Granada for music lovers: pubs where you can drink with your favorite musicians
** PINK NOISE _(C/ Sol 18) _**
Granada night classic that opened its doors in 1987 hand in hand with members of the legendary band 091 . He has passed through “Any rocker worth their salt in this country and some foreigners” , as he assures Jose Ignacio Lapido , ex 091 today with a consolidated solo career and one of the musicians you can find in this pub, along with his brother Victor Lapido , responsible for the premises and also a musician (091, Lizard Nick, Solynieve Group of Experts).
Noni, singer of Lori Meyers, worked for years behind the bar of this bar and it is said that it was here that she showed the demo of her, at that time, unknown band of hers to a producer of Houston Party Records, which turned out to be the first record label of the group from Granada. The rest of the story is well known to all. Today he replaces him behind the bar Natalia, vocalist of Dolorosa, one of the last bands to emerge from the Granada scene whose debut took place, how could it be otherwise, at the Ruido Rosa pub last summer. Natalia is accompanied on this adventure by veterans Raún Bernal (Jean Paul, Grupo de Expertos Solynieve, Lapido) and Antonio Lomas ( Solynieve Expert Group ), which can also be seen there.
It's hard to walk into the Pink Noise one night and not find a musician (apart from the waiters) and, if you're lucky, there may be a small-format concert being held that this essential bar is programming.
Enrique Octavo in full fire
** PEDESTRIAN PUB _(C/ Sócrates 25) _**
Another of the basics when we talk about the alternative music scene in the city , run and frequented by members of different bands. Among his unconditional supporters are the members of two Mutant children , a group that has been forged in the heat of this narrow place. “ In the 90's we lived there , the litmus test of the MasterCard of each album was listening to people there”, recalls the band. There they have held secret concerts, birthdays or the "White Christmas" parties, where all the indie musicians of the city played and which became mythical. Currently the bar has passed into the hands of Migue Haro's brothers (mutant bass player), one of them is Pedro , also a musician and member of the defunct band Mama Baker , which for a time was a sister band to Niños Mutantes.
The classic Pedestrian, where the Mutant Children 'lived' in the 90s
**ESHAVIRA CLUB (C/ Postigo de la Cuna 2) **
We changed from rock to jazz and flamenco at Club Eshavira, a place that has nurtured, for more than 20 years, the city's flamenco scene and one of the liveliest joints in Granada. It is currently closed for structural problems of the building that welcomes it, but hopes to reopen its doors on a date yet to be determined (in fact, it has requested collaboration to assume the cost of the work), so we include it in this compilation as an act of faith.
The Eshavira was one of the favorite places of the late Enrique Morente , who liked to sit and listen to the young people who started singing (and starting from time to time) . This club has also been the meeting point between indie and flamenco from Granada, a space where the members of Lizard Nick or The Planets shared endless nights with the teacher and where some of their collaborations were forged, a place where “you know when you enter but never when you leave”, according to drummer Eric Jiménez **(Los Planetas, Lagartija Nick and Los Evangelistas)**.
** GROUND FLOOR ROOM _(C/ Horno de Abad 11) _**
It is unthinkable to make a tour of the bars that shake the Granada music scene without mentioning the Sala Plantabaja. This room was the coolest place in town in the '80s and since then it has evolved, changed location, public and style without ever ceasing to be one of the cultural references of the Granada night.
Its concert schedule is the largest in Granada and all the indie groups (and other styles) of the city and many great national and foreign names have passed through its tables. The work of the room is especially important in the case of younger musicians , who usually play here, and for those who organize your emerging bands contest , an essential appointment when taking the pulse of the scene.
In their DJ sessions it is also common to find names of members of The Planets, Napoleon Only, Aurora, Trepat, Royal Mail and other gangs in the city. In short, run by musicians (currently run by members of Eskorzo) for musicians and lovers of independent culture.
Sala Plantabaja, the most extensive programming
** TORNADO ROCK AND ROLL CLUB _(C/ Pintor Velázquez S/N) _**
If you are more of Juan de Pablos than of Julio Ruiz , a good option is the Tornado Rock and Roll Club, a place where you can enjoy garage, ska, reggae or punk while you dance inside a cage, or sit in an eskay armchair to enjoy your beer to the rhythm set by the DJ on duty with his vinyl. Here it is easy to coincide with members of gangs such as Los Granadians del Espacio Exterior or La URSS, among others.
Juanillo Lee Pierce, representing in the Tornado
** POLAROID CLUB _(C/ Gran Capitan 25) _**
And if you're still sane and don't want to go to bed, we suggest a visit to the Polaroid room, the late club where the mythical of the scene show that they are still fit when it comes to staying up late . The Polaroid is a young room that took over from the sugarpop , another classic in the history of Granada indie, and since its opening it has not stopped launching proposals to enjoy the "Indie vibe" (in the best Éric style) and shake up the culture of the city.
In the orbit of the Ground Floor Room, this space offers concerts (although its programming is much smaller due to limitations imposed by the City Council) and varied DJ sessions in which it is easy to recognize some names, with the advantage that here the party can last until 7:00 in the morning . Apart from the initiatives of the club itself, among its followers it is more than likely to find members of any of the gangs in Granada (and elsewhere).
Rayman DJ to the Polaroid decks
THOSE WHO ARE NO LONGER
For true music lovers we include a bonus track with some places that, being a fundamental part of the history of rock from Granada, no longer exist. Time to get nostalgic!
**The Caves (rehearsal room) **
The Granada underground is authentic underground and it is because many of their bands really were forged underground. In the 1980s, a large part of the city's punk and rock scene rehearsed in caves located at the beginning of the Carretera de Murcia.
Those "locals" were run by the now disappeared Cristóbal, a man capable of dealing with the 33 bands who came to rehearse there, not always peacefully. He counts Eric Jimenez that, when they didn't pay on time, he would show up at the store, open his knife with his teeth and say “I'm already shitting on your mother”, at which point they knew it was time to settle debts. Legend has it that Cristóbal's hallmark when he got into a fight was to cut off the ear of his opponent.
Those were wild times for rock and those caves were the place of a thousand anecdotes from the hand of the groups that rehearsed there, among them Los Angeles, TNT, the Magic, 091 or KGB, among others . Today these caves are hidden behind a semi-ruined facade in which nothing indicates the importance that this place has played in the history of music in the city (and the country).
Granada, the origin of everything
Whistle
if there is a bar praised again and again by the musicians of the 80s in Granada, that is, without a doubt, the Silbar. Located in the area of Pedro Antonio de Alarcón (when Pedro Antonio was, supposedly, the street with the most bars in all of Europe), it was the "jungle of modernity, a place where you could listen to punk rock, new wave and the trends that came out later", according to José Ignacio Lapido.
At Silbar, the former 091 José Antonio García and it was there that the band met **Joe Strummer (The Clash)** during their period in Andalusia. Strummer became producer of that band from Granada that was just beginning.
Éric Jiménez also remembers the nights at Silbar in the days when he was a member of the punk band KGB and how “heavys, punks and gypsies fought”, to which he jokingly adds "It was like Brighton, but more dangerous."
Factory
Another bar in the Pedro Antonio de Alarcón area that It served as an “office” for various gangs from Granada in the late 1980s and early 1990s. . In this pub was born nick lizard and two of the band's key records were forged ( Hypnosis and Inertia ) .
You could also see the young people at the Factoría planets in the times when they left the demo league to burst, once and for all, into the history of Spanish indie with their album Super 8 .
Santa Maria Bar
On Almona street in San Juan de Dios there was the Santa María bar, a place where in the second half of the 70s the "quinquis of the neighborhood, the soldiery and the rockers" mixed , as José Ignacio Lapido recalls. There, in the heat of their cheap squid sandwiches and half-liter mugs of beer (it was the first bar in Granada to serve them), it was where 091 was founded and where Jose Ignacio and Tacho Gonzalez (drummer of 091 and Mama Baker) had the first meetings with José Antonio García so that he would become the singer of the band. “The Zeros have photos of us standing in the doorway with our huge toupees and our beer mug in hand…good times,” recalls Lapido. Éric Jiménez also highlights it and he adds that it was the place to find out about everything that was happening in Granada because the owner was very fond of talking.
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