Wonders of spite

I still had to tell the story of La noia de Hawaii , which I promised you after speaking with Dionís and Toni Olivé, guitar and bass guitarist of the group Melodrama, who accompanied Sisa on a tour of Spain in 1979 and 1980, where they had a hell of a time. It's a song I love. It was first released on the double album La catedral , from 1977, on the B-side, after another fantastic song, Tres cavalls , by the most psychoanalytic Sisa: the horse, symbol of desire, gallops through the imaginary world, which is the platform for some mental ponies. Well, Tres cavalls ends and La noia de Hawaii begins with a melancholic and strange air, like an advertisement for Sunsilk conditioner, played on a pedal steel guitar, that flat guitar, with little levers that change the pitch of the strings. Sisa is a great poet, and the song has very brilliant images. One of my favorite moments is when he tells the girl she fills the sky with air conditioning. What a compliment! With climate change, it will never go out of style. But the girl doesn't fill a room, La Enagua bar, or Diagonal Avenue with palm trees with air conditioning. She fills the sky with air conditioning! Sisa is a Petrarch of Poble Sec.

On the 1979 album Sisa & Melodrama , recently reissued by Satélite K, a second, completely different version was recorded, just as good as the first. But instead of being a sweet, yearning song about a "look at me, don't touch me" girl who's leaving, it's a horror song. What an excellent idea. The girl from Hawaii transforms into a Transylvanian girl. Instead of pedal steel, the music imitates robotic rhythms, with a repetitive Devo-like bass line. One of the star lines is: "this girl with big eyes / a little fortor that I feel when I have her with me." The song has certainly changed! When you listen to the two versions back to back, you discover some symmetries. In the Hawaiian version, it says that the girl no longer has milk or blood: she has dematerialized. In the Transylvanian version: “spit out the blood, it’s beautiful”: he’s a vampire , as Sisa would say.

The girl fills the sky with air conditioning! Sisa is a Petrarch of Poble Sec.

I asked Dionís and Toni Olivé how this second version came about, and they explained the following story. They were scheduled to perform in Roses, and there was a schedule change. They arrived thinking the concert was in the afternoon; it was in the evening, and they spent a long time waiting in a bar. Normally, they liked to discuss the day's repertoire. Sisa never wanted to play "La noia de Hawaii ." Dionís suspected it was dedicated to a flirt, and it seemed things ended badly—in fact, the song is already about an unattainable girl—and Sisa didn't feel like remembering the "chagrin d'amour in to my corazón." They had time, and they dedicated themselves to destroying the song, each one saying a verse, and later Sisa dedicated herself to rounding it out. The wonders of heartbreak.