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The Santa Fe native Zach Condon is the front man for the band Beirut. Condon's contemporary influences included The Smiths, acoustic Jonathan Richman records, The Waterboys, U2 and Velvet Underground recordings, especially the LP's with Doug Yule and Billy Yule as sidemen. Condon was inspired to his apocryphal-Europa beer hall sound by the cabaret style of Lou Reed's LP Berlin. Originally forced to play guitar by his father, Condon picked up trumpet and started to experiment with music. He no longer can play the guitar due to surgery he had when he was 17, resulting from falling from a bridge when he was 14. Though young, Condon has already released a few albums. He recorded under the name Real People when he was 15, which was an electronic record admittedly fashioned after his love of The Magnetic Fields. At 16, he recorded an entire doo-wop album that was inspired by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers. Condon attended Santa Fe High School, where he was a student until he dropped out at the age of 16 to travel Europe where he was first exposed to Balkan gypsy music notably including the Boban Marković Orchestra. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.