One Watch, One Record: Black Pumas’ Adrian Quesada, ‘Check Your Head’ By The Beastie Boys, And A Vintage Omega From 1962

Welcome to the second episode of our newest flagship production, One Watch, One Record, where we sit down with movers, shakers, and moneymakers in the music world and talk about … well, one album and one watch. We started off strong with none other than Manny Maroquin, serial Grammy nominee and winner, and this time around, we’re talking to Mr. Adrian Quesada.

Adrian Quesada might be best known to our readers as the guitarist for Black Pumas, which he co-founded in 2018 with singer and songwriter Eric Burton – their debut album in 2019 snagged them a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist, and since then, the band’s gone from success to success, with sold out tours and nominations for Record of the Year, and Best American Roots performance.

Quesada won a Grammy in 2011 with the band Grupo Fantasma, for Best Latin Rock or Alternative Album, and this year, he’s up for an Academy Award for “Like A Bird,” featured in the 2023 film, “Sing Sing,” which tells the story of the Rehabilitation Through The Arts Program at Sing Sing penetentiary. Over the years, he’s worked as a producer with some of the biggest names in the business, including Prince, Los Lobos, and Wu-Tang Clan.

For One Watch, One Record, Adrian’s got two unidsputed classics: a steel Omega Constellation with pie pan dial, from 1962, and the seminal Beastie Boys album, “Check Your Head.” The watch is one chapter in a history of fascination with watches that began, as so many watch stories do, with a Rolex – in this case, one that belonged to his grandfather, and which was given to his father who then gave it to him. As his interest in watches grew, he began buying watches that caught his eye and piqued his interest, and which as a rule had an interesting story to tell of their own – two early additions were a Gruen Precision, and a gold LED-display Pulsar, both of which were watches that appeared in James Bond films (the Gruen is actually the first watch Bond is ever shown wearing, at the baccarat table in a casino in “Dr. No.”)

The watch he wears by far the most, however, is a vintage Omega Constellation with a pie-pan dial – which also has a movie connection. Adrian fell in love with the gold Constellation that Al Pacino wore in “The Godfather Part II” but he’s not a fan of gold, and this steel Connie from 1962 became his daily driver – a great example of a vintage watch doing exactly what it was designed to do, all day, every day.

And the record? It’s the Beastie Boys’ magnum opus, “Check Your Head.” Adrian picks out two tracks that especially resonate with him – one is the instrumental “Groove Holmes,” named for the great jazz keyboardist, Richard “Groove” Holmes; the other is the skit, “Blue Nun.” “Blue Nun” is an example of the tradition in hip-hop of framing an album with a thematic, and usually comedic, spoken-word sketch and this one talks about the man who made Blue Nun wine a major hit in the United States – Peter Sichel, who worked for OSS during World War II, and the CIA afterwards, until the tricks got too dirty for his tastes and he went into the family wine business.

We sat down with Adrian at the Wrensilva Listening Studio in Los Angeles – Wrensilva’s a maker of old school design, modern high tech hi-fi consoles that combine gorgeous mid-century design with the best of today’s analog record playback technology. The console you see in the video is the flagship M1, which features a belt drive turntable, split plinth construction to isolate the turntable from the drive motor, and a host of other features including Sonos speaker compatability. You can see one of their consoles if you visit our New York location as well.

We hope you enjoy the video and the conversation, and thanks to Adrian Quesada and the folks at Wrensilva for making it happen!