It’s hard to listen to the Waterloo chorus and not have a good time humming Wa-Wa-Wa-Wa-Waterloo, finally facing my Waterloo…
In 1982 many things happened, the Falklands War, the Naranjito World Cup, and also the dissolution of Abba, one of the historic bands of international pop. Waterloo is one of those songs that has the superpower of resisting the passage of time, the kind that lifts your spirits and awakens memories. Perhaps that is the secret to the success of tribute bands, a phenomenon that is booming and widespread on many continents.
There are many rooms that program this type of proposals. There are festivals dedicated exclusively to this type of cover bands, and companies that are dedicated to promoting shows of this type. In Madrid, this summer the concert series Tributes: the best of… was a resounding success; and now in Barcelona, ??the Cúpula Las Arenas theater stands as the largest stage with seats that hosts this type of recitals, although venues such as Luz de Gas or Apolo also regularly program tribute groups. Abba’s performance is scheduled for the night of December 31 at Cúpula Las Arenas, with a musical and stage show that revives the music and style of the Swedish group.
Since their victory in the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest, Abba’s music continues to work. This is corroborated by the furor with which the announcement of their return in 2021 with a new album and a virtual show was received, and proposals such as this tribute band, made up of eight musicians and which has even performed at the Swedish embassy in Madrid.
“Abba’s compositions are original and good, they go far beyond hits,” highlights the group’s drummer, Jonathan Argüelles. They have a very interesting musical universe. We started more than eight years ago and after the pandemic we have grown a lot. Having entered auditoriums and theaters, some promoters and representatives offered us the option of doing big things and we took a step forward. It may seem cliché, but Abba’s audience spans many generations. In its day the group had an audience that has grown older today, but since the musical and the film emerged, young people have also become interested in their music. And his return, in addition to keeping his repertoire current, has the value of being in a very current and futuristic format.”
In addition to the tribute to the Swedish band, the special programming for these Christmas parties at Cúpula Arenas Barcelona includes shows that bring us closer to Sinatra (Babalu Band), Queen (Queen Forever) or Elvis Presley (with Greg Miller, one of the best imitators of Elvis worldwide, and the only one who got to know the king of rock).
The fever for Elvis does not wane, as witnessed by the more than 30 concerts in Europe of The Elvis Concert, a show in which musicians and personalities related to Elvis participate, along with Dwight Icenhower, one of the best Elvis impersonators of recent years. (five-time consecutive winner of the World Championship Elvis Tribute Artist in Memphis).
The Beatles also continue to inspire. The members of the band Abbey Road know this well, and with The Beatles Show they have created a two-hour show in which technology and the best of the Liverpool band’s discography are mixed. Abbey Road is one of the world’s best tributes to the Beatles, and they even use instruments used by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.
Perhaps in our days, in which originality and the production of something that blesses the algorithm are sought, the word imitate is associated with negative connotations, but this has not always been the case. Throughout history, the imitation of certain artistic models has been essential for the evolution of creativity: in the Renaissance imitatio as a pedagogical exercise and the rhetoric of Quintilian were the norm.
Imitating is not a verb that bothers Adrià Pujadas at all, who plays Brian May in Queen forever: “I think that the greatest adulation is imitation, we try to imitate the music that we like the most and we do it while being very respectful of the songs. and the staging.”
Queen forever will turn ten years old in 2024, the year in which they will tour throughout Spain and in which they are already closing performances in Germany and the Netherlands. Pujadas, who has always been a Queen fan (as a teenager he started making guitars like Brian May’s), celebrates being able to dedicate himself exclusively to the band, although since they are all from Mallorca and have families, sometimes it is difficult to be there every weekend. away from home, but, as he emphasizes with a smile, “above all, rock and roll.”
The audience of this band that admires the music performed by Freddie Mercury is timeless, from children to people over 85 years old: “The film Bohemian Rhapsody has made us grow, our audience has become younger and we have access to larger venues,” says Pujadas.
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Lara F. and Marí R., born in the early 2000s, are not interested in going to tribute group concerts, although they admit that they are options they consider when they have to give gifts to family or friends older than them. However, Mireia S., born in the late seventies, does not hesitate to suggest to her friends that they go to the Please (U2) concerts, even if that means traveling a few kilometers.
These types of bands may have to do with nostalgia and date of birth, but it is an incontestable fact that almost all the big stars on the music scene have someone who sings for them. International figures and Spanish pop rock figures have their cover groups. Héroes del Silencio have about twenty, and Mecano, Los Secretos or La Oreja de Van Gogh also have their clones, and singer-songwriters like Raphael, Nino Bravo or Camilo Sesto have found in Sergio Romero from La Mancha a firm voice to interpret their songs.
Another tribute band to take into account is La Penúltima Sabinera, a group from Lugo that tours throughout Galicia performing Joaquín Sabina’s repertoire. With Carlos García-Boente as singer, and considered by critics to be the best tribute to Sabina, this group from Lugo has managed to share the stage on several occasions with the members of Sabina’s original band, both with Pancho Varona and with the Benditos Malditos. As Sabina sings: “There is no nostalgia worse than longing for what never ever happened,” and what these tribute bands achieve, precisely, is for that something to happen. Perhaps that is the secret of his success.