Musician Peter Taylor believes Torrevieja and surrounding areas are saturated by people who can’t play an instrument, using backing tracks, to ply their trade. Andrew Atkinson reports.
‘TORREVIEJA and surrounding areas have survived extremely well for the last 25 years and more for many different reasons.
‘They include the lovely sunshine, of course, great coffee and the seemingly endless colourful street fiestas. Running in tandem have been the wonderfully diverse talents of local musicians. ‘Musicians are people who want to entertain their audience and here is how they go about it.
‘They search for songs from the archives, then set about bustin’ their gut learning how to play them.
‘They then take them out and play them in public. In some cases they have to go back to the drawing board and tweak their playing and vocals, until they have finally got the song just right for live performance. ‘The purpose of my concern is the fault line in this entertainment process.
‘Torrevieja is now saturated by people who don’t play an instrument, people who prefer to side-step that lengthy process and use backing tracks.
‘It can be argued that it’s a natural progression, but the truth is that they are using the sound of real musicians and songwriters to ply their trade. ‘The use of backing tracks has been around for a long time, but has always been at a percentage share, whereby real musicians were still in work. But not anymore.
‘Backing track singer’s re-immergence has grown and grown over the last couple of years – and it is now driving the bus.
‘There are many theories as to why this has come about, the main one being that the bars are using it as a quick-fix, no matter what the standard of performance, to get their tills jangling. ‘My opinion is not ‘sour grapes’, the reason is to keep up a high level of performance, as well as trying to make a case for musical diversity.
‘I feel a smidgen better for having got this off my chest – and wish all you live music lovers well.’
