“In some way we are the last of the Mohicans,” said Roberto Tierz, director and alma mater of the Sidecar room, during the celebration last March of the 40 years of history of the legendary venue in Plaza Reial that opened its doors in 1982. It was a moment of celebration with one eye on the past and another on a future that does not involve the presence of Tierz himself, who at 65 years old is preparing to move beyond the room where he was born with the aim of keeping his spirit alive. A nostalgic farewell "because I'm leaving a job that I like," he explained this week.
"What began in 1982, moved by the love of music and pushed by a rebellious and non-conformist spirit, has been maintained over time without losing its essence," reads the note with which this morning the change was announced, which It will take effect on January 31, but not before holding a farewell party yet to be announced. "Despite all the difficulties it represents today, Sidecar has maintained a location in the city center, open to everyone and especially to Barcelonans."
The natural generational change is the cause of this change of ownership, not of the business model. The venue will maintain its musical programming and will have the same staff that currently works, precisely that was one of the conditions that Tierz imposed on the new owners, the owners of the Sauvage club in the Born neighborhood, with whom he had been in negotiations for some time. . He had previously had contacts with a venue in the city, "but it didn't work out," Tierz explained to this newspaper, who is not sure if they will keep the Sidecar name, "although it seems the most logical thing."
What is crystal clear is that after the renovation works that will be carried out after the transfer, and that will keep the venue closed for a couple of months, the musical line will change. “They are younger people who do not have that guitar connection,” says Tierz, who plans to finalize the transfer in mid-December.
The transfer of the Sidecar raises many questions about the future of one of the most historic concert halls in Barcelona, a breakwater against the tourist invasion of the city center where over 40 years they have held more than 5,000 concerts, including names like Total Sinister, Sidonie, Manu Chao, The New York Dolls, Nick Lowe, The National, Love of Lesbian or Pete Doherty.
The transfer of Sidecar occurs shortly after the Milano Jazz Club closed in the nearby Universitat round due to the inability of the owners to meet the renewal of the rent, accompanied by an increase in the monthly payment that is unaffordable for the club, which will give up its space to a chain of Italian food restaurants.
It has been just six months since the venue celebrated its four decades in the city with a marathon of events that included exhibitions, talks, concerts and DJ sessions, a compendium of the cultural work that has been carried out at number 7 of the Plaza Reial , accompanied by the publication of the work Este no es el libro de Sidecar, written by Tierz himself with a prologue by Carlos Zanón and edited by 66 rpm Edicions.
“We arrived here, we did an inaugural concert on December 31, 1982 of District 5, but in 1983 we did a comic exhibition, another video clip exhibition, which at that time was very new, painting, poetry reading, we continued doing concerts... what we wanted was to be the place where things happen,” explained the founder of Sidecar to La Vanguardia on the occasion of its last anniversary, recalling the opening of the venue, when he was 23 years old and the oldest in the group. “We didn't know anything, but we had traveled, we were in Amsterdam and we were very hooked on the model of a couple of places there, and without realizing it we took it and put it into practice.”
