Sharing the joint with young people

A couple of weekends ago, we went to the Low Festival in Benidorm. Maggie, my partner, knows that I like festivals. She doesn't. She doesn't like the push and the shove and the constant standing and, generally, the music does nothing for her. She's decided on her favourite musicians now, and she pretty much sticks with them. She doesn't discount newer stuff; it's just that, generally, she finds it falls short of her established preferences.

I'm going to try to do a piece here on the accessibility of music, but I know I'm going to meander and wander around the houses. So, what I want to say is that music is very accessible in Spain. From local concerts by town bands to municipal festivals for pianists or guitarists, through any number of styles and formats of music supported by local town halls for no other reason than that they see it as their job to enrich the cultural life of their populations. In the bigger towns, small, commercial, performance spaces come and go and nearly all the theatres programme inexpensive musical events as an integral part of their offer. There are also an enormous number of, particularly, summer weekend festivals that have different bands each year but where the line-ups for each of the festivals can look remarkably similar.

I like festivals. As far as I'm concerned, they have several advantages. The first thing is that they are relatively cheap. If we'd gone up to Sonorama this year, the weekend pass would have been 85€, and there were over 150 performances (including the DJs) ranging from old-timers, through the established and nearly established bands to the up-and-comers, some of whom will never be heard of again. At a bit under €2 per performance that's a good deal. The second is that there are several bands on at once. As someone who finds listening to an album that lasts 40 minutes a bit of a chore, the concerts done by people like Bruce, Taylor, or the Stones that go on for hours and hours, seem to me, close to a violation of human rights. Spending twenty or thirty minutes watching one band is more than enough and festivals make it easy to do that because if you don't move on you'll miss the other band just around the corner. Finally, especially in the early evening, there will be bands that are hopeful, playing and singing their hearts out, determined to make an impression. If you went to see one of Bob Dylan's concerts last year, think exactly the opposite. He didn't give a toss about his audience or the quality of his performance. The odds are that, eventually, with some of those bands or artists, sometime in the future, you'll be able to say you saw blah de blah long before they were famous. You'll be able to relate how it was just you with friends and relatives of the band members - and look at them now!

There is a downside, of course. The headline bands are often on way past my bedtime. I'm really not up to being jostled by a bunch of drunken, hormone-driven, and drug-fuelled young people at four am. And as for the abusive beer and food prices and all those little tricks to wheedle money out of you, like charging for the non-returnable glasses, I will stay seal lipped. In fact, this time Maggie was only willing to go because the VIP tickets offered less crowded bars, easy access to the headline bands, and places to sit. In fact she suggested it!

To be honest, I've not been to that many festivals while I've lived here. We've done the Low in Benidorm three times, FIB in Benicassim a couple of times, I did the old SOS 4.8 in Murcia two or three times too, and just once at the B-Side in Lorca. We've considered other festivals much further from home but, as I said earlier, the line-ups tend to be very similar and hotel prices in the nearby towns are as abusive as the price for noodles or shawarma inside the festival site.

There are other festivals that don't follow the format of lots and lots of acts crammed into a weekend. Monkey Week down in Andalucia, for instance, or one we've been to four or five different years in Cartagena—the Mar de Músicas. There, the format is individual concerts, with higher prices and numbered seats, spread over a longer period and using two or three venues which sometimes leads to a forced decision about seeing this or that band. There are other festivals that put on a series of bands at the same venue over either days or weeks. Local examples are San Javier Jazz and Yecla Jazz (jazz festivals sometimes include wildly un-jazzlike bands) or like L'Escorxador in Elche which puts on bands over the weekends throughout the summer. And, of course, not all the festivals are "pop" - there are classical and folk as well as specialist performances like the flamenco down in La Unión for Cante de las Minas.

The local town fiestas used to be a rich seam of music. Somewhere as tiny as Pinoso has put on well-known names over the years, from Estopa and Izal through to David Bisbal and Sergio Dalma. In Yecla, I've seen bands like Viva Suecia and Alaska. Jumilla too used to have decent names, as did EMDIV in Elda (the photo at the top of Shinova is an old one from EMDIV though the band were on at the Low this year) or Aspe both for their fiestas and their music festival AspeSuena. We've seen lots of big-name bands, often for free, over the years but that seems to be becoming less and less usual, presumably due to budget cuts. And, of course, there is a constant trickle of decent or interesting acts that are put on by local municipalities for one reason or another. Our most recent concert was Soleá Morente, daughter to the legendary Enrique Morente and part of an important flamenco clan, at a venue with room for no more than a couple of hundred people. It was really good fun, especially at a whopping 8€ per ticket.

I'm not keen on going to see has-been bands that had their creative heyday thirty or forty years ago and are still limping along on their hits. I know most people don't agree and would turn out to see Sting, Madness, or Simply Red in preference to Cristina Len or Rodrigo Cuevas. They wouldn't do it for me; why go to see has-beens when you can go and see the potential bands of the future? There is an exception—I don't mind going to see people who I consider may die on stage—we saw Tom Jones do a fine job last year, just after that abysmal Dylan concert, and we went to see Raphael in Murcia a while ago and his new teeth and dyed hair gleamed just as they always have, even if he had a bit of trouble with some pesky high notes.

I'll name that tune - maybe

I was a bit worried about Spanish music when we first got here. I was worried that I didn't know any. I suspected that "Viva España" didn't count. After all, one grows up with music. It insidiously surrounds you. It comes at you in shops, on adverts, from the telly, and in films. 

I'm bad with music. When the musicians on stage incite the crowd to clap along I'm the only one in the audience out of time. The level of my rhythmic incompetence may be demonstrated by my being barred from using the triangle in my infant school music class; I was relegated to the benches. In secondary school I was beaten when the music teacher, carrying out tests for new members of the school choir, accused me of singing so badly on purpose. I don't remember song lyrics or titles particularly well yet, despite all these failings, I still know hundreds of songs that I never tried to learn. This is perversely opposite to the handful of poems that I've struggled to memorize and repeatedly forgotten over the years. 

It's not that I don't like music. One of my claims to fame is that one of the first bands I saw live was the Beatles. I was so young I remember almost nothing about the event apart from fearing mightily that the underfoot movement of the dress circle at the Odeon meant it was going to collapse. I achieved more appropriate concert-attending age in time for the era of the Stadium bands, usually only in binocular range. I was pleased when the musical fashions changed  and concerts became more intimate even if it did mean I was close enough to Chelsea (the punk band, not the football team) to get spit on by their lead singer. Here in Spain, I've been to at least half a dozen festivals as well as seeing innumerable modern bands. Nowadays I very seldom listen to older music, not that there's anything wrong with it, it's just that there's so much new stuff all the time.

I'm a bit backward in my listening habits. Try as I might, I can't get the TikTok algorithm to do its thing and throw up lots of new bands for me. I still listen to the radio and I still buy music, as mp3s. That last is because I think that the way Spotify pays artists is nothing short of scandalous. It's fine if you're Bad Bunny or Taylor Swift with millions of hits, but absolutely useless if you're some struggling local band. There's also the problem, of selection. The Internet means that if you want to listen to PVA or Axolotes Mexicanos it's easy to find them but the problem remains of knowing what to look for. That was the same problem I faced when I got here. When I'd been in the UK, growing up with music, I'd built up a list of sources I trusted to keep me informed. That might be Whistling Bob (though it wasn't), John Peel, one of the music magazines, a particular radio station, or the fat bloke in the HMV shop who knew absolutely everything about music. In Spain, I had to start from scratch.

The still obvious answer, at the time, was the radio. All I had to do was push some buttons and there were the major broadcasters. Just like in the UK, there is a mix of local and national broadcasters. There are voice broadcasters, some with specializations - sport, news - and there are music channels, again with specialisms from jazz via contemporary to classical. The main broadcasters were easy to work out. For spoken-word radio, the big stations were and are SER, COPE, Onda Cero, and Radio Nacional. The big music stations, the ones that repeat the same weekly playlist over and over, are 40 Principales and Cadena Dial and with the same format, but playing only Spanish language music, there's Cadena Cien.

I don't know if it's simple wilfulness or what, but the least popular of the big broadcasters is Radio Nacional, and that's the one I liked most at the beginning and still do. I spent hours in my first job listening to their news channel, Radio 5, as I worked repairing furniture. Their modern music channel, Radio 3 plays music that isn't exactly mainstream but is nevertheless modern - they now describe their musical style as fighting algorithm-driven radio. At the time, though, their programming strategy was bizarre. They'd have the sort of pop festival, potential up-and-comers and old-time superstar music on one programme, followed by a programme that featured Bulgarian folk music. I mean that literally. For goodness sake they broadcast jazz in a midday slot for five days a week! All I could see in their programming was a lemming like desire for self destruction. That's now changed and I would thoroughly recommend today's Radio 3. Its more mainstream programmes are at popular times and it keeps the niche music for the niche slots. Podcasts, catch-up radio if you prefer, means that whatever style of contemporary music you like, from dance to flamenco, you'll find that Radio 3 will have it covered.

So, in those early days, in Spain, I listened to Radio 3 and 40 Principales, I followed up on the names on festival posters by internet searches to see what the artists sounded like, and I made a determined effort to learn the music scene. If there were modern music programmes on the telly, I watched. I asked my English language learners who I should check out disguising it as a teaching exercise. I got to a sort of level of half-knowing, of being satisfied with what I didn't know. After all, when I heard that Lewis Capaldi had been the best-selling artist in Britain one year I wondered who he was. I'd never heard of him but it didn't seem like the end of the world.

So, when we're eating lunch in front of the telly and waiting for the 3pm news, watching the Spanish version of Wheel of Fortune, and they get to the round where the contestants have to find a song title having been given the artist's name, I don't worry that I never, ever, know the band/group/singer or title. I'm happy to be equally musically half aware in my new, and my old, homes.

Dylan in Alicante

We went to see the Bob Dylan concert in Alicante yesterday. I'm not a big fan but I have to accept that the man's a living legend, a Nobel Prize winner. How could I not go if he was just down the road? After all, there may not be many more opportunities to see him, given that he's not exactly a spring chicken. Besides, the ticket price wasn't bad. Overall, it seemed like a good idea. I even bought the album for the tour, Rough and Rowdy Ways, so that I'd recognise the songs.

So, we saw him. I thought the concert was terrible. It reminded me of another concert we went to back in around 2005. That was Van Morrison, and he was at Terra Mitica just outside Benidorm. In both cases, we were a long way from the stage. In both cases, the artists played their songs and hardly acknowledged the crowd. In both cases, the stage lighting was just so they could see, not so we could see them. There was no sort of light show. In both cases, the audience seemed secondary to the performer. All those years ago, it was perfectly reasonable that there were no big screens so we could see Van Morrison. But in 2023, not having screens is a form of subtle insult to a fee-paying audience seated a long way from the stage. To make sure we in the audience didn't sneak a couple of photos, they sealed our mobile phones inside padded pouches. The argument was that we should be centering our attention on the man and his music, not on our phones. Hmm? I didn't see any of the professional photographers who usually buzz around concert musicians either. My guess is that they, too, were barred from taking photos of the great man. 

I still go to see live bands pretty frequently. My partner says she isn't fit enough to stand around for hours at festivals anymore and that has rather curtailed our festival going which is a shame as there are enough festivals in Spain for that proverbial squirrell to go from one to the next without ever touching the ground. Fortunately, even locally, there are quite a lot of opportunities to see both newish and established musicians, either for free or at remarkably reasonable prices. It's a pity about the festivals because they are definitely my favorite way of seeing modern music. I like them because they are always good value for money. I like them because they are more impressive than going to see this or that band at this or that venue. I particularly like the festival acts that are on early, the up-and-comers, the bands and musicians that are pleased to get the chance to perform, even if it is at 6 pm. They want to impress. Also, as an old bloke who doesn't like to be pushed and shoved, the crowds for the early bands are sparse, made up of a few die-hard fans, friends and family. An added bonus with these early evening bands is that, with a bit of luck, a few years later you'll be able to say that you saw such and such musician/band long before they were famous. I like festivals as well because I quickly get bored with listening to the same band. If there are three or four stages on the go you have to keep moving to see the maximum number of performances.

Festivals also give you the opportunity to see the bigger, established acts, both national and international, but I often find their performances a bit lacklustre. They're already famous, and they have no particular need to impress, just like Bob. Because whatever he does, however good or bad his performance is on a Thursday evening in Alicante, he'll always be Bob Dylan.

And I worked in Community Education for years

Yesterday I went to see the 32nd Encuentro de Cuadrillas in Patiño, an area of Murcia City. Cuadrillas are musical groups made up of between 15 and 20 people. The programme told me that Cuadrillas, are typical of the Murcia Region and first made their appearance during the 17th Century to provide music at many of the annual round of rites and festivals. It goes on to talk about the variety of musical styles and the range of instruments used (many of which I presume are not in common use) and how the repertoire has been handed down orally from generation to generation.

It's not the first time that I've seen Barandillas. On the last Sunday of January in Barranda, a satellite village of Caravaca de la Cruz, they have a Fiesta of Barandillas. I've been there three times and it has always been gloriously sunny. The groups take up positions throughout the village centre so that you can watch one group for a while and then move on to the next. There's also a big market and the town is packed to the gunwales with people.

So, the description of Patiño said something about hot chocolate and churros (pastries) to start, then a mass before the groups performed on a central stage. There was also the mention of "jam sessions" along one of the town's streets. The added incentive was that there was free food at lunchtime. Free pelotas made and given away by the good citizens (nearly all women) of Patiño. Pelotas are meatballs. It's a name that means different things in different areas; basically they are all meatballs but, that said, each town and village, possibly each cook, produces a quite distinct product. In this case the meatballs are quite small and, apparently, made from turkey. The broth that accompanies them is as important as the meatballs themselves. In Pinoso we have meatballs too which are called faseguras (in Valenciano) and relleno (in Castellano) but I think they are made from pork and sausage meat (though I could be wrong).

Anyway. So I'm expecting a central stage but music all over the place. In fact it was just the Cuadrillas on stage, one after another, with chairs for the audience. At the front, between the chairs and the stage, there was room for people to dance and lots of people had brought castanets to click along. There may have been more music on the streets in the afternoon but I cleared off after grabbing my free food so it hadn't happened by a little after 3.30 pm when I left.

I was writing this up in my diary this morning and I wrote that it hadn't been as good as I'd expected. It was a bit of a revelation because, thinking about it, the event in Barranda, with the musicians surrounded by people, with the spontaneous dancing along the streets, with music on every corner has the advantage of being much more participative, much more community like. The Patiño event had performers to be watched and listened to (and maybe danced to) but it was nowhere near as inclusive. Thinking about it all the events I enjoy most are inclusive ones. In some of those the participation is simply as a crowd but where the crowd is so close to the action as to be a part of it and there are others, like the ofrendas, the flower offerings, and the romerias (short distance pilgrimages) where the participants are the event.

Deflated

Last year we couldn't go to Yecla, to the Jazz Festival. We went to St Petersburg instead. Tough call - eighth largest town in Murcia or the jewel of Tsarist Russia.

We went to Yecla in 2015, 2016 and 2017 though. Absolutely cracking event, usually five nights. The bands are often really good - good enough to cost money with Amazon later. And the acts are introduced by one of the wise, avuncular Radio 3 DJs which adds to the fun. Even better it was free and, because it was free, you could sit where you wanted. Given that the Concha Segura is all red velvet and gilt choosing between stalls, boxes and the dress circle is a difficult but pleasurable call. We even tried the Gods one year. All we had to do was to turn up early enough to get the full choice.

The Festival started yesterday but Lord Grantham, Maggie Smith and the rest won out. Dubbed versions are fine but the once a week English language version film is better. Downton Abbey in Spanish? Hardly!

Just before we set off for Yecla tonight Maggie asked if I'd noticed that the Festival was no longer free. I hadn't. Tickets were 3€. We've never had any problem finding a seat when it was free even when we arrived close to kick off so we thought that, by arriving early, half an hour before curtain up, we'd be fine with the, new to us, ticketing system.

There weren't any tickets left. I'm away tomorrow, we have another concert on Friday, "Anything for Saturday?," we asked. Nothing. So no Yecla Jazz festival for us this year.

Sad. And a note in my calendar to buy early next year.

You say you love me

One of the things I've realised about being old is that my reference points are different to those of younger people. I know that very few people go out and buy a printed newspaper nowadays, I don't either, but I still say “I read such and such in the paper” or “the papers say this or that”, even though I actually read the news on my mobile phone. I think of the telly as having times when programmes are on rather than calling them up on Netflix. Mention playing a game and I visualise football or Monopoly before I think of Destiny 2.

I used to watch the Star Trek: Next Generation. I haven't seen an episode for years as Star Trek isn't particularly popular in Spain. Actually it often takes me aback how culturally unaware lots of Spaniards are about US culture. I'd never quite realised how fifty first state we Britons were until I lived here. Anyway in this particular episode, as I remember, maybe inaccurately, the captain of the Enterprise is stranded on a planet with a non human adversary. Slowly the relationship between the two of them improves but communication is difficult because the non human speaks in cultural references. It would be as though a Briton used the date of the Battle of Hastings, 10th October 1066, as a way of saying, total rout, defeat with long lasting consequences or a turning point on history.

One of the big problems for my students is that the exams they have to pass are written by people who know about 1066, people with whom I share a culture. Those exam writers know about raising money for charities, about schools owning minibuses and about young people going clubbing. Spaniards don't. So when the conversation or the recording that my students need to understand is about a jumble sale for money towards a new minibus, for instance, my students have a cultural hill, as well as a linguistic one, to climb.

Yesterday I had a class where only one student turned up. The student is very young but she's good at English and refreshingly keen on learning. Nonetheless two hours is a long class for even the most dedicated single student. I needed a change of pace. I remembered a song that I'd prepared for another class of teenagers and asked her if she fancied doing the song Friends by Anne-Marie, at which point she burst into song. She went on to tell me lots more songs that she "loved" or "adored" often with vocal accompaniment. Obviously enough she asked me if I knew this or that song or artist and my lack of cultural awareness, of things Spanish and also of things young, soon began to show through.

As we talked the young woman was almost tripping over her words with excitement. Music is obviously something important in her life.  It reminded me that I had seen a list, "in the paper", a piece from el País in English, written by someone called Christy Romer.  I've just Googled the name and it's a him and he's based in Cambridge.  The list was called "12 classic songs guaranteed to get any Spanish house party moving." Now when I'd looked at this list I hadn't believed it. For a start the examples that the article gave of British "never fail" dance floor fillers were No Scrubs and Come on Eileen. Hmm? Anyway, giving that I had a young person in front of me, keen to talk about music, the sort of person who wouldn't, if she were British, be old enough to believe that the funniest thing ever seen on telly was the Only Fools and Horses episode with the chandelier, I went through the list with her. I hadn't thought the listing was any good because they were all very old songs and lots of them, from my limited knowledge of the artists, or just guessing from the song titles, were either very bouncy songs with lots of voices doing the chorus or overwrought solo efforts. It's quite hard to think of UK equivalents but maybe The Specials and Too Much Too Young or Viva España or some collaboration between Madness with Chas and Dave for the bouncy style. For the style of song which requires a pained expression on the singer's face, so typical of lots of quite famous Spanish songs, UK examples might be Tom Jones with Delilah, Barry Ryan with Eloise or maybe a bit of Renée and Renato. The fact that the majority of the songs must have been released twenty five years before my student was born made not a jot of difference. She recognised and sang every single one.

Class over and I was on my way home. I talked to my bosses who are both sub 30 I think. Young in my books. I mentioned the list to them. They too knew all the songs, maybe a bit Andalucia, was their comment but it seemed to me that they too recognised the list as being legitimate if not, necessarily, definitive.

Just another lesson in Spanish culture for me. Curiouser and curiouser!

For anyone who cares and for the few Spanish readers this is the list.

Celia Cruz - La vida es un carnaval
Rafaella Carrà - Hay que venir al sur
Las Grecas - Te estoy amando locamente
Los Del Río - Sevilla tiene un color especial
Gipsy Kings - Volare
Alaska - A quién le importa
Los Manolos - Amigos para siempre
Sevillanas - El Adiós
Camilo Sesto - Vivir así es morir de amor
The Refrescos - Aquí no hay playa
Bongo Botrako - Todos los días sale el sol
Raphael - Mi Gran Noche

A damp squib

We've been to a few music festivals here in Spain - pop festivals, mainly indie bands - generally pretty close to home. I did investigate going to one near Burgos and another near Bilbao this summer but, even months ago, all the hotels were gone and we're far too old for that sleeping under canvas nonsense. A second factor in deciding against was that, when I did the sums and compared it to my monthly income, I decided that the best thing to do with the coming summer is to sit in the garden, perspire gently, listen to the cigarras sing and read books borrowed from the library.

Last century I worked for a youth club charity. We decided to hold a major fundraising event and we even hired an event organiser. She was well out of her depth and the event was destined to be a squalid failure. But the morning of the event dawned stormy and thundery; rain was falling in torrents. The event went ahead because everything was ready and there was no alternative. The dismal event and the financial losses were all put down to the weather.

In the book that we Britons call Don Quixote, often quoted as the masterpiece of Spanish literature, a work of two volumes with 1250 pages there is not a mention of rain. In Spain, if it rains, events are often scrubbed. Usually they are re-arranged but sometimes that's just the end of them. There's always next year.

I like festivals. I like the short sets and the multi stage thing. If one band isn't too good there is another to listen to and if they are no good either then there are vegetable noodles and falafels to buy. The truth is that I'm a bit old for festivals though. If I have to stand up for too long my back aches and my legs really begin to hurt. Maggie has a similar, but much more painful, problem with her hip. My contact lenses are another problem. They're fine till around 11 or maybe till midnight but, after fourteen or so hours in my eyes my blinking becomes non stop. There's another thing about later evening. The bar is now more battle ground like than earlier, the toilets are repulsive and the number of stoned (does one still say stoned for drugged up?) and drunk young people makes for more collisions and spilled drinks which have a negative effect on my good humour.

But I also have a theory. The headline bands at the festivals are probably doing alright. They probably spend their time travelling around the country in a Transit (does one still say a Transit as the generic for a mid sized van?) but they've given up the day job and they have a couple of albums behind them. They are, in a word, successful. And whatever happens tonight isn't going to change that. Their current reputation is made and their future will depend, not on tonight, but on their new songs and future albums.

The same isn't true of the bands at the beginning of the running order. If they do well tonight people might go out and buy their music (does one still buy music or does one simply steal it?) The opinion formers, looking for something to pad out their blogs, video channels and Instagram accounts, might say something nice about them. You can see, too, that the bands themselves get a buzz out of being on a big stage with a lot of kit. They put a lot of effort into doing as well as they can and they often look to be having a hoot of a time. Besides which the toilets are still smelling sweet, the bar is easy access and nobody is crashing into me because their motor control functions have been compromised.

We were going to a small festival in Elche this evening. The bigger bands, like Love of Lesbian and Sidonie, we've seen several times before, others, like Elefantes and Casa Azul, we've seen too but not so many times. Some of the bands on the running order like Kuve, Polos Opuestos, Atientas and Women Beat were all new to me. I was looking forward to it. Then, yesterday, via Facebook, not via the ticket agency that took my money, I find out that the event has been postponed and split in two with one day on the 20 April and another on May 12. We could have booked up lots of other things for this weekend but we didn't because of Elche Live. And why is the event cancelled? Because there is a high probability that it will rain this afternoon. Pathetic.

La Movida y los 80's

A Scottish pal who lives here in Pinoso commented on one of my photos the other day. He said something along the lines that he was beginning to learn some of the ways and customs of Spain but that it would take a lifetime to learn the subtleties that his Spanish neighbours just know innately. Absolutely right. What a person learns about their own culture comes from so many sources, over such a long time, from so many clues and with so much reinforcement that it is difficult to simply learn it. That's why I know about Harold Wilson, his Gannex coats and the fact that he preferred tinned to fresh salmon. It's why I vaguely know who Katie Price is and what Delia Smith does but also why I'd never heard of Los Monaguillosh until today

I was in Elche this morning. Another class had been cancelled, my watch battery had been replaced and I had time to pop in to see the exhibition about la Movida in the MACE (Museu d’art Contemporani d’Elx). I hadn't realised, till I read the leaflet that I picked up after I'd looked around, that there have been other events linked to la Movida in Elche since January, with more things scheduled through to June.

Now my knowledge about la Movida is pretty basic. I think of it as being the time when Franco had been dead long enough for young people in Madrid to start making music and doing those counter cultural things that, pre Instagram, young people did - strange clothes, strange haircuts, writing poetry, publishing funny, short lived magazines and probably using a lot of drugs. A bit like late punk. I know the names of a few of the bands that were successful then, especially the ones that linger on, Alaska, Los Secretos and Mecano, but almost nothing else.

There was nobody else in the gallery - Spaniards call them museums but I'm sure the English word is gallery. The chap on the door said that there was a video to go with the exhibition and that it lasted an hour. He turned it on. A mixture of old age deafness, problems with Spanish and boredom meant that twenty minutes was all I could take of the video. It appeared to be people like the late Antonio Vega talking about how Nacha Pop did this or that and Herminio Molero doing the same about Radio Futura. The TV was in the middle of a lot of sheets of paper which, it slowly dawned, were enlarged pages of a fanzine. If there was an explanation I didn't see it.

I climbed the stairs to the top floor where there were a couple of display cases, one had some shoes in, the other proved my theory about the fanzine. The main thing though was around twenty perfectly decent photos of people standing next to dustbins or in front of peeling paintwork. Some of them wore goggles and lots had very spiky hair. The captions would say things like "Next to the bar La Bobia". I've just Googled the chap, Miguel Trillo. I think I should have been more impressed - he seems to be quite a famous (Spanish) photographer.

I love going to exhibitions. Even when they're not interesting and exciting I still think they are worthwhile. It's exactly like going to the pictures. You never know when you'll bump into something spellbinding. So the exhibition was OK but I just marvelled at the lost opportunity.

Where was the brief description of what la Movida was, where were the examples of writing, of art or at least the names that came out of it? Was the bar la Bobia an important club in the development of la Movida in the same way as The Cavern, The Marquee, Hacienda or The Ministry of Sound were in the UK? And if not la Bobia then where were the influential venues? Was there a Carnaby Street, a Malcolm McLaren, a Vivienne Westwood. This stuff is important, not just the Movida, the stuff that makes up the culture of a country. I don't know enough about it and I don't suppose that the typical Spanish 18 year old knows either. We should both get the opportunity. We may decide not to take it but at least it should be on offer.

Don't you agree David?

Oh, and the apostrophe in the title is theirs. I have a lot of trouble with commas but apostrophes aren't so bad. Castillian doesn't have apostrophes though Valenciano uses them.

There's nowt on t' telly

I was just on the phone to my mum. She told me her news. And what have you been up to she asked. Nothing much I said, a bit of gardening, a bit of preparation for my classes. Oh, and I've seen four concerts and I've visited the largest quarry in Europe and been on a bodega tour. I could have listed the things that I've missed too.

When I went to see the Excitements at the Yecla Jazz Festival last night I could have gone to a homage to the poet Miguel Hernandez in Pinoso instead, When I went to see Viva Suecia last Friday I could have chosen to  stay in Pinoso and see the Catalan singer songwriter Cesk Freixas. Indeed just thinking about the events that we've been to in the past couple of weeks, not including going to the cinema a couple of times, we've been to a photo exhibition, missed another poetry event because of the torrential downpour, missed the dressage event at the local riding school plus some event featuring folk dancers and traditional Valencian instruments because we were away for the weekend in Altea. Mind you whilst we were away we saw the local Moors and Christians Festival, oh, and on the way back we stopped off to see the display of banners in Monóvar to celebrate the life and works of Azorín. For this weekend I've not got much in my diary - there's a Roman market all weekend in Petrer and another photo exhibition and, of course, the Yecla Jazz Festival is still on. Next week Maldita Nerea, another band that have regular hits in the top 40, are on, for free, in Petrer as part of their fiestas and down in Murcia there's the Big Up music festival. Just to show that it isn't all music in the rest of the month there's a whole series of talks about recent Spanish history, a couple of book launches, two theatre productions, a bit of lyric opera and a couple of events for Halloween including itinerant story tellers in Pinoso. Pinoso has a population of 8,000.

I wasn't writing the list to show off where we've been but more to stress the "cultural" offer that there is in our local towns. The truth is that I tend to be a bit of a collector of events. The Internet brings me news from all the local town halls and I follow up on the titbits of information I hear on the radio or see in the press but I miss more than I get to see. What suddenly struck me about all these things was how available they are.

We went with some chums to see the first of the Yecla Jazz concerts. They are staged in a lovely end of the Nineteenth Century theatre - all red brocade and gilt. The compere is a radio DJ from the national station Radio 3 and the musicians whilst not been exactly superstars are all well above the run of the mill. It can't be a cheap event to mount. Our pals were bowled over by the setting and by the fact that the concert was free. Also in Yecla, but this time as a part of the September Fair, we went to see Fangoria. The lead singer of the band is a woman called Alaska. She is Mexican by birth, I think, but she's been a star in Spain since the mid 1970s. Alaska and Fangoria will not be a cheap band. This isn't like seeing a band who are unknown to anyone who doesn't have wrinkles and grey, or no, hair.  It's more like seeing The Pet Shop Boys or Tom Jones - someone who has been around forever and who may be past their heyday but who are still big. Fangoria were free too. A few days later I went to see Viva Suecia; this lot are an indie band but they are a band tipped for greater success. The sort of band that, in the UK, would have got a lot of airplay on the late evening and nighttime Radio 1 shows when I lived in the UK but may well be on Radio 6 nowadays. Free again. In fact from all the list above the only paying events would be the cinema.

The cultural offer in Spain is wide and varied and, even when it's to be paid for, it is usually pretty inexpensive. The arts market took a bit of a pounding when the ruling PP party jacked up the VAT rate on cultural events but, as a bit of an example, I just looked how much the three day VIP ticket for the Low festival in Benidorm would be and the answer is 40€ though that is a special "you're paying ages in advance without knowing what the bands will be" ticket and last year the Low Festival didn't drag in many big name foreign bands though they did have 75 bands and lots of them were big on the Spanish scene. Down in Cartagena at el Batel if you want to go and see Sleeping Beauty by the Russian National Ballet the cheapest tickets are 18€ and the most expensive 30€. In Murcia, at the Teatro Romea the best seats for the regional orchestra doing Beethoven's 9th are a whopping 20€. It's not so cheap in Madrid; to see the Lion King for instance you'd pay 96€ for the best seats but that's still a bit cheaper than the £129.50 for the same show in London on the same day.

Not a bad offer though for anyone who's a bit bored with what's on the telly. New series of The Big Bang Theory on Sunday though.

Festival time

I see that Adele was on at Glastonbury. I don't imagine that a Spanish festival would think to go for that same sort of mix - Enrique Iglesias alongside Vetusta Morla? Last year, as I remember, Florence inherited the top spot in Somerset, now something like that I can imagine. Indie band turned money spinner alongside the long line of competent but unexceptional bands yes, one time big pop act now reduced to second or third class status, yes, but current big industry acts, no.

I like plenty of Spanish bands but I'd be hard pressed to tout any of them as material for world domination. To date there have been no Spanish Kylies or Abbas or U2s. Luz Casals, Paco de Lucia and Mecano aren't really of the same clay.

We've been to quite a few Spanish festivals like SOS in Murcia, Low in Benidorm and FIB in Benicassim. We've also seen some Spanish big name acts from old timers to plenty of current top forty stuff and tons of indie. We've done hardly any big name international stuff though. Yesterday, more or less by chance, we ended up at a mini festival in the nearby town of Elda. We'd never heard of the festival, EMDIV, but we saw some unneeded tickets for sale on a second hand site and we ended up with them. Small scale stuff indeed. Just one stage, seven bands with DJ sets in between for the roadies to do their work. There were some filler bands, local stuff with a local following like Gimnastica and Varry Brava, but three of the Spanish bands were quality acts, standard festival fodder, Zahara, Sidonie and Supersubmarina. There was a nice enough band from Ireland too, the Delorentos, who seemed to have a really good time.

I was alone for a while whilst one of the DJ sets was on. Lots of young people were jumping up and down and singing along. Even with the music there to listen to I have no idea whether the lyrics were English or Spanish. I have albums by Supersubmarina and Zahara and  I vaguely recognised a couple of tunes but the chances of me singing along (only under my breath of course) are pretty remote. I did sing along to some old Fat Boy Slim stuff though. It's an age thing I suppose. I think it may be too late for me to learn a new repertoire.

It was the same concern when we were trying to decide whether to go for the unknown bands at the start of the day or turn up for the mid order and headline bands. It was pretty obvious that we would not be doing the full fourteen hour stint. My legs won't hold me up for that long, my contact lenses would make my eyes sore and probably I'd just fall asleep anyway. Going early had the advantages for snaps, if there's light the photos tend to be in focus, but, then again, a band on a stage in broad sunlight doesn't look quite right. Early also has space advantages. I like a bit of space around me, I like being able to move around. When it gets to 2am and whether it's the drink, the drugs or the pure exuberance that makes young people jump up and down (fine) and crash in to me (not so fine) I don't like it. I don't like being, to all intents and purposes, a prisoner until the set is over and the crowd moves off to the bars, the food stalls or the toilets.

We went early. We were there to hear the very end of the second band set, we watched three bands over the next four or five hours in relative comfort with good viewing positions, very little vomit or beer spilled on us and the chance to get a drink, go to the toilet and try some of the, always interesting, festival food. By the slightly late running 1am band it was a bit more unpleasant. The brusque passing manoeuvres, the constant dodging to avoid burns from fags or flaring joints and the wobbly neighbours made us retreat to somewhere near the mixing desk, on the edges of the crowd. We watched for a while but it was cocoa time and we were home by around 2.30.

Having a laugh

Normally, when I go to the theatre or somesuch I put the photos on Picasa or Facebook and that's it but I just have to tell you about the Flamenco performance we went to see last night.

The event was at the Teatro Vico in Jumilla. Getting the tickets booked was a right faff because the box office was only open when I was at work. Jumilla is 35kms from home and they have no Internet presence. Then, to top it all, I kept confusing the performance on Friday with the performance on Saturday in my various messages. By the time I'd finished I reckon I could ask the bloke from the box office to be my best man should I ever get married - I'd have to ask by WhatsApp though.

Our seats were on the front row. Right at the front. Just the orchestra pit between us and the tight flamenco suits and frocks. To get to the seats we had to pass by a very severe looking older couple who seemed as unmovable as Joan Baez. As I squeezed past under their piercing stares the vision of me standing on her foot, stumbling and crashing into him flashed before my eyes. I made it to my seat without incident.

The couple did not move through the whole performance. No applause, almost no asides to each other. The man looked at his watch by grasping the casing with his right hand and staring intently at the time for at least thirty seconds. He was so obvious about it, he did it so often and he was so near the stage that the performers must have noticed him.

As usual the event started late. Spaniards call it courtesy time. It never seems very courteous to me to the people who turn up on time but I suppose that's my funny British sensibility. It wasn't late enough for a couple of people though. We got under way for the 9pm event at around 9.20 but some chap in the third or fourth row of the stalls turned up a few minutes afterwards. He didn't lower his voice at all as he and his partner discussed who should take which of the two seats assigned to them. The seats were at the aisle end of the row. He chose the more interior seat so, ten minutes later, when presumably his bladder betrayed him, there was another full volume conversation and quite a lot of noise as he headed for the toilet.

On row two, behind us there was a conversation that was perfectly audible above the music. The only part of it I caught though was about how and what one of the women was going to eat later. Maggie said that when a phone somewhere behind her rang the woman didn't hesitate to answer it or to have a perfectly normal conversation. All in all it was a very unsettled audience which is a bit unusual for flamenco.

Up on stage the flamenco wasn't bad at all. Four, I think, different acts doing their set. Singing, playing, dancing and even some poetry. It did seem to go on a long time though. The compeering was done by a chap who must have gone to great pains to choose his very light coloured suit. The trousers were long, the jacket was tight across his stomach but a bit big on the shoulders and the cuffs were palm covering. Later we had a cavalcade of local presidents of this association or society to hand out certificates and bottles of wine to the performers. Not one of them wore trousers that were not brushing the ground. One bloke, with a cardigan and flat cap looked like he'd come directly from his allotment. Another had a slightly grubby looking combination of black shoes, blue trousers, pink shirt and green jacket. Choosing that ensemble could not be pure chance.

All in all it was a very enjoyable event and not all of the fun was in the performances or even on the stage.

Women don't sweat....

The building is an old Victorian indoor market - all cast iron columns and glass ceiling. The air conditioning was going full blast producing a background growl but if the aircon was at full tilt the hand held fans were going faster. Those fans make a distinctive sound as they furl, unfurl and flap and that sound was everywhere. The seats were relatively hard and relatively uncomfortable so there was a fair bit of shuffling. At least twenty official photographers wearing orange ribboned passes kept moving around crouching down like John Ford Indians dancing around the tribal fire with their tomahawks. Despite the fanning, despite the cooling system and despite the shuffling we all glistened.

On stage Estrella Morente was belting out flamenco songs. The name never goes without mention of her late great dad, Enrique Morente who went into a coma after an ulcer operation and died in 2010. She was there to sing in, and we were there to watch, a part of one of the most prestigious flamenco events of the year. It isn't held in the ancestral home of flamenco down in Andalucia nor in one of the big cities. The Cante de las Minas is held in the very ordinary, bordering on ugly, Murcian town of La Unión. I lived in La Union for about ten months so I can have an opinion.

I've mentioned this competition before so no extra details here but it was extra interesting this time. I like this event so I have a predisposition to go. I hadn't read the tickets or the advertising bumph very carefully. It said Estrella Morente and that was enough for me. I've heard her on the radio a few times and she had a song I liked in the Almadóvar film Volver - though it was Penélope Cruz who mouthed the song in the movie. Basically then I had no idea what I was going to see. I sort of expected crossover stuff - proper flamenco breezed up a bit. Like the stuff you get in almost any flamenco show in Spain but a lot classier. It wan't. To my untrained ear it sounded like a variation on the real stuff that the fat men in overtight suits wail out.

Maggie had arrived in Alicante airport from the UK at about a quarter past nine. The concert was at eleven and about 120 kilometres away so it was a bit of a dash. It was only when a woman in a long frock welcomed us to the concert that we realised the second half was going to be el Amor Brujo (the bewitched Love) by Manuel de Falla performed by the orchestra from a local private university. Originally the conductor was going to be Roque Baños, who is quite a famous writer of film scores, a chap who comes from Jumilla just down the road from us in Culebrón, but in the end Roque was doing something more important. I checked my tickets and yes it was all there. Clearly.

I don't care for Falla. I've tried honest. All that Three Cornered Hat and Nights in the Gardens of Spain stuff. It doesn't work for me.

Anyway so there we are shuffling and sweating and a bit surprised that we were watching a bunch of young people on stage producing classical music with Estrella doing the singing parts.

As we filed out into the square it was still only a bit short of two in the morning so we stopped to get a drink and a snack and we talked about the concert. We always talk about the things we go to see of course but usually it's a shortish conversation and this time it was much longer. I strongly suspect that it's not a concert we will forget easily.

Bouncing off the ionosphere

I like listening to the radio. Getting your news from the radio obviously has it's disadvantages (no pictures) but radio does have the huge plus of portability and not being attention seeking. The Internet and television are nowhere near as compatible with driving, shaving or showering as is the radio.

Generally radio here is reasonably good. There are stacks of local stations full of local news and stories. Nationally the news coverage is fine with a range of political views spread amongst the various broadcasters though politicians don't get anything like the cross examination that they are subjected to in the US or UK. News aside speech radio doesn't have anything like the breadth of, for instance, BBC Radio 4 (drama, arts, comedy, documentary reports etc)  but with my "Proud to be British" hat on I suspect that very few radio stations in the world do. Sports coverage is enormously important and takes up hours of air time. Sport is synonomous with football though basketball, tennis, Formula One, cycling and golf get the occasional look in.

We have a classic music channel, Radio Clasica, which is a lot like the BBC Radio 3 of yonks ago - a bit highbrow and a bit tedious. There's nothing like Classic FM

Not knowing how to describe it adequately I'll call it pop music. Pop music gets badly treated here. I've said before that the commercial channels tend to play a limited range of songs over and over again: They play far too much dated music (not so much Beatles as lots of "Hips Don't Lie" Shakira) and the playlists change so slowly that you're sure the programme you listened to today has exactly the same content as a programme you heard six months ago.

The state broadcaster has a pop music channel too - Radio 3. A quick look at their website and you can see that they're a bit staid but, then again, it looks hopeful enough. The very first programme I listened to on Radio 3 was playing modern Spanish indie bands and the next had modern world music. Hopeful I thought. Radio 3 does have some good programmes but it also has far too many presenters who prefer the sound of their own voice to the music and they play far too much really old stuff. It also has minority programming like country and western or jazz at peak times.

Now I realise that young people can access modern music in so many ways that radio is not now the key medium it once was. On the other hand the eclectic nature of radio does mean that it can do some of the sifting for you. The radio is on, in the background, you like something, you check it out on Spotify, YouTube, Internet radio or Facebook and then, if you really like it, you download it to your computer or phone and it's yours.

I've been fretting about this for some time now and this morning when I popped into town and some bloke was droning on about some macrobiotic festival in Madrid instead of playing music I decided to do a bit of complaining. And that's what I've just done. I banged off an email along the lines of asking Radio 3 what sort of music policy it has that allows it to broadcast just three 1950s flamenco tracks per hour at ten in the morning - or something along those lines. Actually I should be honest. I wrote an email and then asked a couple of Spanish pals to correct my grammar so that I didn't come across as a fool. It was interesting that they made very few changes but they chose to make my language much more formal.

The website was opaque of course so sending the message wasn't easy and I don't suppose they'll reply but at least it formalises my right to complain.

A nice evening in front of the telly

"Good evening, sir," said the Guardia Civil, "Alcohol test." Thus saying he passed me a mouthpiece sealed in cellophane which I cracked open before attaching it to his breath meter thingy. I blew into the machine - "Correct," said the Guardia. "You may proceed." And proceed I did. That's the second time I've been stopped for a random breath test in Spain.

It was about three in the morning and I was just joining the motorway to drive back to Culebrón. We'd been to the Low Cost Festival in Benidorm to see a few bands. I understand why the police were waiting. When we'd watched some of the early evening bands we had several acres of space around us and we were surrounded by nice people chatting gently. By the time we got to the bigger bands the space was less than that required for the proverbial cat and the crowd was a little more boisterous. By the time we watched Vetusta Morla at about 2am we had only Ryanair space and everyone seemed determined to crash into us, jump on our feet, cover us in beer or burn us with one of their strangely smelling cigarettes. This is very boring stuff when you are completely sober. I have no problem at all with the police keeping unsafe drivers off any road.

Whilst we were being suitably outraged by being jostled and bumped into I started to chuckle. Unlike the time we went to Benicassim a few years back I was definitely the oldest person I saw all evening. I must have been one of the few people on the whole site who did not need to use the keypad of my phone to communicate urgently with someone or upload a few snaps or videos. I could have given a lift to everyone else there who was, like me, wearing long trousers (that's an exaggeration, I've only got a four seater but if I'd had a people carrier...) and my Ramones T shirt came from a gig when Joey, Johnny and Dee Dee were all still alive.

I was chuckling because I was having a whale of a time. All those young people bouncing up and down. All those bands that sounded just like tens of bands that I've listened to over the years but which were still different. The way my whole body was vibrating with the sound. All that sustainable, eco friendly talk that still left stinking toilets and mounds of rubbish strewn around and a car park full of jostling vehicles of every shape and size including VW camper vans.

Maybe I should have been at home curled up with a good book and a nice cup of cocoa. No, not quite yet.

No staying power

There has been lots of press speculation about the King recently. A while ago he had some surgery. The doctors said they had removed a benign tumour but the cancer rumours persisted. The Palace said he was fine except that his hip and knee were a bit dodgy. Not unusual for a 73 year old, otherwise it was just the ailments of old age - "los achaques."  I thought that was an excellent word. It was a word I understood exactly.


Working on the principle that you're never too old to rock we went to see four bands last night. The event was called Ciclo Pop. One of Maggie's ex colleagues is the lead singer for a band called Aardvark Asteroid and the rest of the line up included Fuzzy White Casters, Arizona Baby and Sexy Sadie. Obviously we were keen to support James and his band but I'd wanted to see Arizona Baby for quite a while as well. Two birds with one stone. Even better the venue was only an hour or so from home.

It was a good venue, right in the middle of San Vicente del Raspeig, and the 11€ price tag was excellent for four bands. Nonetheless the crowd was pretty thin - two or three hundred people  maybe. The gig was late starting but we were perfectly fit as we watched James and the other Aardvarks and we were still well in the game for Arizona Baby. By then though the achaques were catching up. We older people have to empty our bladders reasonably frequently. We don't like those little cabin toilets. After 12 hours or so our contact lens had become unbearable. In my case too my mouth is a bit sore and I've had a mild if persistent stomach ache for the last three or four weeks too. The numbness that I get in my hands and feet was exacerbated by the chilly evening. Basically by 1.30am I was knackered and we still had to get home. So we bailed out and came home around 2am. We never saw Sexy Sadie.

Don Juan Carlos had his knee operation a couple of days ago. I'm sure if he'd been at Ciclo Pop he would have stayed the course.