Santi Carrillo (‘Rockdelux’): «When the discs are scored, they tend to value them too well, as if everything were wonderful!»

In April 2020, it is not necessary to remember what the whole world was involved, the collaborators of Rockdelux They were locked in their homes, finishing the texts for the May number without knowing that it would be the last. The usual uncertainty in the musical media shot at unassumable levels for the magazine, and it was decided to close after almost four hundred months in the kiosks. “It was an emotionally strong moment, we are not going to fool ourselves,” recalls its director since 1987, Santi Carrillowho to say goodbye devised a selection of “cultural items to counteract the boredom of confinement” that was very grateful for its readers. As soon as that RDL#394 went on sale, a statement was disseminated by giving the sad news and, as Carrillo recalls, «Everyone turned to us with us putting our work in value, and the number was exhausted forcing us to edit again, Thing we had never done.

Fortunately, six months after that abrupt final because of the pandemic, The Spring Sound Festival made the light becoming its patron To return it to life. And although it has been in digital format (“with subscription,” says Carrillo, firm defender of quality content), paper rockdelux returns twice a year (the summer special and the annual list with the best albums) and Last December celebrated its 40th anniversary with a special number in which the 200 most important pop cultural characters dissect since 1984. (still available in Kioskos).

That was the year in which the history of the magazine started, which was born as a heiress of special rock and, after a split in the writing that ended with the creation of Route66, took the reins of the most insightful, avant -garde and safe musical prescription of itself of the Spanish written press. His greatest achievement since then is not changing, not having fallen into condescending attitudes or corporatist automatisms – or at least managed to be noticed less than others – without being afraid of the possible animosity that all this could generate. “It’s true, but I don’t want to show off because they already call me everything,” says Carrillo, A veteran rock-critic that occasionally is the paste of the tweeter flames for speaking without hairs on the tongue about the groups that he considers mediocre.

What has best done RockdeLux in all this time?

Talking about the music we like without importing whether it was little known or well known, and being consistent with that. Starting from rock as a base, we have opened to all the styles that we have considered important and contemporary, without prejudice, opening our ears well. We have never talked about artists for the mere fact that they were popular. Some of those we have taken have become popular, but we probably talk about them before they were. If we have talked about something commercial or majority, it is because we liked it.

What would have been good to do in a different way?

Take ourselves in digital before what we did. We put ourselves to it in 2011 and without too much conviction, because we intended that the paper last as much as possible. When the paper ended, we lacked the background we would have had if we had made the transition before. What we were very clear from the minute one of that transition is that the web contents would be paid, because the work must be paid. If everything is free, all cultural gear is hindered.

The networks have made dispensable the intermediator of the magazines between artist and fan, and the streaming platforms have made their prescriptive role expendable. Should we try to recover those papers? Or is it better to try to discover new ones for magazines?

I don’t have the solution to those enigmas, nor do I think anyone has it. The press problem is how to convince people to pay for the contents that journalists who work hard to offer the best. I would have to change the people’s cultural consumption paradigm. Before there were kiosks, and people were going to pay, not to take things for free. Now that they have become accustomed to doing the latter, it is difficult to reverse it.

Would a strong bet on video would not be one of the keys to get it?

Yes, it is something we have pending to solve. But we don’t have so much economic capacity to do it well. It generates an added expense if you want to do it with professional teams. And although it may seem otherwise with this that we turn forty years old, we are a fairly minority medium, with a small writing team that does not supply everything that needs to be done with daily information. But yes, it is a pending subject that one day we will have to address.

As for the criticism of records, RockdeLux is one of the few means that dispenses with the scores. It is something that many of us appreciate, but given the tendency towards immediacy in cultural consumption, could I change in the future?

No. I remember an era at the end of the eighties in which the records did, but it lasted very little and stopped doing and we have never done it again. Now, with rapid and superficial communication, people are looking for the holder and with seeing the scores would stop reading the criticism. That is why we dispense with them. In addition, with the scores the records tend to value excessively well, as we see in Mondosonoro, where seven is almost the minimum they put and there are eight and new to Mansalva, as if everything was wonderful! Or with the fools of Pitchfok, putting scores with decimals … it is to be slapped.

The debate on music quality is something necessary, or a dialectical trap? Some say that if an artist likes many people, that means he has quality; Then there is the “theory Robe”, which says that selling a lot does not mean having quality because most people are idiot; And there is also a third way that says that talking about quality is pure arrogance, an absurd and snobing denial of subjectivity.

I would give all of them sticks. Robe sells a lot, so that speech does not believe it. Obviously he does not sell as Coldplay, but in Spain it is surely one of the most vendors, so what are you telling me, that all those who buy you are silly? In the opposite direction, there have been very worthy groups that have had the chamba to like many people and that is why they have to be bad. And about subjectivity, it is true that in principle you can ask yourself the question of who has the power to say whether an album has quality or not. But journalists who are supposedly informed, who have a background of listening to tons of music, who contrast and also know how to write, should be candidates to have that power. Although the quality of the music is something subjective, we should be able to affirm this quietly and argue it, because there are arguments. The opinion of a professor is not the same as that of a YouTuber, nor can the opinion of an informed journalist be worth the opinion than that of a Tiktoker.

It should be wonderful to live musical journalism without the current informative maelstrom. Throw a record criticism, for example.

Obviously. The mere fact of looking for information had the charm of having to go to certain stores, to ask for it abroad … it was romantically artisanal. I do not say that it is a better way, but it was more elaborate and with more time for reflection. Before the criticisms of records were done, taking your days, but now as soon as the album comes out, criticism has to leave. And so there is no place that allows you to reflect quietly about what you are going to write. Even more with the avalanche of novelties that leaves every Friday, which is an unbarkable madness for any human being.

I didn’t plan to get Dani Martín’s name in this interview, but he has left it to egg: What do you think of everything that has been mounted around his song ‘News Friday’?

I have never liked what he does, neither alone nor with his group the song of the madman, but the uncle has gone against the sense of reaffirming his old man against the norm, and that already has his grace. Now it seems that you have to give yes to everything that is politically correct … and I am very against that. We are the note saying that sometimes, it seems that it is prohibited to carry the opposite.