HOW MUSIC AND SCIENCE FICTION GRABBED ME

As long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by fantasy stories, everything related to impossible creatures, aliens, time and space travel, threats from the underworld or from the farthest galaxy...

I have no brothers or sisters and I grew up in Madrid in the 80s with an innate intolerance for football, so weekend afternoons outdoors with friends became the most absolute boredom or punishment for me, as football was almost the only thing on my friends' minds.

All of that, domestic video and the stories I found in books and comics made me progressively less and less interested in being part of the group.

Beeeeeeeep! Beeeeep! — Are you coming out to play?

 — I can't, I have to... —  I couldn't care less about the excuse, I was watching a movie about martians or drawing incredible adventures!!! And of course that was more important than another numbing afternoon of football for me.

I devoured all the old black and white horror movies on TV, watched fascinated films and series like Alien, Enemy Mine, V, Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Blob, Akira, Kabuto, Twin Peaks, X-Files... and read some Spiderman, X-Men and Fallen Angels comics, as well as Dragon Ball, 3x3 Eyes, Bubblegum Crisis, Gunmm and other mangas.

Music also knocked on my door at an early age. At home I heard music that went from Simon and Garfunkel, Elvis, The Beatles, Dire Straits, Barbra Streissand and Jorge Cafrune to Hombres G, Julio Iglesias, Carpenters, ABBA, Queen, Tina Turner or Beethoven. Some of this music didn't appeal to me at all when I was a kid, but I have to say that over the years, I'm very grateful to have known them from such a young age.

I was the youngest in the family, and the youngest of my cousins was at least 5 years older than me and when I was with them they kept playing albums and video clips of Europe, Kiss, Alice Cooper, AC/DC, Guns and Roses.... That was fun and not fucking football!

Step by step and in different ways, I started to discover more bands, other styles: Nirvana, Megadeth, Sonic Youth, Bad Religion, Melvins, Sepultura, Jaco Pastorius, Machine Head, At the Gates, Cradle of Filth, Alice in Chains, Lydia Lunch, Soundgarden, Kyuss, Los Planetas, Tom Waits, Art Blakey, Massive Attack, Radiohead, Charlie Haden, King Crimson, Mark Lanegan, Fantômas, Andrea Parker... The more styles and groups I knew, the more I realised how little I knew (nowadays I assume that it is completely impossible to know in depth more than 1% of the music that exists)

 

In this mess of cassettes, CDs and vinyls, the inevitable happened: I started to play. It was back in 1995 that I got my first bass (a low-price Washburn)... Yes my friends, the bass was the instrument that most caught my attention, as I am a defender of lost causes... and no! I didn't try it first with guitar, I got frustrated and then I moved on to something easier; I went straight for the bass!

Since I was very young I was fascinated by the bass sounds I heard in the songs of Elvis, Boney M, Aerosmith or Tina Turner, so when I discovered Rage Against the Machine, Jaco Pastorius, Stanley Clarke, Victor Wooten, Steve Bailey, Alex Webster... you can imagine how they blew my mind!

Whatever happened, one thing led to another and here I am, always immersed in new compositions and in constant search of new music and stories that transport me to other worlds.