Friday, 2nd July. At last I can see The Umbrella Hating Generation live. I had heard something on the radio, but a friend of mine, Xavier, recommended me the band. And I thought I would surely like. It was at Brothers´ 6, on the beach, in Santiago de la Ribera,... when I arrived the place, I reached the first row and didn´t move, thinking "how good they were live. I loved the show. It´s so different..." I was surprised, they were better than I could imagine. The best gig I´ve seen for times -I told myself- and the sound was excellent, and I fell seduced by Mónica´s voice or the Sofía´s cello, or the delightful music that the seven real funny musicians of The Umbrella Hating Generation were playing.

    When they finished their show, we went out for a drink, we sat down, I took out the tape recorder and made the some questions that Ángel Pop and I had written some hours ago.

    But as I´m a chaos, when I was going to type the interview this week, I couldn´t find the tape, so I had to send again the interview by e-mail, and Alfredo answered it kindly at once. You can also read the critic of their EP album on the section about album and demos.
 
 

-EPA: Who are you? What are your names? What do you play? Tell me about your beginnings...

    Alfredo: Well. We are 7 people (Alfredo-guitar, Roberto-horn, Sofía-cello, Tomás-bass , Jesús-percussion, Iván-drums y Mónica-voice)
    Now we are writing the songs for our next CD, and they are all in spanish, so the older ones are over.
   Tomás and I started the band, after a Papas Fritas´ gig, in which we were astonished by their songs and the freshness of their compositions. I, as I was studying music, I began looking for a violin and a cello, and this was the birth of the band: the line-up was Alba - voice, Sonsoles - violin, Sofía, Tomás and me. As I played the precussion, it was easy to find Iván and Jesús as they studied with me. So we were 7; the horn entered to help us in our gig at Maravillas for the Final of the Demo´s contest. Later, Sonsoles and Alba had to leave the band, because their parents didn´t allow them play with us (they were only 15 years old), so we looked for Mónica, so the real beginning of the band could be in January of 1998.
   Since then, we´ve been playing in Pamplona, Bilbao, Murcia and Tarragona, besides Siroco and Maravillas. Maybe we haven´t played a lot in Madrid, but there are not many places to play.
 
 

-EPA: Any parallel or previous bands?

  Alfredo: Yes. Tomás and I played in a band called Mind The Gap, but it disappeared when t.u.h.g. were born.
 
 

-EPA: Who writes the songs in T.U.H.G?

    Alfredo: Tomás and I write the songs, although lately my brother has written some. With that original idea, it´s taken into the rehearsal room, and then everyone makes his arrangements. Sometimes the arrangements are planned, but sometimes not, and everyone says his ideas. Tomás writes all the lyrics, so I can´t say much about them, but I think that they are lyrics that express nicely some people´s feelings, specially his.
 
 

-EPA: How did you contact Jabalina?

    Alfredo: I met Tanis a year before that Mónica joined the band, and the day after a Baby Powder´s gig (where Sofía played cello with them), we gave him a demo and in two days, he called us to record an EP album.
 
 

-EPA: Do you think your music studies can influence the final sound of the songs?

  Alfredo: It´s very important. It´s very difficult to find a horn in a pop band, not only there are only very few people who play horn, but you have to be very skilled to play it and Roberto is, as he has finished their horn studies, so he has a total control of what he plays. This makes that melodies and arrangements don´t depend on the skill.
 
 

-EPA: Have you ever thought of singing in spanish? Have you ever tried?

    Alfredo: Yes. And the songs sound nice, so much that we are going to sing in spanish since now. So we can express much better and communicate what we want to say in an easier way.
 
 

-EPA: Do you feel a part of the current national music scene?

    Alfredo: No. The new scene is for bands like Meteosat, Los Fresones, and so on,... even yours (referring to Vacaciones)... anyway, we don´t think we are still so important to be part of the musical scene.
 
 

-EPA: Why do you title "untitled" the last song of the EP? Why is called "b-e" the first one? what does it mean?

    Alfredo: It´s called untitled, as it´s a song that we recorded on the computer, when we recorded the demo, and we didn´t know how we could name it, and on the computer it was written untitled whenever we wanted to save the file; so we called it this way.
    B-E is the transcription of the chords of the verse in the american way: B is SI and E is MI, and as we are very bad at looking for titles, this was the easiest option.
 
 

-EPA: Which is the best season to listen to T.U.H.G.?

    Alfredo: Autumn. In some songs I can see some images of a walk along a park and the leaves falling down from the trees, like in untitled.
    But there are also happier songs too.
 
 

-EPA: 3 national bands and 3 international ones.

    Alfredo: Spanish: La Buena Vida, Family and Manta Ray.
                  Abroad: Tindersticks, Pernice Brothers and Calexico.
 
 

-EPA: Choose an option:

-EPA: Next projects.

    Alfredo: Sing in spanish, and make the best album of the next year.