BLITZ 40 years old: “Where were we going to find out the bands’ contact details for the first Paredes de Coura festival? To BLITZ, precisely”, João Carvalho
As we enter the countdown to the big party for BLITZ’s 40th anniversary, at Meo Arena, in Lisbon, on December 12th – with concerts by Xutos & Pontapés, Capitão Fausto, Gisela João and MARO –we asked musicians, promoters, journalists, radio hosts and other personalities to go to the trunk to retrieve memories from four decades of history, also leaving us a message for the future.
“I bought BLITZ every Tuesday. In fact, in my house in Paredes de Cora, there must still be hundreds. I kept them religiously”, says João Carvalho, director of the Vodafone Paredes de Coura festival, “the first festival in Paredes de Coura was called Festival de Música Moderna Portuguesa and where would we go to see the bands’ contact details? Precisely in BLITZ. Therefore, it had a great influence on the way I listened to music and, later, on the way I made posters. This was 32 years ago.”
“Tuesday was a sacred day there, at a time when there was no internet: new trends, reviews of records were absolutely fundamental. Then, I would order vinyl from Tubitek, or even from abroad, as happened a few times BLITZ had a lot of influence on the first editions of the festival and I clearly remember having the newspaper open to the penultimate page, in a telephone booth, and dialing the number of a certain agent. BLITZ was very useful, not only for that but also for that. also in the way of teaching me to listen to new things”.
For the founder of the promoter Ritmos, BLITZ’s greatest contribution is to “promote Portuguese music a lot”. “I confess that I’m much more of a fan of the beginning of BLITZ. However, every day I read the site. Everyone, without exception. I have a ritual of reading online newspapers every day and BLITZ is part of that group”, reveals João Carvalho, “but, in the beginning, it was super important in promoting new bands, national or foreign. It had a huge impact on me musically. It was the newspaper that had the most influence on the beginning of Paredes de Coura. It had an influence on everyone, because there was no other way to get to alternative music, and then to write some articles in the newspaper ‘Independente’, which was not a newspaper dedicated to music. There were two newspapers that I sacredly bought when I was 17, 18 years old, BLITZ and ‘Independente’”.
“I hope they continue, because today things are more complicated than ever. It’s very difficult to keep track of everything. New bands are born every day”, adds the director of Vodafone Paredes de Coura, “I wish BLITZ would dedicate more to new things than to the actual mainstreambecause the mainstream it reaches everyone more easily. And, sometimes, there are musical gems, unbelievable projects, that if it weren’t for specialist media outlets, like BLITZ, supporting them, they die in their infancy. I hope that BLITZ has a long life and that they continue to give great importance to festivals, concerts and music criticism. This thing about music criticism has been a little lost. I like to know, when I go to a concert, what the journalist saw. They do it at festivals, rarely at concert halls. It’s something I’ve always gotten used to reading and would like to continue.”
