There is no "gone Dark Side Of The Moon," really...

The Dark Side Of The Moon (EMI, 1973)
PINK FLOYD

I believe 40 years is a reasonable long period of time to judge 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, it's always about how much it influenced you -, and maybe to be aware of some melody that 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. With three decades on its shoulders and so many cultural changes that have been happening since 1973, the collective subconscious has forgotten how astonishing and groundbreaking this production is.

Noble successor of concept such Albums as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Tommy, this record was manufactured using the same mold other PF 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 death of Pink Floyd's founder: the great Syd Barrett, of whom nobody knew if he was breathing or pulling daisies 6 feet under until his death in 2006. 

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, on the liner notes of his Tales of Mystery And Imagination, of not making too much money with the Floyd), 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 1987 (I bought the peruvian cassette for the first time one year later).

Still today, it's one of the best selling compact discs in 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 music of the Beatles or Mozart's.

In nine songs, Roger Waters pens the story of a man (you or I) obsessing with time advancing slowly 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 suddenly they smash. 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. Beautiful.

For the B side, Waters composes "Money", the best song written about the vile metal ever. There are references to Elton John buying a team of Soccer and to Led Zeppelin buying an jet plane for themselves (Steve Miller Band's "Jet Airliner" probably wanted to follow that thought). "Money is the root of all evil today". Nothing else truer than that statement. "Us And Them" is about the struggle of classes that helped creating part of Barret's madness. "Any Colour You Like" is considered another reprise of "Breathe," two half notes down 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 love and relationships that made Roger Waters' wife cry when she listened to them for the first time. You might too.

Alan Parsons, chief engineer at Abbey Road Studios during the Darky sessions, talked in an interview 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 Road left Abbey Studios, their brains couldn't function anymore. It was just like the Beatles did in Sgt. Pepper. The album drained all their creativity and they just needed a vacation. Their following record would come out later two years, another tribute to Syd called Wish You Were Here. For some, their real masterpiece.

Ah, yes, pure entertainment. Darky will always be available in Amazon.com.

More Floyd:
Ummagumma (Harvest, 1969): The most spacey record of the sixties. Out of this 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.
A Collection of Great Dance Songs (Columbia, 1981): In one record, the six most popular Pink Floyd songs. Adorable.
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.

El Ocaso De La Reina

A Kind Of Magic (EMI, 1986)
The Miracle (EMI, 1989)
Innuendo (Hollywood, 1991)

QUEEN

The last five years of Queen as a band were way more successful with their audience than the twelve before; not with the critics because Queen never got along with the music press. But it seems that the lyrics of “Bohemian Rhapsody” worked as a fateful prophecy that applied to lead singer Freddie Mercury: a tragedy in which the fortunate man finds that there’s no life ahead, just a furious grim reaper approaching him at a tremendous speed. The speed of AIDS.

We don’t know the exact moment in which Freddie Mercury found out he carried the HIV virus. It could have been a little after the apotheosic A Kind Of Magic tour, in which we find Freddie in his best shape, form and relationship with the audience; specially the one at Wembley Stadium on July 12, 1986. After that tour, and after recording the Miracle album, Mercury announced that Queen doesn’t have any plans to go around the world promoting it.

The three records mentioned here, specially The Miracle, are way underestimated by the critics who tought Queen was repeating themselves each three years playing hymns for sold out stadiums, listening and admiring a singer who was a real showman, deeply in love with fame –not fortune- and the love of his audience, that invisible being that understood his troubles and tribulations everytime he hit the stage.

A Kind Of Magic was, besides yet another Queen record in the eighties, the second effort of recovery after that bad joke called Hot Space. It came also with a fantastic movie, Russel Mulcahy’s Highlander, and some songs from the album were used in the film, like “Don’t Lose Your Head” and “One Year Of Love.” The movie tells the story of a Scotsman who belongs to an immortal warrior race that’s been fighting between themselves since Middle Age, and has to choose between immortality and a limited-time life of love with his beloved woman. In the case of Mercury there was no room for choice, but a quick rush to grandeur with this album and the spectacular tour of ’86, ending on August 9 at Knebworth Park in London, Queen’s last performace as a quartet.

The Miracle tunes, had being played live, would have delighted the masses. “I Want It All” is so strong we can find it on Digital TV commercials. It has a certain fatidic touch probably because Mercury already knew by that time he was sick and also Brian May was divorcing his second wife, British actress Anita Dobson. The irony of this record is that, no matter how much pain and sorrow they could sing of, people loved them unconditionally, posting them on the top of the charts. Same curse Cobain suffered until his suicide, but in the case of Queen, they suffered it with quiet desperation, the English way.

Innuendo, released on February 1991, has so many hidden messages about the Grim Reaper that by May rumours were flying on Mercury’s counted days. The first single, “Innuendo,” was an analysis on time spent in fame and a chant to keep fighting until the end for life itself. November arrived, Mercury announced he was an HIV carrier and he was dying and two days later he died, entering the pantheon of Rock and Roll Glory. As simple as that, he kept the secret for a considerable amount of time and his fatalism and anger went beyond his own tragedy: “This is just the tip of the Iceberg,” said Freddie two days before he died. Elton John and David Bowie might have been sweating cold. The keys for the announcement of his premature departure can be found in “Headlong” and “I’m Going Slightly Mad,” where the unavoidability of sudden death is present in almost all verses. For “The Show Must go On,” Freddie regrets being close to death, but he takes it holding his head high, ready to die with the make-up on, entertaining his audience. The fans couldn’t have been in more pain on the next day of his departure, but Freddie left this world leaving a very, very strong musical legacy, full of personality and syle.

*****

Los últimos cinco años de Queen como banda fueron mucho más exitosos con la audiencia que los anteriores; de más está decir con la crítica porque Queen nunca se llevó bien con la prensa. Pero pareciera que la letra de la canción "Bohemian Rhapsody" se le cumplía a su vocalista Freddy Mercury cual profecía: una tragedia en la cual el hombre afortunado de tener toda una vida por delante ve que no hay más que una muerte que viene que bufa.

No sabemos el momento exacto en el cual Freddy Mercury se entera que es portador del virus del SIDA. Pudo haber sido después de la apoteósica gira del A Kind Of Magic, en donde a Freddie se le ve en su mejor forma y relación con la audiencia, especialmente la del estadio de Wembley en aquel 12 de Julio del '86. Después de aquella gira, Mercury anuncia que Queen no tiene planes de seguir paseándose por el mundo con el álbum que grabarían después, The Miracle.

Los tres discos mencionados aquí, especialmente The Miracle, están muy subestimados por la crítica quienes consideraban que Queen se repetía a sí misma cada tres años tocando himnos para estadios en donde no cabía un alfiler de llenos que estaban, escuchando y admirando a un verdadero showman quien estaba enamorado perdidamente de la fama -no de la fortuna- y del cariño de su público, aquel ente invisible que entendía sus tribulaciones cada vez que salía al escenario.

A Kind Of Magic fue, aparte de un disco más de Queen en los ochenta, el segundo esfuerzo de la banda al recuperarse de aquella broma de mal gusto llamada Hot Space. Vino a la par con una película fantástica, Highlander de Russell Mulcahy, y algunas canciones se usaron en dicho filme, como "Don't Lose Your Head" y si no me equivoco, "One Year Of Love." La película cuenta la historia de un Escocés que pertenece a una raza de guerreros inmortales que ha estado luchando entre sí desde el Medioevo, y tiene que decidir entre la inmortalidad o la vida de tiempo limitado junto a su amada. En el caso de Mercury no iba a haber decisión, pero sí un apresuramiento a la grandeza con este disco y la espectacular gira del 86, que finalizaría el 9 de Agosto con el último concierto de Queen como cuarteto en Knebworth Park, Londres.

Las canciones del Miracle, de haber sido tocadas en vivo por Queen, hubieran encantado a las masas. "I Want It All" por ejemplo, es tan fuerte que se usa ahora en comerciales de TV digitales. Tienen un cierto toque fatalista porque al parecer por ese entonces Freddie ya sabía de su enfermedad y Brian May se estaba divorciando de su esposa, la actriz Anita Dobson. Lo irónico de este disco, al igual que los otros dos, es que por más drama y tristeza que ponían, la gente los adoraba colocándolos en el número uno de la mayoría de listas. Es la maldición que Kurt Cobain sufrió hacia el fin de su vida de la misma forma, pero en el caso de Mercury y Queen, la sufrían con desesperación calmada, al típico estilo Inglés.

Innuendo, aparecido en Febrero de 1991, tiene tantos mensajes escondidos refiriéndose a la Pelona que para Mayo ya corrían rumores de que Mercury tenía los días contados. El primer single, "Innuendo," era un análisis al tiempo pasado en medio de la fama, y la arenga a seguir luchando hasta el fin por la vida misma. Noviembre llegó, Mercury anunció al mundo que era portador del VIH y el 24 de Noviembre el SIDA lo mandó al panteón de la Gloria del Rock And Roll. Así de simple, mantuvo el secreto durante un tiempo considerable y su fatalismo fue más allá de su propia persona: "Esto es la punta del Iceberg," dijo dos días antes de morir. David Bowie y Elton John debieron haber estado sudando frío. Las claves están en "Headlong" y "I'm Going Slightly Mad", en donde la inevitabilidad de la muerte intempestiva está presente en casi todos los versos. Para "The Show Must Go On," Mercury se lamenta estar al borde de la muerte, pero lo toma con la frente en alto, dispuesto a morir con el maquillaje puesto. Sus fans no pudieron estar más adoloridos al día siguiente de su partida, pero él se fue dejando un legado musical muy fuerte, lleno de personalidad y estilo.

Greetings from Joe Cocker and El Chavo

I should get back to work, indeed. Enjoy these two videos just pulled out from You-Know-Where.

Have a great day!

The Legendary Band That Became A One-Hit Wonder

Drama (Atlantic, 1980)
YES

1980 found Yes on the verge of collapse and a nervous breakdown. Jon Anderson had not sang an impressive note since 1974's Relayer, Rick Wakeman started to make fans fall asleep, the last sessions of Yes featuring Jon Anderson and produced by Roy Thomas Baker (Queen, Cars) didn't work at all. Dead end for one of the most important progressive bands in England.

Like AC/DC, on the same year, Yes lost its vocalist and faced its future with a big question mark. Anderson quit to work with Vangelis and move further into New Age music (just to come back, three years later, with his tail between his legs). Rick Wakeman, the keyboard virtuoso, also left the band again, for the second time, after noticing that the last two albums were trashed by critics and rejected by the public saleswise. Alan White, the drummer, stayed with the band, so did Steve Howe, the amazing guitar player. But there was more to come for this band in crisis, even though Chris Squire, bass player and founder, was shitting milk with rage.

Enter the Buggles: Trevor Horn, guitar-vocalist-producer and Geoff Downes, keyboardist. The Age Of Plastic, released in 1979, put them in the spotlight of the new wave with that sweet single called "Video Killed The Radio Star." Trevor Horn presented a track to Chris Squire... and he was hired immediately as the new vocalist for the next Yes album and tour. He was needed, come on.

Drama was skeptically received by fans. They actually were expecting a better album than Tormato, but with the same classic line-up of Anderson, Squire, Wakeman, Howe and White. What they got was a warp into the new wave, an update just like Pink Floyd's with The Wall in 1979. Yes, like the Floyd, were no longer dinosaurs, damn it -Now they are, sorry.

The 1980 Yes tour was a total sold out and it's still the top grossing tour the band ever had. Thanks to Trevor Horn (who's a top-of-the-line producer) and Geoff Downes who helped with his synthesizer to update the band and make it more approachable to what people's ears were listening to in those days. Drama was the combination of Squire, Howe and White's experience and the freshness and vision of Horn and Downes. It was a volatile mix that wouldn't last more than six months, but hey, it worked and we love to hear it over and over. In vinyl, it couldn't sound more amazing.

Drama passed the test of time and now it's a classic album. I still remember a friend of mine, back in college, who admired this record as the greatest 80's LP. I can agree with him if, and only if there weren't so many good records released after 1980. It is, however, a landmark in sound production, sending us into the amazing landscape Roger Dean painted for the cover and which is now exhibited at the San Francisco Art Exchange Gallery (458 Gearty Street, San Francisco, CA).

Yes, aftershock:

90125 (Atco, 1983): "Owner Of A Lonely Heart," the biggest Yes hit single, is

included here. According to Iñaki Gorraiz, spanish filmmaker: "Trevor Rabin, the new guitar player, saved the band." The title refers to the catalog number and, if they weren't creative titlewise, they did an excellent job with "Leave It," setting the sound ready for something called... MTV.

Big Generator (Atco, 1987): According to Javier Moreno, peruvian music buff: "Yes, he saved the band. But Big Generator is the first approach to the cheesyness Yes would be experimenting in the nineties. Thanks to Rabin and Anderson's bucolic vision of life. Key track: "Shoot High, Aim Low."

Union (Arista, 1991), Talk (Victory, 1994): Unnecesary Yes, these records are either a no-no or a maybe. The first one was an attempt of cheating on the audience trying to make them believe that the nine most important members of Yes were playing together. Actually, there were more extra session musicians than in any other Yes record. Shame on them. Talk is plainly boring.

Feliz Cumpleaños, Jorge Cox

Querido Jorge,

Hoy, de estar aquí, hubieras cumplido 64 años. Como tu decias: ¿Hermano voy a cumplir 64? ,Te preocupaba mucho el paso de los años y esas cosas. El Sábado (osea ayer) hubiésemos estado en tu casa los amigos de siempre, allí (par recibir las 12) para escuchar música, tomar uno que otro trago y lo mejor estar contigo y escucharte hablar de lo que nos gusta ELVIS!! Nunca olvidaré las veladas en tu casa.

¡¡FELIZ CUMPLEAÑOS JORGITO,en verdad te extrañamos!!

Tus amigos del Official Forever Elvis Presley Fan ClubLima-Perú.

www.elvispresleyperu.com

Y nosotros en CacaoRock lo extrañamos mucho también.

CacaoVideos: What To Be Found in YouTube, Vol. 1

Pilot: Never believe it's not so...

YouTube is like the ocean. Thousands of terabytes of information go back and forth, uploaded, downloaded, traded, commented and becoming in some cases extremely popular. When it first appeared in 2005 I thought I was in heaven, watching videos I haven't seen in years and discovering new ones. For new ones we have the usual channels. This website is about the old, the forgotten, the good old music you thought you wouldn't hear or you might consider giving a shot. Therefore, here's the first volume of personal selections from the vast ocean of videos that Youtube is.

Volume I: The music videos dusted by CacaoRock.

Special thanks to all the guys and girls who posted these beauties. A raspberry to MTV/Viacom, NBC, Warner and all those big companies who force YouTube to remove these videos because of copyright infrigment. Hey, the video quaility is so poor it shouldn't be considered a "copy"! Anyway, it's a nice way to go back in time.

Let's start with Red Rider, a band led by Tom "Life Is A Highway" Cochrane. "Lunatic Fringe," I know you're out there:




To be a kid and to be in love. To be travelling through the cosmos in a spaceship! Robin Gibb knew about the average teenage guy's emotions in this song called "Boys Do Fall In Love." If you weren't a kid in the 80's, you wouldn't understand.




Rocky Burnette, son of Johnny, precursor of the Kid Rock lookalike, singing an extremy catchy tune, "Tired of Toein' The line."

And of course, Pilot performing "Magic" on Top of The Pops, 1974. There was a time when TV showed really good music, not "reality:"

You've seen the videos. Now get the music.

Richard Wright (1943-2008)

El tecladista de Pink Floyd, Richard Wright, puede ser el pianista inglés más influyente de la historia del rock. Entre 1967 y 1979, su sonido acomodó los demás elementos de Pink Floyd creando una maravillosa sinfonía cósmica, a veces introspectiva e inocente y muchas veces desoladora.

Fundador de la banda junto al ya fallecido Syd Barrett, Wright participó en los momentos más ilustres de la evolución Floyd. En el disco estudio del doble Ummagumma se desplegó con una atonalidad que rayaba en la locura llamada "Sysyphus." Compuso "Summer of 68" para el Atom Heart Mother y nos impresionó con su voz delgada y fina junto a la del guitarrista David Gilmour en "Echoes," la grandísima canción natural del Meddle.

Pero serán para mí y para muchos más los álbumes Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here y Animals en donde veremos a Wright lucirse como tecladista, controlando dispositivos electrónicos capaces de hacernos volar al espacio, en el interior de un auto, en un vuelo trasatlántico, o echados en nuestra cama. Rick puede crear atmósferas etéreas basadas en simples acordes de piano como en "Us And Them," puede hacer que sus sintetizadores llamen al espíritu vivo -aunque alejado- de Barrett en "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" y crear ladridos artificiales que nos recuerdan nuestro propio salvajismo en el mundo moderno con la depresiva "Dogs." En todas las canciones de Floyd, su sonrisa y actitud relajada hacían que la banda no se salga de un cierto control humano, sensato, y evitar una desviación hacia la locura y el aislamiento total. Quizás fue por eso que Roger Waters, autoproclamado líder del grupo, expulsó a Wright de Pink Floyd en 1979, haciéndolo un músico de sesión. Su ego y arrogancia pudo más que el compañerismo de los cuatro y la presencia de un tecladista que en verdad fue la clave del sonido de la banda después de la partida de Syd Barrett en 1968.

Aquí lo tenemos a Richard Wright con Pink Floyd y su "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun" llevándonos a la antigua Pompeya junto a Waters, Gilmour y el baterista Nick Mason. Su solo es indescriptible:

Y aquí cantando "Echoes," en Pompeya, 1971:

Richard Wright encontró la muerte hoy a los 65 años víctima del cáncer.

NIN

nine inch nails. september 5, 2008. oracle arena, oakland, california

Los adorables chicos y chicas neo-góticos pueden estar orgullosos al oir decir que su banda favorita es la más consistente y profesional en los escenarios de rock and roll de estos días. El concierto del 5 de Septiembre puede dar fé de ello. Nine Inch Nails tocó con una furia y precisión que nunca habíamos visto en un concierto de rock. En este caso, rock industrial.

Esta no es exactamente una banda que graba en estudios y sale a tocar los mismos temas con sus mismos integrantes. Nine Inch Nails es un proyecto de un solo hombre, Trent Reznor, quien compone, ejecuta, graba y produce los temas casi solo y luego escoge músicos de la escena industrial, les enseña a tocar sus temas (es definitivamente un buen maestro) y juntos los ejecutan en el escenario de manera punzante, firme, estridente. Pero la música que presenta Nine Inch Nails en el escenario es solo parte del show. Las imagenes y la escenografía intensifican la performance de la banda de manera brutal. Ruido blanco, nieve de TV, líneas de luz amarilla, símbolos que representan caos son mostrados con orden y precisión, como en el caso de "Vessel," en donde la banda es rodeada por mallas metálicas que sirven de pantallas mostrando imágenes que van de osciloscopios a bosques televisados. Llegaron "Closer," "March Of the Pigs" y "Hurt" del Downward Spiral -hasta ahora su obra maestra-, "Head Like A Hole," "Terrible Lie" de su primer album Pretty Hate Machine y hasta "Wish" de su EP Broken. Reznor tiene todo bajo control y nosotros disfrutamos el show y nos volvemos fans acérrimos de la banda, que aturde con precisión y gusto, con talento y furia interna que nos hace sentir confortables y complacidos, aunque la lírica de Reznor sale del fondo de un lago turbio de dolor.

NIN es un "grupo" triunfador en el rock estridente y a la vez un candidato de fuerza indiscutible para el Rock And Roll Hall of Fame del 2014.

Reznor ha revolucionado la forma de hacer dinero en la música rock. En vez de lloriquear como niños sin teta por las descargas ilegales en internet (como los quejones de Metallica), Reznor pone su disco The Slip en la página web de Nine Inch Nails para ser descargado gratis (http://www.nin.com/) y de paso, promover su gira y vender camisetas y demás mercadería. Su música será difundida con o sin regalías y Reznor lo sabe. Él también sabe que los fans de NIN se cuentan a montones y su estrategia podría ser una precursora para otros actos que están perdiendo dinero con contratos leoninos de enormes casas discográficas. Por lo que hemos visto y oído la noche del 5, esperamos que venga más NIN, mucho más.

Nine Inch Nails en Amazon.com: