... and then you have a child.
And on Spotify, you move from the “Indie Novelties” to “Disney Princesses”.
Going to a concert becomes a logistical operation worthy of the landing in the Normandy as it includes babysitters, granddads and an explanation of what, how and when you have dinner and go to bed.
And forget about going to a festival (apart from those at the end of the term in the nursery).
Stay calm, you’re not the only one to whom this has happened. Being in this position, a group of restless minds invented the Minipop Festival. The idea is that you can go to a festival with your kids. It’s not that you have a place where you leave them, but you enjoy the concerts and the parallel activities with them. During the concerts, there is a carpet in the first row so that the kids can dance without being bothered. Next to the stages,there are workshops where they can make masks. In the background, more workshops, a bar, a rest area, photo booths...
The festival opened its doors on Friday, the 5th of June at 6p.m. with an oriental night (with workshops where you can make a geisha or ninja doll, have a sushi-based dinner and end the night with a Japanese movie). The musical line-up promised a varied programme.
The ice was broken by Ivory, a young blues/rock trio from Tarragona with influences from the 70s and who won various competitions last year (DO TGN, Reussona...). Long guitar solos, strong drums, and a very harmonious group which makes you feel that they get on well, have played a lot together and really enjoy it.
Then the psychedelic pop quartet Trau took the baton from them and took us to the 60s with their music and their style. They are the latest winners of the Sona 9, which is one of the most prestigious competitions in Catalonia. The singer of the band is their drummer, who gets the help of the rest of the band members for the choruses, thus confirming a potent vocal base.
The last group on Friday were Rombo, a female Indie quartet, straightforward and very cool. After this last concert, the night was closed with a Japanese dinner and the screening of the movie “Wolf Children” by Mamoru Hosoda.
Saturday afternoon was the main day of the festival. Many more festival-goers, more workshops, and the main acts on stage.Copa Lotus, who also won the Sona 9 (2013), performed first and presented their second country-pop disc produced by Ken Stringfellow on stage. Then it was XaviAlías’ turn – very personal Catalan pop with very poetic lyrics.
And then came the festival’s musical highlight. At 7:30p.m., David Carabén, the singer of Mishima, entered the stage and combined songs of his band with versions of French song, of poems by Joan Vinyoli, … Some of the stories he told in his songs were not what we would call child-friendly, but you could feel that he was very comfortable on stage and that he knew how to adapt to the format of the Minipop. It was the concert with the largest audience and no one was disappointed. After this concert, everything came to a standstill. In Berlin, Barça played in the Champions League final and on the big screen parents and children watched the match together. With this “competition”, another of the headliners of this year’s line-up came on stage: Núria Graham. The singer-songwriter from Vic presented her disc “Bird Eyes” to an audience that – some kind of gala village – resisted football’s call. After the match, the night finished withthe concert of The Seihos, who found themselves in front of an audience that was very happy about Barça’s victory (the singer himself wore a shirt of the champion). Their commitment on stage and the covers they performed (The Strokes, The Beatles, Bob Dylan) made it easy for them to get a connection with the audience, which demanded an encore to which they responded with a magnificent “Like a rollin’ stone”. Superpandas DJs closed the night – even though at that point there were few children left.
The festival closed its doors on Sunday with a morning event with small workshops, Anna Roig playing French songs and a puppet show, all of it being some kind of familiar festival hangover.
You can’t deny the success of the Minipop festival. Its five years in existence created a faithful audience that comes back and grows year by year. The idea of combining music and family has been copied by other festivals like “Les Formiguetes” in Benicàssim or the “Portal Blau” of l’Escala, which will be like a small version of Minipop. And thus we can finish the sentence with which we have started this report: “… and then you have a child. And you enjoy concerts with it.”
