With just turned 60, María del Olvido Gara, Alaska, can boast of a multifaceted career in which she has always done what she wanted. Throughout four decades he has made film, television and above all music, from his beginnings in the midst of the Madrid scene with Kaka de Luxe, passing through Dinarama and of course Fangoria, the band formed together with Nacho Canut in 1989 with which He has released a dozen albums, the latest in the form of a triple EP with songs that he presents as part of the A todo láser tour in a summer full of bowling, including those that will take place this Monday at the Jardins de Terramar festival (10 p.m.) and on August 16 at Porta Ferrada (9:30 p.m.), in both cases accompanied by the Nancys rubias, the band of her partner, Mario Vaquerizo. In a break between concerts, she attends La Vanguardia from her house in that Madrid that welcomed her at the age of 14, recently arrived from Mexico, to become her home.
How do you present the live performances of this tour?
When you play at festivals or town festivals, which are also hilarious, we make a repertoire of singles and varied in terms of periods, without any concession to ballads, or slow rhythm, or anything like that. It’s not that we do it either, but in this case even more so because you’re not playing in a place for a public that wants to hear your latest album.
They work with bases to which they add musicians on stage
It scares me when the people who make bases remove them and put live musicians on, I am horribly disappointed. It happens to me with most of the young people I like and who make sung electronic music, let’s say, and suddenly I see them with a bass, drums and a cajon. Everything we do on stage could be done only with the bases, because that’s the way it is, you do the other things more because you feel like it, it’s more fun.
Do you see parallels between you and the new generations of urban music?
You can’t compare it, being 15 years old now and having TikTok is not the same as not having it, it’s that absolute. Or having to try to get someone to bring you a New York Ramones record, than being able to listen to it, see them, hear them talk and at one point even get a like. The world has changed, it’s completely different, we have a head from the 70s, we have the mentality of people like Deborah Harry, it’s another world. That’s not to say that Chris Stein doesn’t have his Instagram and we talk to him. It is also very different to start out just because, making a fanzine, than to enter this world directly knowing that records are being sold, that concerts are held with different expectations than the zero expectations that we had, is something that cannot exist today.
Don’t they seem to want to break with the past?
each one has their influences and their references, it is absurd to think that the rockers of the year 57 had them and the boys of today will not have them. It is exactly the same, they are other references, always, and it is absurd to generalize because, for example, since the confinement, electronic pop has taken over everything to our wonder. Suddenly a guy like The Weeknd is doing German electronic pop, and a lot of people are incorporating an electronic that they mix with the urban, which is electronic after all, but they add a few more trance sounds, or a few more bpms. fast or me what It’s a brilliant moment, there are a lot of things that we like.
He continues to defend individualism, something that is sometimes misunderstood
It’s normal, when we started, individualism was very frowned upon, because it was a time when progressives, hippies, and the collective ruled. We were like the Velvet Underground, which is to say, weird people in the mainstream world, and suddenly in the eighties and early nineties people stopped paying so much attention to it. Right now there is a great tendency towards the collective again and the collective is very scary for us. Anything other than being able to define yourself without having to use a series of dogmas, neither those of your parents nor those of those who are not your parents, scares us a lot. There are times when you fit in better with what is imposed and others when you don’t fit in, nothing happens either, life is like that.
Dividing society into blocks removes nuances
Civil war is complicated and dangerous, that is easy to see if the Martians come and invade you. Are you from the Martians or are you not from the Martians? And hey, you might be one of the Martians at one point, but if you’re with the humans, does that mean that the rest of the world that’s with you is like you? Well, maybe not, maybe some want to annihilate the Martians and others want to marry them. Circumstance changes everything.
Do you think that technological advances are going to lead us to a worse world or a better world?
I am very dystopia, we do not come from Woodstock or Monterrey, but from somewhere else. I don’t really like where things seem to be going, I’ve been reading about them for 50 years and it’s like my science fiction is taking over.
What has remained of the years of The Crystal Ball?
I have the feeling of that redoubt of people that we were, within what there was, even within the program team, all very different. For me it was an award because I like television, unlike most of the people who made television in 1984, who didn’t like it, thought it was evil. For me it was good and I was involved in good, which was what I could like the most.
Can you imagine making a program like this now?
Can you imagine that now a 15-year-old girl shoots Pepi Luci Bom? No, it is not possible, I think we are the first generation, the older ones now, who for the first time see things that cannot be done that were done before. Normally it is the other way around, the younger generations are seeing that more things can be done. It is not that everything is like that, there are other things that could not be done before that are done, but it is still curious.
Now they would cancel it
It’s not bad either, we would be canceled on all sides, like being in no man’s land forever, it would be a problem on all sides. The other day Paul Reubens died, Pee-wee, he was already canceled and we were in the 90s, what happens is that there were no networks. The problem is the fear of having an artist who later generates a lot of controversy on the networks, that is uncomfortable for record companies, televisions, businessmen, brands. Pee-wee was directly wiped off the map, except for Tim Burton who continued to strangle him in the movies and four other things. He is an almost pioneering example, the poor thing.
Is this situation linked to the appearance of far-right parties?
It is linked to extreme parties in general, and extremes meet
Are extremes a cause or a consequence of our society?
These are times when people tend to position themselves more radically between black and white, or very black and very white. Although it is not an example either, because if we look at the electoral results, 90% of the people are between the center right and the center left, we must not bring the headline for clickbait either because fear is a wonderful weapon, you have to try run away from this Most people want to be fine and for the person next to them to be fine, period. When they feed you chard or cauliflower, you still want chips, but since they don’t exist you have to choose between chard and cauliflower. I think this is what happens to most people.
This past month you celebrated 60 years, how much longer do you plan to go on?
We did not have major references when we were little. We had Bowie, who was 47, Elvis died at 42 and was already a very old person. Today it is scary to see that Mick Jagger continues to do concerts and that Cher is great, so everything will depend on how the genes were distributed in the primordial pool and what happened to you. There is no will on our part to continue or not to continue, it’s something like from year to year, maybe one day we stop playing, of course, logically.
On his Instagram profile he has a photo with Ozzy Osborne.
I have never changed my Instagram profile picture. I had that photo handy, from a report for popular one in 1991 for the publication of No more tears.
This one has been withdrawn.
He is capable of returning, notice what I tell you. Look at Paul Stanley [Kiss guitarist] at 70 years old giving pinotes with the platforms. And of course, with those references you are ashamed to say that your knee hurts, it cannot be. Ozzy has always been a bit of a chepao, for me he has always been an older man on stage, but Paul Stanley moves better and more than any youngster in rock today.
You already have a reference.
For reference there is Rafael, who does not stop working although he would not have any need to record new albums, because in fact it is impossible, his repertoire cannot be covered even in the three hours he plays, but he makes new albums with whoever he wants, with whoever you feel like, with the authors you discover and phenomenal.
There must come a time in the life of an artist when you just can’t stop.
I have no idea, when the confinement was over, people were very overwhelmed, but Nacho and I were happy. Although perhaps it is not the same when you know that it is only a few months, in fact we are one of those who acted in 2021, with all the restrictions and with everything that had to be adjusted to be able to act. We are very accommodating to the life they tell us, and if you can’t get out, well, we’re not rebellious in that sense. I am not going to come down the moment I leave it, there are many things to do that have nothing to do with this.
