Soda Stereo & Gustavo Cerati

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1oLpr7CRX8GogGMIqJGKuf

61 hours though!

So far so good though.

She seems to have a good bolero playlist too. Only seven hours.

Have now played 50 songs of 61 hour playlist and so far it’s been pretty enjoyable. Lots of Soda album tracks with maybe one or two hits of theirs so far interspersed with other unfamiliar stuff.

“Adiós” has an interesting phrasing of the melody that is difficult to sing without counting or paying extra attention to the drums etc.

Most of the time he starts singing on the 2 of the bar. There is a heavy pattern played by the drums and the rest of the band leading up to it: TWO THREE Four and One!

There’s also usually a crash on FOUR before that.

What’s your opinion on Cerati’s Bocanada?

My father let me use one of his cars for a year and it was one of those cars that let you load 4/5 cds but one of them got stuck and it got fucked and I couldn’t load anything else other than those initial 5 cds and one of them was Bocanada. It ended up being one of my most listened albums of all time. I think due to overexposure it’s the Cerati work I appreciate the most.

i think bocanada is his best work and it's one of five cds stuck in my car by choice

Ha!

I don’t know Bocanada that well– yet! But give me time. I’m sort of backing into through the hits, such as they are, such as “Puente” and “Paseo Inmoral.” Also love that first track, “Tabu.” I believe it was considered some kind of departure for him and that Ahí Vamos was viewed as return to form, to rock.

“Canción Animal” also has the thing of the vocal starting on the two of the bar.

Yet another guest appearance!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ5zn1Vvd2I

This one too!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM7g9wbmjgs

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_lo_Soporto

There's a whole compilation album of this kind of stuff.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sat%C3%A9lite_Cerati

Wears pretty thin in that context though imho

That No Lo Soporto video is fun. With Gustavo in dual roles!

Don’t think I posted the Bajofondo video yet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FakWEAvZE4g

Upcoming Netflix doc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmnkpeYIrb4

Wonder if I should watch the Fito Paez one?

Really like "Pulsar"!

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.

― Moka, Thursday, September 4, 2014 5:21 PM (eight years ago)

If anyone's interested in putting together something like this, I'd be grateful - Soda Stereo alone have over a dozen compilations in their discography and not sure how they compare.

This comp is one I went to in the beginning although it is missing "Prófugos"! Maybe it wasn't much of a radio hit or something, even though it is a very well-known track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNxoPtgj98o

Actually there are some tracks on this I still don't know! Maybe Moka can make a better playlist.

This comp is okay too, I’ve also spent time with it, but don’t have it mastered.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_Ver%C3%A1s_Volver?wprov=sfti1

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.

Maybe best place to start is one of the live albums? Although even then they are both double albums, but split into two so you can just focus on a smaller portion for a while.

Ooo wee I forgot I posted that!, it sounds like a gargantuan task nowadays lol

there should be a division between my personal favorites and the ones I think everyone needs to listen to …

Easiest path is to start with Cancion Animal for Soda and Bocanada for Cerati

^This is not a bad suggestion

I’ve been listening to this stuff a ton for the better part of a year now and still haven’t gotten anywhere near the bottom of it.

Like in theory now that my original Gustavo bro-crush is dying down a bit I should be able to just put him up on the shelf, but nope.

Un hombre alado etc

Not to be confused with a Lobo Hombre.

Revisiting his solo career and I hadn’t really contextualized his music on release date and it’s blowing my mind how in 1992 he was so ahead of the curve. I always assumed a song like “Cozumel” was from the mid 90s. Noone in latinamerica understood and implemented as efficiently trending genres like shoegaze and downtempo/trip hop as good as him. It took several years for the rest of the world to catch up with artists as him.

Best I could do for his solo output: 2 highlight, imho, songs per album - with the exception of “+ bien” which is soundtrack work and probably just worth a listen for completion purposes.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7baccsvllKfsimqhRwCmhj

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.