Rogelio de Jesus Miret (born June 30, 1964) is a Cuban American musician. He is the vocalist for New York hardcore band Agnostic Front, street punk group Roger Miret and the Disasters, and hardcore band The Alligators. In 1983, he briefly played bass in the Cro-Mags.
Agnostic Front are considered to be "the godfathers of hardcore" and one of the bands that created the New York scene.
Personal life
Miret was born in
Havana
Havana (; ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center. He is the older half-brother of Madball frontman Freddy Cricien. The two have the same mother, who is of Cuban descent, and different fathers, hence the different last names. Miret and his family fled Cuba to escape the Castro regime. They came to the United States in 1968 and settled in New York.
Miret was incarcerated on a drug charge in the late 1980s, spending almost two years in jail. In a 2011 interview, he stated that he became involved in it because he was living in poverty, squatting buildings, and his then-partner was pregnant. After being released, he started supporting PETA campaigns, as well as other non-profit organizations, and followed a
vegetarian
Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the Eating, consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, seafood, insects as food, insects, and the flesh of any other animal). It may also include abstaining from eating all by-products of animal slau ...
diet for many years.
In 2008, he said he no longer smoked or used drugs, except for an occasional drink.
In September 2021, Miret revealed that he was diagnosed with
cancer
Cancer is a group of diseases involving Cell growth#Disorders, abnormal cell growth with the potential to Invasion (cancer), invade or Metastasis, spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Po ...
earlier in that year. However, after a lengthy hospital stay and surgery, the cancer is now in remission. A
GoFundMe
GoFundMe is an American for-profit crowdfunding platform that allows people to raise money for events ranging from life events such as celebrations and graduations to challenging circumstances like accidents and illnesses. From 2010 to the ...
page was launched to help Miret pay for his medical bills.
Other projects
In 2012, Onno Cro-Mag (real name: Onno van Ravensteijn; d. 2013) from ''Aardschok'' magazine of the Netherlands and Miret started the hardcore music record label Strength Records.
With Jon Wiederhorn, Miret released ''My Riot: Agnostic Front, Grit, Guts & Glory'' in August 2017. The autobiography chronicles Miret's career as the vocalist of Agnostic Front as well as his upbringing; it focuses on Miret's trials and tribulations growing up in 1980s New York City.
Prior to joining Agnostic Front, Miret played bass for The Psychos, who claimed in a 1984 interview that Miret was replaced due to the fact that Miret became "more devoted" to Agnostic Front and therefore "couldn't make rehearsals and so forth."