Marquee Marauders Club immortalizes your favorite indie musicians with bootleg action figures

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For most of his life, Jacob Alvarez has sought out items that he could hold in two hands. From comic books to CDs, he has a lot of reverence for physical objects in a screen-damaged world — a tradition that’s followed by some of the most groundbreaking, revered eccentrics across the globe. Think of J Dilla, who found a second home in record shops and had thousands of LPs tucked away in a Detroit storage unit, or John Peel and Haruki Murakami, whose titanic vinyl collections always seem to surface on social media.

Read more: Plushie Love is creating collectible toys of your hardcore heroes

It’s fitting, then, that Alvarez is turning his passion into preservation by channeling his love of alternative, indie rock, and beyond into bootleg action figures with Marquee Marauders Club. Since 2019, he has constructed dozens of small-batch collectibles, typically limited to one-of-one drops, that are supremely original and possess spectacular attention to detail. There’s 6 Feet Beneath the Moon-era King Krule, decked out in the brown suit that he wore during the “Easy Easy” music video, next to Tierra Whack and a shirtless Flea. No two are the same, all are hand-painted and diligently crafted, and each is packaged as you’d see them on the shelves of a vintage toy shop, complete with warning labels and sometimes a lyric from the artist.

Alvarez is a long way from his first figure — a replica of Interpol’s Paul Banks, his favorite band, which gave the project legs — but it’s a grind, chronicling the artists who are defining our current moment. He has dreams of doing something big in collaboration with luminaries like Radiohead — he’s still hoping for new music — and Red Hot Chili Peppers down the line. “I’m just hoping to make stuff that people will think is cool, but I’m always open to anything,” he shares, speaking in front of a wall of framed vinyl from Los Angeles. “What I like about this is that when I get commissions or emails, I may have not even necessarily heard the artist before, and meeting people and making connections brings me into different places that I probably would’ve never been able to go by myself.” For now, though, he’s continuing to immortalize the music he loves with every figure and create an alternative future — one where memorabilia stretches beyond a colored record or tee.

Do you remember the first artist you ever saw live?

Yes, it was in 2012 at the El Rey Theatre here in LA. My dad took me to one of his favorite bands. They’re called James. I think they’re from the U.K. They were pretty big in the ’90s. They had a few hits, but I wasn’t necessarily a big fan of them. My dad, going to school and stuff like that on car rides, would play them over and over again, so it was someone that I was really familiar with. Then when I saw that, I was addicted. It wasn’t even just the music itself. It was, “I need to go to concerts from now on. This is crazy.”

Did seeing them live change your perception and how you listened to their studio songs?

Exactly. Everyone’s staring at the stage, and the band literally [walked] through the crowd from the back and made their way to the stage, and that was something that I didn’t even know that you could do. I had never seen that before, so I was just like, “Whoa, this is really intense,” but in the best way. 

How many shows do you think you went to last year?

That’s a good question. I’ve been trying to do [more] photography, so I guess in general, with that mixed in with going as a fan as well, I would say maybe 80-90. I’ve been trying to up it every year or so.

Your figurines are totally original. How do you determine who you’re going to make — is it based on album cycles, anniversaries, and tour schedules, or is it more impulsive than that?

It’s a good mixture of all of ’em. I think at the beginning, it was basically impulse. What am I listening to right now? Lately, though, I’ve been lucky enough to get more commission work, so I’ll have more people and artists reach out to me, and they’ll want to do something for an album cycle [or] for an anniversary. I also always make a list of things like, “OK, this year all these albums are celebrating 10 years or 15 years or 20 years,” and obviously, it’s stuff that I like or resonates with me. So when that date rolls around, I’m hoping to have things done, with time permitted. My schedule’s all over the place, but I tend to try to do more of those passion projects while mixing in commissions that are asked of me.

And they’re all pretty much one of one, right?

Yeah, for the most part, they’re one of one. I’ll hand-sign ’em and label them one of one or one of 10, whatever. If you got it, you got it. If you didn’t, find it on eBay, but that’s it. I try to keep it exclusive. That’s super important to me.

What are some of the best artist interactions you’ve had with either people seeing your figures online or physically holding them in their hands?

There’s been quite a lot for me. I’m sure there’s many that I’m leaving out, but one that comes to mind was last year, I did Slowdive. Rachel [Goswell] has been following my work for a little while now because I made her something a couple of years ago, but I never sent it to her just because I wasn’t really happy with it, so I ended up redoing something [around] her new look and the album, and then I saw they were playing here, maybe 10 minutes away. Then she invited me to the after-party, and we met. It was really brief because I think they were going to San Francisco the very next day, so they had to get on the bus, but she was super nice about it, and she took a picture and was talking to me, asking me how I do stuff and about the music. Meeting people like that is really nice.

I went to a show with KAYTRAMINÉ, and my friend does work with them, so I said, “Hey, I have this idea. Do you think that they would like it?” And he was like, “Yeah, go for it.” After a couple of weeks, I finally got it done, and I went to the show. Then afterwards, he invited me backstage where they were in their green room. It was a group, maybe 10 to 12 people, and I gave it to ’em, and they were yelling and screaming and hyping me up. To get that [reaction] is cool. It’s a little bit more rare. You don’t always get that interaction with them directly, but it was really special for me, and I was just like, “Well, that’s exactly why I do this kind of thing.”

Does it normally take you a week per figure?

It really depends on how intricate the design is. Just to give myself enough time to be comfortable, I’d say maybe two weeks because the painting process is the thing that takes a long time. You got to do extra coats, get the little details right, because I’m hand-painting the eyes and everything, so it does take some time.

Some of my favorites are the ones with accessories. It feels like they have an extra-special touch, like with The Estate Sale-era Tyler, the Creator carrying the suitcase or Weyes Blood’s dog.

I’m trying to do that more often. It just gets super complicated when you’re doing little mini things. You want to make sure that they don’t break, and you want to get it just right. And to do that several times, it becomes a process. But when you’re doing just one for fun and you have all this time to put energy into it, then I try to do that as much as possible.

I also saw that your figures were used in the Eyedress and Mac DeMarco video for “My Simple Jeep.” How did that collaboration happen?

Well, he’s been following my stuff for a while now, and previously we did a few figures for him in 2021. He’s just that kind of guy that’s into collectibles like me. He has old Simpsons figures. He has a respect for it, like me. Out of the blue, he said, “Hey, you know what? I have this music video coming out. Do you want to maybe do this?” I’ve been hit up to do stuff for music videos before, but it just never worked out or the time frame was super small, so it didn’t come to fruition.

But with him, he gave me some time, and I worked with the team that was producing the video, and everyone was super cool. The director of it, Sandy Kim, is a photographer that I look up to a lot, and I’ve gotten to see her gallery and things like that. And of course, Mac DeMarco, huge fan, got to work with him, too. We had to get mini figures, so almost like the accessories that we’re talking about, but they’re trying to fit into a replica Jeep car. It was really fun, something I hadn’t done before, and it was a learning process. Then from that spawned this marketable thing where we could sell the actual figures from the video, and we did a few of those. It was a really cool experience, and my hope is to get something like that again.

Do you collect anything else?

Yeah, I collect a lot of stuff — whatever piques my interest. I try to get signed vinyl as much as possible, tour posters. Obviously, I have a lot of band shirts. There was a year where I was just buying as many old-school band tour shirts [as I could]. I have a No Doubt one from the ’90s, and I collect other figures. I have some stuff from my childhood — comic books, CDs, stuff like that. Just anything that I think is cool. I try to do this whole thing to fit into that space and just see, “Man, that’s something that a fan would want” because everyone has a T-shirt. Everyone gets a record, but not everyone gets a figure.

It’s really something that you could only get online or at a merch booth.

I feel like there’s a lot more creators now that are coming out. I’ve seen someone that does replica baseball cards now. There’s Legos out there. There’s a bunch of different creatives doing some crazy stuff now. It’s cool to just see everything shift. I know we’re living in a digital age now — Best Buy is not selling DVDs anymore. I’ve always been a person that I like to have stuff in my hands. I like to have the CDs and have the vinyl, so I like that it’s going more in that direction, too, at least with creators like myself that are not super popular. It’s starting to bring about a change.

Marquee Marauders Club appears in our Spring 2024 Issue with cover stars Liam Gallagher/John Squire, Kevin Abstract, the Marías, and Palaye Royale. Head to the AP Shop to grab a copy.