Soda Stereo & Gustavo Cerati

^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.

Took a little break, maybe will listen to Bocanada now.

I wish I had a better reason to bump other than that I keep thinking maybe I am maxed out but then end up coming back for more and getting surprised at how solid and deep the catalogue is but so be it.