The Los No. 2 Dinners started out in the underground contemporary art scene playing shows at the San Antonio Museum of Modern Art in the late 1970s. They became known as the local anti-disco rock-n-roll band that wrote about their hometown (Livin’ Inside the Loop, Downtown San Antonio) and remixed rock songs with a San Antonio bent (like Take a Walk on the West Side and On Broadway). They soon had a regular gig at the Friendly Spot on Beauregard Street, in the King William Neighborhood on the cusp of historic preservation efforts.  Within a year their gig was shut down for noise complaints.  The band found their way to the St. Mary’s Strip; an up and coming music and restaurant entertainment district in Tobin Hill.  The Dinners would play many weekends throughout the month on the strip, sometimes on both Friday and Saturday nights at St. Mary’s Bar and Grill, Tycoon Flats, and Joseph’s Foodliner.  While they had always been gigging at other venues, a few years later they nonetheless felt the effects of the highly publicized murder of strip patron George Waters III as many of the initial establishments began closing up and people went elsewhere. 

Thank you to Eric Friedland for being interviewed and Norman Avila for sharing flyers.