What Kind Of Clothes Does Plato's Closet Sell

The man who knew almost Nacho Vegas

In a bizarre conversation film of 1993 (" Después de tantos años "), the great amateur Michi Panero-intellectual, a writer without having written a book, Night of the dandy Madrid at the turn of the seventies and eighties, and more succinctly, he exclaimed:

"Lo peor se puede ser que en este mundo es Conazo.

More than a decade later, the dignified celebration of death, which took place in the solitude of-Astorga, Nacho Vegas wrote what is undoubtedly his song more inspired and funny, "El hombre que Conolly cases in Michi Panero ", a homage, a requiem, a phony (car?) literary biography of this notorious playboy and dilettante. Memorable is the beginning:

" Es hora de que me has Hostias recapitular las dice el mundo.

vendrán a oir Hoy me último Adios. Bien.

One in a van I arrive and get in his dressing gown.

And some guy called me and others tell me sir.

Some have not wanted to pronounce.

I once had a love, but if I must be honest, I said "no" on the altar

and when I say it is not.

I failed once, failed ten thousand

and still raise my glass to the sky

in a toast to the man today and how well that inhabits the world.

Look, the girls are singing! Shalalaralalá .. "

E poi:

"I've never been in anything the best, I have not been a great lover.

More than I want to testify.

But if something capital is something really important,

is that I'm going to die

and when I say I'm going.

I've enjoyed it, and almost met once ina Michi Panero,

and is much more than I ever

soñaríais in a thousand lifetimes.

¡Mirada, Las Ninas chanting! Shalalaralalá .. .

In its way, Nacho Vegas seems to want to emulate the youngest of Panero, following in the footsteps on the ground of self-irony, the damnation of the drawl of contempt for intellectuals, for the rejection of any label - such as cult artist (in an interview with El Pais -Madrid past Saturday issued for promotion, the triumphant trio of concerts that was about to give in the capital, when asked "Eso de ser de cult artist , constituye a responsabilidad muy fatiga? ", the rocker of Gijon, shrugging his shoulders, replied thus:" Ese is a temporary factor, but I lack such a vocation. Dylan I suppose if those disks now burst letters long songs too dense and would class as a cult artist. I do not dislike what I say, but I try to focus on making good songs ") or intellettuale di della canzone (" It's a rock 'Cultureta'? "Gli domandano." Literature is an influence with a specific gravity level between People of my generation, but I'd like to consider as well. Pessoa can hover by my records as I hear conversations emerge in bars. [..]; if you call 'Cultureta', is that something you're doing wrong " , risponde).

But there is a slope on which Nacho Vegas is not emulating anyone but a master of all, and is the art of writing songs that last seven minutes, do not contain refrains, along despite all the melodrama and the urge to whistle the melody as if they were pop hits radio. Moreover, the profession of musician is schematic: to tell a story, accompanied by the music, interpreting it with the voice - and Vegas is a writer, musician and excellent performer. Beyond the crest, sunglasses, drugs, the blonde singer with the Danish surname, enthusiasm for the new indie movement English, is an author as there are few in the world (Jeff Tweedy, maybe ). If I said that Morrissey is the Iberian Antonio Luque, then Nacho Vegas is living proof of what would happen if instead of Jarvis Cocker was born in Sheffield in Asturias. Same drama, same seductive voice, the same texts dense and elegant, the same disenchantment with the success, the same ubiquity of culture (music, literature), and a final hard-El Manifiesto desastre-that is nothing but the same awareness , tortured and yet not pessimistic, the fatuity of fame, happiness, love that "the man with the same initials of Jesus Christ" was discovered in his most personal album, and probably better looking (This is Hardcore).

With this background, the concert could not be flawless. Despite the deplorable attempts of the English public to turn every song into a football chant, what is striking and makes the chills is the intimacy of the stories he tells Nacho Vegas: every song is actually a confession, looks you in the eye and requires maximum empathy. Vegas does not pose no screen between him and his listeners, it is as if he was singing on stage but was leaning against the counter of a bar with a glass half full of patxaràn in one hand, wrapped in cigarette smoke of yet. And this vulnerability is manifested in all its grace in the handful of songs that deal alone-he, the guitar and the darkness-and the rest of the group looks like a prophet Anabaptist: the splendor of those notes, those words, gestures, probably derived from the splendor of the Cantabrian Sea, that is not quiet at all ("Deja que hablen, las cosas que yo Prefiero oir de la mar," he sings in "El Salitre"), but above all the burning desire to learn to see things from a distance and perspective, but being serious with a smile, because life can be anything but a Conazo , and then you can not afford even the verses like these, without being a poet, but only a genius:

" And tell me if the sun has risen and is not for the two

then for whom?

Or if not today the wind howls and the two

then by whom?

As well I can love

if I am my own enemy?

And

restart when both yesterday here in my?

We can go and ask the sea

to respond to us with roaring,

to tell us the truth .