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Drummer Victor Burguan, a 21-year-old, PCC music major, admits to feeling a little distraught when the curtains at the Roxy Theatre rose for his band, Fragyle Vybes’ performance last month. Sure, they were the first band up and he was grateful for the 15 or so he counted in the audience, but the small number made him feel like he was in the beginning stages of a letdown.He looked out into the faces of the audience and saw none of the friends he had invited well in advance.

“But then around the second or third song, people started showing up. My playing – the whole band’s playing – started to change and we got really into it. It ended up being one of our best shows yet. Everyone on stage felt good and that radiated out into the audience. There were a lot of smiles,” he recalled.

“We were definitely given a boost with that surge of crowd during the middle of the set,” said lead singer and guitarist Victor Salazar, a 22-year-old music major who recently transferred to Cal State LA. Later, the group would find that the cause for the initially small crowd was the most quintessential of Southern California delays: traffic.

The memory and meaning of that performance won’t soon be forgotten, said bassist Candice Montoya, 19, undeclared. “Just being on the stage where so many bands we admire have played, was an honor,” she said.
The band, whose name is taken from a No Doubt lyric, has also played at The Mint and The Wire in Upland, but they all agree that The Roxy was a defining moment.

Salazar, the principal songwriter of the group, categorizes their homegrown sound as “California indie pop.”
Burguan’s heard others describe their music as a combination of Incubus and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He calls the music “beachy and very Southern Californian,” though at their rowdiest, the band sounds not unlike the angsty 1960s garage-rock of The Sonics, whose “Have Love, Will Travel” was recently used in a Land Rover television spot.

The band has been together in some incarnation for about four years, Salazar said. He and Montoya met at PCC and have been playing together for about that long.

“I had been playing the bass for a few years, but not really seriously until I joined the band,” Montoya said.

Burguan became part of the band early last summer. He and Salazar had met in the PCC marching band and instantly clicked. When Fragyle Vybe’s original drummer was unable to make it to a high school gig, Burguan stepped in and the two realized their connection translated onstage as well. The drummer was asked to be a permanent member not long after.

Burguan counts Jimmy Chamberlain, Ringo Starr, John Bonham and his father, a drummer in a local classic rock cover band, as inspirations. Montoya considers No Doubt bassist Tony Kanal “sort of an idol. I look to him to get a feel for the music,” she said. For Salazar, the Beatles’ influence cannot be understated.

The band is currently in the pre-recording process – weeding out songs that don’t quite belong, polishing up the ones that do, Salazar said.

The group seems hopeful that their “take things as they go” philosophy will ensure good times in the future.
“This originally started out as a bunch of friends joking around and playing for fun. We’re going to continue to have fun with this and see what happens.”

See Fragyle Vybe live at Stinger’s in San Bernardino on Dec. 22.

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