We propose an experiment: ask someone over the age of 30 to follow the phrase “you have brown skin.” They will almost certainly reply “in the sand”. This is the fault of a line from the song from the summer of 1993, now 30 years ago. The name of the song that hit the top of the charts by selling 600,000 copies was ‘Ella’, but no one knew her like that. The name of the group was Viceversa because its members were two people.: Beato brothers. Ángel and Carlos… or vice versa, hence the name.
The reverse still exists, but now only one. The angel is left alone. “My relationship with my brother Carlos was a 25-year marriage and it’s over. It’s all to himself. My brother was never very interested in it. He now works in the care business. I put him in the band because it cost me 90,000 pesetas to record the demo and I was missing 15,000 pesetas. I told him I could join the group if he loaned me them. It was. But the opposite was always me.”
Ángel Beato told EL PERIÓDICO DE ESPAÑA of the Prensa Ibérica group as he finished his last cigarette at the door of the nightclub. It’s still active: it’s going to give a short concert at a party in a few minutes. Don’t forget in Terrassa. This is now his range of motion, small rooms. She has not recorded any new songs since 2009, when she tried to sneak into Eurovision by participating in a TV competition. But 30 years later, he continues to push ‘Tu piel morena’ onto the stage: “People love it. Young and old. This song will never go out of style,” he says.
The performance is part of a project in Catalonia called “Party of your life” that broke it. Celebrate specific parties that pay homage to the legendary nightclubs of the ’80s and ’90s. More than 30 events are expected in the coming months, with performances by artists of the period such as Loquillo. Viceversa (or Ángel Beato) was the artist chosen for the session of the extinct nightclub. Number one from Terrassa. In the original residential area is now a nightclub called Pick Wick.
A Casio in Barcelona
“I started music because my mother bought me a Casio PT12 keyboard in Barcelona. I learned to play, sing and compose,” Ángel recalls nostalgically half an hour before the party started. “I recorded a three-track tape at home and sent it to a production company. They liked them but at first they threw out ‘Ella’ without listening to the chorus. They decided to record a demo at a studio in Sabadell and they asked me for 4 songs. I put ‘Ella’ back as I don’t have another one. They listened well and said, “This will be the song of the summer.” [“esta será la canción del verano]”.
It was. It was 1993 and post-Olympic Spain had techno pop music; sung by a duo (also in Catalan). OBK. Accustomed to copying formulas that work, the makers gambled with groups that sounded like: Exit, Refuge… And Backwards, They say they are two brothers from the Bufalà neighborhood (Badalona) who have no experience in the music world but have peaches. as ‘O’ as the main (and only) entity. “The OBK style was very popular, they were successful. Carlos and I were told we were gay and a couple even though we knew we were sisters,” he recalls.
The single has been a hit since its release. They sold 600,000 copies and ‘La Quinta Marcha’, the music program of the then emerging Telecinco, presented by Penélope Cruz and Jesús Vázquez. This was the program you had to be involved in to be part of the elite back then. They filled stadiums in Spain, went to Argentina or Mexico. “We sold 60,000 records on the island of Puerto Rico. It’s like… I don’t know… It’s like we sold 60,000 records in Mallorca,” Ángel said. starts. And he admits that he succumbed to the artist’s life: “That’s right: sex drugs and rock and roll. That’s what I had to live with after that success.”
72 year old DJ
People enter the Pick Wick room. There is at least three hours of music before Ángel Beato’s performance. The queue on the street is huge. One of the keys to the success of these parties Don’t forget it gives people who left years ago the opportunity to go out again for a night. The track is full of people and some are over 70 years old. DJ, before we go any further. Her name is Joan Aymerich, she is 72 years old and has been in the cottages for 55 years. happened click Together with Ángel Tutan, the original and Viceversa manager from the Number One room, they held a remembrance session that any DJ in their thirties would want.
The brown skin that Viceversa mentioned in the song had an owner, a first and last name: “Mónica Serrano from Badalona, Lloreda neighborhood. She was my girlfriend back then. and then she became my wife. We broke up twelve years ago, but we have a beautiful daughter named Andrea. Sometimes he goes to a party and plays a song and says he’s his father, but they don’t believe it.” Ángel breaks up during the interview and sings Pet Shop Boys songs as he responds.
He admits that they always carried the “one-shot wonder” tag. That is, being a group with a single success. But she doesn’t care: “The question is, does being recognized for one thing piss me off? Not at all. It’s silly to feel bad about it. You don’t know how hard it is to achieve that. Sometimes they say, “Hey man, you just made your skin brown” and say, “Damn. , is that a little for you?” I say I can’t feel bad. It’s like saying I have an ugly son and they want a more handsome son.” bullshit “Look, your brown skin will still ring when I die. And that’s the only important thing here. Neither the money we made, nor the gold records, nor angry with my brother, nothing. I accomplished all this. This is my legacy and I will continue to play it.”
The group stopped. He did nothing else that was also relevant and disappeared from the rest of the Spanish technobands. It just resisted OBK. Ángel says he’s stayed in touch with music all this time, working for Vale Music on various versions of Operación Triunfo. He composes songs for other artists. and live on royalty Because of that song he’s the only one who really pays them.. There are 3 same songs in different formats in Viceversa’s 5 most listened to Spotify list. The first is the original ‘Ella’, which has been watched approximately 5 and a half million times. The latter with half a million visits, a version of ‘Ella’, but it was sung by an artist named Karam. Third, “A true friend” with only 170,000 hits (an overrated great song). The fourth is called ‘Not true’ and is 126,000. And the fifth is the remix of ‘Ella’ once again with nearly 100,000 visits.
With so little variety, it’s easy to see why the 2006 album ‘Lo mejor de Viceversa’ wasn’t very successful. They tried to reconnect with success by submitting a song to an RTVE contest to go to Eurovision in 2009. It did not come out and the song did not play anywhere. They did some concerts for the band’s 25th anniversary, but that was until Carlos left the band permanently. Ángel doesn’t like to touch on this subject, and his sadness is evident: “It’s over, he wasn’t interested in these things at all. I was the one who composed and sang. I’ll continue with that.”
At 2:30 in the morning, when the room is full and warm, Ángel’s performance begins. He promised to do 4 songs but in the end he only sang 3. sings little and weakly by lip syncing. He leaves without a keyboard or a keyboard player because his brother is no longer there. There, he’s dancing alone on stage and humming ‘A true friend’. The room fills with the second on set, ‘Ella’ everyone has been waiting for. And since they’re the only two people know about, it ends with the “Neither you nor anyone” version from Alaska. She sings enough and limits herself to dancing and plugging in the microphone to get the audience started: “You know that, right? Well, come on… you’re all alone”, order.
It’s all good for the public, because they come to the parties as if they haven’t even smelled in years. Ángel finishes his show and disappears into the crowd. He assures that he has a full bowling program: “From Terrassa I will perform in Murcia, then in Almería. And so I have hunts every Saturday until the summer is over.“, he swears over and over. Wherever he goes, he will repeat his ‘hit’ one more time. Known all over Spain. He no longer has his older brother who always accompanies him. Not even the original Mónica. He is the owner of the brown skin Left alone, but giving him a temporary refuses to leave Viceversa, the brand that made it famous. How hard it is to say goodbye to the things that make us happy: “I don’t care what they say. That song gave me an unimaginable career for a boy from Badalona and I will continue to do so. Maybe one day Viceversa will end… but it will end whenever I want”.