The first cultural measure of the new Torrent City Council, governed by PP and Vox, has been to remove the name of the Valencian musicologist Vicent Torrent from the town's auditorium. The founder of the folk group Al Tall, in the mid-70s, is one of the most relevant recoverers of traditional Valencian music of the 20th century and should be a name of consensus in the cultural heritage of the community. Precisely, in the house of Toni Pep Rodríguez, the group of Torrent, Miralles, Gil and Lledó was baptized as Al Tall.

Toni Pep Rodríguez (Valencia, 1950) began playing the piano at the age of four. He trained as a pianist at the conservatory, in the circle of teachers Leopoldo Magenti and Daniel de Nueda, and in his early youth he played with Els 4Z, Nino Bravo and Bruno Lomas.. The day Franco died, on November 20, 1975, he founded the music promoter La Taba, one of the first Valencian initiatives that could be considered an incipient native music industry: “Before, I had worked as a worker in the warehouse of the legendary Edigsa music label, in Barcelona, and that contact served to link the innovators of Valencian folk music with the industry”.

In 1975 there were no labels or recording studios in Valencia. In a meeting at Toni Pep's house, Al Tall was born. “Vicent Torrent, Manolo Miralles, Manolo Lledó and Miquel Gil decided to name themselves Al Tall, ruling out using their last names, in the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young style, which was their initial idea”, recalls Rodríguez, “I was the producer of that debut, recorded in Edigsa, and I looked for professional studio musicians to accompany the group. Al Tall were composers but they did not yet possess the proper technique”.

The Barcelona record company promised to publish six more albums with other Valencian artists such as Cuixa, Els Pavesos, El Sifoner, Valldecabres, Ximo Pere & Cia and Humo, but they did not fulfill their agreement. “Al Tall continued with Edigsa, and I took the rest to the Movieplay label, from Moncho Alpuente, in Madrid. The Pavesos of Joan Monleón and Lluís El Sifoner sold 450,000 and 300,000 cassettes and records, respectively. An outrage at the end of the seventies ”, says the veteran promoter.

In 1976, Toni Pep founded the Café Concert, on Marqués de Caro street in the El Carmen neighborhood. Despite the fact that its first intention was to be a rehearsal space, it functioned as a cultural bar for poetry recitals and as a concert hall until 1979, and all the Valencian political intelligentsia of the time and artists such as Toti Soler, Pepe Rubianes, Jordi Sabatés, Al Tall or the Cuban Carlos Puebla passed through there.. “That ended when the 26th Police Brigade raided El Carmen and began the degradation of the historic center. Drug addiction and crime took over the neighborhood. I closed the cafe and found a place on Maestro Gozalbo street. Later I found out that a member of the 26 opened a new business in that bass”, comments the pianist. What was the Oggi nightclub became the Nou Café Concert, the musical nerve center where the musicians of the Movida would pass.

Between 1979 and 1982, Nou Café Concert (NCC) crystallized as the essential venue for the most representative national and local bands of new youth sounds. “When we began to reform the false ceiling of the old Oggi, hundreds of syringes appeared. This was the Valencia of 1979. We set up a stage, added a grand piano and started programming. I was a friend of Moncho Alpuente and the Mariné brothers, managers of the music distributor Pancoca, which allowed me to bring the Madrid and Galician groups of La Movida closer to the NCC”, recalls Toni Pep. Siniestro Total, Golpes Bajos, Alaska and Los Pegamoides, Pistones, Aviadro Dro, Paralisis Permanente or Derribos Arias, played for the first time in the heart of Valencia.

That place between Ruzafa and the Ensache was a meeting point for the tribes of punks, rockers and mods of the Valencia of the Transition. It also energized the local scene by giving its opportunity to groups such as Seguridad Social, Interterror, Sade, Cómplices, Betty Troupé, Scooters, Comité Cisne or Blue Moon, among many others.. “The Permanent Paralysis concert was the best I did, without a doubt. Eduardo Benavente was the son of the owner of the Hotel Bristol Valencia. I had to move heaven and earth to get what I asked for or I wouldn't leave the hotel, but I had friends even in hell. The sound that night was resounding, Pepe Sena, the irreplaceable Valencian sound technician, managed 4,000 watts for a 300-square-meter ring”, explains the musician.

The pioneer of the Valencian industry acknowledges that the Galician Siniestro Total were always his personal favorites and that he forged a good friendship with Germán Coppini, “they came through here three times and during one of the concerts, Julián Hernández, who was the drummer, between songs listened to a transistor to find out how Celta de Vigo was doing, who was playing at the same time as the gig.”. We hear him shout the goals”.

In a city still without conditioned auditoriums to attract big names (Pachá opened its doors in December 1983), Toni Pep dared to produce concerts by James Brown, Silvio Rodríguez and Pablo Milanés, at the Bony de Torrent. “I was always a better cultural promoter than an event manager, although no NCC concert was in deficit until the catastrophe with Alaska and Los Pegamoides came.. The Valencian punks did not want it and the normal public did not come either. We sold 23 tickets and we had to pay them 250,000 pesetas. They did not spare a penny. She returned to Madrid, but Nacho Canut stayed here for the two nightly dance sessions on the weekend until we collected the collection. The planned budget for performances at the Nou Café Concert ended that night in 1982. Alaska and Los Pegamoides emptied the box at the Nou Café Concert in Valencia. That's where our concerts ended”, concludes the Valencian promoter.