JULIAN HERNANDEZ - INTERVIEW WITH ALLENDEGUI (2010) 
Hernandez, Sinister: "Growing old is easy, you just have to leave passing time March 29th, 2010
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Julián Hernández (Madrid, July 2, 1960) is one of the three founders of Sinister, a group of punk rock's most influential in Spain and an example of how, in a tragic automobile artistic creation can emerge fireproof.
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1981, when Hernandez was in a Renault 12 family with a group of friends, suffered a car accident that left unrecognizable. It was a total loss for the car, but a lucky break for music, as it was the spark that gave rise to the group. Very close to the age of 30, with 18 albums under his belt, still creating non-stop. His latest album, Country & Western is fresh from the oven, for a change, not for rolls.
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Sinister met in late adolescence, after listening to their songs for hours on end while editing a video clip to the proclamation of the school holidays. Since then, ST has accompanied me and I never tire of listening to these groups ... is perhaps the gurus call classic.
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This interview with Hernandez is a clear example of Dada's own Sinister. Why? Because given the geographical distance that separates us, given the time difference we have and given current technology, we did it by email (buff, a technology of last century). So it's a "mailtrevista." avail.
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Allendegui: begin with the latter, not only does man live punk, and now gives you the country and the blues what can you tell me your new album, Country and Western? Country music style "Sinister?
Hernández: Well, I believe that man, in this case Homo Siniestrensis, it lives only punk. It's more of an idea, say, cultural and (glubs!) In which the genre is somehow secondary. There is more to take a look at what is normally considered the beginning of the English punk in the late seventies Damned, Sex Pistols, Clash, do you have something to do with the music? I think very little, regardless of whether they are rock bands, period. Country & Western Regarding the album, everything came from two directions. Galicia is a country and is west of the Iberian Peninsula and across Europe (peripherals are), which matches the name of the genre. In this country that is west is where we live and where we manage an operating system, with a peculiar sense of humor, which is what we use to communicate. The album (which has been particularly good, but it is wrong for me to say) is the last link, to date, a string of jobs with Joe Hardy that started a whopping seventeen years in Memphis (Tn) with recording Made In Japan, an album almost (and hardly) of heavy metal. Country & Western was recorded in February 2010 in Houston (TX) in The Foam Box, the study of Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top with whom Hardy works from the time of Gimme Some Lovin '. What why we went to Texas? Because the dollar is cheap against the euro, because the collection of guitars and amps and Billy Joe together is impressive and because the Galician us that long characterized the country to talk about it. There are some country but, as expect, we are anything but a purist.
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Allendegui: If you had to explain what Sinister young people now what will you say? Who are you, where you come from, and where are you going?
Hernández: The same explanations for the old would be worth now. In summary, we have no idea why we did those three questions and a song in 1984, the year of George Orwell. We know, yes (and we in Country & Western), who they are, where they come from and where are our leaders, not only in politics but also in economy, culture (popular or high-flying) and other pain in the ass to give us all alike in this world Globalitaria, not global. Sinister is basically a rock band, a band, but we have accumulated a number of people as designers of covers (Oscar Marine, Xulio Daspastoras, Mikel Garay), a maker of video almost fixed (Mikel Clemente), technicians and other family, not forgetting an important social base, which also shape the idea and part of it as much as the five guys who are in stage. Do not scare us or the death of rock (rock died when Buddy Holly was killed in that plane) or technological change or the traditional ignorance of an industry in decline. We do what we want, knowing that freedom is very expensive. If there is something to steal, steal it, as I said Pablo Picasso. Perhaps we are a group without gender but with a certain style. Go figure! We do not consider any part of our work as special in itself but is a kind of project-object (which read Frank Zappa) should also be able to function as a good sliced \u200b\u200bham. It sounds pretentious, but what can we do?
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Allendegui: What was the funniest story that happened to you onstage?
Hernández: Uf, and the funny thing is being on stage. After nearly three decades, the list would be a matter of taking a vote. Moreover, forcing the cull memory for a story is difficult, often arise in the midst of conversations in which someone says " Incidentally, do you remember that day when ... ". I wish I had seen a girl in the front row into fish and bubbles take by mouth, such as Captain Beefheart, or look like a hay wagon fire rushed toward the stage, like Maldita Vecindad in Tijuana, but none of the Two things happened to us. Well, something similar happened to us in the desert of Tabernas in Almeria, when we played at the party mid-filming of the movie 800 Bullets Alex de la Iglesia. It was in the saloon of the village where the spaghetti westerns were shot (what foresight!) In the sixties and mid-gig, broke several cowboys on horseback and hitting shots without us told us anything. Another dramatic effect (this is not premeditated) passed us on the Malaga bullring. We used to put the tune of the TV series Miami Vice just before leaving to play. When the square was dark and the music sounded loud series, passed over all the heads a police helicopter with a searchlight sweeping the stairs. Or Pink Floyd or U2 would have dreamed of a free show of this caliber. Maybe not funny anecdotes, but as we've never seen a lingerie shower on us or anything like that, is what occurs to me now ...
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Allendegui: What would you say is your best song, which I would like you to remember?
Hernández: Good question. The problem is I have no answer. Let's see: first, do not pretend to be remembered, lest our grandchildren to stop something that we perpetrate on us when they were not born yet. What happens is that all songs are like children and fools all want or hate equally. This does not mean the eye, we do not know that sometimes leave us more rounded, sometimes more angular and more triangular. We know that there are issues that are better known, for whatever reason, and others who spend less noticeable. That does not give them a special value or the handsome or smart or to the ugly and the stupid. We are very democratic in that regard. A pop song (let's call them that) has something in three minutes (sometimes more, sometimes something a little less) and it works as far as it is surrounded by others. It's like an ecosystem of songs: each can survive as and consumes their neighbors to the extent it can. And we also believe that sometimes a song can connect with people and not with others. If we had the solution to the mystery, not the slightest doubt you would publish a book and we would of gold, but for now, we just write songs that are worth to us. We can not have another option, I'm really sorry for good.
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Allendegui: How much of your lyrics are based on real events? For example, some of you had surgery for phimosis?
Hernández: This is also a good question and I can also use someone to answer. Federico Fellini, Italian film director, said everything is autobiographical and nothing is autobiographical. I think he meant that the imagination works mixing driving and what you know but that need not have happened to you. In the case of phimosis operation to which you mean, yes there was one: the brother of Javier Soto, the best guitarist of Loss, but it was when we were still in high school. In other cases, is absolute fiction. Never went to the Cies Islands (in the Ria de Vigo) to kill hippies, not least because there were too many hippies. It was a kind of comic that we had invented (illustrated later by Roman of cashews) and we did a lot of grace. Fiction is thus: can not identify the author with what counts because that would be tantamount to saying that Cervantes went to La Mancha starving on a horse fighting the windmills. Relatively speaking, of course.
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Allendegui: My mother spent Galician many summers in a town of Ourense, when I hear "terra Miña galega" here in America, it begins to sprout tears to gush. How did you melt Sweet Home Alabama with this song to Galicia?
Hernández: Hey! As the song to Galicia Julio Iglesias, I say. Literally, the story was at a party at Road School (now the Faculty of Engineering idem) in which a band played the song by Lynyrd Skynyrd and Pepo Fuentes, friend and associate of much of what we did at the beginning of the eighties , came to "Mina terra galega" syllables and stress coincided with "Sweet Home Alabama." A few weeks later I was alone in the lobby of the Hotel Riazor Coruña was waiting for my girlfriend at the time, and wrote the lyrics of the stretch in a napkin. Did not mean anything more than touch a few weeks after the Madrid club Wave Rock to annoy the hated that class modern American rock of the seventies. Apparently, the punk attitude (we return to the beginning of the interview) turned against itself and function as an anthem song and out of Galicia. Lynyrd Skynyrd or not we have taken a hard adjustment but only that the satisfaction that someone will recognize as their own is sufficient. Weeping and mourn are all very healthy. Another thing is that Song of the Yankees (well, are from the South) were racist and cagara the mother who gave birth to Neil Young, but maybe that was the reason for amending the plan to a group that, on the other hand, it is our favorites ... (Ah, congratulates your mother, not all human beings are fortunate to be in Galicia).
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Allendegui: A curiosity, what are the Jaján kakfianos?
Hernández: Ho, ho, ho! This really is good. Luis was a phrase, a character who worked with my father in the workshop. He said the apprentice, "You what happens is that you are a Kafkaesque of Jaján." The Jaján (Xaxán in Galician) is a hill on the other side of the Ria de Vigo, where he was (is) post TV relay. Good old Louis had not read Kafka or anything like that but the look is killer. If the Galician cultural authorities have half a brain would organize a conference of specialists in Kafka on top of that mountain. Don Franz was naive: The process is only a pale reflection of what may become justice in our time but if we can become the Jaján Kafka, we are much closer to the truth to Louis on the workshop.
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Allendegui: Have you had threats from Islamic extremist groups for your song "Ayatollah! ? At least that's been severed ...
members Hernández: No, never. How could it be? We have pursued before the Church of Rome to burn at the stake. It was said that we did not like jazz, at least coñazo jazz-rock of the Seventies it was all the rage in certain circles of Vigo in those days. I quote to Cervantes in Don Quixote displayed lots of references to the true Christian faith discrediting Islam and why not burn copies of the book. And that, mind you, that we do not disqualify anything at all, quite the opposite. It is highly recommended to visit the Mosque of Cordoba if will have the chance. Is embedded within a Christian cathedral atosigante baroque. In contrast, the original arches of the mosque are a metaphor for the infinite and the best visual representation of the repetitive minimalist music and American (Steve Reich, Terry Riley), built many centuries earlier. Our comics are irrelevant.
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Allendegui: What are your musical sources? Are the Rolling Stones and the Shadows?
Hernández: Jé! In fact, the list is endless sources. Almost more than the Rolling Stones or the Shadows, that too, would be the Who and the Kinks. But this only in terms of UK bands sixty concerns. I have no idea where we would begin to name names, much less where to end up. In this Country & Western is one or two references to Junior Kimbrough, a Mississippi bluesman, yet are, somewhere, Johnny Cash and Bachman Turner Overdrive or Fun Lovin 'Criminals, AC / DC or the Beatles or Pogues. I do not know! No versions of them, but they are the names that we came to a head when we were riding around the disc. And it is only a fraction. In fact, we are a fan of music and played in a group to do what others have done at the time. Our mistakes are our original copy, if is that we have.
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Allendegui: What influences ST recognize other groups? Which ones?
Hernández: No. Never. Actually, I think we've had so many models that do not think anyone is capable of keeping us to ourselves as such. If anything there may be people who identify with the same things as us, but from there to influence is a long way. This is not false modesty. Maybe (and since we're here giving the plate) we have more influence in parallel between the groups that emerged in the eighties in Spain. I mean, there are small details that I recognize in ourselves and in other co-generation that are as similar. I dunno, it's very subtle. Something I am sure, have been as varied as chameleon and (we had three singers, three bassists, three guitarists, two drummers and a saxophonist who was passing by) that can never be a group like "Les Miserables Polyclinic: Tribute to Sinister Total. " That I could not say or even Frank Zappa were alive. The group is best known by the name of his songs and his intentions. (Praise the Lord for this.) Do not pretend to be inimitable, nothing is further from our minds, but we get nothing that is as recognizable / imitable and the Ramones, Madonna, Barack Obama and Jerry Lewis. Is the advantage of being Galician cause you know that when you meet a Galician on a ladder, it is impossible to know whether to raise or lower. Anyway, yes there is a place where we copied note: in newspaper headlines and the like. When Celtic lost the van and put "First of all: very calm," and if the government distributes sweets write "For the benefit of all." What happens is that they lack imagination or have much desire to honor, heh!
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Allendegui: "If you honoris causa, if you're menopausal, do you have reached menopause as a band?
Hernández: The menopause occurs when a group ride. A hormonal imbalance must have to enter such a frenzy even if you have twenty years. Seen this way, we can not reproduce and it gives some peace of mind. Aging is easy: just pass the time. Maturing is another matter. All of us at ST do other things, each more rare, but the machinery of the group is now very reliable and we see no reason not to give boring. Perhaps the day is come when we have no ideas in common or not we communicate between us. For now, menopause, or andropause or pitopausia or whatever, we do not care the least.
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Allendegui: What music on your iPod? Got iPod pod right?
Hernández: Well, yes, I have iPod, what happens? It would be a long list of things in there. I use it many times, mostly as a tool. Ie I have demos, song sketches, letters, occasional picture ... It's a good junk, why deny it, but does not replace the object, the disk. If I put the shuffle mode can sound the Kinks, John Cage, the B side of a single that we took in 1987 and three hundred thousand cacophony I have no idea where they come from. OK for a machine to decide for you, but only to some extent. When I play music at home, shooting vinyl and I step like a dwarf. For some it was me who put the discs in all the parties. What happens is that now I can put most anything I please without fear of being split face handsome footballer on duty. Oh, and the iPod I got it because I asked for an article on the aparatejo in exchange for giving me one. I had never written a folio so well paid ...
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Allendegui: What technologies have changed your way of making music and, above all in the way you relate to your fans?
Hernández: We already born with the technology, although many years ago it was only a cassette recorder Radiola (the mole). And I do believe that technology changes the way you view things. Now, with most normalito computer, you can save on local everything that comes to mind. But we all agree that if a new version, we charge the former, then we go crazy with so much material. Communication is faster but more intense. In the nineties, a sort of revistilla editing them, Circular Sporadic, we sent to the people we wrote to a PO Box for Lugo. The feed-back, the response of people was more or less now with the guestbook on our website. We are faster and have more gigs on your hard hard but that does not make us smarter or more effective. I love, yes, you can type at night without crushing the neighbors with one of those typewriters that got a terrible noise. I also love the idea of \u200b\u200bthe type ProTools multitrack recording and the like. The possibilities are enormous but not long because you win, sometimes you get lost in bullshit that lead nowhere. I ate so served, then, with the technology. Gutenberg with his printing press might not think the same, but the same to me.
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Allendegui: What question would make for this to be the most intelligent interview I have ever done?
Hernández: either.
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Allendegui: Can you answer that question?
Hernández: If you and me is not too difficult ...
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Allendegui: "I do not know why, but alcohol and God are the two most recurring themes of our repertoire", what is that? What is your position on religion?
Hernández: The phrase on alcohol and God, for the record, is de Soto, not mine, and it surprised me to give both the nail with the statistics in question. Religion is not the same as God. There is an experiment gorilla that explains it well. If you you put five gorillas in a cage and suddenly, on the roof of the cage opens a slot for which descends a banana, gorilla stronger attempt to reach it. If the dominant gorilla falls cold running water, none of the gorillas will attempt to take the banana. If you change one of the gorillas by another who has not seen running water, others will warn of the danger and the new will not try to take the banana. If you keep changing gorillas until none of the cage has been a stream of water, unseen information will have been passed so that everyone will think you do not try to take the banana. That is religion: believe in something we have ever found overseas and that culturally and socially, we are unable to verify or question. This had its value when humanity went from magic to the aristocracy, he needed to convince his subjects that he had a divine plan for all but a few, they were slaves. Ugh, too complicated, right? The important thing is to have fun and not take a hit in the head (or cold water).
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Allendegui: At first, your maxim was "to say the greatest number of atrocities in the shortest possible time," what is your peak now?
Hernández: Well, after hours meditation, I think that is the same. Life is short, what can we do?, And if we do not hurry to let go of all the rants that come standard in our brains, because as you will not get rid of them. Man, if a song has to last four minutes, because that is what you get. If there are three, well. If two, then goes. Actually, never mind. They are communicating, as far as I came to understand, this was an anticipation. How much barbarity we can now see and hear on the news that last half hour? If they do not simply copy these bastards.
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Material courtesy of:
We are the electrogoblins (2003) 
