From Alicante, we went through Nyc, and ended up in Madrid with Kamikaze, in the previous episode of Breaking The Rules. For this new one, we stayed there, specifically in Alcorcón where we visited the story following the steps of Zeta who welcomed us in her studio in Madrid.

All photos belong to Zeta. As always you can listen to the episode here if you have Ivoox.

Zeta-I started painting around ‘85, although my family encouraged my art abilities from a young age. I can remember going to local art academies and schools. I attended the School of Applied Arts and Crafts during my adolescence, but that was after getting to know graffiti. Just like most writers of that time, I grew through the influences coming to us from the USA, through breakdance and hip hop. My first attempts at graffiti were in the likes of putting my crew’s name around the neighborhood; it was my first way of showing myself to the community. I started trying to grow and evolve faster, further than just a calligraphy study of my name, I was working on scenes and characters.

My first pieces were in ’84-’85, but I don’t have any pics of them. I belong to a generation a couple of years younger than the first writers in my district like Chop and Berrón.

I was hanging out with Rayo, who was more or less my age and really got into letters. We complemented each other well, and started designing our walls together: him with the wildstyle and me with the background and characters. Our first pieces weren’t very significant, with typical characters in break pose.

My local group was called Beat Snake and I remember having done a sketch of a snake with a Kangol on.

In my early days I remember looking for a nickname, and first started writing Buffalo, then Pablo 85 and even Rocky, I guess referencing to the movie. In ’85 I started making more sense, there was also more information available. I did my walls and graffiti a bit more consciously and putting Faze2 as my name.

For quite some time we used ‘having to paint a school’ as an excuse and explanation to the car parts store clerk. We usually went two or three: one would babble on to the clerk while the others stocked up on spray cans, because of course our allowance as 14-15-year-old kids didn’t add up to much.

That first piece “Lobo-B.boy”, with some 90 small Duplicolor cans, marked a turning point, at least in Alcorcón. If you notice, in those years, graffiti was characterized as crazy, there is not even 20 cm of the same color, we had bad paint, metallic colors… In the graffiti of the ‘80s, chaos was predominant.

The excuse of having to paint a school worked as a good story to get our hands on that stash. We already had contact with people from Barcelona, with Bzn, and I think it was through them we heard that Henry Chalfant was making SprayCan Art. I think his expo was in January of ’86, but I can’t remember when we did that wall, only that it was terribly cold. We did that piece with the aim of it appearing in the book, in fact it’s dedicated to Henry, who we didn’t even know personally yet. Rayo hurried out to Barcelona with the pictures, but in the end a horrible piece from Checho was included, which didn’t really reflect the early references of Barcelona.

It would have been special to me because somehow it meant being part of the world that had flooded us and had us practicing graffiti like junks. I remember that piece fondly, because graffiti in Alcorcón barely existed up to that point. There were some break dance-style pieces in small alleys and hidden corners.

In contrast to how we understood graffiti: as an act of vandalism, against society, etc…, that same society didn’t have this perception, as it was something they did not know. They were neither for or against it. In this case with the Lobo piece, I had prepared an alibi: I had told my mother I’d be going to a friend’s birthday and sleeping over… so we could paint during the night. And there we went with our backpacks on, in December.

We started our wall, next to an apartment block. In one of the balconies above we heard a woman hissing “Hey kids, kids!” and we’d hide, knowing we were doing something bad. That happened 3 or 4 times, and 10 minutes later a grandma walked down, poor thing, watching these kids drawing on the wall. She brought down a blanket, brought us warm chocolate milk, and gave us advice “Kids, don’t you think you should be doing this in the morning, there’ll be more light and you won’t be this cold.”

There was a try to sneak away when she appeared, but finally I stayed with her, sympathizing. Suddenly, police sirens emerged. The grandma calls them over, and of course I don’t know what to do. Turns out the cops say the same thing as the grandmother already had. They even wanted to help us load our cans in the car and take us home. And I’m thinking “Let me be illegal!”.

In fact, we pretended to gather our things up, and just went on further when they left. We finished it that night. That piece has a wolf on the left and a “Power”. That wall was really long, so we painted a few more times there, but during the day, seeing at how that vandalism act had turned out.

During those times, in ’85-’86, there just weren’t many elaborated pieces, maybe some by Chop or Rayo, but basically it was just pieces or tags, more related to break dance. And I think that piece was relevant because there hadn’t been anything like it.

Musa- ¿Was it only relevant in Alcorcón or did it go further? Because in those days there were no fanzines.

Z- It expanded quite quickly, even though the movement was very locally based. We knew through the break dance groups that there was a crew in Móstoles, and we’d heard of Mast. There was some rivality when someone told you about, for example, a wall that had been done in El Soto. Jose Berrón, one of the Kappa of Madrid City Breakers, occasionally had the opportunity to visit other neighborhoods and would tell us what was going on, but we were basically busy doing our own things,In contrast to how we understood graffiti: as an act of vandalism, against society, etc…, that same society didn’t have this perception, as it was something they did not know. They were neither for or against it. In this case with the Lobo piece, I had prepared an alibi: I had told my mother I’d be going to a friend’s birthday and sleeping over… so we could paint during the night. And there we went with our backpacks on, in December.

We started our wall, next to an apartment block. In one of the balconies above we heard a woman hissing “Hey kids, kids!” and we’d hide, knowing we were doing something bad. That happened 3 or 4 times, and 10 minutes later a grandma walked down, poor thing, watching these kids drawing on the wall. She brought down a blanket, brought us warm chocolate milk, and gave us advice “Kids, don’t you think you should be doing this in the morning, there’ll be more light and you won’t be this cold.”

There was a try to sneak away when she appeared, but finally I stayed with her, sympathizing. Suddenly, police sirens emerged. The grandma calls them over, and of course I don’t know what to do. Turns out the cops say the same thing as the grandmother already had. They even wanted to help us load our cans in the car and take us home. And I’m thinking “Let me be illegal!”.

In fact, we pretended to gather our things up, and just went on further when they left. We finished it that night. That piece has a wolf on the left and a “Power”. That wall was really long, so we painted a few more times there, but during the day, seeing at how that vandalism act had turned out.

During those times, in ’85-’86, there just weren’t many elaborated pieces, maybe some by Chop or Rayo, but basically it was just pieces or tags, more related to break dance. And I think that piece was relevant because there hadn’t been anything like it.

Musa- ¿Was it only relevant in Alcorcón or did it go further? Because in those days there were no fanzines.

Z- It expanded quite quickly, even though the movement was very locally based. We knew through the break dance groups that there was a crew in Móstoles, and we’d heard of Mast. There was some rivality when someone told you about, for example, a wall that had been done in El Soto. Jose Berrón, one of the Kappa of Madrid City Breakers, occasionally had the opportunity to visit other neighborhoods and would tell us what was going on, but we were basically busy doing our own things.

M- ¿Do you think the competition between neighborhoods would have existed, if there hadn’t been that rivality from things coming in from abroad?

Z- No, I don’t think so. Talking with Henry about different personal things, he told me about some intricacies of what happened during the shooting of the film, his personal experience of the first contacts with graffiti. What happened with CAP wasn’t even that important. If you’ve had contact with American writers, you know that at the beginning, painting trains was almost a Sunday kind of thing. The whole family would go to the end of the railway line, even brought barbecues, because back then this was not perceived as a vandalic act. Henry insisted a lot on this, the ‘70s; and that about CAP in NY, was infrequent. Beefs between writers were not the norm, there was a lot of respect. He told me he (CAP) crossed out people to gain notoriety, and when he decided to interview him for the documentary, he had an internal debate over it.

He wanted to show the different profiles, different ways to understand graffiti but he wasn’t sure this would be understood as just another profile, or whether it would be seen as graffiti having this competition to it. He had his doubts, and he never thought it’d transcend to the point of generating waves of writers with this same motivation.

For our part, in some of our pieces we did add the sentence “let’s see if Móstoles can do it better than this”. But that was healthy rivalry, a competition between neighborhoods to boost our growth. We never had fights, there was never a real problem.

In our neighborhood there was also Gallar Ags, and each was moving forward in their own way. I admit we were always keeping an eye out for what others did, and there was that “look at them, I am better” attitude, but let’s not forget we were 15 years old.

Later in the ‘90s, with hip hop, rap rivalry, the influences of NWA, Public Enemy, everything was more combative. In the beginning things were healthier, more laid back.

And to come back to that piece, word started traveling fast and everyone was on the lookout; it transcended much more that we could have imagined. Lots of people told me it was like the coming of the aliens. It’s true it was not at the level other were. But it inspired us to strengthen up, keep sketching and do pieces like crazy.

We started traveling in those years and got in contact with people from Barcelona. It was personally a very active stage, painting pieces and growing as a writer. For my crew and I, the decisive moment came when we went to Paris and we had a direct link with the scene of another country.

M- But, how did the “We’re going to Paris” come about?

Z- Our bond with Paris comes from the fact that our crew (Chop, Rayo) generally had quite an acceptable level already. If I remember correctly, Rayo spent his summers in Benidorm, and there was a club where lots of writers from Paris used to hang out; they played the hits of the moment, Sugar Hill Gang, etc... And there he saw some kids dancing break, and one of them was Nest.

Rayo told me he went crazy when he saw those guys dance. Nest spoke Spanish, his grandmother was living in Alicante. And thanks to that, a friendship bloomed. We exchanged addresses, and if that was summer of ’86, a couple of months later an envelope came with pictures and the usual letter. Included were the legendary pieces from Chrome Angelz, Mode 2, Bando… everything that was in Stalingrad.

SprayCan Art hadn’t come out yet, so we were going crazy.

I was in 8th grade then, and I remember we did a Break Dance act at the end of the school year. We made some money, sold a couple of things as well, and earned enough to go to Paris with the class. I was already hooked on graffiti then, but this was a school trip.

M- And nobody else painted in your class?

Z- No, I do remember Julio being in my class, a B-boy… We had a tourist tour of Paris, and the whole city was bombarded with tags. I realized I had to come back to this city for what interested me. So, with the excuse of knowing Nest, Rayo and I saved some money and went to see him. It was crazy. It had taken off in Paris, and the multiculturality was stronger. Paris wasn’t comparable to Spain, where we were coming out of a transition. Even if we were contributing with a bit of color, we still had a long way to go.

Nest was a very active figure in the scene, he hung out with Jay One, Mode 2. I remember being at a party in the JABA with Joey Star and the guys from NTM, Dee-Nasty, Afrika Bambaataa, Nina Hagen… Of course some of these people weren’t that known yet and everything was very normal... but when we saw the books we went ballistic. I have never taken drugs, but I imagine this was like taking LSD and having a vision. It was brutal, an addiction. When we got home with all this info, it changed our vision and or way of understanding graffiti.

M- Your universe expanded…

Z- I think for those of us who had the opportunity to experience other realities, we realized the limit was not just local. This marks a difference in how you evolve, and your evolution reinforces the scene. We had the chance of meeting Jon, in ’88, who’d just arrived from the USA. He settled in Paris, and I guess the new coming of American artists meant a significant push in the Parisian scene. The opportunity to live this experience with them, known for their talent but not truly famous, was incredible for us. We had a very active period from ’86 to ’89, and our next trip to Paris was in ’88. Due to Nest’s relation with the BBC, we were at their studio “Hospital Enfermerie”. Sharp, A-One were also there, as well as Jon, who lived in the studio. It was our second time in Paris, and we wanted to paint. Imagine Jay all of a sudden saying we could paint over one of his mythical walls in Stalingrad, a wall you’d gone to take pics of, one you find insane…

M- The pressure!

Z- It was a bit dazzling. How was I going to go over that? “Yup,” -they said- “we renew the walls.” I had taken a picture the year before, a legendary mural with a unicorn, letters by Jay and a B-boy holding an ace in his hand. But he didn’t mind. In fact, lots of French people, when seeing we had gone over it, thought “Who do these people think they are?”. Funnily, we had come with quite a sense of inferiority but instead, many people remember that piece. They made us feel like a part of them. There was friendship there, and they treated us as if we were one of them. During that time at the end of the ‘80s we put up a lot of pieces that were considered milestones. It was they way for people who couldn’t travel to see a more evolved graffiti, thanks to the learning we got in Paris. Many remember it with melancholy, as for them it meant something important at the time.

I’ve always seen graffiti as something that goes hand in hand with personal growth, and have never payed attention to beefs, but it’s true that sometimes without realizing it, you generate it once you turn a bit more known. There’s a difference between active writers whose only goal is creating some buzz, and those who just want to evolve artistically.

Maybe there was a mistake made on a global movement level when confronting one way of graffiti to the other, in the end there’s always moments of rivalry; when you start that growth, when you’re finding your way. But all those visions can coexist together, we’re dynamic people. I too started doing illegal bombing, but there comes a time…

M- They didn’t let you…

Z- Yes, they’d let me, they’d even bring me chocolate milk. (Laughter)

In the end, as a person,one sometime has phases with inner anger and you’re more into the illegal stuff, getting more adrenaline; but maybe at other times, where you’re developing a style, what you want is an easy wall. And those two ways can coexist, and can even coexist in oneself. Truth is, sometimes it seems as though for each term there has to be an exercise of style, and that’s it. I’ve debated on this with French, German and even American writers, and I’ve heard things like “if you haven’t been in Style Wars, Subway Art and SprayCan Art, you can’t say you do graffiti”. And, sure, I understand that if you’re a writer from the ‘70s and you see people doing the same as you are, but their reality of it is different, you feel the need to say you do not identify at all, with what those people are doing. But everyone has a right to do what they want.

In other discussions, with very known writers that I will not name, the role of Montana was questioned, and they’d ask my opinion about what it had contributed to graffiti. My view is that it was a positive one, but they disagreed because, for many writers, the handicap of having to paint with a Krylon (which is an atomic bomb with a bit of paint), the can control you need to have, determines whether you are a good writer. And of course, with the low-pressure cans we have nowadays, anyone can paint.

M- Sure, but style is style…

Z- Of course, but even so, what is the damn problem? The only intelligent thing said at that table was said by Dare, who shut us all up, talking about evolution and melancholy: Everything that brings you to a progress, to another level, is an important path to explore.

M- But it’s not even an obligation.

Z- Indeed. Who’s to tell Os Gemeos that their work is not graffiti? And if you analyze it, esthetically it has nothing to do with it, but graffiti is a global language. Sometimes it seems we’re too dogmatic and if it’s not done a certain way it isn’t valid.

But hey, I’m a bit of a missing link between the old school and what is happening now. We’ve lived together and understood where we came from and how it was done, but we aren’t disconnected from how it’s lived today. I’ve seen it happen with many writers who lived that phase and come back suddenly, wanting credit for being who they were, and they don’t understand. They complain about the kids today not knowing anything… I try to be impartial then, in interviews, just telling what I know, because I’m informed, but I don’t know it all, I sometimes forget things, and they’re bothered. Another important thing is that we used to have little information and what we found interested was coveted and researched; music, art… The new generation doesn’t have that need because they have all the information available to them. Now there is no need for this exercise of research and investigation. But still, progress is progress, and what matters is what you do and what you like.

M- Let’s see, let’s leave the general scene review, and let’s get back on track. You’ve told me about the scene in Paris, how you all freaked out, and how when you came back you painted and implemented new ideas and techniques to your world. After all this, Alcorcón became a mecca, and everyone wanted to know what was cooking up over there. On top of it all, writers came out from Paris.

Z- Yes indeed. I know there were some other specific cities, like Sevilla, Málaga, where after that first wave that came with breakdancing, they continued being active and some writers stood out. For example, we heard through our contacts in Barcelona that Futura2000 had been there and had painted. Truth is that having the opportunity to travel helped us raise our own level, and that of the city. At a certain point, in line with what several of us were doing in the crew, there were others that were going hard, like RSC, Dark, Juez, Jes.

At a certain time, we sort of lost control, but because we could. At first illegally, because those walls were not legal, but there was still that complicity with the people living there; they let us paint those walls.

During the end of the ‘80s, in the surrounding neighborhoods, heroin was present and there was a high rate of unemployment… The reality in those neighborhoods was real tough, so we were the best out of the worst. We were that other urban tribe, with our colors, we danced on the floor, we drew, and on top of it all, they made us popular on TV.

All kinds of things happened in the main square, where I lived. I remember the heavies (rockers) with their looks, they’d dance with us. Everything was mixed. We each went our own way, Gallardo, Use.. it made us elevate graffiti to another level, and made us expand our operating radius, further. All of a sudden, these big mural walls were created and instead of seeing graffiti as a hall of fame that would get renewed, we went to conquer other walls. After that, we did have to renew each year, walls were getting scarce. That’s because there was a lot of terrible graffiti, especially tags from the breakdance era, or from the heavies. As there had not been graffiti before, I guess town hall hadn’t even thought about cleaning it up.

M- Well, they had other problems to take care of, so some kids painting on the street would not seem so severe.

Z- Exactly. With the idea of trying to control what they were starting to see, they decided to add graffiti and/or breakdance to the Alcorcon block parties. Our crew was on good terms with the Youth Council, and they started giving us spaces, gave us a bit of money for paint or to bring people from Paris over. This in turn made people from other places come to Madrid. I remember Apa and the guys from Nación Sur from Málaga, although I had more contact with Jes and Vampire Warriors.

We started getting to know the ones who were keeping active in their cities, and the movement started growing on a more national level.

I also remember a club in the ‘90s called Aire, where we saw Snap, Tone Loc,, international artists… that is where I met Kami, that had come to set a piece there.

Our first contacts with Barcelona were with BZN and Sutil, that made the CFC magazine. Sutil would tell us about Alex, and the people from Alicante like Kami, Loco, Tom Rock etc… Although I don’t remember having known him back then. He showed me some pics; they had already gone to London and showed us pieces from over there, of writers that also had quite a level like Goldie, NonStop, Fade, Cade, and I guess Pryde, Zack and all of them from Chrome Angelz. It was the start of a good back-and-forth of sending letters, right before fanzines arrived on a national level and were more available everywhere. That was our Facebook: going to the post office.

Locally, we had lots of walls and we were super active and started to organize events where we’d invite the most relevant figures of Alcorcón. And if I remember correctly, ’92 was the first time we painted with someone from abroad, Echo, who we had met in one of our trips to Paris. That year we created “Latino Soy”, which helped to bridge the gap with the people from Paris. In ’93 we invited Mode 2.

M- Mi first trip to Madrid was in ’92, during Christmas season, and when I was there, I saw murals of Mode 2.

Z- Really? Wait… Echo came in the spring of ’92, and that summer Mode 2 came for the first time, and then came back the year after. I know the first numbers of Game Over were already out. I can see ourselves painting in Hermanos Laguna (neighborhood) and you guys came looking like a sight… Moockie and Kapi looked like they were from Euskalherriak, they had military jackets on and hair in half mullet, and you with a turtle neck on and a goodie good girl face. “Hi, I’m Maria and I paint trains”. I do remember you were staying in Móstoles. Moockie’s contact was Mata, although you didn’t stay with him that time.

M- I have no idea. The only thing I remember about that trip is doing my first color piece, a horrible disaster, for which I was very embarrassed.

Z- I thought that trip was earlier, but we were able to date it because I found a letter from March ’92, of Moockie introducing himself. We hadn’t met personally yet. So that must have been Christmas ’92 or ’93, because Mode 2’s piece was from September ’92. Echo came first, and painted in San Pedro al Bautista, and we did the ‘Chicano soy’ in spring. Moockie has already been in Madrid on his own account, with Mata, and he had already seen the pieces by Mast. I remember you guys stayed NYE with us, you left after that and we stayed in touch. I don’t know the next trip to Barcelona was, guessing it was the year after, in ’93.

M- I want you to tell me about the jams in Alcorcón…

Z- There was a first phase, where they were very surreal, with barely any public, and no one remembers, because we were so few. Those were the breakdance jams, and I was the DJ. Well, if by DJ we mean the guy that had recorded tapes from the radio and turned it around when it was over. I remember having some dexterity, I did my best when recording from the radio; I obviously cut the song when the radio broadcaster got on talking shit. Which meant listening to that same radio station every day until the same song came on again, recording that bit I was missing, and then doing a copy/paste.

There was a magazine called Superpop that gave out a tape kit to edit your tapes, with a ruler and papers to cut out and set on your recorded tape. Very crazy.

From there we moved on to halfway the ‘80s, the nexus still being breakdance, and we had started playing vinyl’s. At the end of the ‘80s and beginning of the ‘90s is when graffiti became prominent, which was the time we started working with the Council, having a bit more resources and permissions. Thank to this we were able to have more talked-about jams. There was one with Jay One and Fasim, Jonone. Another one with Mode 2. It was thanks to the contacts we had with Paris that we were able to bring these people over. Later, in ’94, we brought Futura because it coincided with an expo in Paris. That was the biggest jam we organized, and also the last. We loved organizing them, did it with much enthusiasm, but it surpassed us.

In this last one, Agnes B did a retrospective exposition about the top American writers: A One, Sharp, Jay, Ash, Skki… Echo was the link. For us, having Futura come, such a reference, it was incredible.

He was quite a character. We went to pick him up from the airport, all very excited, and suddenly we see this grown man, with a Russian-looking hat on, with a huge backpack on, skating on his board through the terminal. Funny thing was he didn’t know how to stop, so he’d jump off the board, but try to imagine that with an adult man carrying a 20-kilo backpack. It was crazy funny. We had thought of a more formal reception. We liked him a lot, right off the bat. He was on his skateboard all day.

M- Was he the one singing Mecano’s song “Una rosa es una rosa”? We were having breakfast in the hostel. He walked in singing that song and we were all cracked up.

Z- Yes, true. Mode also came on that trip, and there were some very funny circumstances. The same day of the jam, close to the music school where it would take place, we took them to eat at a Galician restaurant. We wanted them to taste something typical, and I remember they brought us some chorizo. On the paper tablecloths, Futura was doodling his coils with a slice of chorizo, but even better was Mode 2 cutting the paper to take home with him. And on the streets next to the event, Futura throwing himself at cars to be able to stop his skateboard. Very unusual.

Aside from the writers, obviously music had great importance. CPV performed, a legendary concert that many remember. Because of the connection with others from the scene, we had the best of the best of everywhere. For many, these jams were the place to find the role models of the scene.

M- And afterwards, was the city destroyed?

Z- Well, yeah, a little… (laughter) We also went to jams in Barcelona, Málaga and Alicante and those were the opportunities to meet the people you had been writing to, it was the way to establish new contacts. Truth is that whenever you heard of a jam, you knew it was a mandatory date that year.

As of ’93, the relationship with Barcelona consolidates, especially with you, Moockie and Kapi. Did Bunker (shop) already exist or not yet?

M- Yes, that was before Montana existed. The first was in Lesseps, right next to a small park.

Z- I remember we’d been in Barcelona before with the BZN crew, but that was more about mixtapes, and recording studio. They’d show us their music, but that was all. I don’t remember having been to any jams or having had contact with graffiti.

That was later on, maybe in ’92 after having met each other in Madrid.

The shop existed, the magazine too, and I already had interacted with Jordi of Montana. Parallel to this, Triburbana in Madrid had been there since end of the ‘80s, although it started out being a stand in the subway, in Prosperidad. The first times I heard about them was because they were selling belt buckles. The guy bought them in England and brought them back, he had Beastie Boys t-shirts, and Public Enemy patches for our jean jackets. Cowboy, the DJ of Jungle Kings in ’89 - ‘90, was coincidentally working there and he mentioned the shop to us. As we’d already been to Paris, Tikaret, and we’d bought kangol and the whole paraphernalia there.

After that first store, one opened in Tirso de Molina, in Magdalena street; I started working there, doing aerography during the summer months. It was specialized in urban gear of that time, and it started to bring in specific hip hop products.

M- Is that not the one I visited?

Z- No, this was the one before. It was quite a big place. They started bringing Ewings, and stuff like that. Tiempo Libre surfaced with the rise of urban tribes in ’90-’91, which was the purchase point for Felton. In Madrid, the type of buyers in Triburbana were more the b-boys and cool rappers. Felton linked up to what we used to call the “Chichotes”. The owner of Tiempo Libre was the usual man that was only in it for the business, he didn’t understand any of it, and he found it all just great. He had no clue. So, Felton associated with Tiempo Libre and really didn’t get an image of ‘keeping it real’. That was a kind of competition. At first we painted with Novelty and Duplicolor, but I guess later on we started using Felton too, as they had a wider range of colors.

This was a very prolific period because we painted a whole lot. It was us five, and I think later came Nest. I got to this conclusion talking to Moockie about it, because there is a poster of Game Over with a staff worksheet on it. I don’t remember the excuse or the moment in which we created acme, but in made sense due to the friendship, the trips and the amount of painting we were doing together.

The scene was so well settled nationally, that jams were being made at a whole other level. The ones before ’93, ours and others, were for the most part made up of the local scene. The “Que Punto de Fiesta” jam was maybe the first one to bring together everyone in the national scene, references in music as well as graffiti, and they also brought Skki – Ash of BBC, and other international personalities. And then after that the one in Pueblo Español which left us all like WOW.

M- You know what I remember from Que Punto De Fiesta, seeing CPV all in black, and you there, completely in red.

Z- Of course, haha. As to not extend this podcast too much, we’ll just say that in parallel to graffiti I was also doing a whole bunch of other things, and that placed me in a lot of different situations in the scene. Ultimately, I remember the 90’s as a time of much learning and traveling. We also had the chance to meet the people of Mollet, PDM. We had the studio in Alcorcón, a low small house on San José street, and each month we’d have 5 or 6 people there. Everyone went through that place. That was the spirit back then, just like if you went to Málaga you’d end up in Apa’s house, same in Barcelona and Alicante.

M- When you came over here, did you stay at Moockie’s house?

Z- Yes, for sure at the beginning, with his folks there, and his cork-soundproofed bedroom, where it was so cold and so warm…

In a melancholic and romantic way, I remember when you were the weird one in the neighborhood and went into town and saw some guy on the street with a Public Enemy cap on, you’d stop him and say “Hey, are you rapper too? Where do you live?”. And that was the excuse, in the most natural way, and it extended and went on for quite some time. You’d receive a letter from who-knows from Zaragoza, that you’d never heard of before, and at the same time you’d meet someone from Benidorm who then again opened other doors to Paris, or Germany, etc…

That was a type of link-up that was happening all over the world. It was a beautiful connection that I’m not sure is repeated nowadays.

I do remember a golden age of fanzines, pictures, trips… And maybe I do see that the American scene takes a sort of second position, at least the role models that we had, and what was happening in Europe started growing, with the Battle of the Year, etc… These things really drove some energy to the scene.

Regaining the positive constructivism, everything contributed, the synergy and energy was getting created by the growth of the writers themselves, and that in turn gave momentum to the scene. Before, we didn’t plan these things, nor were we aware of the repercussions, not even Henry Chalfant.

M- I’d like you to tell us, how did you learn how to paint?

Z- For my part, when I started, there was nothing to refer to… I think I saw Break Machine, and maybe one of Michael Jackson’s music videos where you’d see some tags on the background. To live through that period of promoting your crew’s name, that was my first contact with the spray can, that I think was shoe polish... that was the start off, and it taught us to control our outlining. The cans were females, the caps weren’t good for traces. The first pieces were probably not much more than tags.

I think once we started stealing them at the drugstores, Novelty, Duplicolor, we noticed those were better; but the cans we stole at auto shops, lots of them were metallic, and very watery.

When you the graffiti of that period, it’s crazy, an attempt at dominating the tracing skill. Another funny thing we understood once the movies and books started coming in, was the matter of sizes. As we’d only seen the pieces on pictures, the ones from the ‘80s looked tiny. When you see them, they seem all clean, but that’s because -in proportion- they were three times bigger than what you were doing. You see Dondi’s train, and in reality, there are drips and very blurry outlines, because of the paint they had at that time of course: krylon, rust-oleum o americans accents.

We tried to be as neat as we could, within the possibilities the spray cans were giving us. A sort of common knowledge started growing based on our experiences, slashing the hole of the cap, stealing varnish caps, or whichever. Later once we went to Paris for the first time, we tried out Sparvar and Buntlack, and met writers that had mastered the skill of the technique. We were in Stalingrad, seeing pieces by the BBC. “How the hell do they do those outlines?”. After being with them, we knew what we had to look for. I mean, going from hyper basic straight sticks for lines, or bubbly ones that said Break Dance or Hip Hop Don’t Stop, to seeing a Seen piece with its arrows and connections, we lost our minds. A flash that appears to quickly disappear again, and a bunch of information you cannot access. You start trying to translate all of that, with all the differences there were between writers, and at the beginning your way forward is copying like a little parrot: arrows, shines, shadows, 3D, all of it at once. Pieces from the ‘80s have it all. In my wolf piece, the figure has shine even on his jacket. Likewise, if you see pieces from DFR or Fasim, it’s all a chaos full of details, shines, etc.

In Paris I tried Buntlack of Marabu, Germans, which was model building paint, also available in the stores in Madrid, but of course they cost about five times more. And if you bought one and used it for your outline, everyone freaked out. That was our secret.

Mi first characters had a more Disney-ish esthetic because I had learned illustration, and they had more to do with that than with B-boying. The following time that we went to Paris, they guys from BBC already had the B-boy thing down. We were evolving through our references.

Like for example my name: after the ones I’ve mentioned I moved on to using Faze2, not fully realizing the reference to the NY writer, which isn’t much talked about in Style wars. I was obviously not the only Faze2 in the universe but, I can’t remember in what year, Moockie got a letter from Phase-2 saying I was copying his name. I mean imagine me “I’m just a kid from the neighborhood, my name’s Pablo, I would have loved to know your work because I would have definitely progressed in a more precise way...”. So, in the end, I transitioned to Fazeta. I liked the combination of letters, with the addition of having a wink to my childhood reference, Mazinger Z.

I liked the name; the letter Z is powerful, and you can make it have lots of styles. Almost all writers go through this exercise of trying out and changing. From ’94 on, I kept Zeta.

M- Pablo, this has much more to give, but we need to break off here… Let’s follow up another day, how about we close with an anecdote?

Z- OK. Barcelona. They brought us over to paint something strange, I don’t know if Metro had something to do with this. Chop, Moockie and I, in a jam who-knows-where. The usual, b-boys, graffiti writers… We were hired to paint the club, and in those days, we always messed around with the phrase “Why do pigeons say yes?”, we’d written it on several walls.

This was your usual noisy club, music blaring. We were painting inside the bar. They’d move the bottles, we’d paint, and they’d set it back again. The club in full swing, the waitress serving, it was really crazy. The owner, all happy, buying us drinks, bringing girls over... it was all very ‘90s movies, drugs and rock & roll.

We didn’t use drugs but we had enough with the paint, it was madness and what we had done was horrible.

Once the jam was over, the owner of the club volunteers to take us to Barcelona. As we’d gotten paint on us, we had cleaned up in the club with turpentine. Thing is, I remember this guy being dressed as a pimp, it probably wasn’t so, but you know, in a kind of sordid way... so we step into his fancy car, Moockie, Chop and I in the backseat. Once we took off, this guy kept on making sick jokes and telling us he needed to make a stop to pick up a female friend of his; he also had to take her to Barcelona. Halfway, he stops, and this woman gets in, looking almost like an escort, with a fur coat on. We: completely shy because of the situation, and all giggly.

We keep on driving, and they’re talking, and suddenly the man says he seems to be smelling turpentine. Chop and I nod. Moockie sat in the middle and was looking at us weirdly. We didn’t understand a thing. All of a sudden, he screams “I’m not going anywhere to no whores!”. Of course, the man stops the car. They both turn around and just look at us like “what did you just say?”. Moockie repeating he wasn’t going to no hookers. He just presumed that lady was a prostitute. Imagine their faces. The rest of the journey was in complete silence.

M- Moockie and the hookers, that’ll be the title of that podcast, hahhaa. A life of lust.

I forgot to ask, what would be Zeta's soundtrack from those years?

Z- This one:

*note – in Spanish, turpentine (aguarrás) sounds closely like a slang word for whores (guarras), that’s where Moockie’s confusion came from 😉