Rock Español A Través De Los Ojos De Un Ruso: En Directo. GAF Y La Estrella De La Muerte in SKIF XVIII, Saint Petersburg, 17/5/2014

Concerning GAF.

We came to SKIF place on time but were not allowed to enter. 'We got no lists for persons with electronic tickets. Please wait for 10 minutes', they told us. 10 minutes were gone quickly, but they told us again that the lists were not there yet. Ten minutes more it would be 8:15 pm. 'Chicks', I outraged, 'We came here from fucking Tula only to see the GAF playing - and they are already playing, but we stay here at your door!'

'10 minutes', they replied, 'And there's nobody playing right now.'

So we stayed there for ten minutes more, and only after that additional small amount of time we managed to get inside. The girls were right - nobody was playing onstage yet. We stopped at the merchandise desk to see if there were the LPs of GAF. There were no GAF's LPs initially, but then came a man with the box and the box was full of GAF's vinilos. And this man was Alejandro Padron. I stayed in 10cm right beside him but didn't want to embarass him with my unexpected greetings.

In the hall where the gig should take place we saw a man in the pink polo. And this man was Mladen Kurajica. 'Go and talk to him!', Tanya said. 'He's occupied', I replied. Really, Mladen talked to one man, then to another man, then another man took a series of photos of Mladen. And then Mladen walked off to see the rest of the band.

Before the show the audience was pretty limited. I think there were something like 30 persons. But when the band started playing people started to come in and pretty quickly the audience has grown 5 times or even more. It seemed like the most of the audience formerly had no intention to see GAF, but came to catch the show being attracted by the sounds, especially when they started playing "Alien Love" from "GAF Y La Estrella De La Muerte" - the song which is closest to a 'hit' in the band's back catalogue.

The best tag I could use to describe the show of this band is 'the controlled storm'. The band rocked as hell, these Canarian shamen produced the sound which was groundbreaking. Their wall of sound incorporated trumpets, the chants of Mladen and of the female vocalist Caroline Machado, the strange percussion tools... The certain persons before the stage were convulsing like the voodoos trying to catch the rhythm but were always missing it.

The first half of the show has faded fast.

'We're going to play the last song', said Mladen, 'And it's a very long song'.

'Yannakis', said someone behind my back.

And it was really "Yannakis', the 20 minutes long track from "Sunriser"...

The show came to its final, the light was switched on. The band started disconnecting their equipment. The audience went away. Me and Tanya came to stage. 'Mladen!!!', shouted I with my voice totally broken on flu. He raised his eyes on me: 'Oh, Mikhail! What's with your voice?' He came closer, we embraced one another, his polo was absolutely wet from the sweat. Please take in mind that Mladen was predominantly sitting during the show - these men really rock hard, have I already said that?

We've talked for a minute and then Mladen left us to finish his duty on disconnecting the equipment. While leaving he expressed the wish to meet us later and drink some alcoholic beverages with us. I tried to tell him that we had very limited time but my voice betrayed on me again and all I said was some kind of duckling's squawking. Then we stayed in the hall for 10-15 minutes to catch the possibility of meeting the band members again but they were in the secured room and we hadn't enough courage to try to get inside it.

And then we left because we really needed to leave. When we came out of the building the girls at the entrance checking desk asked us: 'Do you really want to live the place?' 'Yes', we replied, 'because we only came here to see GAF'.

On our way back to Andrey's bar VinyllaSky I felt myself like I was fully recovered from illness (except the voice). And half a bottle of scotch away we paved our way to Pulkovo airport to get onboard and fly away back to Moscow through one more sleepless night spent on salidas y llegadas.

There's a couple of things that I've known about myself during this trip (sorry for these personal details though):

1. I'm not a fan. I don't need these things like autographs and mutual photos, etc. I just need to support my favorite musicians and mostly that's all.

2. I'm too shy and I should do something with it the sooner the better.