Cultura = Capital

Guimarães, city with a founding role in Portugal’s history, is not only beautiful and well preserved; it also seems to be an intelligent city that is proud of its culture. Its main activity was the textile industry, but of course this is no longer the case. Now it is known as a cultural centre and it is outstanding in this area, supporting the country’s most Avant-garde programmes in contemporary dance and music and hosting a prestigious jazz festival. The equation Guimarães=Culture is something that makes its inhabitants incredibly proud. The European capital of culture 2012 has done the city no end of good and against this background Optimus Primavera Club’s tickets sold out thanks to its excellent line up.

I was able to talk to the local programmers and to compare audience numbers at similar concerts in Barcelona. At the most recent concerts of Bonnie Prince Billy, Oenothrix Point Never, Julia Holter and even Michael Gira himself, to name but a few of the artists who have played here in the last few years, the audience numbers were the same or higher than the last time these artists played in Barcelona.

I went into a café and there was a large painting there of Anthony Braxton giving it all he has. When I get to the Vila Flor multi-space cultural centre, I go in the wrong door, there is a local orchestra rehearsing, I open another, six girls are singing opera, I turn round, another auditorium, the Little Wings concert is starting, the room is so full that some people have been turned away. I haven’t mentioned yet that the metropolitan area of Guimarães has 160,000 inhabitants. Less than half of them live in the historical centre.

I am not going to get into evaluating our own line up in great detail, let the critics do their job. But I have to say that in such an ideal venue as the Gran Auditorio in the Centro Cultural Vila Flor, Swans couldn’t but give a concert of epic dimensions. It was one of those “I-was-there” moments. The same happened with Destroyer, Ariel Pink, The Vaccines and Tinariwen in São Mamede, a former cinema that has been done up to house concerts (they are doing another one up to make another cultural centre, with rehearsal rooms), designed with perfect acoustics and specifically for live music.

Before the first concert of Optimus Primavera Club started, the programmer of Guimarães-Capital Cultural Europea 2012 takes me around the facilities of the city. He shows me another centre, the Centro Internacional das Artes José de Guimarães, a building by Pitágoras that recently won a prize for its architecture that houses the private collection of the man it is named after and where some of the Optimus Primavera Club showcases are programmed. Once inside, he shows me an incredible room: a Black Box with exquisite retractable seating, for improvisation and the most esoteric concerts, I am told. Seating for two hundred or so people…what can I say?

We continue our tour, in every window of every establishment of the city there is a heart:  in the bakeries it is made of bread, in cosmetic shops of lipstick, in haberdasheries it is hand-embroidered. It is the logo of the city’s status as a capital everybody is involved.

As I stopped being jealous of anything or anyone a long time ago- I only get jealous about things related to food, whatever- let me at least express my admiration for what I have seen and heard during these three days. One has the sneaking suspicion that if all of this had happened in another place, neither the money allocate by Europe would have gone so directly to its cultural destination, nor would the taxpayer feel so proud to belong to the European capital of culture. Guimarães, the programmers tell me, is a town that is happy with its position as the centre of European culture cultural. And that is something that extends far beyond this year’s manifestations.  Congratulations, de tudo coração.

Abel González

#bestfestivalever

Hello everyone, how are you?

Some say I am a pain (they don’t know the half of it) and that I never stop going on about Primavera Sound… and I think, bloody hell, if I don’t make a noise who the hell will… And, what’s the Internet for anyway… Blogs, forums, Twitter or that Facebook crap. So much nonsense just a click away means that for a charlatan like myself it is almost impossible to stop… Everybody is entitled to their I don’t know how many seconds of fame and here I am willing to take more than my share.

In fact it’s your fault for reading me. I bet that more than one of you is trying to read between the lines to find the initials of the band that revolutionised the seven-tube amplifier at the beginnings of the seventies and that will absolutely definitely play at PS. Trainspotters, you are all total trainspotters!!!!

Yeah well ok, here goes

Lots of people ask why we aren’t revealing the confirmations little by little during the lead up to Christmas. It’s what we used to do and the YouTube videos were the highlight of those long difficult autumn Mondays. What can I say? This year we felt like waiting until the end of January to reveal the line up and then the traditional press conference would be something more than a re reading of the already well publicised line up. The truth is that it is a pain in the arse setting up all that circus to talk about something you already know about. Let’s not be too silly.

So I am going back on my word and if it used to be cool to do it before everyone else and to reveal 4 headliners in mid November, now what rocks is waiting and revealing everything at once for a more resounding effect. And anyway, uploading videos of the bands you have announced is so yesterday, and true to our status of professional snobs it is better to stand out from the rest.

But Gabi, tell us something about the 2013 line up……Told you were a pain!!!!!

Anyway, this year we are really happy. I think it is the first time in our history that we have managed to programme everything we wanted to and with only a couple of confirmations missing from bands with which negotiations are already well under way (cross your fingers), we can say that it is the line up we’d always had in mind and that it would be difficult to do better. What is not there wasn’t in our plans. What I am saying is that the line up is 100% PS and that anyone who doesn’t like it is at the wrong festival.

Really, the #bestfestivalever is no exaggeration, given the perimeters in which we are moving we couldn’t have been luckier and the 2013 edition will be one which you remember.

In fact, here some of us would say that this is could turn around and bite us in the arse, as the chances of repeating a line up like this in 2014 are as unlikely as snow in August. Next year people will remember this line up as being the best ever… But we will deal with that then and we will find ways to justify ourselves. Why else did our parents pay for our Masters in sophistry?

The total number of letters in the names of the headliners is 33.

The number of female components in the headliners is one or none.

The square root of nine is three.

Gabi

VAT on food and drink at festivals and concerts also goes up to 21%

Yesterday I got some more bad news on the economic front. As you all know too well, the culture industry has been going through a very difficult moment since VAT on tickets rose from 8% to 21% in September. Many companies will disappear and a large number of artists will not tour in our country anymore. It is very difficult for a business man to survive if from one year to the next you take away 13% of his turnover, as it is impossible to add this VAT to the price of the ticket (people just can’t afford it) he has to assume this extra cost. For example, now the PS full festival ticket costs 145€. So, to start, with VAT and SGAE (Performing Right Society) we have to deduct 31%, that is to say 37.15€. This is an outrage that makes this business practically unviable.

To make a quick comparison, in Portugal the VAT rate applicable is 13% (and it is one of the highest in Europe, with the average rate being at about 7%) and the authors’ rights are negotiated directly and are usually around 5%. With both Vat and SGAE this amounts to 18%. If the ticket costs the same we would be deducting 17.52€, nearly 20 euros less than in Spain. For this reason, with tickets costing 110€ for Optimus Primavera Sound, we have practically the same margin as with the 145€ tickets in Barcelona. This is madness because it makes the countries around us much more competitive than us. They can offer cheaper tickets and put up more money for an artist. This means the impending collapse of the sector and we can expect a lot more unpleasant surprises this year. Not even the most consolidated of festivals is safe. And obviously, no one with capital is going to want to get into this sector now.

Ok then, as if that weren’t enough, the Government has issued a circular in which they clear up a point that had created a degree of confusion. As Vat applicable to food, the restaurant industry and bars in general, is at the reduced rate of 10%, we took it for granted that the tax applicable on the bars and food at a festival, at a concert venue or at a discotheque was also 10%… Well it isn’t, we are considered as mixed spectacles and a 21% is applicable in all these cases. This means that either we put the price of drinks and food up or we lose another 13%. It is so ridiculous that in a normal restaurant the VAT is at the reduced rate of 10% (because they say it is tourism), but if that same restaurant has a free pianist for entertainment during the dinner the VAT applicable is 21%. That is to say that the system is penalising music.

If I set up a bar on the street, I pay 10%. If next to that bar I set up a free stage with musicians then I pay 21%.

Fantastic! A round of applause for the luminaries!

Ladies and Gentlemen this is really fucked up. We are lucky enough to be on a sound footing. So this year we will not apply the VAT and we will lose that additional 13% (we cannot further increase the price of the full festival ticket, when what was planned was to reduce it). We will ride the storm this year and see what the future has to offer. But nobody sets up a business to lose money and I can assure you that no businessman in this sector has a profit margin of 13%.

Gabi Ruiz

Believers!

 

One fine day a guitarist plugged his guitar into a thing that amplified its sound.  From that moment on the era of modern music began, what you heard was no longer an exact and reliable copy of what a human being as a transmitter of sound was able to produce alone with an acoustic instrument and more importantly, somebody invented rock and roll and pop music as a classical model of our contemporariness.  It was the beginning of an exciting era in the history of music but in the 50s they automatically considered it a sham, a scandal, a swindle.

So John Maus’ concert divided the audience in the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid, so what?  Fantastic, the same thing happened the first time Elvis appeared on TV, the first time Dylan went electric, when the Pistols recruited a bassist who didn’t know how to play, when Kraftwerk did a concert with robots or when Public Enemy started using sirens.  Since when is a concert better or worse because of certain technical decisions?  What makes John Maus a less worthy proposal than Suicide, Flaming Lips, Sunn))) or anyone who plays using overdubs, who doesn’t use fancy arrangements or doesn’t have an orthodox voice?  Trying to mark the limit of what does or what is does not constitute a valid live proposal is a lost cause.

John Maus played at Primavera two years ago with such a proposal.  It was a success, as was his concert this year in the Casino de l’Aliança. Let’s be honest: Maus has been developing his language with this type of performance for years and we think it is fabulous, whatever anyone says.  That’s what John Maus is all about, full stop and by the way, it is more than commented on, on the net.

To many of us it is added value to instrumental expertise to see an artist going beyond his talents and it is difficult for us to understand why this needs to be explained once again.  Others, of course, can think differently.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a poster of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup on the wall of their houses…

What we must remember at Primavera Sound is that anybody can leave a specific concert of the festival if they don’t like what they see and hear (there are other bands playing on other stages), rather than throwing a glass at a person which is at best reprehensible and at worse criminal.

Abel González, PS.

Sant Adrià

As in any other event there are always some people you have to invite, be it because they are colleagues from the same sector, institutions or sponsors. Although we are usually very careful when handing out invitations, we always reach the point when we are giving away more than we would like to and so we realised that we had to start asking people to pay for them.

It was at the 2010 edition that we decided to ask guests pay for their invitations and we coupled this idea with another that we had been toying with for some time, the desire to support an institution the work of which had a positive impact on the immediate social environment around the Parc del Fòrum of Barcelona, where the San Miguel Primavera Sound festival takes place every year. This is why at the last two editions we donated all the money raised from the sale of the invitations to social projects in that district.

The associations that we have donated money to were chosen with the assistance of the Town Hall of Sant Adrià. Sito, who has been the mayor of Sant Adrià for twenty years, has always treated us with respect and affection. Sito is a pleasant person to deal with and when you speak to him you quickly realise that he is passionate about his work and his town, he wants to improve conditions in this small neighbourhood that lives in the shadow of the big city that is Barcelona and all that this entails socially speaking.

For the second year running, part of the money raised from the invitations was given to the association Sant Adrià APRODISA for mentally handicapped people. Sito, himself and Ma Ángeles introduced us to the association and the important work they do providing work and training to these people.

These mentally handicapped people do important work for the town, be it cleaning, fixing or recording any damage in public spaces. Ten out of ten for APRODISA for the incredibly important work that they are doing and for our part we try to do our bit every year. In this edition and for the first time we have decided to donate part of the money raised to a second social project in Sant Adrià, the Gimnasio La Mina Gervasio Deferr.

Gervasio Deferr, the Olympic gymnastics multi-medal winner, together with Víctor and other Olympic sportsmen, have created a gymnasium for children in La Mina. For those of you who don’t know it, we have to say that historically La Mina is one of the most deprived metropolitan areas and has for a long time suffered from the drug scourge and delinquency. This seems to be changing and Gervasio and Victor are doing all that they can to help this process, sharing their knowledge so that many boys and girls of the neighbourhood can have a daily doses of excitement with summersaults, flips and back flips and who knows maybe one day in the future one of them will surprise us at the Olympics.

As an ex gymnast I have to say that I am a great fan of Gervi and that it really pissed me off when they stole his gold at the Shanghai Olympics despite an impeccable and perilous floor exercise. Now he has another challenge, his objective and that of all those involved is to keep this project afloat, a difficult task that they are carrying out with scant resources. He gives it his all as a trainer and lends his name to a neighbourhood that needs to integrate itself and feel part of the metropolis that has treated it badly for years.

Alberto Guijarro

What could have been and will be.

With the bands announced up till now we still have time to make the best line up ever or the biggest load of rubbish you can possibly imagine.  Give us a little more time and then we’ll talk.  For now we have announced the first few names nothing more.

A few days ago I told you on the forum that I was trying to come up with a leitmotiv common to the first bands announced.  Obviously I haven’t come up with one.

I have written on other occasions that you don’t look for the line up, that somehow the line up comes to you.  Well, this year I am having serious trouble working out what this edition is all about…And I am not saying that it is better or worse, but that for the moment I find this rather disconcerting.  Maybe we are putting together the least Primavera Sound line up of the last few years and I would be hard pushed to explain why….Maybe it is the least obvious, because the options are a little more risky (risky for the programme I mean) or because there is too much novelty, who knows whether it is the fact that there are less repetitions or a smaller quota of classic bands at the festival, the question is that I am still not sure about the theme that I was talking about before.  Or maybe, what I am trying to say is that, that is what is good about the 2012 edition it is not as obvious, it has less repetition and doesn’t resort to old allies as much……Maybe that is the theme, maybe that without being able to understand it we can already verbalise it.  Long live PS2012!!!!!

Gabi

Primavera Sound Sets Up A New Festival In Porto

Porto is the city that has been chosen to hold the new event of the promoter Primavera Sound, of which the first edition will take place from 7th until 10th June next year, one week after its Barcelona counterpart. The Portuguese city is the ideal city in which to present an event with the “Primavera Sound” brand name, as it shares a number of characteristics with Barcelona: like the fact that they are by the sea and have a pleasant climate, their size, their enterprising character and the services that they offer.

Optimus Primavera Sound will have a line up consisting of a wide selection of international artists, as well as numerous artists from the Portuguese music scene. The artistic content will follow the same guidelines as the Barcelona event, that stands out for its stylistic variety, backing newcomer bands and musicians from the local scene, together with artists of long standing careers, and artists who have played a key inspirational role in the creation of contemporary music.

The central days of the festival will take place in the Parque Da Cidade, a huge urban park that is a natural space by the sea and yet still an integral part of the city, whilst on the first and last days of the event, the 7th and 10th June, Optimus Primavera Sound will put on several free concerts in the city centre. These activities, which go by the name of “Primavera en la Ciudad”, already exist as part of San Miguel Primavera Sound in Barcelona, their aim being to bring music closer to all publics and to move the “Primavera Sound” spirit into the centre of the city.

The programme will be distributed between 4 different stages. The main stage will be called Optimus, another will be commissioned by the British promoter All Tomorrow’s Parties (ATP), that has been running a stage at San Miguel Primavera Sound in Barcelona for several years and other one will be for more electronic sounds, Djs as well as live acts, balancing between experimental and dance music.

The Portuguese edition aspires to become an unmissable event in the panorama of Southern Europe festivals; with the support of a city that has excellent transport links to the rest of the continent and has all the facilities necessary undertake an event of this type. Its implantation on the Portuguese musical scene aims to contribute to the growth of the city, to project its international image as a cultural centre and to give a new impetus to the city as an international tourist destination.

The full festival ticket for Optimus Primavera Sound 2012 costs 65 € (+ booking fee), until the first 1000 tickets have been sold.

The sales points are Ticketline, Ticketmaster, Seetickets, Paypal and in Optimus shops (more information at http://www.optimusprimaverasound.com)

San Miguel Primavera Club 2011 – New Incorporations And Change Of Price

There are new confirmations for San Miguel Primavera Club 2011. At the top of the list is the irresistible soul power of Charles Bradley & The Menahan Street Band, the electronic free jazz of Fire Room (Ken Vandermark, Paal Nilsen- Love and Lasse Marhaug’s project) and the British band Veronica Falls with their C-86-like pop.

With them we will also be able to see the freaky psychedelia of Gary War, the 80s-tinged pop of the Barcelona band Capitán, delicate post folk rock from Autumn Comets, the promising Tigercats from London, Ginferno- from Madrid, introducing their new record, the kraut pop of Los Eterno, the new-fledged garage from the Catalan band Aliment and experimental pop of Fira Fem

CHANGE OF PRICE OF THE COMBINED FULL FESTIVAL TICKETS

This Sunday 2nd October is the last day to buy the San Miguel Primavera Club 2011 Madrid at 40€ (+ booking fee), San Miguel Primavera Club 2011 Madrid + Fleet Foxes at 60 €  (+ booking fee), San Miguel Primavera Sound 2012 + San Miguel Primavera Club 2011 Madrid at 120 €(+ booking fee) and San Miguel Primavera Sound 2012 + San Miguel Primavera Club 2011 Madrid + Fleet Foxes at 140 € (+booking fee).

From Monday 3rd October, the prices will change to San Miguel Primavera Club 2011 Madrid 45 € (+ booking fee), San Miguel Primavera Club 2011 Madrid + Fleet Foxes 65 € (+ booking fee), San Miguel Primavera Sound 2012 + San Miguel Primavera Club 2011 Madrid 125 € (+ booking fee) and San Miguel Primavera Sound 2012 + San Miguel Primavera Club 2011 Madrid + Fleet Foxes 145 € (+ booking fee) respectively.

The sales points for the tickets are PayPal, Codeticket, Atrapalo, Servicaixa and Ticketmaster.

The tickets for the concerts of Fleet Foxes + Vetiver are only available on Ticketmaster at the Price of 28€ (+ booking fee). The American folk band will give two concerts at the San Miguel Primavera Club 2011 that will take place on the 25th November in Madrid (La Riviera) and the 27th of the same month in Barcelona (L’Auditori, C/ Lepant 150).

The San Miguel Primavera Club Barcelona or Madrid full festival tickets give access to all the venues of the festival, subject to the capacity of each venue.

The full festival tickets that do not include the Fleet Foxes option will not give access to this concert.

Extra.

I told you in my last post we will announce the sale of the VIP tickets for the PS2012 together with the first names of the PCLUB 2011 and the combined full festival ticket. Finally we will not be able to reveal the location of the new PS. Problems of institutional agenda owing to the proximity of August means that it is advisable to put off the announcement until September. Watch this space.

Gabi

Airam.

Today is Maria’s birthday.  Twenty-five years old, a quarter of a century, congratulations….  It’s Thursday and I am writing to you from Tuscany, from a country house near the village of Volterra. Pablo, Alberto, Sònia and I came here with our families to spend a few days resting and recovering from the fatigue after the festival. This is something that we have been doing for a while now; we all get together and spend a few days far away from the noise. It is a good way of calming in-house tensions and of rebuilding the ties that have sometimes become “frayed” because of too much close contact during Primavera Sound. Almost every time a friend turns up, this year it was Sònia Domènech, deputy director of La Razón and close friend of all of us who work in this company. Together we went over results and exchanged ideas on how to face the future, on where to put a coma or where to put a dash, on what are the really important terms that need to be underlined and at what moment we need to know how t o read between the lines. Sitting at the table with quite a few bottles of Rosso de Montepulciano we debated the line of the next edition.  As we knew that this time we would have more work than usual on this trip, we got Mari to come with us to give us the tactical support that we would certainly need. She is a slight girl and she never shuts up, a fan of the festival and of it forums who started working with us almost a year ago to coordinate internal communication and logistics. As you all know, the forum of the festival is for us a second family and some of the people with whom we share the day to day in the office were “ recruited” from that community.  We like to be surrounded by people who live a breath “music” and who also give a critical perspective that after so many years on this side of the fence we can easily lose.

Well, once again the plan worked.  The food was excellent; the wine out of this world and the countryside was the perfect setting to make a series of decisions that I think will be very important in the development of the next editions.

We have talked a lot about our new location, what it should be like and what it should be in the future.  It won’t be like the English style festival in two cities at the same time, it will take place the week after the event in Barcelona and although it will have less stages (for the moment, the idea is that in the future it will have the same number), the programme will basically be the same.

We are trying to solve the problem of capacity in Barcelona by attracting part of our audience to that second capital which will allow us to keep growing.  Time will tell us if this measure has the desired effect but in the meantime we are very excited about this new adventure.  In the last couple of years we have had several proposals to do another PS in various European capitals but this is the only time that we have felt 100% sure that it could be successful.  Both the site and the contacts there are excellent and the support and implication from the public administration are very important.  Now all we have to do is get down to work to make this second event as relevant on the agenda as the current Primavera Sound

Finally, just to let you know that the official announcement of the new location will be at the beginning of next week and that one week later the VIP tickets for both events will go on sale.  The prices of the San Miguel Primavera Sound Barcelona will be the same as for the last edition and together with the first names for Primavera Club 2011 the combined PSound + Pclub full festival tickets will appear.

See you at the Fly me to the moon….

Gabi