the guys in BT and they were giving me inside details on Love After Death - because at the time, all you had were magazines, and rumors, and MTV. So when they told me it was called "Shed" I was like what? Then it comes out and I was told it would only be an import - I had to track it down. A kid from the UK I think it was shipped it to me. And yes I still have it. Great band, in my mind legends. If you guys are reading this, I love you to death.
I’d love to know who he is. I live in Chicago and hung at & played at the Thirsty Whale circa 86-92. Joe got sick in the Chicago area and “The Ghost Singer” was from the area. That singer deserves mad ass props!
It’s actually a better story than the the Ripper story with Priest ala the Rockstar movie. Just a true fan, not trying to make it more than just being in the moment and being there for the music….then disappears into the night. Props to that guy for figuratively and literally ending ion a high note 😂
these guys were one of my fav bands when they came out. I got to meet them all on a couple different occasions when they were playing the legendary Toads Place in New Haven CT. Really cool down to earth guys. Had no problem just hanging out with a 17 year old kid shooting the shit after the shows. So very underrated. They should have been way bigger than they were....
Kyle Kyle's response to Joe and him soldiering on with the Bang Tango name was well said and his view in retrospect shows what an intelligent man & player he is. The Eating Crow project sounds amazing! With the minimal Mogwai-like guitar parts with the grooving bass & drums worked really well with Joe's voice.
I got that tape... and was absolutely blown away!!! (Psycho Cafe) loved the bass and Leste's voice. I thought "Am I the only one who gets this band???" This documentary tells me no. Also, when AC/DC was on the fence with their singer dilemma, I immediately thought how Joe Leste would have been perfect!!! Axl did ok but ultimately its best that Brian is back.
I happened across this documentary while traversing down the ol' TH-cam rabbit hole with whiskey in hand, and I'm glad I did. Having been in several Southeastern circuit bands in the late 80s and early 90s, I'm a bit familiar with the grind; however, the grind that these dudes have willingly subjected themselves to for all these years is a true mark of dedication, coupled with insanity. You might be able to even throw in a dash of hubristic shades of Ed Wood-esque obliviousness. On a side note, I had a volunteer roadie gig yesterday which required loading in and setting up a fairly large PA. I'm feeling the pain today. Hats off to those who are still able to do this type of work , especially those who are chronologically challenged by Father Time. Thanks again for such a meticulously insightful documentary. Nice job!!
I have been a fan of Bang Tango since they first came out. This documentary is top notch and is well worthy of an official release. I thought I knew a lot about the band but this has every detail you could want to know. Great job!!
Joe is/was the weak link. Better writer than singer. Also, a better Screamer came into the picture. Chris Cornell, Soundgarden. Imagine CC singing "Attack Of Life"!
@@kristopherkrueger4617Nah , absolutely not. I'd rather hear Joe sing than a yarling cat bellowing it's last breath. All the "grunge" singers sounded the same even as different as they were. Joe had a unique voice that popped and it was undeniable who was singing.
One of the best bands ever. Magic. Epic talent. Unbelievably incredibly insane. Original. Sick. Heavy. Hard rock. Super special. Fuck everyother band in this Era. This will always be one of my favorite bands ever !!!
Saw them once in a dive bar in the Bronx (Blackthorn), back in the early 90s. I couldn't believe they were there, felt like they deserved better. Great band and good guys!
Beautiful, man. I haven't been on that kind of emotional roller coaster in a long time...and it felt good. The glory of the music. The heartbreak of being cast aside. The struggle of survival. Yeah. It's all there. For me, this documentary encapsulated the feelings and frustrations of my generation. We watched the music industry throw our heroes to the wolves while force feeding the masses what they thought we wanted to hear. Thank you for taking the time to share your vision and showing the world what really happens more often than not in the music biz. Truly a work of art.
At 52 myself, I slightly remembered the band, barely knew the music, and definitely didn't know the story. But man, upon rediscovery, that first record is a classic. The musicianship and arrangements are outstanding. You know, it's better to burn out than to fade away. Thanks for this.
Thank you for sharing this with all of us. It's fantastic! Bang Tango is one of my favorite bands. I have been a fan since the beginning. Watching this brings back so many memories. Well done!
Thanks for making this,my husbands been raving about it since he saw it,and he saw it again with me.Great job,covered everything,really really cool band
This is great - Brilliant job; loved that band and every few months I have a little binge on those albums. Not sure that Joe really comes across that well in this....
Thanks for posting this. I had the pleasure of seeing , meeting, and partying with this band twice in 1988.PHENOMINAL shows both times. In fact one of the best live bands I've ever seen, keeping mind that I saw izzy n Adler era GNR, Motley, Kiss, Ozzy Faster LA Guns, peppers, Ramones , Misfits, autograph, VH, metallica, all by this time. Mark, Kyle K, and Tigg were notably the coolest to this teenage kid thanks so much guys.All played so incredibly and were consummate showmen.If any of the band are interested I have photos of the inside signing and an original flyer from the 1313 gig.Thanks for the memories!
Tigg is absolutely a straight up, stand up regular guy. I knew him in '85 when we worked a snack bar job together in San Diego. Still trade texts with him once in a while about politics. Hes doing well living in Chino Hills and plays with Mark Knight still. When Psycho Cafe dropped they WERE destined to be the next GnR. Nirvana's Nevermind came out and changed everything.
This was fabulous! Thank you for sharing this with us. I enjoyed their music so much, loved the original line up. Kyle Kyle, one of the best bass players.
Well done. One of my favorite bands of all time. Incredibly under-rated, under appreciated, but very talented and entertaining to those that were in the know. Hopefully this film puts more people into the "In the know" category. Thanks so much for your work.
I feel so bad when the Heroin stories come into the picture. I wouldn't wish dealing with that drug on anybody. In conclusion, I love seeing survivors from dealing with that problem. Please get help if anybody is struggling with that. It will get better when you can get help. Remember, everyone wants you to live and be happy.
SO thrilled to see this - it's AMAZING! I haven't given up on you - been a fan ever since "Someone Like You"! Igree, this band deserved better & should have been heard by more, they were so freakin' short-changed!!! In my little area, I promoted the heck out of your band!! I remember having some really ticked off conversations with the local radio stations for not playing your music enough so, I had decided that I would be your sounding board for my zip code.... I played your music SO many times for my friends or anyone I came across that I actually had to replace the cassette three times from wearing it out!!!! Not tooting my own horn but heck yes, I totally LUV you guys!!!!!!!!!!
Great documentary, had to stay up late and watch! Even though they weren't huge for 20+ years, they all should be proud of the music and success they had. The music lives on; and I just went to play some Bang Tango tonight and that's how I came across the doc. Best wishes and good health t o them all!
Thank for the doc. They most definitely deserved more. To bad we didnt have social media back then like we do now, could have easily put their music out to so many more to hear. I think it can still be relevant today if it was put out there for people to discover. Wish all the guys the best and thanks for the good times.
This is really great Drew... It's interesting to see a documentary that's essentially about the other 97% of bands. So many of these stories could have come from so many bands. I think you did a great job showing that, at the end of the day, it's still about playing music, no matter how many people might be standing in front of the stage.
I dunno what made me (most likely a German album review), but I got Psycho Cafe when it came out, on CD, and me and my wife loved it. One of the most played records of that year. I think its a classic, and Dancin' on Coals was great, too. They lost me in the 3rd album. But I will pull the records and listen to them again. I mean, it's 2020, how many years did I not listen to them? Great film, Drew.
Well done, Drew. Always loved Bang Tango and we played the s*** out of em at KNAC. I just popped Someone Like You and Love Injection into our library at KLOS today, so they'll get some spins from time to time here, as well. Shhhh... Don't tell my PD. LOL.
great documentary! I worked as a photographer for a local fanzine from 87-97, and had the opportunity to shoot and meet them and many other bands. But like my music counterparts, I was among the "other 97%" of photographers who paid our dues but didn't achieve the fame we deserved...LOL!
i was talking with my bro a few years back, and he was playing little bits of music, trying to see if i could guess what they were, from the late 80s, and he was surprised i remembered Bango Tango, Someone like you.... how could i not, i loved it, but being a teen at the time and not having internet yet available, i didnt get to hear other music of theirs, because it wasnt available in Australia or our music shops, and we simply couldnt get it, until now... the internet is where i find the music now, instead of having to wait for Rage music on abc to play the heavy metal hour (that wasnt in when we liked it, but it got us through those boring teen years... Bango Tango just like others is what teens now like, we were just ahead of the times thats all
My band De-La-War opened up for Bang Tango in Wilmington.De.Great time.we let them use all of our gear except guitars.And we partied it up.They were releasing their newalbum.
Just watched this again. Getting all excited to see them this Saturday at the Whiskey! 🤘 all og members. Kyel Kyle was ahead of his time with his hair...its the color and cut i tried to accomplish for years because of him. Haha...i should of just brought pic of him to when got my hair did and said this is the cut im going for lol.always dug his hair back in the day. I always felt they were underrated. Gonna be so cool to see them all on stage together again. 🤘👍😁
Incredible. Great work. I was a huge fan and we used to ride our motorcycles down to LA from Santa Barbara just to go see them. Kyle is one of the best bass payers I've ever heard... As a Cult fan, I always felt the influence on them. Like most great bands, you had to see them live to really get it.
Thanks for posting the movie +Drew Fortier! Really liked it - great job! Always loved Bang Tango since I first heard Someone Like You in the 90s. Wish Joe had talked about Beautiful Creatures though. Loved the two BC albums too.
I always thought they should have gone further. I swore Bang Tango, Jane's Addiction and Chilli Peppers would be stars. I guess 2 out of 3 aint bad. I absolutely loved Kyle Kyle's bass playing and pushed my band to have as bass forward a sound. Bang Tango were magic, and I thank you for this movie!
Good job brother...I could really tell your film was a work of passion. What a great watch. I've seen other band docs with big budgets that were only half as good as yours. Thank you for all your hard work and dedication to the craft.
Fantastic film of an interesting band. Saw them live in LA back in the day. Great insight into the rock world in general really. Thanks for the passion and vision to get this put together. 🤘🏼🤩
Drew Fortier Thank you! Bang Tango will be like Nikolai Tesla, now not have the succes what they should, but IN THE FUTURE THEY WILL BE FOREVER, because the good guys, good things.will be there with people and never lost!!!!!!!!Pro is pro and will... Lot of love from Hungary... Joe, Kyle K., Kyle S, Mark, and Tigg pls live long, release music, release the demos, Eating Crowd, .So abuse was fantastic, I wonder for all. Bang tango's later members, thx for keep the fire burning! You ALL has great hearts guys. Peace!! BIG LOVE(and sorry for my grammar...:))
I saw Bang Tango a few years ago on the 2nd stage of the M3 Festival in Maryland(one of the best hair/glam fests) Joe sounded great, so did the rest of the band and happy to say the area was full, which was approx 2-3 thousand people for BT. Hair metal association helped and may have eventually hurt BT, but many bands tried to ride that wave and then turned their back on it, see Whitesnake. I loved the sound of BT and I've bought all the albums and I know most people don't realize that there even were albums after dancin on coals, or shocked to hear BT released a good album in 2013, just like many other hair metals acts are doing. The original hair metal bands are still putting out cool tunes and there is a great new wave of hair/sleaze metal out there as well, so go and find it! Rock on Forever!
love Bang Tango all the way back to Psycho Cafe. one of the best live shows i've ever seen (and heard) was them in 1990 @ World Stage in New York. thank you Mr. Fortier: a job well done.
I saw Sea Hags, Bang Tango, and Bulletboys in San Francisco at a club i don't remember. I worked at tower records and got the tape for Psycho Cafe and fell in love with it right away. They and the Bulletboys were SO great at that show. I hated the Sea Hags. But that show totally cemented my love for them. They were so great live!!
A fantastic watch! BT was one of my very favs in high school. A hard rock/metal band that featured the bass! What a concept... miss Kyle Kyle! Would love the band to do a reunion, just a tour and then joe can go back to the current line up or whatever.... would be great to see!
Great doc, super entertaining and really well-done, a really interesting look at the band and the changing music scene over the years. Thanks so much for making and sharing this
Outstanding work Drew......far better content and representation than so many other films of this nature. I also did not know of Bang Tango till that night at Liquid Joe's, and am so glad that you came to talk to me before you went on stage. That alone made the gig all the more relevant. Give my regards to Joe , Lance, Rowan and your drum man (I need to look him up, he is excellent) i have also subscribed to your You Tube channel and I see you have been extremely busy with various other artists......You Rock!!!!
Fell in love with Bang Tango when they released Psycho Cafe, then life happened and the band fell off my radar, but every once in awhile I'd return. Just listened to some of Love After Death. What a waste that album didn't get released like it should have. There's a couple songs that immediately made me think of Avenged Sevenfold, tells me how ahead of their time Bang Tango really was. They easily could have been a massive band even still.
Of course I did. And you did a great job that night. I still hope to get Joey to sign that LP for me. But it was great to get a pic with you that night. I think I still have a clip from that night I have yet to post anywhere. I will have to check and see if its worth posting. Keep me posted! Ill be there!
I graduated in 89 and this girl gave me the psycho cafe cd because my name is Kyle and she thought it was cool that the members names were Kyle. I absolutely was amazed at their sound ...played this cd all the time at to my surprise no one and I mean by one knew who they were but would ask me to make a copy.... got to love memorex
I love the band I got a couple their CDs. I was into them back in the 90s and I still jam on them! I’m 55 years old. I also like Shotgun Messiah and Seduce who I would put in the same category as them.
Thanks for this. One of my favorite underappreciated bands. Got my hands on a copy of Love After Death back in the day, enjoyed it too! I still listen to those first few CD's.
Thanks for all the work you did to make this wonderful document. Psycho Cafe has been one of my top favorite albums from that era of pop metal. I like all types of metal including the lighter stuff and the extreme stuff. Psycho Cafe just hit me hard in a special way, so I really understand all the people who say they were a bit different than other bands from that scene. I've listened to that album dozens of times over the years and I always return to it to be blown away all over again. I also love Dancin' on Coals. I did not even realize they had recorded anything after that and continued in various lineups, so this was a fascinating documentary for me. Overall pretty sad but very interesting. I think you portrayed the history and the different viewpoints in a very fair, balanced way. The viewer can reach their own conclusions about personalities and so on. It also really encapsulates an era and a subculture as a somewhat typical story of a band that didn't find the success they might've achieved in slightly different circumstances, so it's interesting beyond the specifics of Bang Tango and really satisfying for a fan of that era of music like me to get a sociological sense of what happened--a fan like me who had no firsthand involvement of any kind in that scene, just someone who got a CD and listened to it at some point. I have to say that even though I found the whole video interesting as a fan of the band, it would be worth watching just for the "ghost singer" subplot, which was a mind-blowing climax in an otherwise humdrum tale. Like holy shit, that actually happened?!?! Pure magic.
Bang Tango were a somewhat tough thing. They were from the L.A. Sunset Strip scene and they absolutely looked the part but they didn't 'sound' the part. If you know Strip music you know what I mean. Solid musicians, Joe had tons of charisma and they all looked good, but it didn't fully translate to the next level. I discovered these guys in late '91 and what they looked like didn't convey what one would think the music was. I eventually bought three cd's of theirs and enjoy them & still have them. The lineup of Joe Leste, Mark Knight, Kyle Kyle, Kyle Stevens & Tigg Ketler was the best lineup, in my opinion. If you like Bang Tango singer Joe Leste, check out a group he put together in the early '00's called Beautiful Creatures. I have one cd of theirs and it's good rocking stuff. Joe had a stroke late summer of '23 and I think he's recovering o.k. To see the end where this version of Bang Tango is an opener for someone at Pine Knob (an hour from Detroit) and the pavilion is 95% empty is sad.
I keep coming back to this film over and over again. I've probably watched this doc 50+ times (no joke). There is something amazingly profound about what it captures. It's about the 80s and rock music and bands, sure... but, man... It captures something so much more than that. I'm not smart or eloquent enough to put it into words, but it really hits home for me, something about human life, people's dreams, and when things just... don't quite work out perfectly, and the way we all can sometimes latch onto the past. How quickly time passes, how we all chase after happiness, and how sometimes we get *so* close to our dreams, and yet it's never quite what we thought. I'm mangling my words trying to describe it, but this is seriously a fantastic film that really hits deep on so many levels. Thank you so much for this documentary!
Me too! I'm glad to know I wasn't the only one!
I think you described it much better than you though.
Excellent film!! I'll always love Bang Tango!! Actually, I'm rockin' it in my car as we speak. Joe's badass as an entertainer and was super cool when I met him at Rocklahoma in 2009!! Keep kickin ass guys!!
they absolutely did put a very good music they could stand on their own for sure , grunge no, thanks Soundgarden was OK
Same here. There's something special about this.
Wow, Thank you Drew for this film... I loved Bang Tango growing up... In '89-90 I was in 10th grade, fkn screaming Someone Like You in the car on the way to school.... Just amazing inspiration for a kid pretending to wanna be a rock star... 5-6 years later (summer '96), I got a college summer job at Urban Outfitters in Pasadena, CA... Joe had a sister named Julie, who was the GM. She was so gorgeous. I had massive crush on her, and always asked her about Bang Tango... Towards the end of that summer, she fired me, for always being late to work... But man, I miss those days, Nicola, Kamlin, Cal, JP, Christine, and gorgeous Julie... And especially Bang Tango... Loved that band and love this documentary... Cheers!
Kyle Kyle just absolutely blows our minds, no words. What an insane talent. So glad he survived.
Bang Tango was a very special band for me, I discovered them when Dancin On Coals came out and worked my way backward into the catalog, buying all of the albums immediately. I did this with a number of bands when I was in high school. I graduated in 93, and when Dancin On Coals came out, I had a girl I was really "in love with" and so Bang Tango tattooed itself on that girl. And now I think of her every time I hear Midnight Struck. Dancin On Coals blew my mind. Then I was in college when Love After Death came out and I met a band from Austin, called Seed, who had come to Milwaukee. They knew of of the guys in BT and they were giving me inside details on Love After Death - because at the time, all you had were magazines, and rumors, and MTV. So when they told me it was called "Shed" I was like what? Then it comes out and I was told it would only be an import - I had to track it down. A kid from the UK I think it was shipped it to me. And yes I still have it. Great band, in my mind legends. If you guys are reading this, I love you to death.
There was a show, Jezebels in Anaheim, CA, NYE, I think, 1992. Joe told us/the crowd that the 3rd album was going to be called "HEX". Things change.
The 'ghost' singer has to be the most incredible music thing I've ever heard of!
How'd they find him for the video
I’d love to know who he is. I live in Chicago and hung at & played at the Thirsty Whale circa 86-92. Joe got sick in the Chicago area and “The Ghost Singer” was from the area. That singer deserves mad ass props!
He nailed it didnt he!
It’s actually a better story than the the Ripper story with Priest ala the Rockstar movie. Just a true fan, not trying to make it more than just being in the moment and being there for the music….then disappears into the night. Props to that guy for figuratively and literally ending ion a high note 😂
I remember cruising in my 1988 Celica blasting Bang Tango as a teen. Good Times!
Great movie. Thank you.
Drew Fortier did an amazing job with this documentary!
these guys were one of my fav bands when they came out. I got to meet them all on a couple different occasions when they were playing the legendary Toads Place in New Haven CT. Really cool down to earth guys. Had no problem just hanging out with a 17 year old kid shooting the shit after the shows. So very underrated. They should have been way bigger than they were....
I loved Bang Tango.
Kyle Kyle was amazing. I had no idea about the accident.
So glad a gifted artist lived.
If there were ever a time that we needed Bang Tango back ,it's now in 2023 .What a great piece Drew produced .
Kyle Kyle's response to Joe and him soldiering on with the Bang Tango name was well said and his view in retrospect shows what an intelligent man & player he is. The Eating Crow project sounds amazing! With the minimal Mogwai-like guitar parts with the grooving bass & drums worked really well with Joe's voice.
Man.... That last shot of the empty show... Sad sad.
I got that tape... and was absolutely blown away!!!
(Psycho Cafe) loved the bass and Leste's voice. I thought "Am I the only one who gets this band???" This documentary tells me no.
Also, when AC/DC was on the fence with their singer dilemma, I immediately thought how Joe Leste would have been perfect!!! Axl did ok but ultimately its best that Brian is back.
I happened across this documentary while traversing down the ol' TH-cam rabbit hole with whiskey in hand, and I'm glad I did. Having been in several Southeastern circuit bands in the late 80s and early 90s, I'm a bit familiar with the grind; however, the grind that these dudes have willingly subjected themselves to for all these years is a true mark of dedication, coupled with insanity. You might be able to even throw in a dash of hubristic shades of Ed Wood-esque obliviousness. On a side note, I had a volunteer roadie gig yesterday which required loading in and setting up a fairly large PA. I'm feeling the pain today. Hats off to those who are still able to do this type of work , especially those who are chronologically challenged by Father Time. Thanks again for such a meticulously insightful documentary. Nice job!!
I have been a fan of Bang Tango since they first came out. This documentary is top notch and is well worthy of an official release. I thought I knew a lot about the band but this has every detail you could want to know. Great job!!
Great band! Kyle Kyle is an amazing bass player. They should have been bigger.
I had a signed pic of Kyle Kyle hanging in my dorm room! :D
D. Bateman Joe's voice is the turn off for a lot of listeners
Joe is/was the weak link. Better writer than singer. Also, a better Screamer came into the picture.
Chris Cornell, Soundgarden.
Imagine CC singing "Attack Of Life"!
They would have been bigger if they wouldn’t have released Dancing On Coals.
Love After Death should have been their follow up to Psycho Cafe
@@kristopherkrueger4617Nah , absolutely not.
I'd rather hear Joe sing than a yarling cat bellowing it's last breath.
All the "grunge" singers sounded the same even as different as they were.
Joe had a unique voice that popped and it was undeniable who was singing.
One of the best bands ever. Magic. Epic talent. Unbelievably incredibly insane. Original. Sick. Heavy. Hard rock. Super special. Fuck everyother band in this Era. This will always be one of my favorite bands ever !!!
Saw them once in a dive bar in the Bronx (Blackthorn), back in the early 90s. I couldn't believe they were there, felt like they deserved better. Great band and good guys!
Beautiful, man. I haven't been on that kind of emotional roller coaster in a long time...and it felt good. The glory of the music. The heartbreak of being cast aside. The struggle of survival. Yeah. It's all there. For me, this documentary encapsulated the feelings and frustrations of my generation. We watched the music industry throw our heroes to the wolves while force feeding the masses what they thought we wanted to hear. Thank you for taking the time to share your vision and showing the world what really happens more often than not in the music biz. Truly a work of art.
At 52 myself, I slightly remembered the band, barely knew the music, and definitely didn't know the story. But man, upon rediscovery, that first record is a classic. The musicianship and arrangements are outstanding. You know, it's better to burn out than to fade away. Thanks for this.
Really well done documentary. As a kid I loved bands like this, and it was crazy how as of 1992 they were quickly all gone.
Thank you for sharing this with all of us. It's fantastic! Bang Tango is one of my favorite bands. I have been a fan since the beginning. Watching this brings back so many memories. Well done!
So glad to find this! Both guitarists were a massive influence on me! Unashamedly a Bang Tango fan for life.
Thanks for making this,my husbands been raving about it since he saw it,and he saw it again with me.Great job,covered everything,really really cool band
Hell Yeah! Thank you so much for not letting this sit on a shelf. Great Movie!
This is great - Brilliant job; loved that band and every few months I have a little binge on those albums. Not sure that Joe really comes across that well in this....
...that's Joe, though.
Thanks for posting this. I had the pleasure of seeing , meeting, and partying with this band twice in 1988.PHENOMINAL shows both times. In fact one of the best live bands I've ever seen, keeping mind that I saw izzy n Adler era GNR, Motley, Kiss, Ozzy Faster LA Guns, peppers, Ramones , Misfits, autograph, VH, metallica, all by this time. Mark, Kyle K, and Tigg were notably the coolest to this teenage kid thanks so much guys.All played so incredibly and were consummate showmen.If any of the band are interested I have photos of the inside signing and an original flyer from the 1313 gig.Thanks for the memories!
Tigg is absolutely a straight up, stand up regular guy. I knew him in '85 when we worked a snack bar job together in San Diego. Still trade texts with him once in a while about politics. Hes doing well living in Chino Hills and plays with Mark Knight still.
When Psycho Cafe dropped they WERE destined to be the next GnR. Nirvana's Nevermind came out and changed everything.
This was fabulous!
Thank you for sharing this with us.
I enjoyed their music so much, loved the original line up.
Kyle Kyle, one of the best bass players.
Well done. One of my favorite bands of all time. Incredibly under-rated, under appreciated, but very talented and entertaining to those that were in the know. Hopefully this film puts more people into the "In the know" category. Thanks so much for your work.
I feel so bad when the Heroin stories come into the picture. I wouldn't wish dealing with that drug on anybody. In conclusion, I love seeing survivors from dealing with that problem. Please get help if anybody is struggling with that. It will get better when you can get help. Remember, everyone wants you to live and be happy.
SO thrilled to see this - it's AMAZING! I haven't given up on you - been a fan ever since "Someone Like You"! Igree, this band deserved better & should have been heard by more, they were so freakin' short-changed!!! In my little area, I promoted the heck out of your band!! I remember having some really ticked off conversations with the local radio stations for not playing your music enough so, I had decided that I would be your sounding board for my zip code.... I played your music SO many times for my friends or anyone I came across that I actually had to replace the cassette three times from wearing it out!!!! Not tooting my own horn but heck yes, I totally LUV you guys!!!!!!!!!!
Great band. They bring back memories because of this great radio station out of Long Beach KNAC, no longer around unfortunately.
Great documentary, had to stay up late and watch! Even though they weren't huge for 20+ years, they all should be proud of the music and success they had. The music lives on; and I just went to play some Bang Tango tonight and that's how I came across the doc. Best wishes and good health t o them all!
I fucking love Bang Tango. I always have since their first album. They should have been waaay bigger than they were.
Amazing documentary. Thank you so much for making it and for sharing it. The original lineup was amazing...nothing against the current members.
This is or will hopefully end up on a streaming platform. Great Doc.
Thanks for making this documentary!
Leslie Yao My pleasure!! Thank you for watching it!! :)
Thank for the doc. They most definitely deserved more. To bad we didnt have social media back then like we do now, could have easily put their music out to so many more to hear. I think it can still be relevant today if it was put out there for people to discover.
Wish all the guys the best and thanks for the good times.
This is really great Drew... It's interesting to see a documentary that's essentially about the other 97% of bands. So many of these stories could have come from so many bands. I think you did a great job showing that, at the end of the day, it's still about playing music, no matter how many people might be standing in front of the stage.
I dunno what made me (most likely a German album review), but I got Psycho Cafe when it came out, on CD, and me and my wife loved it. One of the most played records of that year. I think its a classic, and Dancin' on Coals was great, too. They lost me in the 3rd album. But I will pull the records and listen to them again. I mean, it's 2020, how many years did I not listen to them? Great film, Drew.
Well done, Drew. Always loved Bang Tango and we played the s*** out of em at KNAC. I just popped Someone Like You and Love Injection into our library at KLOS today, so they'll get some spins from time to time here, as well. Shhhh... Don't tell my PD. LOL.
I just started watching but Dee's rant at the beginning had me in stitches.
great documentary! I worked as a photographer for a local fanzine from 87-97, and had the opportunity to shoot and meet them and many other bands. But like my music counterparts, I was among the "other 97%" of photographers who paid our dues but didn't achieve the fame we deserved...LOL!
I was down with these dudes BITD. No one else knew who they were but that just made them even more cool to me.
i was talking with my bro a few years back, and he was playing little bits of music, trying to see if i could guess what they were, from the late 80s, and he was surprised i remembered Bango Tango, Someone like you.... how could i not, i loved it, but being a teen at the time and not having internet yet available, i didnt get to hear other music of theirs, because it wasnt available in Australia or our music shops, and we simply couldnt get it, until now... the internet is where i find the music now, instead of having to wait for Rage music on abc to play the heavy metal hour (that wasnt in when we liked it, but it got us through those boring teen years... Bango Tango just like others is what teens now like, we were just ahead of the times thats all
My band De-La-War opened up for Bang Tango in Wilmington.De.Great time.we let them use all of our gear except guitars.And we partied it up.They were releasing their newalbum.
I bought both albums on cassette plus the all live no jive ep 😎...they should have been much bigger...no doubt
I saw these guys at the Cactus Club in San Jose back in the day... I'm 51 now and I was 21 then still remember how hard they rocked
Just watched this again. Getting all excited to see them this Saturday at the Whiskey! 🤘 all og members. Kyel Kyle was ahead of his time with his hair...its the color and cut i tried to accomplish for years because of him. Haha...i should of just brought pic of him to when got my hair did and said this is the cut im going for lol.always dug his hair back in the day. I always felt they were underrated. Gonna be so cool to see them all on stage together again. 🤘👍😁
I really enjoyed this. Brought back a lot of memories. Thanks for doing it.
Incredible. Great work. I was a huge fan and we used to ride our motorcycles down to LA from Santa Barbara just to go see them. Kyle is one of the best bass payers I've ever heard... As a Cult fan, I always felt the influence on them. Like most great bands, you had to see them live to really get it.
Thank you Drew for letting the fans see this and for all the work you put into this. Great job!
Joe Leste (Joey Mc Elyea) was a friend back in our school days in Chula Vista, Ca. Hope he is doing well.
I talk to his son Tim on Facebook from time to time, he's a cool guy and great lyricist. Must take after his father.
Good documentary , kind of sad at the end; empty gig... , as a musician a relate to this a lot, thanks for the director
A little sad, but I dig that the band (far as I can tell) was still giving it their all.
Thanks for posting this! BangTango has been my favorite band since the early 90's this is a real treat!
the bass lines alone are worth the price of admission!
Thanks for posting the movie +Drew Fortier! Really liked it - great job! Always loved Bang Tango since I first heard Someone Like You in the 90s. Wish Joe had talked about Beautiful Creatures though. Loved the two BC albums too.
Thank you so much! Been a fan since the very beginning... What a trip down memory lane...
Thanks for this, stumbled on it by accident. Incredible work man, needs more views
Love their debut album! Still listen to it today! Well not today, last year.
This is great! Thanks for sharing!
Psycho Cafe is a timeless record and still one of my favorites.
Thanks for putting this documentary together, Drew! I really enjoyed it. Best wishes to all involved and here’s to Bang Tango!
I always thought they should have gone further. I swore Bang Tango, Jane's Addiction and Chilli Peppers would be stars. I guess 2 out of 3 aint bad. I absolutely loved Kyle Kyle's bass playing and pushed my band to have as bass forward a sound. Bang Tango were magic, and I thank you for this movie!
Good job brother...I could really tell your film was a work of passion. What a great watch. I've seen other band docs with big budgets that were only half as good as yours. Thank you for all your hard work and dedication to the craft.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS BAND!!! Thanks for putting this out for the fans :)
The good stuff ! I love the 97 percent! Thx Drew for posting !
Fantastic film of an interesting band. Saw them live in LA back in the day. Great insight into the rock world in general really. Thanks for the passion and vision to get this put together. 🤘🏼🤩
Drew Fortier Thank you! Bang Tango will be like Nikolai Tesla, now not have the succes what they should, but
IN THE FUTURE THEY WILL BE FOREVER, because the good guys, good things.will be there with people and never lost!!!!!!!!Pro is pro and will...
Lot of love from Hungary... Joe, Kyle K., Kyle S, Mark, and Tigg pls live long, release music, release the demos, Eating Crowd, .So abuse was fantastic, I wonder for all. Bang tango's later members, thx for keep the fire burning! You ALL has great hearts guys. Peace!! BIG LOVE(and sorry for my grammar...:))
I grew up playing guitar and watching headbangers ball. Bang Tango's Psycho Cafe is one of my favorite albums of all time. A masterpiece. \m/
"Love After Death" was available in Germany in 1994/95 on a label called "Music For Nations". I bought a copy in Frankfurt.
GREAT doc!
This was cool. Thanks for letting us see it Drew. Those first couple albums were great!
one of my favorite music documentaries ever..............
I saw Bang Tango a few years ago on the 2nd stage of the M3 Festival in Maryland(one of the best hair/glam fests) Joe sounded great, so did the rest of the band and happy to say the area was full, which was approx 2-3 thousand people for BT.
Hair metal association helped and may have eventually hurt BT, but many bands tried to ride that wave and then turned their back on it, see Whitesnake.
I loved the sound of BT and I've bought all the albums and I know most people don't realize that there even were albums after dancin on coals, or shocked to hear BT released a good album in 2013, just like many other hair metals acts are doing.
The original hair metal bands are still putting out cool tunes and there is a great new wave of hair/sleaze metal out there as well, so go and find it!
Rock on Forever!
+Drew Fortier my pleasure, great rocumentry
I love the M3 festival and I'm from Baltimore I try to go very year.
I'm proud of you little bro...congrats!
love Bang Tango all the way back to Psycho Cafe. one of the best live shows i've ever seen (and heard) was them in 1990 @ World Stage in New York. thank you Mr. Fortier: a job well done.
I saw Sea Hags, Bang Tango, and Bulletboys in San Francisco at a club i don't remember. I worked at tower records and got the tape for Psycho Cafe and fell in love with it right away. They and the Bulletboys were SO great at that show. I hated the Sea Hags. But that show totally cemented my love for them. They were so great live!!
bang tango is an awesome band, and Joe leste is a kick ass singer. this movie is awesome.
that live show in tampa just shows how great those guys were in the prime!
Thank you. Seriously, thank you for this.
A fantastic watch! BT was one of my very favs in high school. A hard rock/metal band that featured the bass! What a concept... miss Kyle Kyle! Would love the band to do a reunion, just a tour and then joe can go back to the current line up or whatever.... would be great to see!
Thank you, Drew. Amazing work
Love these guys. I still listen to them. They should’ve been HUGE! But still thankful their stuff is out there! Original line up kicked ass!
Great doc, super entertaining and really well-done, a really interesting look at the band and the changing music scene over the years. Thanks so much for making and sharing this
Bang Tango Crushed! Truly one of the Best bands that did not get their due!!! Truly original🤘😎🤘
ya its me again at 6:55 look at the way Kyle Stevens is looking at the back of Joes head 🤣🤣
Outstanding work Drew......far better content and representation than so many other films of this nature. I also did not know of Bang Tango till that night at Liquid Joe's, and am so glad that you came to talk to me before you went on stage. That alone made the gig all the more relevant. Give my regards to Joe , Lance, Rowan and your drum man (I need to look him up, he is excellent) i have also subscribed to your You Tube channel and I see you have been extremely busy with various other artists......You Rock!!!!
Fell in love with Bang Tango when they released Psycho Cafe, then life happened and the band fell off my radar, but every once in awhile I'd return. Just listened to some of Love After Death. What a waste that album didn't get released like it should have. There's a couple songs that immediately made me think of Avenged Sevenfold, tells me how ahead of their time Bang Tango really was. They easily could have been a massive band even still.
Saw you (Drew) with BT here in Chicago at Red Line Tap. Please come back. It was a blast to talk to you. Great to see your film! Great job.
Of course I did. And you did a great job that night. I still hope to get Joey to sign that LP for me. But it was great to get a pic with you that night. I think I still have a clip from that night I have yet to post anywhere. I will have to check and see if its worth posting. Keep me posted! Ill be there!
Thank you Drew. Again, GREAT job!
I loved Dancing on coals when it came out. great musicians.
I graduated in 89 and this girl gave me the psycho cafe cd because my name is Kyle and she thought it was cool that the members names were Kyle. I absolutely was amazed at their sound ...played this cd all the time at to my surprise no one and I mean by one knew who they were but would ask me to make a copy.... got to love memorex
I love the band I got a couple their CDs. I was into them back in the 90s and I still jam on them! I’m 55 years old. I also like Shotgun Messiah and Seduce who I would put in the same category as them.
Excellent work - well worth watching. Love Bang Tango
It's so awesome how singers memorize lyrics.
Thanks for this. One of my favorite underappreciated bands. Got my hands on a copy of Love After Death back in the day, enjoyed it too! I still listen to those first few CD's.
Please release this on DVD. It's a great doc & they were one of my fav bands in the late 80's early 90's.
Thanks for all the work you did to make this wonderful document. Psycho Cafe has been one of my top favorite albums from that era of pop metal. I like all types of metal including the lighter stuff and the extreme stuff. Psycho Cafe just hit me hard in a special way, so I really understand all the people who say they were a bit different than other bands from that scene. I've listened to that album dozens of times over the years and I always return to it to be blown away all over again. I also love Dancin' on Coals. I did not even realize they had recorded anything after that and continued in various lineups, so this was a fascinating documentary for me. Overall pretty sad but very interesting. I think you portrayed the history and the different viewpoints in a very fair, balanced way. The viewer can reach their own conclusions about personalities and so on. It also really encapsulates an era and a subculture as a somewhat typical story of a band that didn't find the success they might've achieved in slightly different circumstances, so it's interesting beyond the specifics of Bang Tango and really satisfying for a fan of that era of music like me to get a sociological sense of what happened--a fan like me who had no firsthand involvement of any kind in that scene, just someone who got a CD and listened to it at some point. I have to say that even though I found the whole video interesting as a fan of the band, it would be worth watching just for the "ghost singer" subplot, which was a mind-blowing climax in an otherwise humdrum tale. Like holy shit, that actually happened?!?! Pure magic.
Way to go Drew! Extremely well done! The gamut of emotions for sure
Bang Tango were a somewhat tough thing. They were from the L.A. Sunset Strip scene and they absolutely looked the part but they didn't 'sound' the part. If you know Strip music you know what I mean. Solid musicians, Joe had tons of charisma and they all looked good, but it didn't fully translate to the next level. I discovered these guys in late '91 and what they looked like didn't convey what one would think the music was. I eventually bought three cd's of theirs and enjoy them & still have them. The lineup of Joe Leste, Mark Knight, Kyle Kyle, Kyle Stevens & Tigg Ketler was the best lineup, in my opinion. If you like Bang Tango singer Joe Leste, check out a group he put together in the early '00's called Beautiful Creatures. I have one cd of theirs and it's good rocking stuff. Joe had a stroke late summer of '23 and I think he's recovering o.k. To see the end where this version of Bang Tango is an opener for someone at Pine Knob (an hour from Detroit) and the pavilion is 95% empty is sad.
I've never seen DTE/Pine Knob that empty as 1:17 Great doc The celebration of a great band that never got to be great