In their 20 years together as a band, Spanish surf rockers Los Coronas have only made it to Australia once before. Ahead of their long-awaited return to a country where surf culture runs through our veins, guitarist David Krahe lets us in on five things we didn’t know about Los Coronas.
1.They Didn’t Get It
The early years were the tricky years – in Spain there was a big tradition of instrumental music during the mid-’60s, but because of the British pop invasion it disappeared a short time later. Los Coronas came out in 1991; there weren’t other instrumental bands in Spain and just a few in Europe, so Spanish people weren’t ready, it was too soon for them. For the first 300 Los Coronas shows people would yell out, “Where the fuck is the singer?!” Thanks to Pulp Fiction’s premiere things turned out better the following years.
2.Enter Vocals Here
We bit the bullet, probably because we were traumatised by all the bottles getting thrown at us onstage! We recorded and performed two covers in Spanish with two different singers, one male and one female – Jairo Zavala, the singer from the Spanish band Depedro; and Eilen Jewell, the country-folk vocalist from Idaho in the USA. Los Coronas have called this experience ‘El ExtraЦo Viaje’, which means ‘The Weird Travel’.
3.You Gotta Check This Out, We Love It
Last year Los Coronas recorded a cover of Astor Piazzolla’s hit ‘Libertango’ with the great Latin jazz pianist Michel Camilo during a Spanish live TV broadcasting. There’s really magic in Camilo’s fingers; it is worth seeing the program for that reason alone. [Have a look for it on YouTube.]
4.Show Me The Money, Fools
In 2009, Little Steven [Van Zandt] tried to sign the band to his label Wicked Cool basically with two kinds of arguments: the mildly strong and the extremely strong arguments. Actually he was always talking about only one thing, money. After several months of long negotiation, Los Coronas probably made the wrong decision: “So long Tony, no deal, that’s what we’re talking about”.
5.Faking It
We’re not a flamenco band, but a surf music instrumental band, except that the closest shore is a four-hour drive from our hometown. We’re actually fake surfers! This is our second time Down Under – during our first visit, we took a surf but didn’t manage to stay on the board for more than ten seconds… so this time we’re taking surf lessons.
Los Coronas play at The Basement onWednesday March 5 and Thursday March 6.
