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On January 20, 1957 , a hard working migrant Mexican couple in Tecate , Mexico were blessed by the arrival of their 16 th and final child, Nunez Oscar (N.O.) Talente. Little Nunez quickly developed a love of music singing folk songs with his parents and fellow workers around the evening campfires straddling the Rio Grande . It was on one such occasion when a thirsty little Nunez, thinking the white clear liquid in the big bottle was water, picked it up and took a huge swig of what was in fact Tequila. Shocked but also somewhat delighted, little Nunez spat out the liquid in full force into a nearby campfire which in turn ignited the adjacent tobacco crop his family and other workers were harvesting. With all the excitement of both discovering this newfound tasty and volatile beverage along with the brouhaha of the accompanying inferno, little Nunez instantly developed a love for alcohol, smoking, and pyromania which is only rivaled by his passion for flamenco-rock guitar to this day … well you can’t beat a good drive-thru either, or quality internet porn, or … umm, back to the bio.
As a result of this fiery incident, little Nunez was quickly nicknamed, Antorcha (Spanish for Torch). When not picking tobacco, Antorcha endlessly practiced the guitar throughout his childhood and adolescence until, at age 17, he left the fields and relocated to Tijuana where after a few years of providing musical accompaniment for bull fights and donkey shows, he was discovered and eventually signed by Bandido Records, Mexico’s premier record label.
In an unprecedented move, and one that has never been repeated again for unknown reasons, Antorcha released a live double album without having first recorded any previous material in order to cash in on the live record craze gripping the mid 70’s. The seminal “Antorcha – Vivo!” was released in late 1977. Featuring the blistering guitar instrumental track “Dots” which Antorcha played only the notes located on the dotted portion of the guitar fretboard at a superhuman rate of speed, the track quickly became not only a staple of AOR radio but also the favored method for medical science to treat epileptic seizures. Dots also soon caught the ear of one young Eddie Van Halen, who not one to be undone, wrote and included his passable imitation, “Eruption”, on the first Van Halen record. Eddie himself stated that once he heard Dots, his life and modern rock guitar was changed forever
(Guitar Hero Magazine, Jan. 1981).
Unfortunately, during a stop in Nashville on the Dots Tour, Bandido records was raided by government troops and exposed as a front for the preeminent drug cartel in Mexico . The tour was cancelled, cash flow stopped, and Antorcha was forced to take a job with a Nashville hide tanning plant with help from a friendly local blacksmith, who also happened to own the only flamenco-rock club in a honky-tonk obsessed town. Now living in the USA , Antorcha anglicized his name to Torch and soon crossed paths with another struggling musician willing to do anything to make it. His name was Duke and the rest, as they say, is history …
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