Thanks 20 minutes

Pipe that! Originally uploaded by itsjustanalias.

On my way to work in the mornings I pass a chap handing out a free paper called 20 Minutos, it’s a good little rag, short articles which help with the Spanish and a few bits and pieces of what’s on. We saw that this weekend the interceltic festival¹ was starting in Avilés² . We’d driven past Avilés before. It’s an industrial town and port, still full of heavy industry and the remains of heavy industry. We hadn’t been to the centre though, and the draw of live music meant we thought it was worth a trip. We’ll have to go back, because the centre of the city is charming. Its historic centre is much more extensive than Oviedo’s, small streets and restaurants that were packed, lots of old squares and churches. We found where the concert was and wandered into a little place round the corner for a wine and tapa which, when it came was a mini fried breakfast: fried quail’s egg and a slice of chorizo on some soft home made crisps all mounted on a slice of bread. We followed that with some smoked anchovies with really good cheese.

Then on to the music. The festival lasts all week, and features musicians from all over the celtic fringe³. Tonight was Scottish, kicking off with Fred Morrison, who was introduced as ‘possibly the best piper in the world’. They weren’t kidding, he was phenomenal. He looked like James May’s dumpier brother (he of Top Gear), and played a couple of different pipes, both Irish and Scottish. But blimey he could pipe… it was like watching Jimi Hendrix do new and interesting things to the electric guitar, or that scene from Bird where Charlie Parker brings the rest of the band to a standstill. He was accompanied by a guitarist who looked all of sixteen, who occasionally looked a little desperate as Fred would pick up the pace of some fiendish stompy reel and smile and laugh as he played faster and faster. Mr Guitar kept up though, and provided some fine rhythm. I’ve seen some tunes knocked out with the inside of mammals but this guy really blew the guts out of it. After that the stage was invaded by the Red Hot Chili Pipers. Three pipers (ex army from the look of them), a guitarist, drummer, pianist and two additional drummers (one being a two time world champion snare drummer). They were a party band (I imagine they go down a storm at just about any festival, celtic or not), lots of mixtures of rock tropes and pipes, pipe battles, pipe v guitar, drum battles, coldplay (shudder) songs, Hills of Argyll where they were joined on stage by a massed band of pipers also over for the festival. Great fun. If you ever get the chance, they’re worth seeing. We nipped away just in time to catch the 2am bus back to Oviedo, the buses run through the night in summer so the Ovetense can enjoy the bright lights of the coastal cities.

¹The first c in celtica, the Spanish version of celtic, is an ‘s’ which really puts me on the wrong foot… ‘seltic’ are the football team, we’re Celts, with a hard C, oh yes… I was Irish today ²pronounced abbey-less rather than a-viles or ahveelez ³which is not the haircut Big Country used to sport