EuroYeYé 2010, Gijón, Spain – Part 1 of 2

by Parsley on Sun, 2010/08/08 - 7:32pm Post to Twitter

PARSLEY’S COMMLOCK

Festival Review : EuroYeYé 2010, Gijón, Spain 29th July to 2nd August – Part 1 of 2
Took up a long-standing invite back to Gijón to enjoy some fantastic weather and an amazing town full of local creativity, and also able to welcome the scooter-riding, specific clothing-wearing international modernist audience. The evening events were paralleled by film shows in the local museum, where there was also a display of photos of some new 60’s styled youngsters.

An introductory talk by Alex Cooper about his book ‘Club 45: 90 canciones de la Era Pop para Mods y Jetsetters’ went largely over by head, being roughly an hour entirely conducted in Spanish apart from odd words like ‘Making Time’, ‘Acid Jazz’, ‘Eddie Pillar’ etc. Then it was time for a Spanish language film ‘Peppermint Frappé’, but the fun of listening to Spanish words without understanding them had worn off, so I dropped out, instead checking out the photo/art exhibitions on the 2nd floor.

The photos were entitled ‘The New Faces’ and were Dean Chalkley’s large black and white stills of young people looking really cool in a sixties way. I think I saw one or two of his models taking part in enjoying the festival. There were also exhibits entitled ‘Autoretratos’ and ‘A Way Of Life’ by Fernando Gil.

Later that evening Martha Reeves kicked off the concert part of the event with a well-attended performance in the Plaza Major square, with hits (formerly with the Vandellas) such as ‘Jimmy Mack’ and her reclaiming of ‘Dancing In The Streets’ from the many artists that she explained had subsequently performed cover versions of it. She performed enjoyably with spirit, with a band of locally sourced musicians. She roused the audience but not speaking English they didn’t always understand that they were being roused!

At one point she attempted to thank promoter Félix Dominguez, who at that precise moment had chosen to step away from the stage to check that everything was ok from an audience perspective. She had the audience shouting ‘Felix!’ to call him back. He leapt on to the stage to receive her appreciation.

Afterwards, there was all night dancing on the other side of town at the Oasis, the main venue for the event, where there was also a mini-market of stalls selling records and original and reproduction clothes and sixties items. This included a stall selling Alex Cooper’s book. It was a lavish and satisfying collection of pictures of most of the sixties bands you’d ever want to know, and I can only hope that someone sees fit to produce an English language version someday.

Next day, after sun-burning my arms on a field that overlooks the beach (reading a book about the Zombies) I was back with the programme for ‘That Kind Of Girl’, an amazing 1963 black&white British film set in Kensington, and warning of the dangers of VD, specifically syphilis. It does it in 1963-vintage X-rated twee-ness, as Eva (Margaret Rose Keil), a beautiful 18-year-old Austrian au pair, lets herself go with more than one partner, without even marrying them…!

There are some fascinating portrayals of English life in the characters, particularly her ‘boyfriends’. One of them is an older predatory man, who becomes violent and abusive when he doesn’t get what he wants. Another is a ‘ban the bomb’ librarian, who expects her to march across England for several days with him and his intellectual and dowdy friends. Another is an open-top sport car driving heir to a fortune who picks her up when her shoes just can’t stand the political marching any longer.

Fortunately Eva is supported by the married Millar couple (who decide not to send her home) and the police and health professionals who scold her for her foolishness, whilst helpfully presenting statistics on the hundreds of thousands of VD sufferers at risk of going blind or having damaged children. It’s amazing to think that Kensington hasn’t changed over 40 years later…, er?

That night an excellent Spanish band called Los Platillos Volantes opened the YeYe evening. They had really good songs and played well, and they also had a great live show thanks to 2 girls in variable very 60s outfits (occasional silver capes, funny glasses etc.). After that, one of the bands representing the UK at the festival was DC Fontana (named after the script editor on the original Star Trek). They’ve been going for many years, but their latest incarnation is a soulful 9-piece (vocals, bass, guitar, drums, percussion, keyboards and a 3-piece horn section) who have a new album out. They had a good, danceable set. They are gigging in the UK extensively this autumn, as detailed at dcfontana.com, and they play London at a mod weekender on Sunday December 5th at the Fiddlers Elbow, near Chalk Farm tube.

The all night dancing happened in the adjoining room, with suitable projections such as the film of Yellow Submarine.

Back in town on Saturday afternoon the film showing was Zabriskie Point, from 1970. It starts off with some students discussing direct action in support of racial equality, and ends up concerning one couples particular experience of rebellion in the desert.

I have actually been to Zabriskie Point, which I found memorable only because it was as spectacular and almost - bizarrely - claustrophobic as the rest of the desert is, during the drive of several hours it takes to get through it. I’ve got the soundtrack album and I knew a fair bit about the film, but this was actually the first time I’d watched it the whole way through. Long sections of it are totally ‘normal’ and cinematic, but it gets progressively weirder until I ended up confused as to what was real, what was fake, and what was going on in the story. This didn’t surprise me, as I had much the same feeling with director Antonioni’s ‘Blow Up’.

Don’t know if it was this copy or the mumbled American dialogue, but I actually found myself referring to the Spanish subtitles to try and confirm the meaning. Despite not being one of my greatest films of all time, it does have some iconic imagery and weirdness. It also begins with the splendid track ‘Heart Beat Pig Meat’ by Pink Floyd. With its radio/TV samples I assumed this was in some way integrated with the film. It was not, although actually it provides an enjoyably strange introduction. [to be continued…]

parsley@gardenrecords.com [www.gardenrecords.com]