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11/05/07

La Banda Municipal del Polo Norte the pictures. Let the melting begin!

by Josep M. Ganyet

Posted in Barcelona, Music, The real world | Tweet This Post

Here are the pictures of last Friday’s concert by La Banda Municipal del Polo Norte at the Magic club.

Online concert agendas, e-flyers, some SMS, the band’s MySpace and a great post on this blog were the only publicity for the event and yet, Magic, the Cavern-like joint, was packed with an enthusiastic crowd (even though they were counter programmed by the Telecogresca concert with life acts such as Def-Con-Dos and Antònia Font).

OK, I know, the members of the band are nice people who have lots of family and friends. Add some freaks, two Dutch tourists and blogger celebrity DJ Phil Musical and you get the full house. Nothing new there.

But the fact that many in the audience knew most of the lyrics of a band that doesn’t have anything recorded, nor an mp3 on MySpace nor a Torrent to pirate from, led me to think that it wasn’t the first time those people saw the band perform, and let’s face it, with internet, playstations and p2p who goes out to see a friend’s band a second time? People were there because they enjoyed the band’s power-pop and were repeating experience. Neat.

The first highlight of the night was when me and my friends got into the club and bumped into the band’s singer Polo Sur, who I happen to know. This allowed me to impress my buddies by showing how well connected I am with the Barcelona’s creative scene. Of course these days getting to know the singer of the band doesn’t score as high as if you knew the resident DJ, but still a good start (you probably don’t want to know Magic’s DJ anyways).

After having found a lost guitarrist (there’s always one), Polo Sur welcomed the audience with a cool: “Let the melting begin”, and the gig started to the chords of “Parte Alta” (Uptown), a picture of the posh world of uptown Barcelona which I bet was too familiar to more than one in the audience.

After that, the Sisa-Derribos-Arias-Golpes-Bajos-Antón-García-Abril influenced power-pop filled the joint for the next 40 or so minutes, while the crowd was busy singing along and snapping pictures with their digicams and mobile phones, in a truly multimedia experience in which old analog Fender onstage met Sony on the dance floor (get this Bono!). Some even danced, but those are still in the 1.0 version of modern collaborative concerts.

The concert reached its climax with “2001 Entrando Por La Ventana 72” (”2001 Entering Window 72″) a theme you would think it’s based on the events of the 11-S. I’ve read the lyrics many times and I couldn’t be 100% sure, although the fact that in the live act the lead singer was shouting “Oh my god it’s the other tower” might point in that direction.

All in all, good pop, good life act with no drum solo, and witty lyrics that read from bottom to top would also make sense.

Some superfluous data about the band that should give you an idea about their world:

• They don’t have any mp3 on their MySpace
• 107 entries in Google for “La Banda Municipal del Polo Norte”
• 40 pictures in Flickr
• A search on en.wikipedia.org yields results for the Municipalities of the Dominican Republic
• The first result of a search on es.wikipedia.org is Coronel Oviedo
• A search in YouTube for Polo Norte Music yields the video Meniños Cantores - Eles non poden ver, a Galician version of Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise
• The guitar soloist name is Dimas, the 7th Dimas in the family line, and he’s damm good

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