El Canto Del Loco

A personal review by Gareth, site admin/owner


I’m in the very happy position today of being able to actually post my own live review up here on the site (although I hope others of you with “live” experiences and other stories and news will continue to write in!) – having lost my ECDL_Live virginity at the band’s show on October 30th at the Palacio de los Deportes, Madrid at the end of their “Hasta Luego” tour.

Although the innovative and imaginative lighting/projection rig is a stripped down version of the one used on the “Personas” tour, it’s nonetheless mighty impressive and with 5 minutes to go until showtime sends the enormous stadium into deafening cheers as it turns into a countdown clock. The Palacio de los Deportes is a huge venue for about 18,000 or so and it’s packed out – think Earls Court but bigger and wider – and when the clock hits zero the noise is immense. The projections change to very computer-graphic style roads and tracings and a bleepy synth interlude soon gives way to the opening chords of La Suerte de Mi Vida, as the front of the rig rises, revealing the band.

It’s impossible for me to really take you through the gig step by step as I was having too much fun to take notes (also bouncing around which probably wouldn’t help either…) but it was, of course, a fantastic experience.
The playlist is a pretty much faultless trawl through the band’s strongest tracks – and certainly tracks that come over really well in a live environment. And also ECDL aren’t afraid to play with the arrangements for concerts, with Ya Nada Volvera a Ser Como Antes and Son Sueños getting distinctly hard-edged, chunky new styles… this isn’t merely them playing out live but a deliberately different approach to styling them, and it works very very well. Contigo too, gets a much harder edge – and sounds brilliant for it, especially with some extra digital-delay/echo treatments on Dani’s vocals at key points in the song. In the same vein of taking risks with reappraising popular “standards”, Volvera is given a much more laid back treatment – sung by the band perched on a park bench centre-stage; another stylistic shift that works surprisingly well for such an originally “rocking” track.

Dani and David play the most central part of engaging the audience; though that’s not to say Chema isn’t doing his bit – he just seems to love bouncing around on his own most of the time, though he has no trouble making sure he gets in front of the crowd too. David is a major natural focus given how central his riffs are to many of the songs, and of course Dani plays to the crowd enormously. He’s a great showman – and this is shown to great effect in songs like Zapatillas where, below frantic stopframe animations of Converse All-Stars (Zapatillas, basically…) lacing and unlacing themselves on huge projections, Dani pulls the crowd into a huge game of cheering and going silent, cheering, going silent… you get the picture. And it doesn’t get old. And you get the impression he could keep doing that for hours and the crowd would hang on every word and movement.

It’s difficult to pick highlights from such a universally great performance, but a stadium full of people waving their glowing mobile phones as if they were lighters, pogo-ing to the max in Canciones, Besos and Zapatillas, David gamely overcoming weird technical problems with his guitars in El Pescao, cackling at Dani and David’s special English language chat during one of the several encores (kudos for so many encores, seriously!) and a mass singalong to the final, final, final – no, really final encore – Peter Pan.

Things I’ve learned…
1 – they’re loud. Stood very near the front just to the side of the stage the air was actually moving with the sound from the speakers.
2 – you can still get an excellent spot even if you arrive not long before the show.
3 – they absolutely MUST be seen live.
4 – they really should come to London. They’d go down so well.
5 – they attract an amazingly good-natured and well-behaved crowd, whilst not losing any atmosphere, fun or liveliness.
6 – they are surely one of the most impressive *live* bands in the world today (which makes it all the more shocking that they aren’t more known or appreciated globally).

Anyway, they’re supposed to be taking time off after the “Hasta Luego” tour – Er, hence the name! – so let’s hope they release a full show on DVD to tide us over till they’re next out and about.
I’ll certainly be itching to go see them live again, and I hope they’ll consider extending their shows to include some kind of UK event. In the meantime I have a stack of fantastic memories and iPhone photos to remind me of a superb concert.

Many thanks to one of our readers, Hanna, for getting in touch.
It’s always really nice to hear from you – and in this case – to also hear about live experiences. I’m an ECDL “live” virgin with my first gig ahead of me in Madrid at the end of October, so it’s dead exciting to hear all of this from Hanna on what to expect at the show (plus some very cool compliments about this site in general too!)…

“I stumbled across your blog, a while back, and you deserve a huuuugggee pat on the back for educating the world about decent music. Well. That and I think it’s cool you have been providing a resource for fans non-spanish.
By your narrative, I think it is safe to say, I can be officially classed as a ‘hardcore fan’ – I’ve been a hugeee ECDL fanfor absolute yonks, after discovering when I was back home in Andorra in the early 00′s. Would have loved to go see them in st julia de loria when they were there while back but sadly didn’t get to go.

I actually went to see them [and a *thankfully* no longer blonde [?! why?!] Dani] on
6/08/09 in Torrevieja. A less than brilliant location [parque antonio soria] , but I managed to [with the help of my 6'7 brother] squidge myself to within reaching distance of the front. So close to the speakers, my ears rang for days! Compared to last year [17.08.08 valencia plaza toros] they seemed a little ‘out of it’ but it was fun to see chema rocking out in his own world!
Alcohol consumption was definitely up this year, but then, the average age was absolutely down. The guys stood at the gates were pretty lax, and I managed to get in sin ticket, regardless of having bought one. A few interesting, shouted, conversations with drunk guys about my nationality, three cigarette burns, loss of my voice, being absolutley drenched in sweat and being elbowed in my head were absolutely, positively worth it!

I really can’t say enough about them live! 6 encores seems to be the norm. Which is better than the ‘we have finished, we are off’ mentality most american bands appear to have whenever they are touring. Plus, you see some crazy things, babies in push chairs seem to be pretty common, so odd…
I just wish all English/ International fans could have seen it.
alongside my ever growing list [shinoflow, porta, pereza, mala, ivan ferreiro, pignoise, lucas masciano... it goes on!] ECDL should get their bums out of spain!”

I’d certainly agree that it’d be cool for the band to do more stuff outside of Spain – and I certainly refuse to believe they couldn’t do a kick-ass concert to a packed house in London…

And a final few wise words from Hanna about going to see them live…

“…My only advice, fight your way to the front! [watching out for the cigarettes!!]”

Thanks also to Hanna for this link to a Youtube video taken apparently by someone extremely close to her at the gig.

If you’ve got any comments, news or stories from gigs etc, please do get in touch – it’d be brilliant to share some more fan experiences here!

Cheers,
gb

I’ve just come back from a short break on the Costa Dorada – chilling in the extremely hot sun, supping ice cold Mahou and generally taking a nice break from the UK.
One day though, I had to go for a meeting in Barcelona, and took the train up along the coast – to my surprise, a short distance to the east of Sitges I looked out of the window and thought “Bugger me! I know that beach!” – it was the really cute one with all the beach huts and the sweet retro-looking hotel that’s the centrepiece of the promo video for “A Contracorriente”…

It genuinely *does* look fab! I want to holiday there sometime. I do… seriously!
Anyway, I checked it out on Google Earth and it turns out it’s called Garraf – and I’ve uploaded a Google Earth placemark here should you want to go look it out for yourself…
And the video can be seen here…

I suppose the main question here is if you already own Personas, is it worth buying De Personas A Personas?
The answer depends very much on how big a fan you are. Released in early December 2008, De Personas A Personas is a special limited edition “box” that expands on the content and in many ways references the delivery and history of Personas itself as well as adding bonus material.

For a start, as well as the original 13 tracks on Personas; De Personas A Personas delivers an extra 6, including the bouncy “Quiero Ser”, the punky “H.D.P.”, a 2008 version of “Foto en Blanco y Negro” and – perhaps best of all – David Otero’s terrific “Madrid”.
Then there’s the self-referential stuff on an accompanying DVD; central to which is the 15 minute film De Cerca which follows ECDL through 2008 from the release and promotion of the album, to the concerts and signings, and the departure of Jandro. It has some excellent live footage, showing off the band’s innovative and spectacular lightshow really well. There’s also a short film on the nudey photoshoot by Rubén Martín and another shortie on the band’s friends and families; somewhat poignant following the death of Dani’s sister.
Beyond that you also get a set of three alternative promos for Eres Tonto, the promo for Peter Pan, and a little ‘making of Peter Pan video’ clip too.

The packaging is pretty much impeccable: all bound up in a thick card booklet of about 30x30cm, with many pages of band and technical notes, artworks based on the photoshoot and further photographic variations and compositions from it too. There’s also a nifty little blank diary inside for the owner to use, though I imagine most of these are destined to remain intact.

All in all a beautiful piece of work, lovingly produced with some great fan goodies in it – and at anywhere between €35 and €40 usually on eBay, very good value indeed.
As far as I’m concerned it’s a definite hit, and in no way a superfluous addition to Personas itself… Excellent.

The band have posted “De Cerca” on their El Canto Del Loco Youtube Channel.
De Cerca is a 15 minute movie that appears on the DVD in the “De Personas A Personas” set, and focuses on the band’s 2008 – from launching the Personas album, pulling together a very very nifty stage show, promos, signings, the departure of Jandro, and some excellent live clips.
Highly recommended…
Sadly it’s not possible to share the Youtube video here as they’ve diabled embedding on it, so you’ll have to click here to go and watch it.

For English fans of a Spanish band, it’s often difficult to enjoy the music on every level as the question of translation of lyrics gets in the way. As with English bands, there is always going to be a degree of colloquial wording and grammar, of abstract concepts, and probably some slang too. So a straightforward translation is always pretty unlikely.
We’ve tracked down some translations however (thanks to the website Ooltra) which don’t seem bad at all and help convey a lot of meaning, which will hopefully enable you (and us) get more out of the songs.
First up is Volvera from the album Zapatillas. More will be posted over the coming weeks. Enjoy…

Lyric translation by Ooltra.net
If you reckon you can offer improvements then do please get in touch.