Thus began taking shape the legendary Puerto Rican rock band, The Living End. The drummer, Amaury Lopez, was one of the first to integrate and Osvaldo Torres was the original bassist who had played with Jorge Calderon in a group called The Vultures. Soon enough we started rehearsing at my house in Ocean Park. It was not long that we began to be requested in clubs and venues of the time including El San Juan Hotel, the Condado Elks Club, the Miramar Center, The Chart house, Alfred Herger’s activities and at the legendary Battles of the Bands. I must say for the record that The Living End won ALL the battles of the bands. The last in which we participated (and of course, we won) was at Hiram Bithorn Stadium.

Having won all the battles ‘Battle of the Bands’ and also having been in the local news as "corruptors of youth", we decided to leave Puerto Rico for new adventures. We won the infamous title because we must have been the first, or among the first groups to perform in public under the influence of LSD (LSD was not illegal in U.S. until October 16, 1966 and was not even considered a narcotic, although not lacking negative propaganda) and it showed both in ourselves and in the audience. With the promise of a contract at a new club in a hotel in St. Thomas then called Duffy's, we continued our psychedelic pilgrimage. Eventually we were also literally expelled from St. Thomas (for the same reason as in PR), and decided to try our luck in New York City.

It was in New York where we had the most success. A week after our unplanned arrival, but with much enthusiasm, we got an audition at the then famous club Scott Muni's Rolling Stone on 48th street and 2nd Avenue in Manhattan where we were hired as a house band. It was a period of great success and developing a large fan base in the Big Apple. From that bastion we attracted the attention of prestigious management groups and record labels such as Capitol Records who offered a generous contract to record an LP. They even agreed to allow us our own label within the umbrella of Capitol Records, Hand Records. We were assigned a producer, Shadow Morton (Janis Ian), but actually it was us (for better or worse) who produced the album. The album was titled Space.

By 1969 the group had dissolved because of conflicting interests and personal differences. In the summer of that year our then manager, Jack Rieley, who shared an apartment with me in NYC, invited me to accompany him to Los Angeles, California for a weekend. At first I did not want to go, but eventually I agreed and in end result I stayed in LA for 16 years. A few weeks already in LA, I met some of the musicians who traveled with the Beach Boys and they invited me to play on a tour when they needed a percussionist at the last minute. During this tour, it was in NYC during a rehearsal that the Beach Boys accidentally heard me playing piano on a jazz jam session with the brass section. At that time Carl Wilson upon his return from recess he said: " if you can play that sophisticated music (jazz) on piano I'd like to know what you can do with the group on organ". After several tours with Wilson Pickett and other artists, Carl called me that year to audition on Hammond Organ and piano, replacing Darryl Dragon, who was then the Beach Boys pianist and keyboardist. The rest is history until 1981, when I decided to leave the Beach Boys.

Soon after leaving the Beach Boys, I start getting calls to record and perform with artists in other genres such as George Benson, Chico Hamilton, Les McCann and others including Country Western Swing and Blue Grass. It was a very fertile period in my life musically. Also I had chosen to study cinematography, which I managed to study for two years at UCLA and LACC with practice in the American Film Institute and participating in numerous SEMPTE seminars. In 1986 I returned to Puerto Rico with my family of 4 kids and my first wife, Brenda, who I had met in Canada. There, I applied my new knowledge of film production and cinematography and started directing commercials for advertising agencies and filming documentaries. This lasted until 1989 when Hurricane Hugo destroyed my studio and office, which was at the top of a building facing the lagoon in the Condado area - but every cloud has a silver lining... From that moment I decided to return to music full time - regardless of the economic consequences. Out of that decision I formed the Carli Muñoz Jazz Trio. I was never without work and without compromising the integrity of the music in the pure jazz genre. After earning a name and a loyal audience in the jazz genre, in 1989 along with my new partner Jim Bonbright, we inaugurated our own club and fine dining restaurant, Carli Cafe Concierto, now called Carli's Fine Bistro & Piano, in Old San Juan; still thriving today and God willing still for many more years to come.

Give 'Like' to Carli's World on facebook.com/CarlisFineBistro