The Talented Mr. Harrison

Cloud Nine (Dark Horse, 1987)

GEORGE HARRISON

If George only knew. Now that he passed away, like all things must do, everybody starts considering him as probably the most influential guitar player in popular music of the last 40 years. Before his death, he was the Quiet Beatle. However, almost every Beatles fan learned to play guitar after listening to him. From the simplest strumming ever of the acoustic guitar in “Love Me Do” to the great G suspended 4th opening chord in “A Hard Day’s Night”; from the melancholic “I Need You” to the dry and powerful chords of “Taxman”; and, last but definetly not least, from the Indian sitar and tabla sounds of “Within You Without you” (his masterpiece) to his eternal question for finding a real God in “My Sweet Lord”. Harrison grew artistically under the bigger, overwhelming shadow of the Beatles, a band bigger than the sum of its parts. He asked his Beatle friends to go with him to India for the trascendental meditation that could have saved the band from the inevitable split and, in the meantime, to find God, Vishnu or whatever its name was. He also asked Paul and John to help him with his solo projects. They declined.

It’s no coincidence that after the India trip, Harrison wrote his best songs with the Beatles, turning “Something” and “Here Comes The Sun” from Abbey Road into instant beloved hits and perennial classics of rock and roll. More than God, he found out how to live in peace with himself and how to understand human nature. Later, he forgave his best friend Eric Clapton for writing a desperate love song to his wife Pattie "Layla" Boyd (ultimately stealing her from him), and of course, a man so complete like George found another woman in his life, the great Olivia Arias.

He also took a lot of patience for writing and recording Cloud Nine, the only album he recorded as a solo artist since 1982. Clapton plays the solo on “Devil’s Radio”, and they settle down their differences and play just like they did 19 years ago with “While my Guitar Gently Weeps”. Jeff Lynne, that selfish guy from the Electric Light Orchestra, produces the album and co-writes “Someplace Else”, which reminds us a little bit of the song “Free As A Bird” that he co-produced with Paul, Ringo and George for the Anthology 1 collection.

The title track was number one in Argentina, back in 1988, and the album was an international success with "Got My Mind Set On You," a catchy James Ray cover. George also remembered the good ol' Beatles Days on "When We Was Fab" and that would be the last time he would sing a song about his beloved friends.

On the album cover, George’s smiling and he’s wearing sunglasses. Of course he wasn’t thinking about death on that moment, but he was ready to face it and let go. His mind was in peace. Altought this album led Harrison to record two albums with the Travelling Wilburys (the supergroup with Lynne, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison and Bob Dylan), He didn’t release anything after as a solo artist until Brainwashed. May God bless him.

Amadeus Goes To Cairo

Mozart In Egypt (Virgin Classics, 1997)
Orchestre Symphonique De Bulgarie/Milen Natchev/Children's Choir Of Radio Sofia

In 1997, one of the most curious and unexpected experiments in "educated" music took place in Holland, and now we're discussing its results. For Classical Music lovers, at least the ones I've introduced Mozart In Egypt to, the album is something curious, out of the ordinary, and something to quickly forget and move on. But no, this is definitely a keeper. It is a natural consequence of the evolution of travel and communication technologies. The evolution of understanding.

The idea came out of Hughes DeCourson's mind, influenced by Middle Eastern music as well as the evolution of Western music of the 18th Century, having Mozart as one of the best representations of it. Mozart was a pioneer but mostly a rebel. A punk who dared to smash all preconceived ideas of music. His sounds were not only creative but stormy and questioned for the truth and for something else to mix with. Middle Eastern music was too far away but DeCourson dared to clash these two dissimilar music tendences: European/Western and African/Middle-eastern.

It's almost a peace treat between Christianism and Islam. For an hour, Egyptian instruments will be collaborating with Western ones to create something unique. They won't cancel each other. We will enjoy pieces like the Double Quartet in E Flat for Clarinet, Violin, Viola and Violoncello, with the sweet, daring addition of Arghul (single-reed, double oboe), Rababa (two-stringed bowed instrument), Kawala (flute), Tabla, Daff (flat drum) and Sagat (small cymbals attached to the fingertips).

Mozart composes, but his work gets blended with traditional arabic melodies and together they flow through a beautiful string of tunes. Purists will call this union unholy and some of them will call on Jihad against the idea. But that idea gave a wonderful album that's here to stay. In Yaman Hawa/Thamos, King of Egypt, a singer with the voice of an angel named May introduces us to a popular Arab-Andaluz melody using a form of improvization that Mozart later will help to glue together. See, the Western instruments make the listener of the Western World feel more comfortable and less out-of-place. But eventually we will fall in love with the Egyptian sounds and will thank Mozart for the trip.

Mozart In Egypt is truly a trip, a pilgrimage, more than a "clash" of cultures. A masterpiece? Indeed.

Forty years later, there is no "Gone Dark Side Of The Moon," really...

 
Forty years is a reasonable long period of time to judge or rate a record: to check how good it behaved throughout the decades, if it has influenced other works -although I believe that's not so important, since it's always been about how much it influenced you-, and maybe to drill down some melody we may have been humming along all this time.

Records like Dark Side Of The Moon are for some collectors like for normal people is to have food in the table or to own a car. You have to have it or else your life is worthless. Every once in a while getting an additional copy is good for you. With four decades on its shoulders and so many cultural changes that have happened since 1973, the collective sub-conscious has kind of forgotten how astonishing and groundbreaking this production is.

Noble successor of concept such Albums as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Tommy, The Dark Side Of The Moon was constructed using the same mold other Pink Floyd albums were made, such as Meddle and Atom Heart Mother. However, the Floyd picked a vast subject: life and death. The life and the artistic suicide of Pink Floyd's founder: the great Syd Barrett, of whom nobody knew if he was breathing or pulling daisies.

Darky owes much from its success to the conditions it was recorded. London's Abbey Road was the studio, Alan Parsons the main engineer (who later complained of not making any royalties out of this album), and the four members of the band were the actual producers. They risked everything and they got what they deserved: The permanency of the album on Billboard's Top 200 albums from 1973 until 1988 (I personally bought the Peruvian cassette for the first time one year later).

Still today, it's one of the best selling compact discs on Amazon.com. It's a record each new generation has to discover, and it is for that reason that the album will never leave, just like the Beatles' or Mozart's music. 

In a sequence of nine (or ten) tracks, lyricist Roger Waters pens the story of a man (you or I) obsessing with time slowly pushing him toward his death. "Breathe" and "Time" are written almost in the same moderate beat. Between them, "On The Run", an intricate game of synthesizers, heartbeats and airport sounds where airplanes take off and crash. Richard Wright, the keyboard player, executes an instrumental called "Great Gig In the Sky", based on the ancient Egyptians' idea of the chariot that takes the dead to Paradise. Did I say ancient Egyptians? See the pyramids in the inner sleeve of the CD. See the pyramidal prism that decomposes the white light.

For the B side, Waters composes "Money", the best song written about the vile metal ever. There are references to Elton John buying a soccer team to Led Zeppelin buying an jet plane for themselves (Steve Miller Band's "Jet Airliner" probably wanted to follow that concept). "Money is the root of all evil today", sings David Gilmour, and we look back and we say... oh yeah. "Us And Them" is about the struggle of classes that helped creating part of Barrett's madness and a natural segue to "Money". "Any Colour You Like" is considered another reprise of "Breathe", and the idea of a quiet album about a screaming subject turns into reality in our ears. The album ends with "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse", two fascinating games of words about madness, love and relationships that made Roger Waters' wife cry when she listened to them for the first time. You might too if you get it.

Alan Parsons, chief engineer at Abbey Road Studios during the Darky sessions, talked during an interview in 1982 about how hard recording this album was. Pink Floyd wanted strange sounds to sound familiar to the listener. A cash registrer and a bag of currencies pulsing in 7/4 tempo, recorded on a tape that looped around the control room. Another room full with wall clocks hitting the hour, a beating heart that begins and finishes the symphony of life. It took them one year to finish the album, and when Pink Floyd left Abbey Road Studios, their brains couldn't function anymore. It was just like the Beatles after Pepper. The album drained all their creativity and their next project, something called Household Objects using sounds created without actual musical instruments, had to be dropped but some elements were found in their follow-up record which came out two years later: Another tribute to Syd called Wish You Were Here. For some, their real masterpiece.

Darky will always be available in Amazon.com.

More Floyd:
Ummagumma (Harvest, 1969): Still, the most spacey record of the sixties. Out of this Solar System.
Wish You Were Here (Columbia, 1975): A homage to guitar-vocalist-songwriter-leader of 1966 and 1967's Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett. Gilmour and Waters ask him to come back and join the band. But two guitars can't sound in the same amp, or can they?
Animals (Columbia, 1977): They got to be crazy. The ultimate conceptual album, the beginning of the end. In 2008 it became the unofficial anthem of the economy meltdown.
A Collection of Great Dance Songs (Columbia, 1981): In one record, the six most popular Pink Floyd songs. Adorable: "Money" played solely by Gilmour because EMI refused to give the song to Columbia.
The Wall (Columbia, 1979): the kick in the ass, from Pink Floyd to all the Punk generation. With lots of love.
Echoes (Capitol, 2001): Essential Pink Floyd, sequenced by Gilmour and Waters. Like previous albums, a tribute to the eternal Syd Barrett.

Jueces y Partes (álbum de la semana del 17 al 23 de marzo)

La Mandrágora

(CBS, 1981)

JOAQUIN SABINA, ALBERTO PEREZ Y JAVIER KRAHE

Después de oir este pequeño e insignificante (para la casa disquera CBS) álbum en vivo, llegamos a la conclusión de que Joaquín Sabina se ha pasado toda su carrera tratando de repetir este recital, con algunos aciertos y otros desbarajustes.

El disco deja boquiabierto a cualquer hispanohablante y nos fuerza a oírlo una y otra vez hasta memorizarnos las canciones de tres verdaderos trovadores y cantautores. Sabina, El Poeta convertido en superestrella del rock and roll tiene su momento cumbre en un disco en el cual los dos instrumentos predominantes son las guitarras acústicas y los kazoos (las cornetitas esas de fiesta). Pareciera increíble, pero están ahí para acompañar a tres voces de compositores que nunca se comprometieron con nada para cantar lo que tienen dentro, una visión extremadamente irónica de la sociedad madrileña postfranquista y pre-movida de inicios de los ochenta.

Los tres artistas son de vanguardia, pero cada uno apunta con su misma voz ácida a diferentes blancos de la psique humana. Sabina es melancólico y con una filosofía extremadamente irónica de la vida, y siente que está cansado de vivir a sus aproximadamente 32 años (en 1981). Lanza canciones al viento como "Pongamos Que Hablo De Madrid," en donde está tan deprimido por tanto tiempo de vivir en una ciudad tan sórdida que termina enamorándose de ella, al sentirse incapaz de sentir lo que le dijeron que era la felicidad. Al parecer no le pasa a cualquiera, pero igual terminamos amando la canción. Vendría una puya al Caudillo y su reciente fallecimiento, "Adivina Adivinanza" en donde Sabina, furioso y cáustico, nos hace saber quiénes lloraron la muerte de Francisco Franco y cómo se celebró -y lamentó- la partida del dictador. Sobrecogedor tema considerando que hasta ahora hay gente que canta "Cara Al Sol".

Sabina nos explicará sobre su ironía frente a la muerte en "Pasándola Bien," aunque en verdad estará ocultando su pavor frente a ella y su asombro de haber sobrevivido a varios encuentros con la pelona. Él representa a Tánatos en el trío; mientras que Krahe es Eros, el pervertido mujeriego y libador. Se obsesiona por el tamaño de su miembro, por las hembras que lo ignoraron y amaron en un "yo-yo" emocional interminable y también se da el lujo de cantar un poco desafinado. Cantará temas sobre erecciones, descendencia y usará la palabra "gilipollas" en el tema "Marieta" (de Georges Brassens) lo suficiente como para provocar censura en algunas radios. Krahe cuenta también la leyenda de un pueblo llamado "Villatripas" en donde hostia la gente anda bien cachonda, tío.

El que realmente se roba el espectáculo es Alberto Pérez, un verdadero genio cuya diferencia con Sabina y Krahe es que presenta una introspección más profunda en la represión conservadora de la Iglesia Católica. Pareciera que es un poeta rebelde pero al mismo tiempo se pregunta con mucha culpabilidad, "¿No habrán sido los largos años de Franco una cosa normal para España...?" Ahí está la canción "Un Santo Varón" en donde se entrega totalmente a la virtud divina para evitar las tentaciones del cuerpo de la mujer. Pero en verdad el punto más alto del disco es la versión suya de "La Tormenta" de Bressans, traducida por el mañosón Krahe. De contarles de qué trata, les arruinaría la sorpresa.