English
There are bands who split up after having left only one memorable album provoking all sorts of nostalgia and impossible desires; there are bands that do so in their highest moment leaving a painful and perfect memory; there are bands that split up a bit later than they should have but it´s hardly noticeable because the albums that they were releasing were somewhat out of time, by pure inertia or commitment or lack of courage, in order to definitively break a few dependable ties that have been too strong, they add new deep dimensions to their work that will always be remembered as unbeatable and touched by grace with the added epic and heroic dimension given by the conscious or unconscious crepuscular sense, especially when it´s shared by the artist and its crowd; and there are bands who never split up but insist in living off their past, accepting the price of becoming a mere parody of what they used to be and, amplified by their history and their enormous media power, they become objectified icons, someone else to go and see and listen and who refuse to acknowledge their slow disappearance and regurgitation in the shape of a flagship of experience without feelings on behalf of the society of spectacle.
One has the impression that Enrique Bunbury, who will play at Sant Jordi Club in Barcelona on the 21st of January http://www.nvivo.es/sant-jordi-club-salas-31619 was since the beginning of his career a parody of himself, a member of one of these latest type of bands. A parody pof himself that however wanted to be taken seriously, something that possibly made him clash with others a few times. However it wasn´t easy to see as something other than deficient imitations his successive attempts of embodying figures of misunderstood geniuses, damned poets inspired by Morrisey with Vedic touches, the space Bowie or the tramp Bob Dylan, solitary and enigmatic, who walks an imaginar road of the American Far West insinuated in albums such as Nashville Sky or John Wesley Harding.
With time, however, as the possibilities of being taken seriously by the people he wished for have disappeared, the character has curiously moved towards monstrosity and, the parody, according to his condition, was being somehow accepted by Bunbury himself, acquiring unsuspected dimensions which have enriched his controverted work in a considerable way.
Even his most stern critics would admit that Bunbury -who has never lacked hoards of enthusiastic fans- has become some sort of monster, something which isn´t in everyone´s reach and that make his concerts unique events regardless of previous tastes.
A monster who has decidedly and vigorously made the stage his genuine element, paradoxically acquiring, in the process, his own artistic and human dimension, more interesting than ever, possible for the first time in his already long career, as you can find out for yourself if you rent apartments in Barcelona
Translated by: aleixgwilliam
