The 1st post of the year

Upon my return from 'dolce vita' of the holidays to the zombie-like cold hands of reality I must admit one important thing: the impact of the ruining Russian financial/economic system on the everyday life of one given Spanish rock lover is drastic - and is going to be more and more drastic during the newborn 2015. Gone are the generous crowdfunding donates and vinyl LP purchases - the only acceptable kind of the music purchase for me now is iTunes. Also, the growth (almost by 50% to middle-2014 indices as of now) of Rouble/Euro exchange rate kills all my intentions to attend more festivals in Spain this year (I'm forced to say farewell to PortAmerica, ContemPOPranea and Keroxen) - it all would be too expensive in roubles equivalence with my salary blocked on its current level. The alienation of Russia also has the psychological effect - for me as a person who always has pro-European vision it's painful enough to live within the society whose most part openly hates the ones like me. If the common proverb says that politics is dirt, then contemporary Russian politics is the pure shit. So, taking in mind the aforementioned, I should try harder to find something good in what the new year may propose to me.

Anyway, the 2015 has much to offer.

AMA, Pasajero, Alborotador Gomasio, Havalina, The New Raemon, McEnroe, Grushenka, Anni B Sweet, Dover, Dorian, Pumuky, Xoel Lopez - they're all going to release new albums this year. So it's gonna be the fantastic year in terms of amounts of the great new music.

The new cartel of Sonorama shows the first part of the bands confirmed - with Newman, Marlango, Zahara, Mucho, Supersubmarina, Xoel Lopez and the newly re-born Mercromina amongst them. So it's gonna be the great new edition of Sonorama.

And in addition I have the plans to undertake some 'rock espanol'-connected activities which would [probably] make me short of money and [most likely] never occur - but my hopes are high so I should keep my fingers crossed and my mouth shut.

Just look at the Sonorama poster - it's so cool, isn't it?

Some new songs to catch your attention: the pseudo chamber detective story of Anni B Sweet...


and Dover's foray into the territory of Veruca Salt:

How It All Started, or What Brings The Spanish Grief To This Guy?

I have a bunch of columns in my blog now. 'Las Resenas Casuales' is for reviews, 'Los Treinta Principales' is for the best 30 albums of Spanish indie rock on my humble opinion (or, should I better call this 'The 30 Albums That I Truly Love And Adopt The Grandeur Of''?), 'Las Canciones Ocasionales' is for occasional videos which I suppose to be pretty interesting for some reasons. I started an overview of the bands from Canary Islands - the thing which never was made in English before. I dream of starting getting the interviews here. And the question is 'Why?' Or 'What's up to you, guy? What happened to you and made you totally wasted and fucked up? Why, for the God's sake, Spanish indie rock?'

I don't know, really. It was something like that.

Autumn of the year of 2006. 6:55 a.m. I'm sitting in front of the TV set and having my breakfast (I recall this to be some kind of sandwich) before going to the work. And it's 'Euronews' channel on TV. I'm talking with my wife and looking on the screen without a care. The 'music' section of Euronews could be pretty interesting at times. Not this time, possibly, as this morning there is someone called Deluxe. Never been heard about him. The skinny and unshaven guy in black clothes leaves his bycicle at the fence, sits on the low barrier of the playground in the park and starts playing a song with his acoustic guitar to a bunch of occasional beholders. 

And within the next minute I stopped chewing, stopped talking. Even stopped breathing.

I can't recall the song Deluxe (yes, I learned only his alias from this short clip) was playing. I only know that the song changed my life.

The next couple of years I was trying to find in Internet some information about this guy. And it was not an easy target. First af all  - requesting 'Deluxe' in Google you might retrieve the whole lot of useless trash including tons of deluxe versions of everything along with, dunno, VIP prostitutes. The second obstacle - my native town of Tula was not that sort of advanced place of living in terms of Internet expansion. It was, frankly speaking, one step above the dial-up.

The things started changing in the 1st half of 2008 when I moved to Moscow. Having cheap and fast Internet now, I learned that Deluxe was the alias of Galician native Xoel Lopez. But the far more important thing that I learned from all of my unstoppable searches: there were lots of great bands in Spain besides him. I recall Tulsa to be the second Spanish band I fell in love with, and my actual all-time favorites Love Of Lesbian were the third. Then I learned about Mi Pequena Radio, Pumuky, Vetusta Morla, El Nino Gusano, El Hombre Burbuja, Mercromina, etc. There were also lots of Spanish-languaged musical blogs which were mostly piratic ones. Some of them successfully converted into the informational and cultural resources intended for the support of indie musicians: El Mundo De Tulsa, Senor Pollo leaving their unfair past behind - and some fell into obscurity.

I might start this blog in Spanish - but there are many music blogs in Spanish which are far better than mine (I'm just living too far from the event places - and I'm way too shy to finally start making interviews! - to create really good resource). But almost no one talks about this great scene in other languages.

Why not in Russian? There is a big problem with my countrymen - they like something for free very much and don't like at all to pay for something they used to get for free. But I don't - and never will - give links to mp3s here unless it's free distribution by an artist himself - and it vastly diminishes the importancy of me and my blog in the eyes of an average Russian music lover. I know it sounds a bit snobbish - but that's the fact.