Evaristo Páramos reviews the trajectory of a band that endured more than 40 years on stage in ‘We are nothing’, a documentary that hits theaters on January 28
This is the story of some villagers who formed the largest group in Spanish punk and, against all odds, held out for decades and had a happy ending. “We went like rockets and more than one crashed”, reflects in ‘We are nothing’ Evaristo Páramos, singer and lyricist for La Polla Records, the soul of a documentary that reviews his career and that will hit theaters on January 28. This is not a story of drugs, foolishness or divisms, but the dream come true of some Agurain kids who have been on stage for more than 40 years and whose repertoire is made up of hymns that are sung in Latin America. His return tour in 2019 after 16 years of inactivity showed that those kaffirs that played on frontons where the sound bounced between the katxi glasses today fill stadiums.
Javier Corcuera, a seasoned documentary filmmaker who won the Goya for ‘Invisibles’, follows the group in the concerts on their return to Spain and South America, intersperses archive material and animations and achieves rare moments of intimacy with Evaristo, who at 61 sticks is a gentleman With her ears pierced by a thousand earrings, she needs the solitude of walks in the mountains and the affection of her third three-year-old daughter. “I never thought I was going to turn 60”, the charismatic vocalist is sincere, who maintains his anti-establishment discourse but reveals something akin to nostalgia before the camera. That baby who spent his first eleven months crying non-stop turned out to be a “fucking nerd” at school. He endured the nuns’ claws and the odd mockery of the Salvatierra kids for his puffed ears and his Galician origin. “They told me he was from abroad, but nothing important,” recalls this son of workers, who soon became class conscious. The mother went from serving to working in a factory; the father did everything from the age of ten: bricklayer, miner …
The future author of ‘Come shit’ was the star of family meals with his uncles, civil guards, when he launched into singing songs by Camilo Sesto and Formula V. Abel Murua, the bassist of La Polla, recalls the formation of the group elbowed at the bar from Otxoa, the bar that served as a recruiting office for years. They phoned for concerts and the waiter took errands. They were all currelas in the Seat or in Miko. They believed that guitars were simply plugged into the network and discovered that a bass had four strings. For a long time they shot with an incomplete battery. The name came from an oath by Evaristo when he changed a wheel in the workshop: “Fuck your cock!” They added the Records thing because they thought it alluded to athletic brands. They did not know what disco means in English. “At 17 we were the strangers in town. No fucking idea of playing, but supreme elegance, eh? », Sums up Evaristo.
The Sex Pistols opened their eyes. They could be punks without living in a city, the attitude was enough. Sometimes they were envious “of those foreign groups that agree to play all at the same time”, but, as Abel Murua admits, they never fully learned to tune and that made them consistent with their music from the beginning to the end. final. He also saved them that “heroin did not enter Agurain.” And that to Evaristo, always in his eternal mountain clothes, the big cities cause him overwhelm. That Galician who was going to sing alone to the era needs to speak again with his favorite oak, next to which he greets some nuns on a walk. «Those will be from the PNV. Left-wing », says the king of sarcasm.
“I have always been a fan of La Polla Records, I knew them long before I came to live in Madrid in 1986”, Javier Corcuera pointed out at the last San Sebastian Festival. «In the beginning his tapes arrived in Peru and they have been the soundtrack that I have been listening to for years. That is why it has been a pleasure to make this film ». The director of ‘Winter in Bagdad’ and ‘The back of the world’ succeeds in getting Evaristo’s youthful mother, 82 incredible years old, to attend the BEC for the first time to see a concert by her son. At his side is his granddaughter, with headphones that protect him from the thunderous sound. Corcuera keeps the entire songs in the film with subtitles to follow some lyrics that the thousands of spectators in communion sing at their fingertips. Stanzas such as “we are the grandchildren of the workers you could never kill …”, “they call it democracy and it is not …” and the mythical “Hail Regina, mater misericordia.”
Evaristo and bassist Abel Murua on La Polla’s comeback tour in 2019/20.
«Unfortunately the lyrics of La Polla are still current in many respects. In addition, people make them their own in very distant places, it is something that occurs very rarely “, remarks Javier Corcuera, who met Evaristo on a trip with Willy Toledo, when the actor was doing the backing vocals for him in his new group , Trigger. The death of drummer Fernando Murua ‘Fernandito’ in 2002 at age 40 due to arteriosclerosis anticipated the group’s dissolution the following year after 13 studio albums. Grandparents, children and grandchildren celebrated their fleeting return just before the pandemic. “When I was little, I dreamed that I played and was in a group, but it was not a Disney or Fox fantasy, where everything is clean,” says Evaristo in the film. «There are thousands of songs to do and I’m going to die without doing them. But, well, we’ve already recorded a few albums and there are some pretty nice songs. For being a town, it was not bad.
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