Smoke fills the stage. Lasers green as kryptonite scan the crowd. People are pulsing with this familiar beat. Alvaro Espinosa, lead singer and guitarist, pulls away from the microphone, and the entire room bursts into song, singing words we’ve remembered since our childhood: “We don’t need no education.” Alvaro rattles his guitar again, and we sing some more. “We don’t need no thought control.” Across the crowd, people raise their bottles of Heineken, singing at the top of their lungs—one loud, Spanish voice rocking out this box called Sala Sol. “Hey, teacher. Leave those kids alone.”
“Pink Floyd in Madrid?” you ask. Well, not quite. They call themselves the Pink Tones, a tribute to the epic British progressive rock band that’s marked music history since the 60’s. Despite the Pink Tones mismatched stage appearance, the message is clear: they’re not here to look pretty, they’re here to make music, and as far as the music goes, they’re just plain good.
I’ve been to five concerts by the Pink Tones. I didn’t grow up listening to Pink Floyd, but by this last concert at Sala Sol I was singing along with the best of this band’s nostalgic following, howling the lines I could remember from “Comfortably Numb,” “Wish You Were Here,” “Money,” and “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.”
I guess you could call me a groupie. There’s about ten of us who know Alvaro, the guy in front with the wild hair. We’ve been going to his concerts for a while now. First it was the Radiohead band. Then it was the fusion jazz band. Now it’s the Pink Tones. One thing is for sure: we’re not sure what sound we’re going to get next.
Even more eclectic are the Friday nights when we all end up at Alvaro’s apartment with two or three guitars, singing our lungs out. The evening turns into early morning, and somehow we’ve managed to medley The Beatle’s “Revolution,” Elvis Presley’s “Are You Lonesome Tonight?,” Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama,” Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Cotton Fields” and a jukebox of other songs I don’t know, singing by request anything from American jazz to Spanish flamenco to Brazilian pop. Nothing’s off-limits.
We spend the night drifting between genres, languages and instruments, and at the end of the night when I’m sitting in the back of a taxi zipping across town to my place, I find myself thinking about the concert at Sala Sol and all those Spanish people singing Pink Floyd in English. “Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun,” they cry, swaying to the music, “Shine on you crazy diamond.” I wonder how many of them speak English. How many of them understand the words they’re singing? Either way, it’s obvious English doesn’t stop them from loving music. They sing the songs anyway.
It seems ironic now that my Spanish friends call me the international. I’m the one from beyond, the world traveler, the experienced one. Do they know I’m still trying to get the hang of these Pink Floyd songs?
I’ve been living internationally for two and a half years, but I get the feeling that my Spanish friends have been living internationally their whole lives. Most of them haven’t lived outside of Spain, but being with them is an international experience in itself. It’s the music, of course, and it’s thinking across borders. It’s conversations about Russian politics and Cuban mixed drinks and that movie in the theater from Afghanistan and travel plans to The Philippines. It’s thinking the whole world is fair game, within limits, ours for the taking.
Maybe it’s the proximity. Geographically speaking, Europe is tiny. It’s enough culture and language to fill a planet squished into one continent the size of Canada. Crossing borders is a way of life here.
Whatever it is I have to do to get my pair of border-crossing shoes, I’m listening. I want to learn how to cross borders too.
The taxi driver fiddles with the radio and finds his station, filling the cab with Spanish sounds. I stare from the window and listen to the radio—maybe I’ll be the one singing along this time.
