aka The City of Counts
The poster above says it better than I can. Clubs are a waste of life. Drinks are expensive, they’re full of kids who should be swearing at old ladies at bus-stops, and it’s a nightmare getting home. There are, however, a couple of bars in Barcelona which I would quite happily trek across town at 3 am to get to for a last drink. Read More
I’m not a fan of music websites (pitchfork bores me) but playgroundmag.net is a madrid based, spanish language page that has one foot in obscure indie, the other in electronica and dance music, and isn’t all that concerned with being hip or the first to a certain band (although they often are). Read More
I know I’ve been banging on about Spanish cinema a lot recently, but I do live here, and you (probably) don’t. I also work with this guy who hardly says anything, but if you so much as mention the title of an obscure movie he’ll bring in the DVD the next day. Arrebato won prizes in upon its release in 1979 and is today considered a national treasure. Which says an awful lot about the spirit of the times it was made in. Read More
This week I decided to go up to fashion, air kiss it and pretend to be it’s friend, even though actually I’m a bit scared of it. It was the third edition of BCN’s 080 alternative fashion week, which coincided with the streetwear fair The Brandery. Read More
Them up above there are Venereans, a newish punk group from Valencia who play punk rock and roll. At their best they sound like the UK’s Lovvers with more of a Cramps influence, and at their very worst a bit like the B52’s.
Venereans are one of 4 new new bands who are making rock music which isn’t schlocky, predictable indie or post rock that sounds like everything that wasn’t ever really that cool 5 years ago. (Nobody genuinely LIKED sigur ros)
This year i listened to the Crystal Stilts record a ton (i’m listening to it now) and also Kurt Vile, who i discovered around the same time in May, and am pretty sure that talking to him would be like having a chat with the Computer Who Wore Tennis Shoes.
Obviously i don’t use Myspace to keep in touch with anyone anymore. But i barely ever use it to listen to music. The problem is the player. It’s a pain in the ass. it seems so dated somehow, takes forever to load and is just unsatisfying. Spotify on the other hand is undeniably great and revolutionary and all the things that everybody says, and if it ever gets to America i think the happiness released will cause world peace for about a week before making the earth shift off it’s axis and tumble into the sun.
One of Spain’s most popular TV shows is Benafuente. A kind of Catalan version of Letterman, that has been responsible for probably the stupidest moment in recent television history; the 2008 nomination of a character from the show to the Eurovision song contest.
It’s way too late for me to start talking about 30 rock now so I’m going to go off at a tangent. Recently I’ve been re-listening to On The Hour, The BBC Radio 4 show from 1992 that every single funny person of the last 10 years worked on.
Maybe it’s the mediterranean, but right now i don’t know anybody (male) without a moustache or a beard. Seriously, it’s like Cuba in 1973. This is mine.
Sorry to go on about it, but since I last posted on the Cine Quinqui of the 80’s I’ve been really getting into it. I’ve just finished watching El Pico 2 and am still in shock after seeing 5 full minutes of what I can only describe as ‘heroin porn’. Literally a close up of a needle being pushed slowly in and out of a vein. Read More
I hate hippies. Sorry, i’m going to be specific. I specifically hate Spanish left wing hippies. I specifically hate them for a very specific reason – they make terrible art. Read More
Earlier this year Barcelonas MACBA ran a retrospective on a forgotten chapter of Spain’s cinematic history. It was called Quinquis: Cinema, Press and Street, and focused on underground urban cinema of the 1980’s that reflected a stylised reality of a generation of lost teenagers.
I’m serious. Even though everyone associates bow ties with Timmy Mallet and Carlton from the Fresh Prince, the best look I saw out this weekend was a bottle green bow tie and a tan courdrouy jacket. Ok so it might not be a trend exactly, but it worked.
The upside of facebook’s uberdominance of cyberspace, aside for making it much easier to stalk ex- lovers, is that it’s become a hub for everything else on the internet. Read More