Sonorama Ribera 2013. The Report. Day 1, 15.08.2013. The arrival, the first impressions and disappointments

Sonorama is a multiple-staged festival with the daily schedule for almost 30 bands. In 2013 it had 7 stages divided for 3 units:

1. Old town unit: 2 stages - Plaza Del Trigo & Red Bull Tour Bus located in the old town of Aranda with operating time starting in midday.

2. Campus unit: 1 stage - Carson Camping located in the Park of General Gutierrez with operating time starting at 5 p.m.

3. Main unit: 4 stages - Ribera del Duero, Castilla y Leon Es Vida, FutureStars & Carpa Electronica in the 'recinto ferial' starting at 7 p.m.

The 1st day had something to offer us:

Plaza del Trigo: The Girondines, full, Pasajero.
Red Bull: Mine!, Para Normales, Los Zigarros.

Carson Camping: Los Nastys, Sin Rumbo.

FutureStars: Drow, 84, The Handicaps, Sexy Zebras, Santos, Autumn Comets, Kuve, Los Maranones, Klein.

Castilla y Leon: Los Tiki Phantoms, Solea Morente y Los Evangelistas, Mucho, Triangulo de Amor Bizzarro.

Ribera del Duero: Luis Brea, Jaime Urrutia, Belle & Sebastian, Loquillo, Mendetz

The most interesting ones from this list for us were, definitely, full, Los Tiki Phantoms, Mucho and Autumn Comets, not to mention Solea Morente y Los Evangelistas - the project of the daughter of the passed flamenco performer Enrique Morente and the supergroup Los Evengelistas consisting of the members of such the renowned bands as Los Planetas and Lagartija Nick.

First of all, the timeslot of our arrival in Madrid - plus time we should spend for driving from Madrid to Milagros, plus time we should spend for accomodation in the hotel - made the gig of full undistinguishable for us. 

First time in Aranda

So when we finally came to Aranda and entered the gate of old town there was some band playing on the Red Bull Tour Bus stage (and it was really the top of the tour bus as the scene) at the time when no one should be playing at all. And this band (unnamed for us) was really cool.

Me & the band on the bus top

The guys played fast as hell but melodic guitar-driven garage-like rrrrock using the microphone stands and the stage protection bars (preventing the musicians from falling from top of the bus to the ground) as the tools for playing their guitars at the final part of their gig.

Only the band

5 minutes on the festival, 1 and 1/2 songs - and I was already in love with this place!

The band finalized their show with the loud feedback drones and we came along the narrow brick-paved street to find the Plaza del Trigo stage empty.

That was OK but we had at least one problem - we did not know at all where to go to convert our printed confirmations of tickets purchase into the wrist tapes which should be used for the tickets. There were lots of people around who had already obtained them - but I was in trouble formulating the question even in Russian. ''Donde podemos..." - what?

We decided to follow the crowd, and the crowd appeared to approach the Park of General Gutierrez. At the gate to the park I noticed a guy and a girl who were unmistakingly defined as the servicemen. Pulling the printed tickets off my bag I run to them, shouting my famous ''Donde podemos...?" And somehow it worked. The guy have shown me the right direction adding the misterious term 'taquillas'. Despite my some nervous state of mind I understood almost 100% of his speech (except the aforementioned 'taquillas') and we followed the specified direction to find (from the 2nd attempt) the magic 'taquillas' which appeared to be the wooden booth with the smiling girls inside. One of the girls have made for us all we needed at the moment and we left the place absolutely happy with our white-and-silver wrist tapes on returning to the park to look at the bands Los Nastys & Sin Rumbo.

Tanya with the smiling girl in taquillas

Happy

Happy 2

The park was crowded with the tourist tents and the young people mostly slightly drunk on cheep beer and calimocho, the mix of red wine and cola.

Los Nastys didn't impress us at all. They played garage rock mixed with the light-weight version of latinocore, and they tried to diversify it with the convoluted bass lines, but the picturesque-looking bass player missed the timing too often, and the band sounded disorganized at times. Their 40-minutes set away, we were sitting on a bench awaiting the band Sin Rumbo who, as I had known from youtube, got at least one good song in their back catalogue.

Los Nastys

Sin Rumbo came onstage and started playing. During the 1st song Tanya came close to the stage to make some photos of the band. When she returned we looked on each other and both said 'Let's go dancing' because the band was really great. Not to say 'they got one good song' - they had no bad songs at all! The music was melodic, driving, cohesive and well-performed. The guitarist who looked as the twin brother of my good pal Danil Senchishin made the high jumps never missing a stroke. The guys were really cool and their show made us feel so happy we never thought we could be. And it was only the early evening!

Sin Rumbo

But the things went absolutely wrong a little bit later when we followed our steps to the 'recinto ferial' to enter the main stages territory. At the entrance we were banned for possession of the photo camera Canon EOS 60D which was considered 'professional'. We left our car too far to run to it, leave the camera and then come back - and while there were not so many bands interesting for us to perform at night we decided to return to the hotel to have the supper, drink some wine and have a good sleep before facing the next day which seemed to be much more eventful for us with the trip to Valladolid and the string of sets in the main unit of the fest.

P.S. The band we saw at the Red Bull revealed to be The Handicaps.