'Yes', the British Rock group (if you can remember that far back), was performing here in Spain on Saturday night, in the Sant Jordi Club. Very much the fashion in recent years when old timers, after 30, 40 or more years resting and presumably nourishing their talent, ability and vocal cords, decide to come back to dazzle old fans and winning a few new ones.
Theirs is the what's called progressive Rock, with a hint of folk and country. Included in the programme was their most known major hit 'Owner of a lonely heart', also 'Starship trooper' and 'Roundabout', 'You & I' ... All the past glory and energy still there, perhaps even more now, as they had changed somewhat their style and rhythm, making the original music, simple but perfect, now unnecessarily complicated and difficult, with theatrical crescendos. I guess it's the desire and effort to catch up with the times, even to jump ahead a bit of it, to say: 'Hey, we still got it, plenty of it!'
In the old days, music was music, a combination of sounds and tones made by skilled hands of talented musicians, playing one or a variety of instruments, emitting suggestive melodies or amazing mixture of sounds; harmonious, contrasting or even clashing, but pleasing and surprising. Nowadays, music performance is even a bigger combination, with many other elements equally important if not more so, than the music itself: stage-sets, creative scenarios, props, gadgets, elaborate lighting that creates atmosphere, and non-stop changing of costumes, extravagant, surprising or even shocking a la Lady Gaga ... Most of all, plenty of marketing. Music is figured somewhere amongst all that.
I remember, in my childhood days, I came across a saying 'Drawing a snake with legs'. Very young kid I might be but I knew well that snake didn't have legs, so I asked my father what that saying meant. He told me the story that 'During a selective competition a group of young aspiring artists had to draw or paint a snake, showing the characteristics of this much feared reptile.
One talented young man had painted a snake as if it's alive, with all it's cunning and vicious character in it's eyes, scheming, ready to strike and devour any being on his slimy path. He finished the drawing in no time at all while the competitors were still struggling hard at their task. To past time until the 'times up' bell rang, he amused himself by idly added legs to his snake. The painting looked absolutely striking but, needless to say, he failed.'
That story describes people who add unnecessary details to something already perfect. But who is to say that should that happens today, his painting of the snake with legs wouldn't become a masterpiece, giving him enormous fame and fortune, exhibited in a prestigious museum or fetching colossal sums of money in an auction?
Dali or Picasso born under the wrong star. Poor guy.
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