Fangoria restarts the Nights of the Botánico with pop satanism and love for Benidorm

The other botanical garden in Madrid, unknown, hidden and generally underused, is located between the polytechnic schools and the Complutense faculties of the university city. It is actually very recent, it was inaugurated by Ruiz Gallardón as regional president in 2001, although different projects preceded it since 1927. Inside this landscaped box, the concert series Noches del Botánico has been installed since 2016, with the exception of the pandemic year 2020. , always between the months of June and July, welcoming the heat in the capital with the coolness of late afternoon and an incomparable aroma, radically different from that of rock and roll, which is that of the flowering trees that protect the venue .

Fangoria shielded by Nancys Rubias has been the combo chosen to open this year's call, where the dance floor audience could be on their feet again, repeating the performance they gave in 2021 at this same festival but this time without restrictions. The call was a box office success and a few minutes before the start there were hardly any tickets left for the occasional loose spot in the stands. It is a medium-sized festival, with pleasant mobility, not overcrowded, good sound, with rest areas and easy access.

"Long live nature and long live the Botanist" shouts Mario Vaquerizo in front of Nancys Rubias, with an effective play back full of funny versions where homage and casual pose prevail. The public was delighted. To the reinterpretations already assimilated into the group's repertoire, such as Yes sir I can boogie by Bacara (I do dance), Barry Ryan's Eloise (perhaps rather passed through Tino Casal's version) or Blondie's Heart of Glass ( Heart of ice) adds the most recent I'm in Love with a Psycho by Kasabian (Your boyfriend is crazy). In addition to other bombs created in the laboratory to succeed, such as the tributary Alphabet Nancy or Peluquitas, there was also the version of The King of Glam that makes it clear that if Nancys Rubias exists it is partly because Alaska and Dinarama (previously with Pegamoides and later Fangoria) they exist too.

Vaquerizo said goodbye to the public, in his role as opening act, warning that now the best of the night had arrived and that Fangoria is “the best we have at home, the best group in the world”. It may be that, in line with him, he exaggerates, but in the first part of that sentence he is not so far off the mark either.

Between one concert and others, a successful selection of songs was played, probably chosen by Fangoria, since one of them was Telex's Moscow Disco, a not too well-known group that could be said to be the Kraftwerk that went to Eurovision.

Fangoria brings a fresh new album from this year, Pagan Edifications, which follows Pop Existentialism, from the previous year. With a song by the latter, the concert begins (Absolute Momentism) with a brilliantly designed staging, with dancers, visuals and choreography. Rafa Spunky's voice covers and sustains, as always, that of Alaska, who continues to be a beast on stage.

"Some of you were here, sitting on little chairs, behaving well, because if not, the concert couldn't be held," says Alaska, remembering the summer of 2021. In the third song of the concert, Spectacular already appears and the audience stands up like a spring, attesting that this is a modern hit on a par with the old ones, which also fell (Electricians, Polisentimental Geometry, Party in Hell or Twisting Words).

The group plays their own songs reverted, reconstructed, repainted, remixed. New bases reinterpret songs like Electricistas and give it a force more typical of 1989 than of its year of production, 1999. Fangoria, in his constant exercise of revisiting, correctly resorts to more powerful sounds, although they are old, but they sound current.

The group's love for Benidorm is not recent, but their new song Satanism, abstract art and Benidorm is accompanied by visuals that place the city of Alicante in the place it deserves in its pop imaginary.

Night falls while the concert progresses, which surrounds the show with a mystery in which little by little the outside world darkens and only that illuminated box remains that is the stage and some lights that someone left on in the Faculty of Sciences Biological.

A few days ago they were fulfilled 20 years of death Alaska and Nacho Canut's partner in Dinarama and Pegamoides, Carlos Berlanga. Some of the songs that played last night were co-written by him, such as Bloody Pearls, Dancing or My boyfriend is a zombie, so, somehow, his absent presence inevitably flies over Fangoria's concerts.

The concert closed, in fact, with a tribute to the past, a second encore in which Fangoria asked the Nancys to join them on stage to perform My boyfriend is a zombie, in which Mario Vaquerizo appeared dressed as Freddy Krueger, remembering the old performances of Alaska and Dinarama. In a way, it is a tribute to themselves. And it wasn't the only one, as Fangoria undertook a version of Love Stories by the popular technopop group OBK from the nineties, in an exercise of generosity and acknowledgment common to them.

June 10 - Gipsy Kings Ft. Nicolas Reyes / Kiko Veneno

June 11 - Miguel Poveda

June 12 - Imelda May / Eli “Paperboy” Reed

June 13 - Khruangbin / Dirty Loops

June 14 - Pablo Alboran

June 15 - Burning / The Enemies

June 18 - Pat Metheny Side-Eye

June 20 - Patti Smith

June 21 - India Martinez

June 22 - Leon Benavente / The Ponds & Anni B Sweet

June 23 - Madness

June 24 - Prince Royce

June 26 - Tom Jones

June 27 - Wilco

June 28 - Wilco / La Tremendita

June 29 - LP

June 30 - Marisa Monte / Gustavo Santaolalla

July 1 - Juanes

July 2 - Belle And Sebastian / Beth Orton

July 3 - Crowded House

July 4 - Cat Power / Yellow Days

July 5 - Agnes Obel / John Grant

July 6 - The Smile

July 7 - Chucho Valdés & Paquito D´Rivera Reunion Sextet / Eliane Elias

July 8 - Estrella Morente / Kiki Morente

July 9 - Israel Fernández & Diego Del Morao / Israel Suárez “El Piraña”

July 10 - Nick Mason

July 12 - Cory Wong / Cory Henry & The Funk Apostles

July 13 - George Thorogood & The Destroyers / Vintage Trouble

July 14 - Zucchero / The Black Heritage Choir

July 15 - Snarky Puppy / Robert Glasper

July 16 - Vicente Garcia / Carla Morrison

July 17 - Carlinhos Brown / Cimafunk

July 18 - Steve Vai

July 19 - Jessie J.

July 20 - Youssou N'dour / Cymande

July 21 - Pink Martini / Eliades Ochoa

July 22 - Calexico / Asaf Avidan

July 23 - Yann Tiersen / Hania Rani

July 24 - Herbie Hancock / Alpha Mist

July 25 - Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals

July 27 - Oscar D'Leon / Eva Ayllón

July 28 - Carlos Vives

July 29 - Nacho Vegas

July 30 - Emir Kusturica & The No Smoking Orchestra / Muchachito Bombo Infierno

July 31 - Diana Krall