It all started back in 2012, when a group of friends from Toledo, Talavera de la Reina and Béjar put on their mid-season hats to pay tribute to the musicians and bands that populate the Toledo music scene and, by extension, Bejarano, something that reflected in a blog dedicated to this world that now celebrates its tenth anniversary.
An event that they wanted to celebrate with the publication of ‘You will see! In Talavera there is a scene’, a book co-published together with Descrito Ediciones that includes interviews and articles dedicated to Talavera bands, groups and DJs with the aim of vindicating the music scene of the City of Ceramics. Following in the footsteps of other groups and media such as Monasterio de Cultura, Rutas Enemigas, Música Envenenada, El Kaleidoscopio Musical and Sputnik Launch, they also began to pay special attention to Toledo and Talaverana music.
“The city council has a historical debt with the Talavera music scene.” That’s how emphatically Rubén González Moreno expresses himself, one of the members of ‘Mi Chambergo de Entretiempo’. This is the name of the blog and the musical group that has compiled a large number of interviews and articles with people related to music in Talavera, carried out, apart from by Rubén, by his brothers Salvador and Óscar, Rosa López Ortega, Cristina Martínez Portocarrero and Andrés Vázquez Sánchez-Horneros. All of them, some crazy people of music.
“The book was born from that need to vindicate the Talavera music scene,” emphasizes Rubén González Moreno, who tells ABC that they presented this project to the Talavera de la Reina City Council, which helped them by covering expenses with the purchase of several copies. In fact, ‘You see! In Talavera there is a scene’ has been possible thanks to Iberian Catedritos and the Department of Youth and Celebrations and the Department of Cultural Promotion. Something to which the city council of Toledo did not agree, to which they also transferred the same idea for the city. However, the member of ‘Mi Chambergo de Entretiempo’ anticipates that, once the costs are covered, they will launch another publication with bands and musicians from Toledo.
Not in vain, as González Moreno points out, «in Toledo there are more concert halls than in Talavera and the tours of important bands of the national music scene pass through there, without forgetting Toledo musicians of the stature of Julián Maeso or Jero Romero, among others”. But, returning to Talavera, he asks his city council and private entities from the world of culture to open rehearsal rooms and concert halls for bands from Talavera and from abroad who want to play there.
In this sense, he affirms that “the only good thing that has happened to Talavera during the pandemic has been the opening of Cerro Negro, a business that apart from brewing craft beer, bets on music and art in general, with the organization of concerts. and exhibitions that have livened up the Talavera cultural scene a bit».
Through the pages of the book ‘You will see! In Talavera there is a scene’ veteran formations such as Lobos Negros and TV Explosion meet, others that disappeared leaving their mark on the banks of the Tagus such as Aeroflot or Preparaciones para Bodas, as well as artists and bands that still residing in other locations breathe energy into the musical beat talaverano as Mortal Death, Phantom Crest and Matte/Glossy.
The sound of guitars in its many guises is very present in the book with the punk rock of Bridges To NoWhere, Ana Cramming and Invasión Cochambre; the progressive metal of AfterDark, the sound promiscuity of Emilia, Pardo and Bazán and the crazy theatricality of Ángel y Cristo. Every music scene must have groups that edit and program the bands and they give a good account of the vicissitudes of carrying out this work in their testimonies. and Neighbors DJs.
As extra content, Mi Chambergo de Entretiempo has added to the book the most read interviews since 2014, the year in which those responsible for the blog decided to give the interviewees a Talavera ceramic jug, another of the icons of this blog, as an acknowledgment. collective together with the chambergo. The winners are made up of Biznaga in 2014, Pedro Vera in 2015, Chef Creador in 2016, The Government in 2017, Tendido Cero in 2018, Invasión Cochambre in 2019 and Bonita in 2020. The book also has an appendix that includes the discography of the Talavera bands together with a QR code, from which you can access via mobile phone, the references of the groups published on online music platforms.
The cover is the work of Talavera illustrator and graphic designer Aarón Mora and shows a post-apocalyptic Talavera, inspired by the final scene of the movie ‘Planet of the Apes’. In it, a horseman with a guitar on his back sees a ruined statue holding a jug. Other ‘ceramic’ artists who have collaborated in the publication have been the director Pepe Sánchez Moreno, the designer and illustrator Fernando Díaz and the photographers Flash Photography, Óscar González Moreno, Fernando Beat del Río, Víctor Vicgodi and Lucía Morales. In the end, in the opinion of Rubén González Moreno, “in the midst of pandemics, wars and other setbacks, we wanted to show that Talavera must cling to culture, music and other artistic expressions to get out of the quagmire.”
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