Pet Shop Boys starts Primavera Sound in Madrid due to the uncertainty of the cancellation

2023-06-08 03:06:03

The first edition of Primavera Sound in Madrid has started off on the wrong foot due to the Oscar storm. Shortly after the inaugural session began, free of charge, at the Metropolitan Stadium, the organization communicated around six in the afternoon this Wednesday to its workers and collaborating companies the cancellation of the first day of the festival, that of Thursday, June 8 . Two hours later, a statement was sent to the press and announced on social networks.

Useful guide to enjoy Primavera Sound 2023 in Madrid: transport, free concerts and schedules

Further

The rains that have been persistently soaking the soil of the Ciudad del Rock de Arganda for days have left the terrain impassable, as has been seen in photographs and videos shared on social networks. In addition, the forecast for both Thursday and Friday is that it will continue to rain.

Despite the bad weather, Pet Shop Boys has been able to play in Madrid, and has done so two nights in a row: first at the Eslava Theater and the next day at the outdoor area of ​​the Atlético de Madrid stadium. It was the same group but they have been two very different concerts, which demonstrates the versatility of some survivors of the decades and the musical currents, of one of the biggest names in pop, arising from the English passion for the synthesizers of the early 1970s. 80s. And until now.

The concert at the Teatro Eslava, as part of the Spring in the City program, and practically also free, lacked the scenery displayed on the huge stage next to the San Blas stadium, but it granted the luxury of short distance. And also some change in the set list, like the interpretation of the ballad Jealousy in the theater. In return, at the big concert he appeared Go West.

Also reserved for the large-format concert, in addition to some huge prop lampposts, the symbology of Smash, the new greatest hits compilation that sets the mood for this tour: some masks with geometric motifs. He set list It is practically the same one that they have been interpreting since last year in this eventful tour Dreamworld, postponed due to the pandemic. Although they have stolen jewelry from the late 90s as New York City Boy, Se a Vida E (That’s the Way Life Is) o Single – Bilingual.

Visibly delighted with the Madrid double date, Neil Tennant, each day more like the Noël Coward he always wanted to be, said that the audience was “wonderful” and allowed himself to be loved by thousands of people who for no good reason did not fill the capacity to the limit of their capacity, it was difficult for them to allow a good viewing angle. No one was there passing through, despite his gratuitousness; each soul gathered on this Wednesday of worries and disappointments, had a fan of Pet Shop Boys inside. If not, how was it possible that, since Suburbia (“the combination of suburbs and utopia”, as the song says) until Being Bored, Most of the verses will be heard singing, loudly, from the audience.

The concert started 15 minutes late —in a day that had already been marked by the cancellation of the first of the groups, La Paloma— and it almost came in handy for the audience of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, because the drops stopped before they they came out on stage, and finally the dry show could be enjoyed. The rain also gave a truce to the fun Australian technopop duo Confidence Man, who gave an unstoppable dance show, with costume changes and a Grace Stephenson delivered, even literally, to the public.

Madrid with Spring

The arrival of the Primavera Sound festival from Barcelona to the community of Madrid is an event that also has a certain experimental character: Is there room for a second macro-festival in Madrid? Will what works in Barcelona work just as well in another big city 600 kilometers away and only a week later? If the remaining two days are held, there will be three indicators that provide an answer to these questions: the number of attendees, the quality of the sound and the mobility conditions between Madrid and Arganda, where the venue is located. Because about the music, which is what this is really about, there will be no surprises: everything that happens in Madrid in the next few days, except obviously the groups from the canceled first day, has happened in a practically identical way a few days ago in Barcelona ; the chronicles are written.

Primavera prepared its landing in Madrid in October last year, separating from Mad Cool in terms of receiving subsidies. “Zero euros”, said Alfonso Lanza, director of the festival. “We do not believe in the subsidized festival model,” he added, although the event has the support of all the relevant public administration: from the mayoralties of Madrid and Arganda, through the autonomous community and ending at the Ministry of Culture. Despite this, in March of this year, the Government Council of the Community signed an agreement to contribute 850,000 euros to the festival as a “bet to attract international tourism”. It is literally the same argument, international tourism, that he uses to subsidize Mad Cool, with €1.08 million. The director of the Madrid edition, Almudena Heredero, had explained that they did not need financial support from the administrations: “As soon as your festival has economic benefits, there is no need to resort to public subsidies,” she said in an interview with elDiario.es.

As announced by the Community, 85,000 daily attendees are expected at Primavera Sound, although day tickets and season tickets have not sold out. What’s more, the organization has said that there will be no problem in relocating the holders of the Thursday day ticket in subsequent days. In a global ticket sales —which does not necessarily correspond to unique people since the same person attends different events on several days—, the festival expects more than 300,000, combining the Ciudad del Rock venue in Arganda and the concerts that take place They have been celebrating throughout the week as part of the Spring in the City program. These concerts outside the venue are one of the successes of the festival’s strategy, as it collaborates in this way with concert halls, which are the great victims of both the macro-festival music consumption model and the pandemic. We will have to wait for the conclusion of the festival next Sunday to find out, from the organization, the final balance of attendees. The weather conditions, the uncertainty before a first edition, the connection between Madrid and Arganda (two cities separated by 40 kilometers), the high price of tickets, the schedules of the headliners and the competition with Mad Cool, are factors that They have played against you. In his favor? A unique poster.

Rosalía at dawn

Another of the debates that Primavera Sound has sparked in recent days is the schedule of their performances. Blur, one of the canceled concerts, was scheduled for 02:05. The same time that is scheduled for Rosalía on Saturday. Depeche Mode’s schedule is within the usual schedule (9:10 p.m.), as would New Order’s (11:05 p.m.). Other groups whose proposal is not usual to listen to at dawn, a band more appropriate for electronics and dance, have also been located late at night, as is the case of Alison Goldfrapp (02:30), Kyary Pamyu Pamyu (02:35), Lebanon Hanover (04:35) or Los Ganglios (04:55).

Sound quality, as we said above, is another factor that influences the final evaluation of a festival. It is often related to the location of the festival, as quality is often related to volume (although they are different things). To get a good volume throughout the night it is essential that there are no houses nearby. Unlike the new Mad Cool venue, the City of Rock is a fairly isolated area and, in principle, there have been no preventive complaints from the residents, as has happened with the other aforementioned festival, moved from Valdebebas to Villaverde.

And finally, the third factor: mobility. Since its presentation in Madrid, the Catalan festival has made it clear that resolving the transfer of thousands of people from Madrid to Arganda was key to the success of its proposal. To do this, they have created parking spaces at 10 euros per day —which discourage the use of private transport while providing a service for those who consider it essential— and a free round-trip shuttle service between Arganda and Madrid. To get there, these buses leave the Cívitas Metropolitano stadium between 3:00 p.m. and midnight. To return, the collective vehicles leave the City of Rock for the Metropolitan, the Méndez Álvaro interchange and the Plaza de Castilla interchange between midnight and 07:30 in the morning. In addition, there will be other free EMT shuttle buses from the Cívitas Metropolitano stadium and the Méndez Álvaro interchange to Plaza de Cibeles at the same times.

The concerts that, whatever happens, remain standing, since they are held indoors, are those that take place in the Primavera Auditorium (The Music Station in the Príncipe Pío station), another gift of the festival to the city, with concerts tomorrow that are not repeated in the venue’s programming, such as Swans, John Cale or Laurie Anderson. They are going unnoticed, the tickets are sold out for these three named groups and their schedule is incompatible with work or rest after a very long day at the venue, but their existence is an anomaly and, as happened with the Pet Shop Boys concert in the Eslava Theater, surely serves to remind the public that all this, in the end, is for the music and not for the show. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe themselves recorded in 1989 a very current song —actually, a version— called It’s Alright, that they have touched these days. It talks about the dictatorship in Afghanistan, the revolution in South Africa and oppression in Eurasia. Of deforestation and desertification. And, despite that, “music is the foundation of our lives and it will happen to all nations to come,” she says, with slightly uncontrolled optimism, her lyrics.