The first last great night of Oques Grasses at the Olympic Stadium

BarcelonaIt’s not exactly “killing it like a butterfly that never dies”, but killing it with the awareness that this story is coming to an end. Killing it, like the song that Oques Grasses played at the start of the concert, the first of this farewell from one of the most popular bands in Catalan music of the last fifteen years. Killing it like no other Catalan artist had done before, selling out all tickets for four nights at the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium, and offering more than two hours of musical gratitude to the audience that has accompanied them in achieving this milestone: this Wednesday, 55,000 people who sang the more than twenty songs of the concert and who served as an exceptional choir when La gent que estimo and Sort de tu brought out the final tears of emotion of the night. "We will be infinitely grateful to you," said Josep Montero, leader and spokesperson for Oques Grasses, before dedicating precisely La gent que estimo.

"It seemed impossible. Who would have thought. And fourteen years later we are here; us, but above all you," assured Montero, after the mandatory "good evening, Catalonia" at 8:52 PM. "It is thanks to you that we can sing these songs. And together with you, even better," he added before getting the audience to dance to the funk of Petar-ho, lifted by a choir, fireworks and a very elegant staging, of great production, but without cardboard: the band was deployed on different mobile platforms, the chromatic choice of light was minimalist and the direction, very skillful in generating background landscapes, took advantage of the horizontal arrangement of the screens, like Bad Bunny.

Furthermore, the good sound engineering was fundamental to project the voice without losing the muscular power of the rhythm section in an anthological repertoire and with a relevant presence of the tracks from the latest album, Fruit del deliri (2024), such as the electronic music for dancing in the darkness of Bambi, which they played dressed in the cloaks of a sectarian society and with Montero surrounded by dancers as if he were Rosalía at Berghain.

Managing emotion and the crowd

As Roger Mas sings, “and the rain dried up” and the Olympic Stadium was able to host the first of the last four performances by Oques Grasses. After the downpours forced the postponement of Monday's concert to Thursday, Wednesday's took on a special character for the group from Osona. In all four concerts, it is necessary to live up to the audience, more than 200,000 people who bought their tickets eleven months ago (between 38.50 and 66 euros). "We still haven't assimilated it even today," admitted Montero. But the first one has an added concern: verifying that everything goes as planned, at least technically. It was important that everything worked well on the main stage, but also on the small central stage where the show began and ended, surely pursuing an impossible intimacy.

However, calculating the impact of the emotion that could be unleashed must not be easy. What must go through a musician's mind when they see the whole stadium vibrating with songs like Cara de cul and Com està el pati? And when they check that thousands of people respond to the different emotional colors of Pingpong and Com el dia i la nit, with strings included? And when the crowd amplifies the very Coldplay-esque epic of Elefants? Or when he is playing surrounded by the spectators he has invited to come up on stage to dance to John Brown, "rolling in the deep" by Bad Bunny, as Montero said? Can a singer as charismatic as him maintain control while people show you with ovations how important Serem ocells and especially In the night are, one of the great moments of the night and also one of the songs that in 2019 showed that Oques Grasses could triumph being a different band? Of course he can, like when he recovered the introduction Cavall estable, an incunabulum from the group's early days, and made the audience join in a hillbilly party. He even seemed relaxed, like when he proposed that the stadium do the wave to link the end of John Brown with the beginning of Cul. By the way, other transitions were very well resolved, such as the one from In the night to Bye bye and the transit between the melancholic strings of Serem ocells and the festive winds of Torno a ser jo.

Farewell concerts have something disturbing about them: they are like funerals officiated by the deceased. Perhaps that is why sadness never rules in these goodbyes. On the contrary, there is an equally disturbing joy: the farewell is celebrated with euphoria, like a party with hyper-stimulated feelings. "Everything began with love and with love it will end," Josep Montero had said two hours before the first last great night of Oques Grasses at the Olympic Stadium ended. A funeral, or four, celebrated jointly by the deceased and those who will keep vigil. Also on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.