(Almost) free live music and stuff, May 2026

Some stuff that I saw in Vitoria, Santander, Torrelavega and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

• 9 May: «Cenizas de Oro» @ Centro Cívico Langraiz-Oka, Tres de Marzo Parkea, 1, Nanclares de la Oca / Langraiz Oka
  A comedy by the amateur theatre group No Me Claves Tus Puñales. Not exactly free as €2 donation (for an NGO to be determined) was requested, but quite worth it.

  

• 15 May: Cantabria en Corto 2025 @ Filmoteca de Cantabria Mario Camus, Calle Bonifaz, 6, Santander
  The programme included Relato del niño que estuvo allí by Sergio Ruiz García; Solo es cuestión de tiempo by Carlos Martínez Pérez; “Solo los muertos se quedan by Alejandro Renedo; Una playa by Juan Carlos Cabañas Soto and Luis Paredes; Instrucciones para quedarse by Caque Trueba; and Wounded Light by Abril Catalina Beascoechea.

  

• 16 May: V Raw Market @ Plaza Mayor, Torrelavega
  Organised by Escuela de Arte Roberto Orallo (Puente San Miguel, Cantabria), this annual event allows the students of the school to present and market the work created during their training. The highlight was a concert of Cantabrian rock band The Haze.

  

• 24 May: Ajódar Poetry Jazz @ Sala Faro, Calle Concejal Manuel Rodríguez Costas, 1, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
  The only event of the Deriva Jazz Timur and I attended. We were not impressed. Ajódar Duo, whose members did not bother to introduce themselves, played some jazz (badly) and recited some poetry (worse). On the brighter note, we have discovered a new venue in just a five-minute walk from us.
• 26 May: «Gran poder a de mandar o mar et todo los ventos» @ Casa de Colón, Calle Colón, 1
  Dedicated to the quincentenary of the death of Elcano, this concert featured “music around the Iberian circumnavigation routes”. Pedro Bonet employed 14 different recorders — copies of medieval, Renaissance and Baroque models — to play a bedazzling array of works composed and/or collected by Alfonso X el Sabio, Diego Ortiz, Pieter de Vois, Thomas Edward Bowdich, Hans Sloane, Joseph-Marie Amiot, William Hamilton Bird and many others. Part of the cycle Música Antigua en el Patio.

  

• 28 May: «Tiempo de Zafra» @ Auditorio José Antonio Ramos, Parque Doramas
  La Banda Sinfónica de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria featuring Domingo Luis Rodríguez Oramas “El Colorao” on timple and voices of Tania Gil and Pedro Manuel Afonso. The concert included a performance of Zafra, a work for timple and symphony orchestra composed by Laura Vega.

  

And exhibitions:

• 7—31 May: «Color, memoria y gesto» @ Sala de Exposiciones Mauro Muriedas, Calle Pedro Alonso Revuelta, 5, Torrelavega
  Works by Débora Regalado and Alejandro Mesurado.

  

• 8 May — 5 July: «Wetlands» @ El Palacete del Embarcadero, Muelle de Calderón, Santander
  Works by Paula Santomé.

  

Goodbye, May.

Rising

by Rainbow

If I had to choose one record from not-that-large Rainbow’s discography, that would be Rising. (Sorry, Difficult to Cure, my first Rainbow love.) I still remember the first time I read about this album («Радуга восходит») in the tremendously popular Soviet magazine Ровесник:

Наверное, это лучшая пластинка Ричи Блэкмора до сих пор. Не то чтобы она содержала какие-нибудь музыкальные откровения (единственное, возможно, исключение — «Старгейзер»; Блэкмор говорит, что первоначально написал ее как пьесу для виолончели). Главное достоинство диска — необыкновенная мощь и динамизм. Образно говоря, он сделан в нокаутирующем стиле, вполне достойном страшного костистого кулака, изображенного на обложке. «Мы записывали этот альбом около десяти месяцев, и у меня нет причин быть им недовольным», — сухо заметил Блэкмор по поводу успеха пластинки.

Геннадий Быков, «Радуга Ричи Блэкмора»

Even then I couldn’t agree with the author of this publication. What did he mean saying “not that it contained any musical revelations”? Even without Stargazer — oh blasphemy! — there are enough revelations for a dozen of rock albums.

Rising is one of those albums that are best on vinyl. Why? Because there are two sides, that’s why. The epic Stargazer is not the fifth track — it’s the first track on Side B. You can’t really listen to it properly just after Do You Close Your Eyes. You have to flip the record, and, better still, use the intermission to refill your cup/mug/glass. And then, when A Light in the Black is done, flip it back to Side A (refill the cup etc.) and listen to Tarot Woman — another epic. Also, as it is the case of In the Court of the Crimson King, the cover art it totally worth it. That fist, it has to be that big. If I ever own a turntable again, Rising and ITCOTKC will have to come with it.

So far, I didn’t hear any Rising song cover that would beat the original. Still, there are some good ones. My favourite Stargazers are that by Cincinnati Vampires featuring vocals of Melody Cristea and fantastic Kalonica Nicx on drums, and another one by Contra Bass, a kids band from Vinnytsia, Ukraine. It’s nice to see young people playing decent music.

Presence

by Led Zeppelin

50 years on, Presence remains the most underrated Zeppelin record. After the grandiosity of Physical Graffiti, it’s refreshing to hear the stripped-back band, perhaps at its heaviest. It’s a shame that in its day most of the album never made it to the stage. A performance of For Your Life from the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert, with Jason Bonham on drums, gives a glimpse of how Presence could have sounded live. But the legacy lives on. Among not that many covers, Tea For One by Joe Bonamassa and Nobody’s Fault But Mine by Baldassarre’s Soul of Zeppelin stand out.

Speaking of covers: I find the cover art (just like that of Wish You Were Here, also by Hipgnosis) uninspiring and having nothing to do with the the album’s music.

Machine Head

by Deep Purple

Released 50 years ago today, this classic of rock remains, deservedly, the most famous Purple record. My first partial encounter with it was, I reckon, in the mid-1970s. I say “partial” because the tape we listened to then lacked Pictures of Home and Lazy. Discovered by me towards 1980, they became my favourite tracks of the album.

Not as heavy as In Rock, not as diverse as Fireball, Machine Head nevertheless provides more than enough variety and fun for a rock album. It could have been perfect if not for that number about some stupid with a flare gun which I really think should have been left out and replaced by When a Blind Man Cries. Not that it’s bad; it’s just not up to the level of the other songs.

Roger Glover recalls in the liner notes to the 25^th Anniversary Edition (which I purchased, pre-Amazon, directly from The Deep Purple Appreciation Society) how the name came about:

During one of these lost and searching days, I awoke one morning in my room at the Europe and, in that moment between sleep and wakefulness, with eyes still closed, heard myself say the words “smoke on the water” to the empty room. Opening my eyes, I wondered if I had actually said it out loud, or had I been dreaming? No, I concluded, I’d actually spoken those words. Mentally filing it away, I thought nothing more about it until later, when I told Ian Gillan. “Sounds like a drug song,” he observed and since we were devoutly a drinking band, we dismissed it.

Maybe I am too hard on it. (How hard one can be on a hard rock classic?) After all, thanks to it I learned about Montreux (also how this latter is pronounced by the English) and Frank Zappa and The Mothers. By now, the band themselves may well be fed up with the old Smoke but the fans can’t have enough of it. And there’s no shortage of covers. My favourites are Señor Coconut’s Humo en el agua, Dread Zeppelin’s groovy one, an instrumental by Stekpanna (from Standin’ Tall) and 1920s-style version by Robyn Adele Anderson.

Speaking of covers, the rest of the album — the good rest of the album, you understand — is as inspirational. Check out Min Chuguruk by the Siberian ethno-rockers Bugotak and another version of Highway Star by the Italian outfit Black Mamba — that “Oooh”, just before “she’s a killing machine”, is priceless. I loved the version of Lazy by Jimmy Barnes and Joe Bonamassa, from Re-Machined: A Tribute to Deep Purple’s Machine Head. Ditto When a Blind Man Cries, again by Barnes with Jon Lord and The Hoochie Coochie Men, from Live at the Basement.

CD1 of the Anniversary Edition, remixed in 1997 by Glover, is “what it <the album> should have sounded at the time”. It took me 25 years to get used to, or maybe more: I’m still working on it.

RIP Martin Birch. RIP Jon Lord. RIP Frank Zappa. RIP Funky Claude. Long live Machine Head.

Paranoid

by Black Sabbath

Paranoid, 50 years young today, is kind of genre-defining album. You can’t say you heard any heavy metal if you didn’t hear Paranoid. Right?

In my case, it was not even the first Sabbath’s album I heard. The wonderful and criminally underrated Technical Ecstasy was the first, in the early ’80s. It was not until 2000 that I actually sat down to listen to Paranoid in its entirety. So, happy 20^th to that.

In 1989, I didn’t go to Moscow Music Peace Festival featuring acts like Bon Jovi, Mötley Crüe, Scorpions and, wait, I’m getting there, Ozzy Osbourne — with Geezer Butler! Missing it is one of my regrets, mostly because of that event’s zeitgeist, although probably the only band worth seeing there were Scorpions. You can see the footage in the 1989 documentary «Десант в гнездо гласности» where Ozzy sings Paranoid (rather badly, in my opinion).

Later the same year, I went to see Black Sabbath live at Olimpiyskiy stadium in Moscow. They played incredible 13 concerts there, on 19 through 28 November as a part of their Headless Cross world tour. By that time, only Tony Iommi was left of the original line-up. But the rest of the band was truly stellar: the vocalist Tony Martin, the great Neil Murray on bass, the great late Geoff Nicholls on keys and the greatest, late Cozy Powell on drums. Dismal acoustics notwithstanding, it was a blast. Amazingly, one of those shows is available on YouTube. And of course, they played Iron Man, War Pigs and Paranoid.

The kids first heard Iron Man in Futurama (Anthology of Interest I, to be precise) and then in 2008 film Iron Man. Needless to say, Paranoid made its way to Yuri’s MP3 player soon after that. Of zillions of Sabbath’s covers out there (I can’t honestly pretend that I heard even 1% of them), give me Hayseed Dixie’s version of War Pigs any time.

Concerto for Group and Orchestra

by Deep Purple and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Arnold

I first got acquainted with this Jon Lord’s masterpiece (first performed 50 years ago today) in the early 1980s, already being familiar with the rest of the Deep Purple Mark II studio legacy. I had a 19 cm/s audio tape reel recorded from a very scratchy vinyl. There were several skips, most notably during the Ritchie Blackmore’s lenghty solo in the First Movement (Moderato — Allegro), but, as this solo is very repetitive, I didn’t miss much. More annoying for me was the fact that the Second Movement (Andante) was split between the two sides of the LP.

What still amazes me that the score of the Concerto was lost in 1970. How? Was there really just one copy? That Marco de Goeij was able to reconstruct it by listening to the original recording is even more amazing. The result, performed twenty years ago already, could have been great... if you hadn’t heard the original, that is. What was revolutionary in 1969 became a tribute in 1999. Still, worth watching, not least because of great guest musicians, such as Annie Whitehead.

Mr. FeedBack live @ The Paper Club

As I’ve mentioned before, I hardly ever see tribute bands in action. To miss this tribute to Led Zeppelin, however, would be unforgivable. Timur and I went to see them last night to The Paper Club. This was the conclusion of “St.George’s Week”, and I thought the €12 ticket for both the movie (Quadrophenia) and the concert (including a drink!) was a good value. But wait. I was hoping for it to be good but the show exceeded my expectations.

Hailing from Bergamo, the band is surprisingly tight and playful at the same time. Not only are they passionate about the music they perform, they also make Zeppelin’s songs their own. Even though almost two hours of non-stop rock/blues/rock’n’roll call for “highlighting”, it’s not an easy task when there’s not a dull moment in the show. But if I must... For me, the melodic basswork of Nicola Mazzucconi’s stood out while Mr Brevi’s singing went, dare I say, beyond whatever Robert Plant himself did “in the days of his youth”. Apart of, I guess, obligatory Black Dog, Rock and Roll, Whole Lotta Love and Stairway to Heaven (all brilliant), they pleased the audience with some not-so-obvious material. I was happy to hear a few of my personal favourites, such as Immigrant Song and Ramble On, and got a serious goosebumps overdose from Babe I’m Gonna Leave You and No Quarter. Highly recommended.

Mr. FeedBack are:

• Francesco Bertini: drums
• Andy Brevi: vocals
• Nicola Mazzucconi: bass
• Simone Trevisàn: guitar

Three music documentaries

Last week, Timur and I went to watch these movies at the Monopol Music Festival. In English, with Spanish subtitles.

The Beatles: Eight Days a Week — The Touring Years

a film by Ron Howard

I’ve been listening to The Beatles for as long as I remember myself. I can’t honestly say that I learned a lot of new stuff about the Fab Four from this film. But I enjoyed it all the same. As for Timur, I hope his curiosity about The Beatles is not satisfied. The version we watched in Monopol (as we were warned beforehand) lacked half an hour or so of 1965 Shea Stadium concert. Thank goodness for that, it must have been terrible. Most of The Beatles footage was. On the other hand, the interviews are brilliant.

The film covers, so to speak, The Red Album years. (It also includes, for reasons unknown, a fragment of the famous rooftop concert which was the last public performance of the band but has nothing to do with “touring”.) John, Paul, George and Ringo were getting tired of the gigs but not of each other (yet). Brian Epstein was still alive. The future looked bright.

Score: A Film Music Documentary

a film by Matt Schrader

We went to see this film on Timur’s suggestion and it proved to be much more interesting than its description or trailer would suggest. Not only because, or even not so much because of giants like John Williams or Hans Zimmer who appear there. I was much more impressed by other composers — too many to list here and frankly I forgot most of the names — who also happen to be great musicians, arrangers and/or conductors. Perhaps inevitably, being an American movie, it mainly focuses on American film scores. (By and large, I find American movie music too intrusive for my liking. I wish there were separate volume controls for music, dialogue and ambient noises on the remote.) Even the scenes in London’s AIR and Abbey Road studios show “making of” Hollywood music. It would be interesting to see the idea of Score applied to contemporary European cinema.

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster

a film by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky

This 2004 documentary portrays Metallica in the middle of their creative, existential, or midlife (delete as appropriate) crisis. I didn’t know much about the band before and watching the film didn’t make me a fan.

First, Lars Ulrich emerges as a biggest asshole in rock history (to his credit, Lars admits that himself) thanks to Metallica vs. Napster lawsuit. Then James Hetfield goes to Russia to hunt bears and drink vodka. Then Lars decides to sell his godawful paintings at Christie’s to raise some cash (quite a lot of it). All the while, they don’t stop bickering. The whole thing looks like they are unwittingly remaking This is Spın̈al Tap without being nearly as likeable as Spın̈al Tap. And they don’t show too much wit either.

Scandinavian Nights (Live in Stockholm 1970)

by Deep Purple

For Deep Purple Mark II, 1970 was truly an annus mirabilis. Not only because of In Rock — wait a minute, I’ve got a 25^th anniversary edition CD which is 20 years old already; shall we expect a 50^th anniversary edition in five years’ time? — but also because of Jon Lord’s Gemini Suite Live and Jesus Christ Superstar superstarring Ian Gillan. I was practically growing up on this latter album.

What about Scandinavian Nights? It was recorded in Stockholm exactly 45 years ago, on 12 November 1970, so it’s not clear why “nights” in plural. But trust me, behind its rather uninspired cover art you’ll find simply the best live recording of this, or any, Purple line-ups. Sure enough, there are Child in Time, Into the Fire and Speed King (in my view, vastly superior to their respective studio versions) as well as half-an-hour monsters of Wring That Neck and Mandrake Root. But also, please, don’t forget the cover of Paint It Black.

The Butcher’s Ballroom

by Diablo Swing Orchestra

Who said art rock is dead? I discovered this fantastic album browsing through Jamendo’s free music collection. The last time I’ve enjoyed listening to heavy metal cum operatic vocals was, um, probably never. The opening track, Balrog Boogie, is a killer, but please don’t stop there and listen to the end. My other favourite songs include D’angelo, Porcelain Judas and Pink Noise Waltz.

Rising Force

by Yngwie J. Malmsteen

The 1980s were lousy times for rock music. At least, in the West. But every cloud has a heavy metal lining: the great rockers of the 1970s discovered that they were ever so popular in Soviet Union. By the end of the decade, they were touring the former evil empire en masse, among them Black Sabbath, Ian Gillan, Nazareth, Pink Floyd, Uriah Heep... and Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force.

Malmsteen probably is the only truly great rock guitarist to emerge in the 1980s. I have no clue what, if anything, YJM is doing now, but by mid-1990s he was already fading from collective memory. Therefore, I arbitrarily declare that Malmsteen was on peak of his career exactly when I saw him (twice) live in Moscow in 1988. The band, fronted by Joe Lynn Turner, was phenomenal. The crowd was as ecstatic as could be under the circumstances (don’t forget the heavy militia presence). And yet, it seemed that Yngwie, still in his twenties, was basking in the past glory. The Force has risen, but it was already time to settle down for bed.

Even if Malmsteen recorded only Rising Force, it should be more than enough to guarantee him the place in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, to which he remains to be induced.

* * *

Listening to the album for the first time, Yuri said: “This guitar solo is longer than Rimmer’s special salute”.

* * *

In my Zumba classes, I use the first 22 seconds of Black Star as a break between some tracks.

* * *

On the CD booklet, moſt of the text, including ſong lyrics, is typeſet in blackletter.
Which is probably to the beſt as the lyrics does not make much ſenſe.

July Morning

by Uriah Heep

The very same day, 16 November 2008, after the Christmas Lights Switch-On (see the previous post), I was heading towards The Junction. I was torn between two choices: Uriah Heep or Mor Karbasi? It could be so much easier if they had these two concerts on different dates! In the end, I decided that Mor Karbasi is young and will be around for a while, while Uriah Heep are old and this is my only chance to see them live and alive. (I am glad that I was wrong: Heep played in Cambridge again this year.) Also, I wanted to see Uriah Heep for at least 30 years, that should count too.

No regrets then. Supporting act, the heavy rockers Maccara, were brilliant, especially the singer Hollie Evans. What a voice! But the main course was simply mindblowing. I never saw a ’70s band in such a good shape. (Also, it looked like I was younger than everybody else, except for Maccara guys.) The Heep were promoting their Wake the Sleeper album and played every single song. Plus some great oldies: Look At Yourself, Easy Livin’, Gypsy (starting with an astounding keyboard solo), Lady In Black and, of course, July Morning. That was a solid two-hour set which left me speechless (and half-deaf). Was it worth waiting for all these years? Absolutely.

There I was on a July morning Looking for love With the strength of a new day dawning And the beautiful sun At the sound of the first bird singing I was leaving for home With the storm and the night behind me And a road of my own With the day came the resolution I’ll be looking for you I was looking for love In the strangest places Wasn’t a stone That I left unturned Must have tried more than a thousand faces But not one was aware Of the fire that burned In my heart, in my mind, in my soul