POP MUSIC : Borracho y Loco--First ‘Keggers,’ Now Cable TV

They began in the summer of 1983 as a bunch of guys in Hawaiian shirts singing along to old Harry Belafonte calypso records at raging “keggers” in Del Mar. Their biggest fans were surfers, many of whom had also just graduated from Torrey Pines High School.

Since then, Borracho y Loco has evolved into a nine-piece tropical dance band whose infectious originals are a musical mai tai of Caribbean calypso and soca , Latin American salsa and African juju and Afro-beat.

They regularly headline top local nightclubs like the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach and the Catamaran Resort Hotel’s Cannibal Bar in Pacific Beach, as well as such trendy Los Angeles establishments as Coconut Teazers and the Palomino.

But their biggest fans are still surfers: young surfers, old surfers, dogged hot-doggers and pretty-boy poseurs.

“We’re always being pegged as a surfer-type band, even though we’re nothing like the Beach Boys or the Ventures,” said lead singer Jacob Brewer. “We’ve never pursued that image, but we still get stuck with it, maybe because the music of the tropics is a natural for Southern California and the surfing life style.

“And, in the long run, it’s worked to our advantage,” he said.

It certainly has. After five years of entertaining 300 or 400 Surfer Joes per show in San Diego and Los Angeles nightclubs, Borracho y Loco is now entertaining more than 2 million surfing aficionados a week on national television.

The group was hired recently to score the sound track to the weekly “Surfer Magazine” series on ESPN, the 24-hour cable sports network. The first of 13 half-hour episodes in the series’ second season aired June 14.

Produced locally by Frontline Video of Del Mar, “Surfer Magazine” comes on the tube every Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. and again Saturday at 9:30 p.m. The program includes profiles on top surfers around the world, updates on new gear and fashion, and plenty of spectacular action footage.

“Ira Opper saw us playing in Del Mar last summer and told us he’d love to use us for something,” said Chris Goldsmith, a founding member of Borracho y Loco who three years ago quit playing bass to concentrate on writing songs and managing the group. Ira Opper is a producer.

“A short while later, he got the ‘Surfer Magazine’ show and asked us for some previously recorded music, which he put in three or four episodes,” Goldsmith said. “And, a few months ago, when he started working on the second season, he asked us to write and record new music for the entire series.”

Goldsmith and fellow songwriters Kevin Hart and Bron Tieman met with Opper to mull over ideas. After a month of writing and rehearsing, the entire band was herded into Mixmasters Recording Studios on Kearny Mesa for a four-day, nonstop recording session in which they produced enough tracks to score all 13 shows.