In fact, The last on the line He’s been back for a while now. In 2016 Manolo García and Quimi Portet They gave four memorable concerts at the Razzmatazz, recalling the successes of Los Rápidos, García’s band that Portet, who played guitar in Kul de Mandril, joined, and Los Burros, the band that Portet formed and to which he joined later García, in the prehistory of most emblematic group of Spanish rock between 1985 and 1998. Those who were there remembered the unforgettable successes, but surely they also knew that they were facing a unique event that would not translate into a full-fledged return. “We are not in the profile of going out on the road now to make mountains of money,” Quimi Portet said then. And by faith they have maintained that maxim. He ‘Pyramid disruption’ announced for December of this year, it is not, therefore, a new album by El Último de la Fila, nor a tour that would surely be legendary, nor “full pavilions or stadiums”, as Jordi Bianciotto already said days ago in these pages and as Quimi Portet has been in charge of clarifying. They do not return, but they apparently offer (and from what we have been able to intuit with the ‘single’ ‘Far from the laws of men’) new versions, new arrangements, a studio work where both play all the instruments, an activity that , for Quimi Portet, seems much more pleasant than starting a new ‘tour’, 35 years later, of that band that “could do very Martian things and others almost folkloric.” “We were like a ‘bulldozer’ of popular music,” he said. .
Portet, alone, has said a few things about music, performances and the meaning of life. In fact, since they separated amicably (and they continued making paellas or scrambled mushrooms Portet style), with hardly any controversies (there was one about the language, but very discreet), they have not stopped seeing each other and having projects together. García collaborated with Portet’s first album and also on ‘Ós bipolar’ and we can still remember, for example, the ‘Aviones platados’ that they played together in October 2021 at the tribute concert to Àngel Casas, on TV-3. This separation was justified because each one wanted to do things on their own and, suddenly, we discovered that Quimi Portet also sang and that he did so based on two premises that have governed his entire career. First, the music; then the letters. And another: “The concerts are not left; the records, yes. “I want to leave my little things, which are records.”
In this process, the musician born in Vic has had the “tiny claim”, but robust, of sing for few people, to become the “inter-regional star” (as he defined himself in a book, in 2007) that relies on other types of hymns, linked to a popular culture, I would dare say “rural”, which is based on obvious things that hide double, enigmatic meanings. ‘Si plou, ho farem al pavelló. Live in Cincinnati’ is a compilation of all of his solo achievements and also a declaration of principles, a kind of philosophy of life. No problem. We can change, if things are not going well. If it rains, in the pavilion. And we can do it all, even if it is in a pavilion about to fall.
Pla’s influence
While going up and down with The Last One in the Row, Quimi Portet, on the tour bus, I read Josep Pla. The complete work, in three years of roads. He has spoken about it sometimes, and has recognized his influence, but also that of Armhole wave of Santiago Rusiñoland he said, for example, that ‘L’home dibuixat’ was a bridge that united those who had taken a trip with those who read the writer from Palafrugell.
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Portet’s humor, increasingly sharp and pungent, not nihilistic, but uncooked, with high doses of intelligence (like a self-preservation instinct), we could appreciate in his interventions in ‘Natura sàvia’, the TV3 animal program that He shared with another Pla, Albert. There, both of them sitting, they used the formula that Carner described to describe Catalan humor, which is an ironic exaltation of the obvious.
Quimi Portet confesses that It was the simple and rudimentary guitar riffs that changed his life.. A direct, tribal music that preceded the lyrics that would come later. Soundscapes are more exciting than words. We can get tired of putting them together. And Portet is one of the best lyricists in the country. But as he himself says, a violin solo comes later and then you really get excited. The Last One does not return to the pavilions. Rain or no rain, Portet continues playing.