locomia He made thousands of young people dance with his unusual steps in Spain and Latin America between the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s. The Spanish group also knew how to break the mold with their peculiar hairstyles, costumes and fans. At first, however, its members did not know how to sing. How did they become famous?
In their first presentations, this popular band used the playback to cover the little experience in the singing of Francesc Picas, Manuel Arjona, Carlos Armas and Juan Antonio Fuentes. Everything makes sense when we understand that locomia It was not originally a musical group, but a fashion and dance group that appeared on the busy nights of Ibiza.
Xavier Font’s confession about the playback in Locomía
locomia He recorded his first album, entitled “Tayo”, in 1989. This included iconic songs like “Loco Mía”, “Rumba, samba, mambo” and “Gorbachev”. However, the voices were not typical of the singers. The direction that the group took under Gil did not please Font, who had to do the playback voices, as well as the executive.
“I had to go out doing his playback, which is something I had never used or said so as not to detract from my own band. Not to hide from Gil the fact that he began to sing without giving us the opportunity to do it ourselves. In an album that sings that… Well, now with the reggaeton vibe, nobody sings. But that wasn’t singing, it was reciting lyrics. And I did it because my voice is as much a man’s as his,” Font told El Diario de España.
However, this difficulty was overcome over time and the members of the group gained more freedom to sing with their own voices. “When Gil arrived, we spent two years giving dance and singing classes, we professionalize We did not stop working”, commented Manuel Arjona on one occasion.
In what year did Locomía come out?
It all started when a young Xavier Font she sought to create an “urban tribe”, according to her own words, in 1984, together with her boyfriend Gard Passchier and Manuel Arjona.
“When I arrive to Ibiza It seemed like another planet. I came from Viladecans, where I had to hide my sexual identity. And on the island, if you were a boy and you were wearing a skirt, no one looked at you. It was a wild change”, said the founder of Locomía in dialogue with the newspaper El País.
Xavier called his brother Luis and the four began to meet in a house in Ibiza to make suits with which they would go to Ku, the trendy nightclub in that spa in Spain. The owners saw them and agreed to give them a million pesetas (today about 6,000 euros) in exchange for going up on the platform, dancing and being flirty.
“They were carrying small fans and I saw a movement that captivated me. I got home and started building. Since I’m an exaggerator, I invented XXL fans,” said Font. The band gained fame on the island – Freddie Mercury even visited his boutique – and, after 4 years of success, the record executive Joseph Louis Gil He offered to turn 4 of them (there were 15) into singers.
What happened to the band Locomía, does it still exist?
After making a name for himself in Spain, locomia It ventured into Latin American lands and became a success. But the debacle was not long in coming. In 1992, Gil had secured a lucrative contract for the band to enter the US market, but he decided to put Font, who was in Miami, in charge. The latter convinces the boys to break the contract.
Gil created a parallel group of locomia, which included Luis Font, and both versions of the band competed with each other until their success faded. Today, Xavier Font owns the group and Gil owns the songs, and the rivalry between the two was portrayed in a recent Movistar + documentary. The group continues to date, with other members, but it mainly uses playback.
What happened to the members of Locomía?
After his departure from the group, Manuel Arjona He fell into nocturnal excesses, but later recovered and worked as a dancer in the Bikini room in Barcelona, in addition to briefly rejoining Locomía in 2011. Juan Antonio Fuentes He is currently dedicated to the hospitality industry and opened a restaurant in Cuba with his partner.
Charles Arms he plunged into addictions after the band’s decline, but then returned to music with Javier Pastrana to form the short-lived group Vatikano, and today runs a fashion store in Tenerife.
Francis Spades he tried to be a soloist and after that he graduated in Psychology; she also opened a fashion accessories company and wrote 8 books. white saintswho replaced Fuentes, died in 2018 at the age of 46 from a pulmonary thrombus.
Where is the Locomía documentary?
“Locomía” is the documentary released this 2022 about the band of the same name, which tells a story of “success, betrayal, jealousy, anarchy, homophobia and oblivion”, according to its description. The three episodes of this production are available in Spain on Movistar +.
The members of Locomía were homosexual
Since 1988, José Luis Gil has not allowed Locomía to perform at parties related to the LGBT community. The members of the group, who were homosexual, had to hide their sexual preferences. “Ambiguity is commercial; what is defined, whatever it may be, limits and reduces the public”, Gil told them, according to the newspaper El Confidencial.
“A journalist asked me if I had a girlfriend and I told him yes, that I had a gorgeous boyfriend, and suddenly we had to stop expressing ourselves freely, to hide, to be ambiguous all the time. He forbade us to be gay, Same what he did with Miguel Bosé, to whom Gil said that ‘Don Diablo’ was not commercial”, Xavier Font told said medium.
What do the fans represent?
In ancient Egypt and China, the fan was seen as a symbol of authority and distinction. In Japan, it was traditionally used to greet. These objects became especially popular in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, but their moment of greatest presence among the bourgeoisie was in the 18th century. Over time, their movements formed a language used by ladies to communicate with gentlemen discreetly.
Why the name Locomía?
“Gard (Xavier Font’s boyfriend) was asked why we carried such big fans and he wanted to answer that it was ‘I was crazy’, but since he didn’t master Spanish grammar, he said it was ‘crazy’. We all loved the name”, said the creator of the band on one occasion.
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