The Man Who Hasn't Met Nacho Vegas

After much thinking, I dared. I had to vomit about this. I dare to talk about music, even though I don´t know much about it but what I get from my ears, brain (or whatever my skull is protecting in there), the heart and the guts. Aphex, whenever you feel it convenient, correct me in your blog. Tambor, Esquer, Karnal... I'm sorry if I fail you.

I think there are very few times in life when one comes front to front with revelations of any kind. In this case, the revelation happened some time ago... and it was musical. Especially in a generation like ours which, even if tried hard, cannot be classified or named, simply because there's no identity at all. In this generational crisis that steals, borrows, or simply recycles past cultural manifestations, sometimes the singer-songwriter (for me a necessary combo), comes out with a style frankensteinely unique.

That singer-songwriter, who emerged from the underworld of our generation, is not a Mexican and much less a gringo... he's from Sabina's land and his name is Nacho Vegas.

I first heard him in a gathering with my three brothers. The song: Gang Bang; the album: Enrique Bunbury's Freak Show. Really?! Accordion, waltz, the burlesque, the neon, the night. The song was a duet with Enrique Bunbury, who I also consider a totally underestimated monster.

And that contrast in their voices and the perfect match in the stanzas was gripping. It was a feeling similar to the first time I heard Esa Noche by café Tacvba, but also the fist time I heard Regan speak with her possessed voice in The Exorcist. It was my inner self of a character many times seen in big movies. Keeping on with the comparison with movies... Gang Bang is Music Noir.

Nacho Vegas is like Chavela Vargas' lost child. While she cries and suffers without hiding, with exposed flesh in a Mexican folk subtly deep, Vegas represses the yell and his voice comes out like a mild cry... like an spectral lament at night, in the distance, that is there for the simple reason of the inevitable... to see who listens.

Nacho Vegas is folk. Is returning to music for urgency. It's not ornamental music. He is a troubadour as much as Sabina is a rocker. His album shared with Enrique Bunbury, El Tiempo de las Cerezas, is a masterpiece of the bohemian, the cabaret, the sorrow, the alcohol... the night. A brother said, pretty drunk by then, that this album is so special and unique that if you put it against Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, you will not know which one to choose. At that moment, I suggested him to be more careful with his words... but drunk people and kids always say the truth, and my brother is both.

Vegas is so special and fucking crude that he resonates in different human fibers, making him shine with own light and never be eclipsed by anyone.

One of the things that calls my attention about Nacho Vegas is that his songs, like Sabina's, Cohen's, Dylan's, and Pink Floyd's, are movies by themselves. They tell stories, and in three to five minutes, they take you in a roller coaster of emotions that very few artists achieve nowadays. And the strongest thing about this is the amount of people that could identify with these monsters half song, half movie.

Nacho Vegas gets to the overwhelmed human passions like Cronenberg and Arnofsky in Gang Bang and Canción de Isabel; he gets to sexually and spiritually raped worlds like Almodóvar in the great Historia de un Perdedor and the hallucinating Mi Marilyn Particular; he gets to very deep human textures, covered by an exterior layer easily confused with banality, the same as Billy Wilder, in songs like El Cazador and El Hombre que Casi Conoció a Michi Panero.

I knew Vegas because of Bunbury, and when they did the album together, that album that will stay in my top 10 forever, I immediately fell in love for his creations. He's immediate, he's urgent, and he's weird, classic, and genuinely talented

"¿No veis que yo le rezo a un dios, que me prometió,
que cuando esto acabe
no habrá nada más?
¡fue bastante ya!"

-Nacho Vegas, El Hombre Que Casi Conoció A Michi Panero

When The Music´s Over

Is there anything sadder than the ominous fade out of a song? That´s why Elvis is the king. He knew how to take us from a melodic climax to an acute sadness, and then to another climax, a miraculous one, with his Suspicious Minds. There is also the sudden, abrupt silence of a song. Is there a more hostile and hopeless thing? Of course we´re talking about good music, whatever it means to each person. Anyways, it feels like we lost our ticket to the dreamy world, to the oasis, to the blue bus, to the yellow submarine, to the highway 61.

There are just a few things than can really take us to a state of mind as agitated, primal, stupid, angry, vulnerable, eloquent, articulated, rusty, visceral, lucid, as complete. In drugs, there are uppers, downers and hallucinogens. In music the possibilities are infinite.

But if a song ends, just to let another equally stimulating song start, then everything´s fine. If an album takes its natural journey between the different trails, even though it does not follow the yellow brick road, but still takes us to the land of Oz, then everything´s fine. But when that album is over, that feeling of emptiness returns. And then you urgently need another fix.

Then the ipods came. And with them, music becomes a partner, sometimes an anonymous one, but partner whatsoever. And you get hooked up to its company, as never before. Those overrated, in vogue, great gadgets, give you the opportunity to have a tangible soundtrack of your life. The soundtrack of your life, your walk, your razzle, your fuck, your dinner, your writing. The soundtrack of your essence. And suddenly, before your eyes in disbelief, Vancouver´s Robson St. becomes a Nashville street when “Cocaine Blues” starts; it turns into a street from Madrid when the first, furious notes of “Yo Me Bajo En Atocha” can be heard; and it even becomes a traditional street of Monterrey´s downtown when the subtle, urgent, and intoxicating sounds of “Las Tres Tumbas” fill your ears.

When the music´s over… turn off the lights. The Armageddon is not a global fire, nor a great drought, nor a Texas-sized meteorite striking the Earth. It is silence.

_____________________________________

Original date of composition: Monday May 4, 2009.
10:28PM

Y Jamás Flaqueó

Entré por el acceso G de la siempre inédita Arena Monterrey a eso de las 9:15pm. Pinche Bunbury. Y yo que tiré a león aquella cosa de la "puntualidad". ¿Existe la puntualidad en los conciertos de rock? ¿De cuándo a acá? Sepalamadre, la neta no me considero conciertero. Pero el hombre delgado ya estaba en chinga cante y cante y rockeaba... y rockeaba fuerte con su "Señorita Hermafrodita". 5 minutos me tomó chingarme ese cigarro de preludio que siempre me echo. 5 minutos que significaban ver el intro y escuchar su versión rocker de "El Club De Los Imposibles". Y todo por respetuoso de la ley antitabaco. Venga la anarquía tabaquista, dijo mi compa al encender un camel dentro de aquel templo Bunburiano. Venga pues.

Y entre cigarro y cigarro sin que nadie nos molestara, escuchamos grandes himnos. Pero Bunbury en su performance y producción había dejado de lado lo burlesque, lo cabaretero a lo que después de jabs, ganchos, uppers y volados, nos había dejado totalmente noqueados y sorprendidos de todos esos ritmos y arreglos inéditos para muchos. Regresó al rock. Pero ojo, Bunbury no se está repitiendo, pues después de Héroes, fueron contadas (por no atreverme a decir nulas) las casiones en que nos recetó rocanrol puro. En esta ocasión y con motivo de su nuevo disco "Hellville De Luxe" nos asaltó rocanroleando. Realmente nos sorprendió. Y mucha gente que anhelaba escuchar algo siquiera similar a "Héroes del Silencio" en el Bunbury como ente independiente, ahora sentía nostalgia por el cabaret. Otros, como nosotros, nunca extrañamos nada porque al final de cuentas nunca esperamos algo en particular. No sabemos con qué saldrá en su siguiente disco, presentación o proyecto.

Poca elocuencia. Una versión de "El Extranjero" tipo Plaza de Mayo. Monterreginos y Monterreginas (¿?). Ninguna canción de "Héroes del Silencio" (más que "Apuesta por el Rock And Roll"). Un simbólico "caballito para todos". Cerrar el concierto con "El Tiempo de las Cerezas" y no con "Y al Final". 9,000 humanos, según cifras oficiales.

Todo esto fue parte de un concierto que quedará grabado tanto en el mismo Bunbury como en los 9,000 cabrones que ahí estuvimos. Fueron los restos del naufragio. Y es que insisto: este cabrón trae el viaje Dylaniano de jamás repetirse.

Bunbury se presentó con su nueva banda de rock. Lejos se ven los días en que el buen "Huracán Ambulante" lo acompañaba con esos exóticos sonidos que te hechizaban. Lejanos se ven también los movimientos de cadera, las plumas, los flamingos, el mariachi Domínguez, el performance bunbury-meets-the-rocky-horror-picture-show.

Pero eso es parte del viaje. Creo que Bunbury siempre ha estado en constante cambio. En constante movimiento. En constante exploración. Es extranjero. Es infinito. Y todo está tan lejos de la tristeza que casi la toca. Todo eso es parte del viaje a ninguna parte del hombre delgado que no flaqueará jamás. Hasta ahora lo ha cumplido.

Que tenga suertecita.