In May we featured up and coming act The Weather Underground as one of our Blips artists to watch. The L.A. quartet had quite a six-month stretch – a cross country tour, stops at major music festivals including Bonnaroo and High Sierra, as well as holding down the opening slot for a diverse group of acts like Matt Costa, Dead Confederate and the Constantines.

[Photo By: Sonia Onate]

The group’s name has been in the news quite frequently as of late thanks to Barack Obama’s connection to Bill Ayers – co-founder of radical organization the Weather Underground. As a result of a lineup change that saw guitarist Sho Bagley replaced by Calvin J. Love, and perhaps due to all the negative publicity related to Ayers, the band recently announced they had officially changed their name to Red Cortez.

Here’s the statement straight from the band…

Red Cortez is the continued evolution of the Weather Underground, a band renowned across California for thrilling audiences with their own fresh take on American rock and roll. Now, just as they demonstrated on the three EPs released by The Weather Underground in 2007 and 2008, Red Cortez has delivered powerful songs drawn from the most classic of rock, soul, punk, and blues influences.

Red Cortez’ two brand new tracks, recorded with Love on guitar, are now streaming at www.redcortez.com and the band’s myspace page, www.myspace.com/redcortezband . “All The Difference” begins with a repeating piano riff before erupting into an anthemic, arena scorcher while “World At Rest” is a jerky, Clash-style punk rocker.

Red Cortez will make their public live debut on November 11 at the premiere of Indie 103.1’s Check One Twosdays at the Echoplex in Los Angeles, sharing a bill with Earlimart and Afternoons.

In addition, Dayrotter will release on November 5 the session The Weather Underground recorded over the summer. Red Cortez will continue to play the songs recorded under the Weather Underground moniker, and this session available for download November 5 at www.daytrotter.com features four of these celebrated songs from the band’s repertoire.