Los Rodriguez's Sin Documentos

Description

Sin Documentos is a landmark album in Spanish popular culture and continues to maintain considerable popularity more than two decades after its release. The characteristic guitar riff of the title song, a kind of rumba-rock, still occupies a place at every party in Spain. Los Rodriguez's success came after a decade characterized by the rise and fall of local-language punk and new wave bands. By the time Sin Documentos appeared, however, rock journalism was fascinated by the thriving indie scene, where the bands were singing in English and had turned to grunge and noise rock. This book evaluates the influence of Latin American pop-rock in the modernization of Spanish popular music from the 1950s, despite the Anglophilia of Spanish rock scenes, especially in the 1990s. Through interviews with members of the band and members of the record label DRO, analysis of the media coverage of the album and a cultural analysis of its meanings, it delves into the cultural trends of Spain throughout the 1990s and beyond.

Hector Fouce is Professor of Media Theory and Semiotics at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. He has held several positions on both the IASPM Spain and International IASPM boards, and has spent time as a music journalist and critic in digital media. Fernan del Val is Assistant Professor of Sociology of Culture at Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia (UNED), Spain. He writes about music, politics, media and youth in Spain and is the author of Rockeros insurgentes, modernos complacientes: un analisis sociologico del rock en la Transicion (2017).