We took the train at 10:30 a.m. The catalan convoy is formed by Tipos de Interés (Edu, Jonathan, Lesqui and David) plus the great company of Susana, Edurne and Iñaki. Another person joined us on this adventure, Uri, but he travelled on his own with his brand new car.

It was 10:24 a.m. and Iñaki hadn’t show up, arriving in the last second as he usually does. The train trip was pretty nice even though it lasted 7 hours. Once in Madrid we were welcomed by a torrential rain which fortunately disappeared on Saturday.

When everything was left in the hostal we headed for the Siroco, the venue where the festival was taking place. We arrived at 8:30 p.m. and found a huge queue at the front door.
They had to close the door 45 minutes after because it got packed. Sold out.

The atmosphere inside was so hot that we could only resist 3 bands: Meteosat, Martin max and the Happy Loosers.

Anyway that night became one of the craziest in a long, long time.

After “tasting” a whole lot of white wine at a bar on San Dimas street, along with uncountable bottles of Mahou beer, we went to the coolest R’n’Roll club around, named “Louie Louie”. The music was great when we entered, but after annoying the DJ for a long time we could dance to the hyms of the Plimsouls, MC5, Vikings and many others that I don’t remember due to obvious reasons.

After all the flirting of Uri with the impressive waitress and the never ending billiard games of Iñaki, Lesqui and David we reached another bar named “La Vaca Austera”, where we spoiled all of our reputations.

Some weird images spring to my mind now…: Uri headbanging his nowhere-to-be-seen long hair (his head is shaved…) to the rythm of RATM, spitting beer while impersonificating the possesed girl on “The Exorcist” and saying “Jonathan!, LOOK HOW I SMASH MY HEAD AGAINST THIS BILLIARD TABLE!!!”.

The person subscribing this article finished rolling on the floor and playing air guitars to the rythm of the Ramones and dancing to a great reaggea version of “I wanna be sedated”.

All the real dreadful details are omitted in order to preserve our moral integrity.

Once I was led to the hostal, I fell asleep. Zzzzzzz…

Everyone wanted to die in the morning. No comment

After forcing ourselves to eat something we went back to the hostal to recover from the big hangover.

At 18:00 we had made an appointment with M.A. Villanueva, our soon-to-be-producer to talk a little bit about our future recording sessions, which were finally delayed until April because he’s planning to organise a tour of his band, LOS BRUJOS.

Later on we went to the venue in order to save some room for our friends so that they could enjoy all the concerts that night.

We were interviewed by someone running a radio show in Madrid and enjoyed the sound-check, done by a great 60’s pop ye-ye band named Los Soberanos.

Just like the day before, the venue was packed in less than 40 minutes.

INTRONAUTAS (ex Vegatales) started out loud, with an improvised but charismatic show.

The ones who became the real stars of the night were VINCENT VON REVERB AND HIS ELECTRIC COWBOYS. A really impressive show. Vincent demonstrated that he’s a great front man. Everyone freaked out with their pure old school R’n’Roll.

After the SOBERANOS’ show, who were loudly clapped, and the concert of the super-group consisting of M.A. VILLANUEVA AND SANTI MALCONSEJO, which I can’t review because I was in the backstage and I could only hear a distorted bass from there, we had to cope with the business of changing the night feeling completely because we played after a great punk-power-pop-beat band named ANEUROL 50.

Juan de Pablos introduced us with all of his charm (I was really touched by all his words about us), and we started a 6 songs mini-show.

“The KKK took my baby away” was the first song, and it was really clapped because, I guess, it was our first radio hit a year ago.

We followed with “Cuando no pueda soñar más”, which came out really cool. We improvised a song that wasn’t on our set list. “Dime que me quieres”, a Tequila cover. The audience liked it very much (or at least that’s what I think because they sang the chorus along!).

The worst part of our show was when we played our Michel Polnareff song, which we screwed up a little bit, but everyone was really cool about it.

“Cristina” was next, a song that we were supposed to play with Julio Bustamante, but that wasn’t possible. 

We finished with our brand new song, “Hoy es uno de esos días”.

After the show a lot of people congratulated us and we sold some CD’s. It was a funny feeling when some people told me that they came to see our show and the they liked it very much. Moreover lots of people knew our own songs and sung them along because they listened to them on Juan de Pablos’ radio show.

After us came JULIO BUSTAMANTE, who played my guitar because he came with nothing but his girlfriend!

He also did a short set, playing an Adriano Celentano song, his brilliant “Ellos sólo duermen”, a song I can’t remember now and “Sur del Corazón”, when he invited us to join him on stage and do some vocals for him. He started to do weird things with all the verses, so Eduardo and I were completely lost sometimes, but everything came out alright in the end. Being up there with such a great artist was a marvellous moment.

After JAIME CRISTOBAL and his nice guitar pop, the COOL JERKS finished, singing old rythm’n’blues classics: Sam Cooke, Carole King…
It was a great feeling, a very touching performance. Juan de Pablos joined them to sing “Crazy Love” by Van Morrison.

Then a big anniversary cake with 20 candles on it (regarding the 20 years of his radio show) was blown by Juan de Pablos and that’s how it all ended.

We met with a great psychedelic band from Galicia named Los Huespedes Felices, who invited us to play there in summer!

And the day after, the return. You can see a picture of how I ended…

We hope to be back in Madrid soon!
 
 
 
 

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