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Death Metal Guitarist On The Red Line

Brian Bencomo |
August 31, 2015 | 5:19 p.m. PDT

Contributor

Juan Carlos De Alba waits for the Red Line to leave Union Station. (Brian Bencomo)
Juan Carlos De Alba waits for the Red Line to leave Union Station. (Brian Bencomo)

Juan Carlos De Alba, 19, has been taking the Red Line from Union Station to Hollywood/Highland for the past six months. He goes to school near the famous intersection at Musicians Institute (MI), where he looks forward to earning an Associate of Arts in Performance Guitar.

The long-haired and goateed death metal musician waits quietly this Monday morning for his train at Union Station -- black t-shirt, black shorts and a black case for his guitar.

De Alba is a member of the death metal band Deceive. The band has performed at numerous bars around town and recently did a show in Portland at the Panic Room, a bar featured in Spike TV’s “Bar Rescue.” The 19-year-old says he’s been playing guitar for about 8-9 years.

De Alba's daily commute is a lengthy one -- an hour and a half to MI from his home in Covina. Weekdays he arrives at Union Station around 10 a.m. after riding the San Bernardino Metrolink.

He thinks the subway is usually reliable -- but not always. 

“There’s been a couple of times where the train would stop -- like out of nowhere -- in the middle of one stop to the other,” he says.

De Alba recalls a delay during a trip back from Hollywood that caused him to miss his 6:30 p.m. train from Union Station to Covina. Fortunately there was another train departing later that night.

As luck would have it, delays are part of De Alba's journey today. His trip will take nearly two hours due to multiple delays on the subway, including a 20-minute stall at the Vermont/Beverly station. Emergency repairs to damaged power cables along the Red Line are the source of the delays, Metro says.

When a woman sitting nearby mentions the possibility of taking Uber, De Alba speaks ambivalently about the service. The death metal guitarist says he recalls recently hearing about a woman found dead in an Uber car just blocks from his house. 

Lack of transportation options aren’t the reason De Alba rides Metro. He has a car and says that driving to school would take him about the same amount of time as taking the subway. However, sitting in a car for too long is detrimental to his health.

“I have back problems,” he says. “So the subway’s cool because I can stand up and crack my back if I need to.”

(Brian Bencomo / Annenberg Media)
(Brian Bencomo / Annenberg Media)

Contact Staff Reporter Brian Bencomo here and follow him on Twitter here.



 

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