Mi Carro

There's a television channel that plays music videos, TeleTaxi. Its in catalan, but most of the videos are in castellano. One of my favorites from this summer is "Mi Carro" a cover by El Koala.

To see the video haz click here: The rock cover

The original was done by Manolo Escobar in 1969: Original

Now if only I knew how to sing. Here are the lyrics:

Mi carro me lo robaron estando de romería
Mi carro me lo robaron anoche cuando dormía

Dónde estará mi carro.
Dónde estará mi carro.

Me dicen que le quitaron los clavos que relucían
Creyendo que eran de oro de limpios que los tenía.

Dónde estará mi carro.
Dónde estará mi carro.

Donde quiera que esté mi carro es mío,
porque en él me crié allá en el río,
si lo llego a encontrar, vendrás conmigo
en mi carro de amor por el camino

Les digo, por el camino hablando con los romeros
que lleva sobre sus varas Antonio grabado a fuego.

Dónde estará mi carro.
Dónde estará mi carro.

En mi carro gasté una fortuna,
en mis noches de amor llevé la luna
Preguntando busqué por todas partes
y por fín lo encontré y s’acabao.

Ska's Not All Fun and Games

With all the street festivals in Barcelona, I saw a bunch of ska bands. The flavor is a bit different than I was used to in California. Back there when I heard bands like Reel Big Fish, and Suburban Legends the songs were more fun and games. Suburban Legends played in Downtown Disney.

In Barcelona, ska and punk are the styles that young people use to be political. One group was pro Catalan independence, another yells grievances against the police. Not only are these kids more well informed, but they also play kickass music to spread the word. Back in Cali punk used to be like that, but now pop punk is all about skateboarding and girls (which I enjoyed).

Festa Major de Gracia

Wow, this was the biggest street festival EVER! A weeklong event of music, food and fun. Even before the event began I went online (http://www.festamajordegracia.cat/) and looked up the acts.

All I can say is that the decorations of the street reminded me of building Interhovse parties. I was also in the midst of street fireworks!

Directions...Oops!

What's worse than being lost? Asking a blind man for help with a map. That's what my floormate did the other day. Throughout Barcelona there are posts, that sell lottery tickets. La Organización Nacional de Ciegos Españoles, ONCE, is the group that serves these posts. They employ blind people to sell the tickets. Just an fyi.

Blisters

I've grown out the nails on my right hand to help me play guitar. It feels weird typing with nails, much harder to hit the keys correctly. I also have a blister on my thumb that prevents me from playing guitar every day. At the beginning of August I played for a few hours straight one day and had to stop playing for a week until my blister popped and became callous again.
In other news, today is the first day I actually noticed a piezoelectric pickup (like the one shown above). There was a guy in the metro playing the guitar with one of these. Very timely as I have been reading about the "tapa armónica" which is the front piece of the guitar body where the pickup is placed. The book describes the need for the wood to resonate and I wondered the effect of the pickup. It is definitely negligible especially considering that I press onto the body with my middle and annular fingers when I pluck with my thumb. Anyways, just a thought.

While I'm at it, another thought is about optically imaging the "tapa armónica" to map out its modes. The only thing regarding optical imaging I've found so far (I haven't searched hard) is someone using light to pickup guitar fingerings.

Crazy weather

Earlier today I went and read more of John Eargle's The Microphone Book at the beach. It was a partially cloudy 85 degrees F. Right now its raining and there will be no music festival tonight for me. In case the reader is not aware, I do not like the rain. You can't play an electric guitar outdoors when its raining. You can't dance around in a crowd of umbrellas. I don't feel like cooking so I think I'll go grab something to eat and bring it back here. Tonight will be a good time to catch up on mastering my recordings and adding blog entries about the festival I'm missing tonight.

Busker's Festival

August 2-5 was Bursker's Music Festival in Barceloneta. About 12 bands lined the streets each day along the port and the beach of Barceloneta.
Los Pacos was the first band I saw. They sang hilarious rock music and even covered "la puerta negra" which is a tejano song that I played for Dabney Metal Knight. I liked their matching red converses and ties as well as the cajon instead of a drumset.
What I was really excited to listen was a rumba band called Rumbé (I even bought their shirt afterwards). I stayed here for almost their entire set. In addition to the music, they had a Russian performer in training that did pole climbing. He did acrobatics on a pole they setup until he ripped his pants. What was amazing was that he slid head down about five meters and stopped five cm from the ground. I did a brief mastering of the recording I made of them and gave them to mi morrita to listen. The cool thing about all these street festivals is that there is no rule against recording if I don't sell them.
A fun band was Pegatina that had a guy on stilts pumping the crowd. The style is rumba-reggae. Then moving onto folk internacional bands there was Gattamolesta:
This band had a few vagabonds dancing in front.
As I kept walking down the beachfront I made it to a tango group called Violentango.
The rest of the bands were variations on rock and weren't as impressive or fun as the above mentioned bands.

There is a difficulty with my M-Audio recorder when recording sound reinforced concerts because of the loudness. There is a lot of clipping that occurs, especially with the bass drums and snares.

Dark Side of Barcelona

Last night I was almost robbed (don't worry mom, I'm ok). I went out with a group of student from University of Barcelona to celebrate Emily's 21 birthday. When it was time to go home (5am) we decided to walk along the beach. At one point we sat down and some guy came over asking me for a cigarette. After I told him that I didn't have one he proceeded to try to greet us and shook my hand and all that. Later on he tries to pickpocket me and at that point I just walked away and made sure I wasn't missing anything.
But wait, there's more.
There's no need to go to a brothel because at night there are prostitutes all along Las Ramblas street. Last night I walked home Emily, a french girl, because her neighborhood is a bit sketchy (don't worry Mary, she has a boyfriend). Anyways, I walked back alone. Usually the prostitutes (more commonly referred to as "putas") just blow me kisses as I walk past and also say stuff like "cute boy." This night one was walking past me and grabbed my arm, eww. I quickly shook her hand off and kept walking. The weird part was that it happened again further on. What a bad way to end a night of celebrating someones birthday.