We are all totally sinister; Let’s not fool ourselves

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The Galician group, essential soundtrack to the music history of Spain, bids farewell to the stages this Friday and Saturday with a double concert at the WiZink Center in Madrid

While I’m not a mythomaniac, I’m making an exception with Total Sinister. Although I have sworn to myself never to return to a farewell concert -the last, that of La Polla in Barakaldo in 2019-, I will make an exception. Bad start. Too many buts for a head start.

If twenty years is nothing, as Gardel sang, nothing will be the other twenty these illustrated kaffirs—read it with affection, in case you don’t understand the irony—continue on stage. Taking their leave this Friday and Saturday at the WiZink Center in Madrid, the Vigo band collects bolo after bolo for four decades, to the derision of the increasingly numerous offended and friends of the politically correct: «Without stepping on the National Court! A feat no doubt due more to the passivity and judicial short-sightedness that has always seen them as the rude and disrespectful boys who usually sat in the last rows of the class. The good thing about Sinister is that they did what they wanted regardless of the consequences. In general, they have never been taken seriously. That is the secret of its longevity. What they have achieved – such as one of their texts that ends up in Religion books (“Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?”) – they have achieved without wanting it; more than commendable merit at a time when the ribbon and paper are more important than the gift hidden within.

Total Sinister says he’s saying goodbye -although it’s yet to be seen, I don’t believe it–that he wants to enjoy a serene aging without the springs off the seats of the van that for so many years has toured venues, gambling dens and clubs all over the world. Spain and partly abroad.

This Friday and Saturday will be a nostalgic day for many. Because it means farewell to the stages of a group that is in itself all of Spain: the lyrical, the vulgar, the civilized, the intellectual, the Kaffir, the existential… As far as I’m concerned, like so many others, I became addicted by accident. A cassette fell into my hands and a miracle happened. The acidity of his lyrics, his irony, his hidden intelligence and his unmistakable culture in disguise grabbed me. And why not say it, the charisma of his great leader – although he prefers to say that he is only “the Mother Superior” -, Julián Hernández. I’m of that generation, born in the early eighties, that kicked off in the heat of ‘Ante todo mucho clama’, later went back to admire their recording past and suffered for its troubling future. After the recording of ‘Made in Japan’ – one of the albums with the most powerful sound of national rock – Miguel Costas – the best deep voice of the national hoarse voices – left the group. Sinister drifted towards a musical eclecticism – it is true that they have never been able to pigeonhole themselves, they have played all styles from punk to rock, through blues, country or gospel – without giving up their intellectual restlessness.

So, with these cane braids, next Friday’s concert will mean for many that Miguel and Julián can swap mics like Messi and Ronaldinho together for the first time when they perform magic on the pitch.

It will be more than two long concert hours – they plan to play between 40 and 50 songs – to travel from the present to the past and turn their backs on the future. To go back to the happy time when after the Institute I lay down in my sisters room – there was the only music chain in the house – to listen to their records at full volume, to try to guess in the booklet in the CD -without the help of the internet or anything like that- the reason for their lyrics, to dream that someday they would return to play in Cantabria, to feel what a conversation with them would be like… Things from childhood. Fortunately, that all worked out. I first saw them in Tanos’ portable arena (next to Torrelavega) with ‘Popular Culture’ -yes, the same one that fell in 1990 after Barricada’s non-concert-, and many years later I was able to bring some cane with me. It was for a concert in a small room in Santander in 2016. Besides a good conversation, Julián and his people gave me the best headline I have written in my almost twenty years of work. “What does the world revolve around?” “Around human stupidity, the foundation stone of the universe,” he promptly replied. A genius – another -. And yes, of course I asked for a photo. And yes, of course I told him to sign the cover of ‘Ante Todo Mucha Calma’. And yes, of course, he did what he wanted. And yes, of course he dedicated it to my mother: “Peace: tell the child to wrap up!” Why? Simple. Because I told her that because she heard me listen to them so often, she would take her records from me and play them as the soundtrack to her afternoons of stringing. Because – let no one forget – we are all Total Sinister, let’s not kid ourselves. Like that old IRS slogan.

Source: La Verdad

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