9/17-18: Torello, Vic

We found in France and Spain, that the oft repeated “too soon” no longer applied to 9/11 humor. My September 11th flyer in Paris had brandished planes flying into towers, and the same image was repeated on the wall outside a squat in Barcelona. In Torello I saw someone wearing a tee shirt that I’d seen at a shop in Bordeaux. It was a variation of the popular “I heart New York,” design, but with a 9/11 skyline, planes and all. There’s something admirable about this, but I’m not sure what.

In Vic, a smaller Catalonian town that Ramon grew up in, there is a yearly weekend of outdoor live music. Since Ramon was a teenager he’d been throwing satellite illegal outdoor punk shows every year to coincide with the mainstream festival, and this year was the 10th anniversary. In the past ten years the idea of doing guerilla shows had really caught on, and walking around Vic, it seemed like you couldn’t turn a corner without seeing bands playing. Ramon’s show was the last one of the night – the only competition being someone blasting raver music across the street. In spite of the sonic competition my acoustic songs were met with almost comic enthusiasm by a crowd of people who’d spent the whole day drinking and dancing.

One of the bands playing told me that they didn’t have lyrics to most of their songs, they just sang in gibberish English and no one knew the difference. It was a strange idea, but I suppose most people in Catalonia are used to listening to music in non-native languages, and often don’t know what the singers are saying, if they’re saying anything. Stranger still, I saw some people singing along to this band, which led me to believe that they did have lyrics to their songs, but maybe not – during my set some people who had clearly never heard any of my songs were so enthusiastic that they’d start singing along as soon as they heard a pair of syllables repeated and keep singing them well past the refrain. Taking the lyrical element out of the songs makes for a total different way of appreciating music, where the music can mean anything your imagination wants it to. I remember listening to Os Mutantes and imagining anthems of Brazilian peasant revolts, only to find out later that they were love songs.

It was strange for me being such a lyrical based songwriter to meet this an attitude, especially since the melodic mood of my songs tends to be upbeat, in spite of downbeat lyrics. Even my attempts to breach the language barrier with translations of the lyrics and song explanations weren’t suited for the party-like atmosphere. At one point during a song that’s about avoiding suicide a group of kids formed a circle around me and started doing joyous traditional Spanish dance. I tried my best to roll with it and keep the party going. One promoter I’d e-mailed with had in a way warned me in a way when in response to my request for a show, they wrote back “you want to come to Spain to sing political songs in English to Catalan speakers? OK! Whatever makes you happy.”

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