Soda Stereo & Gustavo Cerati

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

Here is the original “Gracias totales” moment, his Ziggy Stardust breakup of the band. It’s kind of moving to watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX-us7PEfkc

Feed just gave me a video of Gustavo and Shakira singing “Cuidad de La furia.”Gustavo’s solo is pretty terrific.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylndY8Ufx-k

Hadn’t known that Shakira had been a big fan and they ended up collaborating quite a few times.

This is the video I originally came across, which seems to have better sound and picture quality but is missing the intro and some other stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Niv8YWnI41k

I don't/didn´t know if writing scratch demo lyrics in English was a generalized modus operandi in the "rock en español". In south america at least, the break in the use of english, and the beginning of rock in español was between the first generation of post-beatles bands that wrote in english such as Los Shakers, Los Mockers in Uruguay, Los Macs, Vidrios Quebrados in Chile, and groups and artists in Argentina like Los Gatos and Tanguito who started singing in spanish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSHgkQ2Wp5Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPdooS2A0-Y

There were also attempts in the 1970s and 1980s to record in English to enter this market, without success (Spinetta's Only Love Can Sustain perhaps the most notorious example). Soda Stereo even recorded a couple of songs in English. In this case, comparing with the originals I don't think it sounds good, something is lost in the translation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2c9yLAFM8Q

I think Richard Coleman played in one of the first incarnations of Soda Stereo, then he formed his own band Friction, and stayed friends with Gustavo.

Now last he was on tour with the remaining members of Soda Stereo, on a tribute tour to Gustavo.

Thanks for posting.

I just received this as some sort of Exhibit B.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLr_I_4tx1I

Ha! Capussoto is great. Here that time when the rockist audience in Capussoto´s show tried to kill Daniel Melero.

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

OMG!

Another Gustavo Shakira live clip with some great shredding at the end. Bonus points for amusingly enthusiastic German voiceover translation of Shakira's introduction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnGtJ9DJgqg

Anyway, the point was not that there was no Rock en Español prior to Soda, more that Gustavo found a way to make the Rock and Español fit together more organically. "De música ligera" was viewed as some kind of defining moment, iirc, a gigantic hit across all of Latin America, although I wasn't there, I was a continent away.

Thank you kindly - great starting points. Always takes me a bit longer to absorb non-English music so having a little more focus is great.

Problem with the comps, I see now, is that they have some earlier angular post-punk funk tracks (like very early Go-Betweens?) that I don’t really care about that much.

― CeeLô Borges (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, June 13, 2023 10:17 PM

Ha, I have the same issue with early Go-Betweens despite liking other bands that exist solely in the angular post-punk funk zone!

Added two tracks per album of Soda Stereo too… I’m omitting some of his biggest hits (de musica ligera, persiana americana, adios, crimen...) … not because I don’t like them but because I feel like there’s better songs in their respective albums and those are a very basic intro.

Tempted to treat “comfort” as not a live unplugged album but as a closing album, an add songs from it too. Most of the versions in there - particularly their early songs - are wildly different from the original ones. Even a song as iconic as “en la ciudad de la furia” feels like a totally different song. Both the unplugged and album versions are great.

Yeah fuck it I’m adding “te para tres”, that song is nowhere near one of the highlights of “cancion animal” but it turns into one of the best moments in the unplugged version. Adds a solo lifted from “cementerio club” by Pescado Rabioso (Spinetta)- a classic argentinian rock song on its own - and brings the song to another level.

Bocanada is a hard one… again I’d probably recommend to listen to that one in full. It’s probably Cerati’s magnum opus imho.

Picking Raiz and Tabu since they’re the ones I’m most in the mood for with the current heatwaves and they’re the two songs that convinced me in the first place to buy this album back in 2000-something.

Raiz is very sample heavy but it’s built so effortlessly you’d think it’s all Cerati. There’s samples of Deodato (breakbeat), XTC (guitar break), Jaivas (Flutes), Thomas Dolby (main guitar) and even Mark Snow from the X files soundtrack!

Tabu’s main groove is lifted from Spencer Davis Group “waltz for Lumumba”, I love the energy Cerati adds to the groove. Probably Cerati’s best opening track both in Soda and a solo artist.

Could have easily picked the title track or “paseo inmoral” which is based around Garry Glitter’s rock n roll.

Ha, been meaning to concentrate and figure out what this last sample was, and whether it was an actual sample.

Wow at dropping the Bocanada sample knowledge. Just found this handy video about that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HMo9Wun31o

somehow had never noticed Kim Deal in there!

All the samples are fun to learn about but the one that made me smile the most for whatever reason was the John Barry.

For an example of the early stuff that is okay but not my favorite, see “Danza Rota.”

Heh, just came across an album for kids called Babies Go Soda.

I think Soda gets interesting from Signos onwards, the first two albums have some of their big hits but sound too generic - with some exceptions like “cuando pase el temblor” which is probably the first BIG Soda song.

Sounds about right.

Signos has three big hits, I think, but the whole album flows from start to finish. It’s much more open, both spacious and dense, from start to finish.

Also just came across this:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xlze59

^“Lo que sangra (La cúpula)” from the reunion tour with some special guests.

I think this is supposed to put the kids to sleep.

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

Lol that doesn’t sound very pleasant to sleep to.

Guess they figured they had to give Dan Zanes a run for his money.

Never listened to or even knew about this early live album Ruido Blanco before today.

Then found another live recording from early on, this one simply called En Vivo, which has a lot of noise. Seems to be the soundtrack of a performance, the first night in Viña Del Mar in 1987.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZsMmket4e0

Guess they were promoting Signos, which was released the previous November and then had the three singles coming out throughout the year.

Crowd noise on this sounds like some Beatles stuff#onethread

Crowd doesn’t quite know “Persiana Americana” yet. There is some screaming when he starts singing but that’s it.

Somos cómplices los dos

My music listening in general lately has been slow, but I did finally hear Amor Amarillo (hooray for titles even I can understand). "Lisa" and "Te llevo para que me lleves" are good, the latter a cool take on Isn't Anything MBV, but thought the rest was pretty sluggish. I will give Bocanada another listen eventually but so far I much prefer Soda to Cerati solo

Think the production is less dense on his solo stuff but his singing, songwriting and guitar playing is still strong.

That could be it. I think I tend to like fuller productions in general

Too much time on this thread:

Just a few hours ago I overheard someone saying “Gracias” and my mind automatically added “Totales!”

Soda getting a Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement award.

https://www.grammy.com/news/latin-recording-academy-announces-2023-special-merit-award-honorees

Just read more about when he did that Police tribute song. Pretty interesting.

Heh, can you guess who were the Top Two artists in my Spotify 2023 Wrapped?

Had to step away for a bit but now I’m back

good timing, I just dug out Canción Animal for the first time in a while. for some reason I have a hard time remembering its tracks (apart from "De Música Ligera"), so I forget how good it is

Ha exactly! That album is full of great tracks, many of them also live staples. Often I forget “De Música Ligera” is even on there.

Also many of these tracks not so uptempo so kind of heavier but still really cool.

Yeah they play with time signature, mood, tempo to create a pretty diverse set of songs. Though they throw "Cae el Sol" at the end so you get an anthemic chorus

Also wtf... 9 of the 10 songs were released as singles??

Forgot about that.