All concerts are generational, or have something generational, but it is when the generation that stars in them moves away from the years of youthful vigor that the nostalgia of memory and the look at the self of the present adds new readings to the generational fact. Despite the inclusion of a new audience – fortunately there are always people who, motivated by interest and curiosity, leave their temporary space -, on the first of the three days of planetary apotheosis in a Razzmatazz packed and without tickets, those in their 40s and 50s were the ones who celebrated the songs of a group that 30 years ago began offering them the soundtrack of what was their spirited present. Then everything was today, the present today already has something of yesterday and the conviction that all holidays have an expiration date in the future. Maybe that’s why the spirit to sing about that past in which no future was drawn. Among other things, that is why the first of Los Planetas’ concerts in Barcelona, celebrating the third decade of their first album, was so vibrant. Super 8.
They played it complete and in order, and that order forced a first peak with the second song, about love, like many of the group, What can I do. Coincident or not, just at that moment a lady with an elegant classic jacket and proud gray hair shouted “I’m a groupie”, certainly not so much in its sexual reading as in its manifestation of complete emotional dedication to those who sang that song, mainly two gentlemen, J and Florent, the only survivors of the original group, both in their mid-fifties. The pressure of the room mattered as little as then, and as then the water carriers from each group of friends insisted on entering the mass of the public carrying beers recently purchased at the bars. That does not change, but the absence of smoke, which was then facing its last years of reign before smoking was prohibited indoors. But as always, what has changed the most were, are, the people.
But for celebrating that thread that unites an adult with what he was as a youth, for stating that there are songs that will die with each person. For example Jesuswhich in the case of moving among the audience made it easier to listen to its lyrics sung by a different person with each step taken: “show me what you are like, I promise that this time everything will turn out well.” From the stage, presided over by the colorful images of the album, the indie catechism flowed, which in the case of Los Planetas was adapted to pop melodies soluble in memory shot by distortions, couplings and a hubbub of tortured guitars that sometimes had The Cure as referring, always to Velvet Underground as grandparents. The only thing missing was that, like in the original FIB, someone held up a sign with the writing “temazo”. Of course, in the invigorating cocktail of noise and melody, what came to be called noise-pop, it was perceived that Los Planetas already have the profession of more than thirty years of practice, all and that J is still not understood when speaks, southern mush of words stripped by the accent. What was understood, in part, were the lyrics, like that of Yes that’s finewhen the audience sang “if everything is going so well, why this pain I feel?” Confusion, anguish, doubt, what if I have it all? Missing? Why this inner hole?
After the themes of Super 8 performed in the order of the album, about 45 minutes of ecstasy in the room, Los Planetas prepared to finish off the night with a storm of hits that already overwhelmed, like those downpours that catch you unguarded and there comes a time when they no longer wet because It is simply impossible to be more soaked. Battery push in Second prizethe emphasis of Saints that I painted youthe melodic sweetness of David and Claudia or that New sensations which in the penultimate place of the repertoire appealed to the youthful spirit while ready-made couples danced it on crow’s feet, the beers explored the outside of the glasses and the crowd was a single person who showed that in thirty years they have not learned to sing. It will be, it is, the emotion. It must be the only thing that hasn’t changed. On the other hand, something important has changed, and a lot: 30 years ago it was not common to see so many adults at a music concert. What was it? is? youth. That’s why when it rang One fine daybrilliant and accurate youthful manners of the nineties, the room roared in complicity when the moment arrived “I was with Erik until six and we scored four million points.” Even if it is a mere memory, there is something about youth that only extinguishes the definitive end. Meanwhile, Razzmatazz said: let them take away what we danced.
