Sixties Rock Weekend in Castellón, 3rd edition with a luxurious international programme

The third edition of Sixties Rock Weekend takes place from 3 to 5 March 2011 with a luxury line-up and a wide range of styles not forgetting Hard Rock,  "Garage",  Psychedelia, Beat and Pop. With this range of groups, not so diverse as it may seem, it’s difficult to select one proposal over another so we have chosen to summarize the career of all groups depending on the day on which their performances are planned. As you know this festival is organized by Pick Up Productions formed by two of the components of the band Los Búhos, Iván Cabrera and María Pascual.

Thursday, March 3

The March 3rd Festival is inaugurated at the Auditorium and Congress Centre in Castellón (placed in Avenida Virgen de Lidón, 50) where all concerts are held as well as various activities related to the theme of the event. That same night Magic Dildoss and The Dustaphonics are performing.

Magic Dildoss

Magic Dildoss are Antonio Jorro, voice and chorus, Rafa Leal, guitar and vocals, who formed part of the "garage" band from Castellón named “Los Fóssiles”, Germain Albero, bass and vocals and also "Varo" Coalla, drums. Together they give life to a whole band of "garage" style sixties with an amazing creativity presenting their first EP, released by Hair Man Records, with the tracks “Kill Time” and  “All That I Want to Say” on side A and on side B, 'Hey!' and “It's A Crying Shame", a version of a track by Gentlemen (Dallas, Texas 1964-1968). The album was recorded at Circo Perrotti studios in June 2008, produced by Jorge Explosion and Mike Mariconda who are collaborating playing the harmonica and lap steel.

The Dustaphonics are great specialists in black music. Is the band of Healer Selecta (Yvan Serrano Fontova), Dj, producer, musician and founder of the group from London Raison D'tre, with more than a decade in active and with the support of important figures of R&B, Soul and Rock and Roll. The Dustaphonics mix different styles with an amazing skill and an overwhelming attitude which find in the singer Ayna one of its major artistic centers of attraction. With the band collaborate some of the best musicians in the UK scene as Bruce Brand (Milkshakes), Snowboy on percussion, John Gibbs (The Masonics) and Tura Satana, author of the words of 'Burlesque Queen',which is included in a single of 2009 that has in its side B the song 'Tornado', a cover of The Giants. This single was released with Dirty Water Records and recorded at Studio Gizzard Studio. They are on tour in Spain and they are also playing on March 4th at the Rated Festival of Murcia,   on 5th March at the Loco Club of Valencia, March 6th  at the Gran Café of León, 7th at Rockclub in Orense , 8th at Cocodrilo in Ponferrada, 9th March at the Nasa in Santiago de Compostela, and 11th  in Vigo, at Mondo Club.

Friday, March 4

On March 4 are performing The Stolen Jackets, Sweet Leef, The Attention!! and Baby Woodrose.

The Stolen Jackets

The Stolen Jackets are Nacho (voice and guitar), Héctor (guitar), Franch (bass) and Pascual (drums), musicians who formed before Ultimabala, a hard rock project. This is a quartet from Vila-real (Castellón) who play  "garage" rock with influences from classics like Led Zeppelin, The Who, MC5, Kinks, Jimmi Hendrix or Cream. They have four original songs and a great repertoire of covers. Their name The Stolen Jackets refers to a jacket that were stolen to the brother of one of its components. On February 3d they are at the Fnac of  Valencia and on 4th at Sala Clamores in Madrid.

Sweet Leef

The Viennese band Sweet Leef are Berni (vocals, guitar), Happy Betty (ex vocals bass), and also the brothers Mike (guitar) and Alex Elam (drums). They form together a rock group with rock determination and with roots in the seventies. Its musicians come from various sixties musical projects as Mike and Alex, while Bernhard comes from Indie bands and Betty Happy from a freakbeat group as Victorians, soul/mod as Happy Beat and The Vips or tribute to the Small Faces and Afterglow.

The Attention is an Austrian band specialist in R&B with clear references to the mod-sixties bands like the Animals which guitarist Hilton Valentine has expressed his admiration for the band. It consists of Georg Ondrak (guitar), Gerald Dittelm (bass), Martin Tomeza (drums), Peter Ehardt (guitar) and Mario David (voice and main songwriter).

They have performed in many times in some of our best state auditoriums and they have always won success for their total dedication that show on each of their performances. The German label Screaming Apple Records released their first album, self-titled, which contains great tracks with personal style as 'Beat Machine ',' Blank Love Boogie ',' Shimmynizer’ or ‘Sea Sea Rider’. In 2010 they also released a single for Cheap Records with the tracks 'Ace Face' and 'Bring It To Jerome', fabulous version of the Bo Diddley song.

Baby Woodrose

Baby Woodrose was created in Copenhagen (Denmark) in 2001 under the name of the hallucinogenic plant Argyreia Nervosa, named in english "Hawaiian Baby Woodrose”. It was born as a personal project of Lorenzo Woodrose, after passing through the cult band On Trial. Lorenzo only recorded "Blows Your Mind", their first album. Later joined the bassist Riky Woodrose, 'The Moody Guru' who had played with him in On Trail, and the drummer Fuzz Daddy who would be called Rocco Woodrose. Together they form a power trio of psychedelic hard rock and since 2003 they have recorded six albums, the last one is Baby Woodrose (Bad Afro, 2009), produced by Johan Gellet and in which Lorenzo returns to play all the instruments articulating great tracks ranging from "Garage" to the Psychedelic Folk.

Saturday, March 5

On the last day of the festival is programmed the  performances of Neil Jung, Small Jackets, Imperial State Electric, The Confidents, Supersweet (ex-Chico Boom) and The Jaybirds.

Morning play Neil Jung, a cover band formed by musicians from Castellón that will also perform on the 29th of January at the Four Seasons in their city.

Small Jackets is an Italian hard rock band inspired by the groups of the seventies, half way between the hard boogie, blues and funk with three released albums, the latest one is "Cheap Tequila" 2009. The band was born in 2000 with the drummer Danny "Savanas ". "Play At High Level" in 2004 was his first official album and two years later brought out "Walking The Boogie", which included Nick "Royale" and Robert "Strings" Dahlqvist from the Hellacopters, in the track "Forever Night". In March 2009, brought out "Cheap Tequila" which was recorded in the Swedish studies of Music a Matic Studios in Gothenburg, produced by Chips K (Sator) and Henryk Lipp, who worked the sound of bands like The Hellacopters, The Nomada, Sator and Millencolin.

Small Jackets will be the support band of the Imperial State Electric spanish tour, another star of the festival. They’ll play on 2nd March in Bilbao, on 3th March at the Apolo in Barcelona, and on March 4th at Sala Caracol de Madrid.

Imperial State Electric is the new project of the Swedish Nicke Andersson 'Royale', ex vocalist and guitarist for the disappeared Hellacopters who has returned to join to Dregen, from Backyard Babies, who already played guitar in the first two albums of his previous band. After the dissolution of the Hellacopters in 2008, Anderson started working on a solo album but changed the course and thought it was better to form a new band. Complete the formationof the band the bassist Dolf De Borst (The Datsuns, hard rock band from Cambridge in New Zealand), the guitarist and drummer Tobias Egge and the drummer Thomas Eriksson (Captain Murphy, rock band from Stockholm). Their self-titled debut album was released in March 2010 with 12 songs edited by Psychout Records.

The Confidents are an original formation from Barcelona formed in 2007 which accommodates the beat, rock'n'roll and surf, with three singers who are her solo Diana CF, who was in Diana & The Rockatones, or Diana & The Atomics, Raquel Ares and Africa Ligero on vocals, Alex Garcia (lead guitar) from Inedia, a new guitarist Emanuele, Joan Codina on drums and Xavi Fernández on bass that were in bands like Reflex, Edición Limitada or The Park. They recorded a pair of singles. They play on 4 February in the festival Rockin 'Race Jamboree at the Disco Apartamentos Buensol (C/Salvador Allende, 35) in Torremolinos. Their first album, an EP released with Butterfly Records in 2008, consisted of four tracks, two original 'Honey, honey' and 'Are you Ready', and two versions of Nancy Sinatra and the famous 'Love Potion Nr 9' by the Clovers . The second came with Sleazy records in 2009 and entitled "It's Christmas Time". It also contained four songs, one original which titled it and covers of Christmas songs sung by The Sonic sor Brenda Lee and a track by Leroy Anderson.

Chico Boom was a band of "garage"psychedelic formed in Donostia by Imanol G.A. (guitars / vocals), Koldo Soret (bass / vocals), Alvaro Turrion (Hammond / keyboards) and Andoni Etxebeste (drums / vocals). Debuted in 2004 with the single 'Birth' edited with the magazine Route 66 and two years alter released the EP named "Squeezing for time" with the label GP Records. They are currently working on his new work. Imanol and Andoni had been part of the band Señor No. Koldo has played in several bands including Surfin Kaos of which is still part and Alvaro has been part of bands such as Small Things or Fives Lives with Imanol and Andoni. Recently changed the name of the band to be called Supersweet and they are now a trio formed with Andoni Etxebeste, Imanol G.A. and Alvaro Turrion. They were performing on Feb. 25 at Le Bukowski in San Sebastián.

The Jaybirds are an excellent band of R&B, Psychedelia and Garage. They were formed in Vienna (Austria) in 1989 and except a change of guitarist in 1994, they had always the same formation: Bernhard "BJ"Old (vocals, harp), Andreas Preisl replaced by Pat Nagl, (guitar, vocals), Norb Payr (guitar, vocals), Markus Zöchling (bass and vocals) and Thomas Schmitzberger (drums). Their discography consists of three albums, four EPs and two singles. The EPs are titled "Oh Baby”, “Do not Tell Me Lies", "London Tapes" and "The Jaybirds”. The singles contain the songs “It Wasn’t Right”/”Happy Day” and their latest one, 2008, with the songs "Take Your Chance”/ “Boy Meets Girl Storyline”.

The LP/CD have a generic name "Teen Trash Vol.13"(Music Maniac Records 1994) with 12 songs, "Going Our Own Ways" (Ilsa records 1998) with 13 songs and "Naked as The Jaybirds"(Time For Action 2010) with 14 songs. In 2008 they released a CD compilation of their singles with the title "It Wasn’t Right". As parallel projects, is remarkable Medusa, a psychedelic rock band that started Pat and Thomas. Norb also has its own indie rock band. Jaybirds have shared the stage with the Sonics, Yardbirds or the Rolling Stones and split in 2002 to return four years later acclaimed for his ever-loyal fans.

Pop art exhibitions

Apart from the performances, the festival also offers pop art exhibitions such as the Pera-U with sixties design and furniture, and other generically titled “A todo color, a todo volumen” by Marcos Torres, more photographs of the past editions of the festival, a bazaar of clothes and CDs, films and Allnighters with DJ's such as Chema Rey and Goma (Alejandro Dominguez). To remark the Scooter Run on Saturday March 5 in the morning in which take part again the  scooter clubs and Minis of Castellón and the rest of the state.

Castellón Sixties Rock Weekend has become a festival for lovers of music whose roots are reminiscent of the parameters of the sixties and its evolution into the hard and psychedelic sounds of the seventies. The lineup this year is the most international up to now and indicates the good health of a cultural event with an excellent approach that has succeeded in its previous editions, the admiration of critics and the enthusiastic welcome of a select audience.

Translated by Pat Sarrais

More info in its web page.

Information in Spanish here