“We want to be in Seville / sitting in the park / Glorieta de los lotos, smelling of flowers / Yes, yes, we want to be / Oh, what a roll!, oh what a roll!, they won’t let us,” Smash sang in 1970 Six years later, Spain was still a mess, but with the dictator already dead, the authorities began to raise their hands a bit, which was taken advantage of by the younger population to conquer new spaces of freedom. One of those young people was from Seville louis clemente which, inspired precisely by that Smash song, he launched in 1976 roundabout of the lotusesa radio program in which he reviewed the history of Spanish rock focusing on three key cities: Madrid, Barcelona and Seville.
“The media were in the big cities, but Seville had a particular character, not only because of flamenco but because of the seed underground that was here”, explains Clemente, a music critic specializing in flamenco whose life took other paths, but who was always clear that this radio program had to become a book.
“Little by little I was leaving journalism because I wanted to listen to music not forced by current affairs but for pleasure. Then I realized that what I listened to the most was music from the 70s, so, after publishing five books on flamenco, I decided to recover that project from 1976. In 2013 I called Vicente Fabuel, who is a great Valencian record collector, and asked him if he knew of anyone who was doing something similar. He said no and I started working seriously on the book”.
Almost half a century after it was conceived, it has just seen the light Spanish progressive rocka book of more than three hundred pages and hundreds of images that compiles the most representative LPs and singles of that musical genre from the late 1960s to 1979, including works by Double Hemstitch, pau riba, agamemnon, bread and licorice o Aguaviva. “The book begins in 1966 because it is the year in which a new way of making music was born. That pop that was consolidated in the 60s, is gradually feeding on other music. All this gave rise to the music of the 70s, which was a very rich decade, in which the guidelines for future music were established”, explains Clemente, who highlights how, from then on, music underwent a change with all the above.
“Towards the year 1969 they began to take their feet off the musical plate. Between that year and 1971 is when pure progressive was developed, which later began to expand taking from here and there, until it became symphonic rock, folk and even punk.In any case, and beyond definitions, what I have tried to do in the book is to put that non-commercial music that had a transgressive spirit“, comments Clemente, who does not hide the fact that, on some occasions, this differentiation has been a fine line that is difficult to draw. “humble soulsfor example, are a commercial group that, however, have a couple of songs, like The sun will shine in winterwhich are distinguished from the others because they have something different, an elegance, let’s say, that made me include them in the book”.
Although Clemente has been lax when it comes to beginning his review of Spanish progressive music by including some years from the previous decade to contextualize the music scene, the truth is that he has been very strict when it comes to putting an end to it. “The book ends in 1979. I didn’t want to make a chapter explaining that the thing continued, even when that resignation caused some of my favorite records to be left out, like the first by Tabletom or the album by Silvio and Luzbel, which are from 1980 . In the end I have made a book of records, not of discographies, nor of biographies, nor of alignments”, concludes Clemente.
Spanish Progressive Rock it is the project of a lifetime, in which its author has invested time, knowledge, effort and money. In addition to writing and laying it out, Clemente has been in charge of paying for the production and even selling it. In fact, the only way to get it is by contacting him directly by sending an email to clementegavilan@hotmail.com.
“I have been self-publishing for twenty-five years. I also took out my other books that way because I like to write them, design them and, although it is more cumbersome, I also like the production part. For me it is the best option, but that does not mean that I have a vocation underground let alone with this project. The natural place for Spanish Progressive Rock are bookstores because when someone has the book in their hands and sees it, they want it. The problem is that it is impossible for me to assume the percentage that the distributors take. For this reason, my intention is to sell this first print run and get the necessary money to finance a second, larger print run that will allow me to work with a distributor and reach the stores. In fact, one of the other things I would like to do is translate it into English but if I can’t get that second edition out yet, how about paying a translator.”
five jewels
Among the hundreds of records that make up the book, Luis Clemente has selected five of them for El Periódico de España, from the Prensa Ibérica group. Some rare jewels that did not enjoy great sales, but whose originality has made them unquestionable milestones in the history of Spanish music.
‘Orgy’, by Sisa (1971).
“The first elepé of Left over is a surreal delicacy touched by some thirty collaborations ranging from his colleagues in scattered music a Machine! or the trumpeter Rudy Ventura. According to Ramón de España, ‘what contained Orgy It wasn’t folk, of course, but a handful of poetic-musical excrescences that emerged from his sick mind. While some tried to put an end to Francoism with an out-of-tune guitar and others spent the day perfecting their left hand pianistically, this good gentleman wrote hallucinating stories and dressed them with beautiful and strange melodies not devoid of peculiar effects‘. Shortly after the appearance of OrgySisa retired from music temporarily, exercising various occupations, composing a lot and maturing the ideas that would give way to her second LP, that of confirmation, Almost every night the sun can rise”.
‘April 14’, from Goma (1975).
“Goma was the distillation of a broad band that emerged around an art gallery with five first-class musicians: an ex-Gong on sax, Antoñito Smash to battery and battery futures Magnetguitarist of Poison and the keyboardist of Cai. ‘A hopeful avant-garde with possibilities of conquering any international market’, ended the promotional sheet for Goma, but the truth is that his album was eclipsed by the success of Triana, who took the gold and the Moor. Goma only left this LP as a milestone of the progressive, the one that best translated the style of King Crimson, loads of instrumentals included. According to the criticism of Popular 1, ‘his music requires patient listening and meditation, in order to try to discern if what one feels is tension, headache or rock paroxysm’. The masonic portal, the work of Alberto Heart, was censored, and the republican flag had to be changed, but not the woman’s eye or the title”.
‘Brossa d’ahir’, by Pep Laguarda & Tapinería (1977).
“Authentic Mediterranean sound, with evocative acoustics and generational break songs, such as Milanta light-years blues, whose verses say: ‘Your father and your mother will never know / that you have made love at night with an old demon / that you have scaled brambles with one bare foot / that you took communion with milk between thunder and lightning / your father and your mother they sleep inside an egg / incommunicado’. Sung in Valencian by Pep Laguarda and his quartet, the musician brought together in this work David Allen that puts the bass, pau riba provided by the electric company and his band, in which his brother is Xavier Riba to the violin and mandolin, Saki as a multi-instrumentalist and Tico Balanza to drums and flute. The charismatic atmosphere of this Yesterday’s junk could have had a sequel because, two years later, Laguarda released a second album that was not released”.
‘The shoeshine boy who wanted to be a bullfighter’, by Cucharada (1979)
“The LP with the title of a farce, a cheap novel, an illusion, which deals with consumerism and commercial imperialism. Trained in the tunnels of the Madrid subway and participating in theatrical reels, Tablespoon they spoke when meeting Zappa, Tubes, Living Theatre… and when he took over them CHueca Collective Laboratories (La Cochu) They managed to record two songs for [el recopilatorio] Manzanares Rock and they entered the circuit with a hard-hitting sound show in which they dressed up onstage accompanied by an Italian dancer and two bewildering mimes. The shoe shine who wanted to be a bullfighter is the only Spoonful album, and on it he sang and played bass Manolo Self (with the pseudonym Lolilla Cardo), who after the dissolution of the band-concept and with elements of it, gave shape to Alarm!!! Among the songs on the disc, it stands out social dangerousnessdedicated to Law of Vagrants and Crooks, in which they ask ‘Who is guilty, who is innocent? / The righteous millionaire or the necessary poor?'”.
N.H.U.the NHU (1978)
“A record that did not sell even three hundred copies at the time and that later desperately coveted itself to be the first progressive rock album sung (little) in Galician and, furthermore, for having an experimental value above the average.
The name was the acronym turned around for Una Hermosa Noche and, as a curiosity, it can be said that they rehearsed in an uninhabited house on the way to the Santiago psychiatric hospital with a good team thanks to their side as a fair group”.