There have been 76 days of strike, 76, of fallen masts. An involuntary and painful stop, a heartbreaking scream of silence. But live music returned this Friday, even shyly, to the night in Madrid. It happened in the Moby Dick room, before two dozen attendees at the venue (tickets at five euros) and another 70 who followed the developments from their homes via streaming, at the rate of three eurets per device. How is that for the new normality in concerts? Well, a Martian thing, very rare. A bewildering concert. Respiration contained by the mask’s effect rather than emotion. But, appealing to the most repeated phrase during the experience on the Avenida del Brasil campus, “this is what there is.”
The protagonists of the night – in a disputed fight with the three girls who occupied the table and more focused banquettes in front of the stage – were Indigo Drone, a recently created band with a still modest repercussion. A picturesque DNA quartet, very suitable, if we want to see it that way, for the circumstances: a Scotsman, an Englishman, a Venezuelan and a man from Huelva ready to make a name for themselves on the stage of the forum. They practice an energetic and interesting pop-rock, with circumstantial ukulele, good vocal harmonies and some great theme (Push the button). But feeling the roar of the guitars again and the crackling of the amplifiers was like being reunited with an old and never forgotten love of adolescence: a shock.
Maybe the Drones end up being a grupazo. We do not know. On Friday, due to these coincidences and circumstances, they left their name written down forever in the sound history of the city. And they set the highest bar, without needing to be in a particular state of grace. Listening to them live and direct, not too many meters away, it was as if the heavenly orchestra and choir had suddenly descended to grant us a little piece of paradise.
“In these two and a half months we have been through anguish, uncertainty and fear, but today we are on a high. And tomorrow, second concert: Los Punsetes. Even more excitement! ”, Summarized the coordinator of the Moby Group, Hugo García. Beside him, the programmer in the room, Carolin Pasero, was smiling behind her red-lip mask, although she had shed a few tears before. “Setting dates is more difficult today than playing Tetris. At the beginning of the pandemic, we moved the concerts around a month and a half. Now, what we had planned in March we are postponing until November… ”.
From DigitalFep, the platform in charge of streaming, they were also hopeful. “We propose concerts of three quarters of an hour – a prudent duration to see them from home -, direct sound from the table, a fixed camera and one or two mobiles,” sums up the person in charge, Germán Ormaechea. And they offer extensive general rehearsals for the groups, so they can undo the muscles after the crude quarantine. “The premises are closed and the four members of the Indigo Drone had not been able to meet until today, so they spent three hours, from five to eight, preparing the concert …”.
The Moby, with a capacity for 300 spectators, not only looked strange for its very small capacity. All the new paraphernalia was coronaviral. Disinfectant doormat with soles at the entrance. Doormat with disinfected soles. Automatic hydroalcoholic solution dispenser. Bottles of mineral water on the tables, courtesy of the house, which nobody dares to open. And that strange dance of masks, or masks, in an inevitably little crowded interior.
Despite everything, Ana, Mercedes and Isabel, the three 27-year-old friends gathered at the central table, were “very happy” after the performance. “We were so eager to go out and do something different that we found one of those experiences that we will remember in many years,” explained Alimón, with the complicity of the many hours shared since they met at an institute in Segovia. Next weekend you should be watching Extremoduro’s farewell tour. Now his ambitions have become much more modest. “When we can go out at night for a drink, we won’t believe it.”
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