Soda Stereo & Gustavo Cerati

Probably the biggest rock band in Argentina and one of the most popular amongst spanish-speaking countries. Both them and Cerati's solo work deserve a thread over here imho.

http://mx.youtube.com/watch?v=UFEPAspWNPY

Will you get more posts than this one did--
Argentine rock, from the past and present?

mmm that didnt work

Will you get more posts than this one did--
Argentine rock, from the past and present?

― curmudgeon, martes 20 de enero de 2009 6:54

I will once I can convince enough people of their sheer awesomeness past the language barriers. Otherwise I'll post a bunch of youtube links from my favorite songs of theirs.

Mmm only one I could find that's not a live rendition. Ignore the anime

Im actually curious about your opinion on their music.

I like the Cerrati solo cd I have and need to check out Soda Stereo.

Cerati, in critical condition after suffering from a stroke :(

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2010/05/21/argentina-rocker-gustavo-cerati-suffers-stroke-after-concert/

Really sad. I like 'Sueño Stereo' very much and the last live record. Reminds me of the week I spent in Buenos Aires 10 years ago.

Just 50 years old. Hopefully he will have a full recovery.

One of my faves:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2teJAInwyK8&feature=related

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100522/ap_en_mu/lt_venezuela_cerati

slight medical improvement

Sort of big news here in Latin America. Overheard today that he's recovering now but they predict brain damage. Hopefully not severe.

After four years in a coma, Cerati died a few hours ago.

I know noone outside Spanish speaking countries knew him so ILM doesn't really have any grasp of how famous he is (think the equivalent of Bob Dylan, fame-wise) but he was perhaps the most important rock musician in all latinamerica.

There's many songs to choose from and perhaps this one is not the most interesting musically-wise but this unplugged version is the latin equivalent of Freebird over here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57uXgCKy0Xc

If anyone's interested I can make a 10 soda stereo 10 cerati songs playlist - keeping in mind you don't speak spanish and his lyrics are pretty much the point - with a selection of his songs.

:(

RIP :(

Oh ok, spotify is doing a tribute playlist and the selection is good so here you go if any of you ever gets curious about him:

http://open.spotify.com/user/spotifyenespa%c3%b1ol/playlist/7qneCVNFWczoSnfdFqfH66

Just saw the news. Terrible to hear.

RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BntcdLZCxM

Thread of missing Gustavo

tried to listen to this new This Year's Model in Spanish but it made me want to listen to Soda Stereo instead.

Hey timely revive: I only started checking out this band in the past month or so, and wow, Dynamo is excellent! The wikipedia page calls it the "hispanic Loveless", which doesn't seem to quite fit, but maybe the hispanic Achtung Baby? I mean, that would be a huge compliment in my book, anyway

I actually started with Bocanada because it seemed more my thing but I didn't really take to it apart from a track or two

Listening to Gustavo’s last solo album, “Fuerza Natural,” on a friend’s recommendation and it sounds pretty good.

Same friend complains about Soda Stereo being too derivative, but I’ve never agreed with him on that.

Then there’s also this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhyRuCfs5Js

Well he never denied his anglophile tendencies. Here talking about Stereolab on Chilean television in 1996.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h70wnnmMBT4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCdOGM-Ac-8

Thanks!

Me, I usually find his tracks pretty convincing and don't worry about whether they may sound like something else, and I especially like his voice.

i asked my chilean partner who the kevin shields of latin america was and they said cerati. led me down a huge rabbithole. i definitely prefer his solo stuff but dynamo is my favorite SS album. it's like a long-lost shoegaze/dreampop classic.

bocanada is definitely my favorite, but all of his solo albums are worth listening to. the cerati/melero collab is also excellent

also i swear there's a david sylvian sample on 'siempre es hoy'

Haha, talking about the Latin American Kevin Shields, and at the risk of deraling the thread... in the mid-nineties Cerati lived here in Chile and certainly had an influence on the sound of a certain shoegazy indie from that era.

Shogun and Christianes, both Christian Heyne's bands. Later he produced Javiera Mena first albums.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxjfEl5mRBE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22ARVj3wdv4

Solar had a hit in 97 in Chile ripping off "Soon".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3poBW_8p08

awesome! i'd love to learn about more experimental latin american artists. new thread maybe?

Thanks :-) . I think here we have the all purpose latin experimental, indie, hipster shit thread.

latin american hipster shit

Gracias totales.

Nada más queda

I've listened through all their albums since my post upthread, ending with the debut just a couple weeks ago. I can see why they may be called derivative, but it's much more apt to say they are great at taking different styles and putting their own spin on it. Cerati's unique songwriting and singing voice always comes through

otm

I was just alerted to this song, Richard Coleman’s “Normal,” which is apparently pretty well-known because of Gustavo’s shredding that starts around the three minute and never lets up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVI0vh1Rc84

https://lamejormagazine.com/2022/08/30/zeta-bosio-revela-la-obsesion-de-cerati-en-soda-stereo%EF%BF%BC/

Y hablando de hits, Zeta Bosio confiesa la esencia de los hits de Soda Stéreo compuestos por Gustavo Cerati.

«Las letras las escribía más Gustavo, eran un viaje más personal. Al principio, sobre todo, le costaba mucho y esperaba hasta el último momento. Teníamos el disco casi terminado y las letras llegaban el último día más o menos.

«Algo que descubrió Gustavo, sobre todo al comienzo era: él tenía una obsesión por tratar de que las letras en español no sonaran tan distintas al inglés; o sea ¿por qué el inglés era tan rítmico para el rock?, porque ellos lo habían creado de una manera, pero el idioma está lleno de palabras cortas que expresan mucho en un monosílabo.

«Entonces, él encontró en las esdrújulas del castellano repartirlas en tres sílabas y empezar a hacer con eso melodías, y así vinieron ‘Prófugos…’ y un montón de letras de Gustavo que están hechas de esa manera».

Ricardo Villalobos playing a speeded up version of Nuestra Fe by Soda Stereo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcG8pVLN2Wc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5paepjECJBQ

Re the comments above from Zeta about Gustavo’s lyrical approach: my friend who first cited that to me also told me that pre-Gustavo many of most Argentine Rock en Español artist would write scratch demo lyrics in some kind of English gibberish and then eventually retrofit the Spanish lyrics, providing this Charley Garcia demo as proof:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rxr5c7Pd0d0

Charly García

Still trying to figure out how Richard Coleman fits in. Seems like he was collaborating with Gustavo for a long time and has played in Soda Stereo (with the remaining members? On the recent Gracias Totales tour?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRCHltKDXo0

Thanks for reviving this thread and seeing finally some
Interest on Cerati over here. I value a lot the input on this board and I love reading takes from people outside of latinamerica on him.

The biggest Soda Stereo fan I ever met irl was a friend from Slovakia and it made me appreciate them in a different way. I wasn’t even that much into songs like “hombre al agua” or “un millon de años luz” until I heard them drinking with her and seeing her singing them in broken spanish passionately and they’re now my two favorite songs on that album.

Non-english acts are a blind spot in many music forums, it’s fascinating to me how acts like yes, Serge Gainsbourg or Sigur Ros or whatever are known worldwide and acts that are huge on certain regions are virtually unknown.

Anyways this thread revive has me relistening to Cerati and Soda Stereo after years of not hearing them and I’ve been loving it.

¿Qué otra cosa puedo hacer?

^Más que una pregunta, una respuesta.

Sad to say, I know next to no Spanish and haven't really paid attention to their lyrics at all. Despite that, I got pretty into them, Café Tacvba, and Caifanes in the last couple years

― Vinnie

Spanish is my first language and I don’t understand 90% of their lyrics. Cerati was good at writing vague lyrics that somehow resonate with a lot of people. You’ll see people in latinamerica shouting the lyrics by memory of songs like “de musica ligera” and if you ask them what the lyrics mean you’ll get different interpretations.

Cerati himself kept changing versions on what they meant. He would explain a song and say things like “this is what it means to me now; but it might have meant a different thing when I wrote it”

Luna roja” would be explained depending on the year as inspired by a soldier in the gulf war or a song about musician Federico Mouria dying of AIDS, or about menstruation, or about the end of the world as inspired by the book of revelations.

“Ciudad de la furia” is about the 1989 crisis in Argentina, or Icarus or finding refuge in sex.

OTM. Some songs have some themes that can be gleaned at least, like the Icarus motif in “En la ciudad de la furia” that I mentioned or “Crimen” of course, but even in those cases there is no clear cut meaning. The video for “Crimen” is a lot more obvious than the lyrics.
(xp)

I wrote something to a friend recently about what I thought about Gustavo’s lyrics and why I thought they worked so well. I can cut and paste it here if you want.

I tend to like lyrics that open to interpretation, so that's interesting. I just looked up a translation of “En la ciudad de la furia” and I can see what you both mean, but I also wonder if any ambiguity gets lost in translation. Lyrics (and poetry) seem like they'd be very hard to translate sometimes, because it helps so much to know the author's intention, and there's not always a clear one with these

On top of not knowing what the 1989 crisis in Argentina was, heh

There's even more to the story in the bio but I can't go into it now.

Going to give Ahí Vamos a listen now, as it has some big hits. Upon first listen the opening track is bugging me.

Second track picking up.

No

Don’t know where that last post came from

Meant to type “nada,” Gustavo’s favorite word.

Not really, it was a pocket post.

New screenname based on some recent thread-related viewing.

Listening to an electronic New Wave album called Silencio by Daniel Melero’s group Los Encargados, the one that got all the fruit thrown at them by the audience. Pretty cool.

Despite the cheesy sax.

Nobody throwing any fruit here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdzxjvwvCms

***SPOILER ALERT***
The lyrics of “Crimen” are actually the plot line of the film DECISION TO LEAVE.

j/k

https://www.latercera.com/culto/2020/08/06/el-crimen-sin-resolver-de-cerati/

Says “Crimen” was inspired by “Jealous Guy” and he was originally going to give it to Shakira.

Gustavo Cerati y Zeta Bosio en la Universidad del Salvador estudiando publicidad antes de formar Soda Stereo

Buenos Aires, 1980

Foto inédita que dieron a conocer sus compañeros de facultad Oscar René Cisneros y Fabiana Frayssinet

La historia aquí: https://t.co/h86jCUqg2V pic.twitter.com/doCwEuBPBz

— FlacoStereo (@FlacoStereo) November 16, 2020

Anyway, enjoyed the run of this revive which seems to be running down. Have learned a lot about Gustavo & Co and their world, and have been nerding out and doing one new Soda song a week at karaoke which has been really fun, especially since people in my neighborhood seem to know every song quite well, sometimes every word.

Maybe this is overreacting, but feel like trying to sing his songs gave me an extra appreciation for his gifts for melody and lyrics. He wrote the lyrics in such a way that he could sing them, not just scribbling down any old stuff he came up with and then sort of force his way through.

Meant to type overreaching not overreacting

I kind of got into some of his tics and tricks a little bit, such as when he likes to go “whoo whoo whoo whoo,” or when he likes to use the vowel “aw.”

Whatever you do, do not click on any video of Chris Martin and Coldplay doing their tribute cover versions.

I am intrigued, despite your warning

Go ahead and click and report back, maybe you will like more than me.

It’s just that – for those who love Gustavo’s voice – Chris Martin’s voice, along with his gringo pronunciation, may be an acquired taste.

Okay, starting to walk that one back. It’s kind of charming to watch them play “De Música Ligera” while the entire audience jumps up and down and sings along.

One of the videos has a guy with a Pulp shirt in it, a man after my own heart.

Another video is a Soda/Coldplay mashup. Which is inadvisable, since the Soda performance is so much more exciting.

Maybe at the show Coldplay played along with a Soda video?

Also thing I didn’t get around to mentioning that the winged man flying

…around with dripping wings en la ciudad de la furia was originally a comic book superhero named Argos created by Gustavo when he was a boy.

xp Tough to judge because I couldn't find a very high quality version, but Chris Martin doesn't seem to give it a lot of enthusiasm. but the crowd seems very into it regardless

Yes, this is exactly right

It functions well as a magnanimous gesture of gringos paying their respects to Gustavo, Zeta and Charly and to Argentina as a whole. As a performance of a piece of music, it makes the song sound like some kind of reasonably enjoyable pop-punk knock-off from some band that had heard Blink-182 or Green Day, instead of the never-stops-giving home grown monster hit that it was and still is.

Kind of fun to listen to Canción Animal in its entirety and finding DML hiding out in the second half after almost always forgetting it’s there. Seems like nine out of ten of the tracks were released as singles too. Two more than Thriller!

Cheesy English rapping in “En el borde” made even worse by very obvious “All You Need Is Love” musical quote. (Listening to the remix on the Languis EP.

There even seems to be a weird “Camille”-like cartoon voice in there!

When Coldplay does DML, the rhythm ends up sounding more like "Smells LIke Teen Spirit." Which came out after DML, I just checked. They also try (sometimes) to emphasize the 4-1 crash from the G-chord to the D-chord but I dunno, it just not nearly a resounding crash as the original.

You know who can perform a Soda Stereo song convincingly? Chilean singer Mon Laferte, who I am sure our Latin American posters are familiar with. I first learned about her because one of my karaoke friends does one of her songs, “Si tu me quisieras.” Here she is on the Gracias Totales tour from last year performing “Un millón de años luz” with Zeta, Charly what looks to be Richard Coleman on guitar, and maybe Tweety Gonzalez on keyboards along with another, younger guitar player, is it Benito Cerati?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp8c6po34oc

Keyboard player not Tweety, seems to be a guy named Fabian Quintero. Guitar player is maybe one Roly Ureta. Benito Cerati sang one song, looks just like his dad with a blond wig. And, oh yeah, Chris Martin was around to sing his sterling version of DML.

Oh, the guy shredding on guitar is Simón Bosio, Zeta’s son. The other guitar player I thought was Richard Coleman is probably Roly de Tal, Coleman appears on another number, I think.

Chris Martin’s DML was the last song of the encore, in Bogotá at least.

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gracias_Totales_-_Soda_Stereo

I guess the solo on “Canción Animal” is supposed to sound like a lion’s roar or something.