1988: the Barcelona group Subterranean Kids gets into a van to go on a self-managed tour of seven concerts in Germany. 1988, after: the hardcore band returns to Barcelona in another van, after the first one died, and with 22 concerts behind him in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Yugoslavia and Italy.
At one of those concerts, in a squat in Berlin, Subterranean Kids performed with Fugazi and NOFX. There was Dave Grohl, future Nirvana drummer, who a couple of days before had played with Scream in the same squatted house.
Subterranean Kids was part of the bill for two of the three NOFX farewell evenings in Barcelona last week, 5,000 attendees per night at Poble Espanyol. Because of that Berlin link, of course.
Group without instruments
Boliche (“Bolo, now that I’m older,” he says) was already a character on the B-side of Barcelona long before he was the drummer for Subterranean Kids. He was 12 years old when his Pa’s sister, older than him, enlisted him as a member of Frenopaticss, a punk group from Barcelona. It’s not that he didn’t know how to play, it’s that at first he didn’t have instruments. Live the idea. There was Último Springe, Kangrena and little else. The age of Boliche sang so much that in the Abracadabra, a musical bar with dissipated clientele and politics in Nou de Sant Francesc, they would not let him enter.
Boliche (Barcelona, 1967) bought a drum set from “a ‘rockabilly’ from Poble-sec” and between him and other members of the gang they took her by subway to her house. A woman tried to throw a cymbal of the instrument out of a car window in response to Boliche starting to pound a drum. The windows of the carriages were sash and could be raised and lowered.
Already at home. In a large apartment on Carrer de Sant Pau, on the same estate where Pîlar, Boliche’s mother, a widow, ran a pension. Most of the guests were regulars, people who lived there. A strange and distant family that never complained about the noise of the Boliche drums. Just as he never complained when his mother put him to bed as a child with a fight in the background in Sant Pau. Frenopaticss did two performances and played at the headquarters of ‘el Víbora’ for the filming of a pilot episode of a series about Makoki, which did not prosper. Ah: Pilar paid for the bowling battery, 25,000 pesetas.
Hospitality
Between the fact that Sant Pau street is in the center of the city and that Pa, deceased, and Boliche were hospitable, there was always a colleague who rang the bell and went up. Without forgetting that the sink on the floor was a Frenopaticss rehearsal site. At first they were the four punks that were in Barcelona and its surroundings; later, more punks from here and there. Because Pa traveled and Boliche rode a business that records cassettes of punk and hardcore records that cannot be found in Barcelona. If he fell into his hands a fact sheet from Stockholm or Milan in which ten addresses appeared, at ten o’clock he would write and perhaps five would reply. The exchange or sale of music by mail began. Any trip abroad by colleagues also translated into replicable discs. His tapes were gold, some of entire LPs and others of “110 bands in 90 minutes”, according to his words. That informal structure of Patizambo Records was the base, where Subterranean Kids published their first demo (1985) and their first mini-LP (1986). To which foreign bands of the wave began to come to Barcelona, the Sant Pau apartment often served as a refuge.
Pilar freaked out when her children introduced her to Xavi Shock, ‘el Dimoni’, ‘el Vomitos’, ‘el Réquiem’ or Johnny Badges. Mom, this is ‘the Vomiting’. But he soon assumed the pints and aliases. One day he was shopping at La Boqueria and the stallholder told him: “Look at that one, how does it look”. “She’s my daughter-in-law,” she replied. It was Semolina Tomic, then Boliche’s girlfriend. Years later, the shopkeeper in question was still apologizing to Pilar.
cult cook
Before the pension on Carrer de Sant Pau, Pilar had had a restaurant, also in the Chinatown, now the Raval. “She was a very good cook,” Bolo says. Their potato tortillas and their croquettes they achieved cult status in the hardcore scene.
Related news
Pilar died on March 31, 2020. Her pension, in Sant Pau, 15, died before because of the municipal demands for the Olympic Games of Barcelona-92. It’s not that Pa and Boliche were in the business of keeping it: it wasn’t their thing. In any case, in Sant Pau, 15 important things happened for the popular culture of Barcelona.
The formation of the Subterranean Kids reborn for the NOFX ‘shows’ is made up of the original members Skittle and Mime (singer), guitarist Alberto Collazo (GRB, Loads, Raiser) and bassist Alex del Pozo (Carpe Diem, Afraid To Speak In Public). Already put, they will do more concerts.