I think a lot about the last few times. The last time you will visit a place, the last time you will laugh with your friends, the last time you will kiss your children, the last time you will make love. The bad thing about last times is that you never know it’s the last time.
I didn’t know that day in Alcalá de Henares last year that it would be the last time I would see Robe sing. I waited with enthusiasm and anxiety for the concerts planned at the Movistar Arena, but they did not arrive. And now there will be no more songs from the heart, mind and balls of Robe Iniesta. Forgive me for being rude, but we’re talking about Robe.
Robe had already been killed. News of his death became a hoax years ago. He took it “with joy knowing they were lying,” as he told me. “AND“It’s a good time for them to speak well of you,” he said.
Well, let’s go. Robe started selling trinkets, I would have liked to buy him something, licorice, to thank him in secret. YesHe paid for his first demo by selling tickets. If you bought one, they would give you the disk when they managed to make it. save it. Steal themHe started with Extremoduro in 1987. Those of us who lived through the last century refer to the years that way.
In 1989 he released Transgressive rock. And it was. Metallic, loud, dirty, cool. It was the first record I bought in my life. A reissue in fact. With 2,000 pesetas that I asked for in advance, telling my mother that I had to buy it quickly, because it was a special edition. It was a joke.
We are one The animals, Deltoya And Where are my friends? They said things with the crudeness that Robe said to them, who spoke of the same things about sex, death, drugs, prison, as he did about poetry, philosophy…
“I specified / The date of my death with Satan / I deceived him / And now there is no one to stop me,” says Robe in Jesus Christ Garcia. I don’t think I’m with Satan. If I believed in God, I would be with him. A chaotic detail of his way of being: He didn’t like AI because he once asked it who would win in a fight between Allah and Yahweh.. Ever since the AI went off the rails, it seemed like crap to him.
My children protest when they are in the car We take turns playing songs and mine “last a long time.” I always threaten to put them in my turn Rock. 29 minutes and 28 seconds of song. At his age, 16, I slipped a hidden analog camera between my legs during a concert at Kanciller. Taking photos was prohibited. I made two: one of Robe, blurry. Another one of my colleague José Cebrián and me, with Robe behind. It was 96 and we were the pioneers of the selfie. My first Extremo concert took place in 95. The last, in 2024. Nearly 30 years filling a lifetime of songs. At Robe concerts, bald heads and long hair looked the same.. Older than young. The heavy ones how chic. Men and women. Local and foreign. It was universal.
Robe was our muse (a tousled-haired muse, taking breaks during concerts for who knows what) and Javi, Manu and Jose ended up creating a band (Etílica, the name of the group, don’t judge us) covering songs, many of them by Robe. I asked Robe how it felt to have been the driving force behind many young musicians. “It makes me feel good. This makes me proud. Musicians and artists in general need to be supported,” he told me.
“Mand I meet my fairy, who is crazy too”… Robe’s muses must have been quite the case. Among them, there was always Manolo Chinatoonly instead of little flowing dresses and lyres, he wears corduroy pants and a peasant shirt, as well as a double beer on top of a bar.
Marcos Ana, Antonio Machado, Cervantes, Raúl Lomas, Federico Garcia Loca, Sister KampanaHomer, Miguel Hernandez, Pablo Neruda, Ramon Romero Ruiz, Santos Isidro Seseña… what a mix. But you already know thatand they will only judge by your mistakes“, but not Robe. Prejudices do not compose songs.
Robe Iniesta composed because he knew that each song was better than the previous one, that it was sublimated. “The song I love the most is always the last one I make. The last thing I do is what I love the most and I’m always like “damn, how did I not think of that before?”‘” he told me.
Here is my opinion: Agilla It was his last angry album and from there he started to soften. But a candy filled with liquor. Banned songs, Me, absolute minority, The innate law, Defective hardware, For all audiences…they put the metal or rock guitars to combine with the violins, the piano… noise gives way to symphony.
If you leave it makes you cry. And it turns you on. It’s a fucking anthem that sings about everything good a human being can have: courage, empathy, love, sex, friendship, respect, admiration…”If you leave / I find myself in this impasse“Nothing is happening, in this blocked street there is an old Peugeot where Robe’s music is playing.
Extremoduro ceased to be and began to be Robe. Just like that, because the last name was only used by those who didn’t talk about it often. They came What floats in our heads (what milk will float if not a verse from a song by Robe?), Destroy, Welcome to the storm, Midwifery (with her conceptual pussy on the cover) and The air carries us away.
“That the power of art / Well could save us / Of an inert life / Of a sad life / Of a bad death”, heard in The power of art. You ran away, Robe. Iniesta’s life was chaotic, full of drugs, sleepless nights, friends, alcohol, shifts and excess. But art always held his hand just before he sank. You can sail on a guitar. You can breathe a song. Everyone’s entire life can be summed up in a sung verse.
Robe thought most people were idiots. Everyone is going to fuck themselves. Stupid people living in a stupid world of bankers and lawyers not naked Indians. But damn, how he understood people. How their songs spoke about you. Of your shit. Of your passions. How they shook their feelings, kicked them in the ass. And there won’t be any more songs like that. The last fucking times.
“I wish my voice was so strong / That sometimes the mountain roars / And that you listen, the social spirit asleep / Words of love from my throat“he sang in Love, love, love and develop the soul. Yes, we hear it, Robe, your strong voice. We hear your hoarse voice. Forever.
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