Johnny and me

Gabba gabba hey!!! I couldn't really play with him, neither meet him, but this is my small tribute to my alter-ego guitar player. 

25 Things Every Guitarist Should Know

I´ve found this on Guitar World. Maybe all of us should remember these advices.

25 Things Every Guitarist Should Know

Metalmorfosis - 30 years of magic

 

It´s been 30 years since I bought this album: Metalmorfosis. It´s a very special one, well, it´s the most special one indeed, because this work was the first record I bought myself. I was only 10, and I can clearly remember how I found it in a department store in Huelva, the album had just arrived and the clerk unboxed it for me. It was summer 1983, and I was with my parents, my brother and my sister camping in a village called Mazagón. I saw the band a few weeks ago on a TV show while I was with my parents in an old tavern called Las Palomas near home, and that shocked me: guys with long hair and electric guitars…oh my god!!! What´s that!! What´s that music!!! I felt something strange in my stomach (and that was no hunger). That was the first metal band I listened in my life. I had no record player and I had to find someone who recorded it into a cassette so I could enjoy it on my mom´s player… after that, other bands came across: Iron Maiden, Obús, White Snake, Scorpions, Judas Priest, Helloween… and all of them told me two things I had to learn: English and play guitar.

… and that´s how my lifetime relationship with metal music began, a relationship that has grown up and today it´s the meaning of my life. It´s what makes me smile, what makes me dream, what makes me feel, what gives the sense to my life, to wake up every morning and go to work every day, to overcome hard times, to survive routine…

Long Life Barón Rojo. Larga vida al Barón.

Metalmorfosis HERE

Koi No Yokan

They´re back!! Finally. After a long wait since Diamond Eyes, Deftones have recorded a new album. Formerly, I had to listen to it three or four times, because it´s not as hard and raw as other titles like White Pony, Adrenaline or Around the Fur, but, once you arrive to connect... oh my god! What a fucking good work. I´m pretty sure that many of you think it´s too slow or too soft, but Koi No Yokan (wich means “love at first sight”) has the density and the strength of a production capable to move your soul. Songs like “Leathers” or “Poltergeist”, or even “Entombed” (where memories of ambient music appears), will make you touch the mirror ball of the dance floor with the help of the waves of Chino Moreno´s voice. Hard to say it´s designed to produce a love at firs sight on you, but anyway, it´s a love that will last forever in the heart of the so called fathers of nu-metal fans.

Willing to see them on stage again!!!

You can listen to the full album here

Nessun dorma

As summer passed away, it´s time to think, time to start again, time to rest. This year, things have gone further than ever... It´s been a long long summer. One day trips to the beach, some MSQ gigs with almost no public at all (bad times for music, I guess), the longest journey in my whole life until now, and the lost of the oldest family member: grandma.

I´ll miss her forever. She will always live in my heart, singing and talking about Seville and the old times she lived. Smiling and telling us stories about her childhood. I´ll miss her kisses, her smell, her voice... It´s been so hard to see how she´s gone. It´s been very sad to see how the whole family has broke down in tears on a endless wednesday. I hope she´ll find the place she has been waiting for years, and I hope I´ll be with her one day. Sometimes I dream I go to that place and feel the warmness of my four grandparents gathered in a place with no pain, on an endless smile and eternal joy.

I never liked october. It´s in the middle of nowhere, between the light and the darkness, between the hot and the cold, between the sunshine and the rain. Today it´s rainy, and I feel a bit better, watching things with a little of distance, and trying to stand up and keep on going where the winds will take me.

Bahía de Jade - Akumal

Things are not easy at all now. These are hard times for most people around me and no one can see the end of this hopeless situation. No one can see an easy way out, and it´s so easy to be swept away by the overwhelming negativity. Maybe that´s why I love to remember the big turtles in Akumal swimming to the surface of the sea to take a breath... and dive in the sea again...with their lonelyness and calmness, with their dozens of years over the shell and the fragility of something very special and innocent.

Drowing in my sleep

I really hate this feeling. After a few hours sleeping and dreaming about strange things with my family and friends, and then I realise that things will become worse as time goes by... I don´t want to know how will I feel when any of them isn´t by my side... I don´t want to wake up one day and burn my eyes in tears missing somebody... I´d prefer rest forever in an infinte dream instead of suffering the anguish and the pain. That´s the thought of a sunny saturday evening alone at home. That´s something that puts me on my nerves. No one knows how dreadful the future can be, but today... today I don´t really want to know... happy endings only happen in movies...

Lambs to the slaughterhouse

I can´t explain a Sunday like this. Very hot outside, and the city becomes smaller with every second. After a week where all the the rights for what many people died for have been massacred, I just want to scream and shout with all my owned forces. I can see how the social network has been taken as a tabloid, and all you can read are complaints about the same "thing". But... what about the streets? Anybody will take the streets?

Just two weeks ago I could see how a whole country could take the squares and main streets to celebrate the victory of the national football team, but... what if the government which controls you raises your taxes up to almost double them? What about reducing your salary to its fully extent and now your incomes go back in time for ten or fifteen years? Culture, medicine, education... and most of the social services will be from now onwards only be available to wealthy people, and most of us been considered just numbers made of flesh to feed the machine of greed.

Hard times for live music, for recording music. No hope for musicians in this country... My Jem has bowed his neck today. No notes, no bends, no feeling, just silence, the silence of the lambs taken to the slaughterhouse.

Bon appetit!

The Swell Revenge clip!!!

This is Mutant Sperm Quartet "The Swell Revenge" video. Enjoy!!

Family values

That´s it. Family. Grandfather. The best of all. The greatest. After a whole afternoon and evening with mum and dad, listenin´ to Slipknot´s Surfacing, it´s time to sit for  a while and think for a few minutes about the origins of simmetry. We all are human, nevermind who you are. Cannot stand. No one stands. Thanks for your smile, thanks for your love. Thanks for your endless nights, thanks for your sleepless nights. Hope you´ll find some peace of mind, and all your mistakes forgiven, and yout prayers listened.

I love you with all my heart.
I hope you´ll always be with me.
I beg someday you´ll understand me.
I guess you all survive to all this shit, like an endless drum solo.
Memories will never die on my own.
Clouds will never rain if I´m with you.

Guess who he is? He never wanted to be a lord. And I´m sure he never wanted to be a master, but he had to live his life in a world that didn´t know about feelings, just work, production, weld metal and silence.
Thanks a lot, Joaquín de Alba, beloved friend, for the photograh. I´ll take it as mine, and I´ll never forget it. Today I´ve talk to Pepe Lora (not the ceramist but his uncle, Pepe, the one and only) and he has told me about my grandfahter, the one who worked endless days and nights in Carmona´s workshop, the one who helped poor people, the one who cared about his family, the greates, the smallest, the cleverest.

I hope someday I´ll be with you again, without prejudices, and we´ll talk about how stupid people can be, and how high can true people fly in a world without any sense. Singin´ Christmas carols, playing cards, talking about the war and how hard it was, talking about policy and famine, about concentration camps and the snow, about winter, about the hammer and the anvil.

Mutant Sperm Quartet...Surface-ing!!

Yeah, we´ve been selected to play on Surface Festival 2012!!

Next 24th february we´ll be thrashin´ all around in Seville. Maybe you´ll want to share the twenty-minute show with us. If so, we´ll be waiting for you at 23.30 in Sala Museo (5 Muñoz León Street).

... and if you want to help us win the contest, please send an SMS with the text AND 028 to the 25024.

Thanks a lot!