The Los Amigos Faringdon DJ Collective was created on a whim in early summer 2022 in the Old Crown’s Courtyard when Al ‘Citizen’ Cane met up with Samuel Cordery and Andy Kehoe by chance. They chatted music for a while and remembering the enormous success of the Folly Fights Cancer initiative earlier in the year Al took the plunge and invited them both to play music alongside him on the Sunday afternoon of FollyFest at the back of The Bell.

The scene was set and on board came long time dj collaborators Mike L and Vinyl Matt to join in the fun.

The Sunday afternoon at FollyFest was judged to be a success with an enthusiastic audience jumping around to the diverse sets of tunes played.

A Bank Holiday Sunday afternoon at The Bell at the end of August followed, this time with Dr Block and Del Boyo joining the group for six hours of uplifting music. On this occasion Los Amigos collected over £200 in donations for local mental health charity COGS.

After this everyone thought it would be a good idea to do this again and a couple of sessions happened at The Swan with guest dj selections from Samuel, Mike, Matt, Del and Andy joining Citizen Cane.

The next opportunity presented itself on New Year’s Day when six of the Amigos came together to take over The Bell from 2 to 8pm. This was a fantastic day of fun, music and laughter and a few New Year drinks with many people dropping by. This time everyone played two half hour sets each with the newest member Echoman (Kevin) joining in with his rocksteady selection, together with Samuel, Andy, Del Boyo and Citizen Cane. By now the collective had taken the decision to solely concentrate on playing vinyl.

One month later Los Amigos put together Swan Love at The Swan over several hours on a Saturday night at the end of January. This was planned as a fundraiser for two local causes, FollyFest and COGS and Los Amigos were now joined by the fundraising expertise of Clare Bradbury (Bradders) who set up a raffle, gathered wonderful prizes together and generally keep things on track. This time it was Echoman, Kehoe, Del Boyo, Citizen Cane, Mike L and Samuel Cordery playing just over an hour each. What happened was that the pub was rammed for the whole evening and over £1500 was collected for the two charities.

Four of the Amigos also joined in the fun at the Faringdon Record Fair held in late April, in and around the Old Town Hall and played short sets to the people around. This was a fundraiser for the Root & Branch charity too.

Los Amigos joined together with Faringdon Town Football Club and Las Chicas for a very enjoyable Sunday at the end of April at Tucker Park. Over seven hours on this occasion with the first sets by Bradders (playing pure rock classics), Dj Dee with her infectious dance moves behind the decks playing powerful songs featuring women singers and finally there was the introduction of The Big Boss Groove (Roger) to the party, playing tunes with a mod feel. A total wipeout!

Moving onto the end of May Los Amigos had their most ambitious day to date with an all dayer at The Pump House Project. Twelve djs played 21 half hour sets over 10 and a half hours. All in aid of the good work that the charity does which raised a very impressive £1780 from donations and bar takings, once costs were deducted. This one introduced two guest dj slots, with Phil the Phloor Phila with his mod and soul selection and our youngest ever contributor to date Charlie, who played an impressive set of alternative rock.

The story continues with several other events in the pipeline as well as several of the Amigos making their mark on the Crown Courtyard stage at FollyFest in early July.