Nunca Taxi at Libario bar (11.22.2009)

Read original entry in Spanish.

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Literally, "Nunca Taxi" means "never been a cab", a phrase often used when selling a car. At Libario bar, Buenos Aires, lining up Agustín Cosovschi, Esteban Salonia, Gustavo Váter and Sebastián Briganti, the NTs revealed that their music is making a quite interesting turn. A funky rythm base prevails now in both new creations and updated versions of earlier songs from their first EP "A las flores". Váter's bass guitar plays a protagonic role there, and Briganti displays the urgent beat of his lively bass-and-snare-drum work. A constant and grungie guitar strumming by Agustín and Esteban completes the band's original new sound. When away from the rythm base, Esteban's guitar usually undertakes the solos and Agustín's guitar the riffs and the phrases. In such environment, Agustín's leading vocals become more emphatic as he tells the lyrics' story with conviction.

Their performance at Libario, a couple of days after they qualified to the semifinals of the Estudio Urbano's "Bandas al Aire" radio contest, suggested that today two streams converge into NT's musical identity: the funky one ―that of the new songs or new versions― and the earlier EP's one ―the one they have been publicizing so far. Most visibly, NT's studio recordings reveal influences from Luis Alberto Spinetta and The Beatles. However, it would be unfair to limit parenthood just to those two names: traces of a broad range of illustrious predecessors can be found in the genetic map of these new artists. Agustín's voice modulations evoke "Flaco" Spinetta himself, Vox Dei, Arco Iris, and somehow, for sure, The Beatles. His voice and Esteban's match well in balanced vocal arrays.

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Agustín remarks: "Actually, our music has at least three major affluents. The Beatles, Spinetta, the indie rock in the styles of Franz Ferdinand, The Strokes and other post-punk influences." On the Beatles side, Agustín mentions their songs 'Pequeño Percance' (with a Magical Mistery Tour flavour, one which Esteban sang McCartney-style at Libario), 'Perro Sebastián' (festive although slightly nostalgic), and 'Perfume'. Among the Spinetta-style songs, he points out 'A las flores' (it truly sounds Spinetta-like on the EP, with Esteban playing a jazzy guitar solo, but at Libario it was one of the songs that commanded the funk revolt), 'Rito Inicial', and 'Jazmín'. And among the indie rock-post punk themes, he quotes 'Falta poco' and 'Lucy' (the rockiest one, often the main course in Nunca Taxi's shows). "Besides", he says, "there are two funkier songs that I'd rather place, however, at the roots of Soda Stereo: 'Vuelto Pájaro', because I feel it's poppier, and 'La Mesa Verde', because I composed it when I was 17, and I used to listen a lot of Soda at that age."

He recognizes mutations too. "It wasn't our purpose to make a new version of none of the songs, but at the same time we are re-creating everything. We started to play with more funk and I took advange of my new Fender Telecaster to change my sound and play always with mid gain. So now I focus on only two sounds: a distorted, mid-gain sound, and a cleaner one I use on a spot basis. In part, that's why the songs sound rockier. We looked for a brit indie rock sound, we wanted to get closer to the post-punk and new wave sound. To get that, Vater often uses the pick and I benefit from the tin-like voice of the new Telecaster".

"La mesa verde" and "Lucy" make part of the single the NTs are now recording to document the band's new aesthetics. It will soon be listened at their myspace page.
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Related links: NT at myspace, NT at facebook and a video by NT.

The Chevy Rockets at ND/Ateneo Theatre

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On October 15, 2009, the Chevy Rockets performed at ND/Ateneo Theatre of Buenos Aires. I knew beforehand that I would enjoy every single minute of the show, and actually that was the case.

I see Vasco Bariain at his summit as a singer, and he is alone right there. From the top of my mind I cannot find, among Spanish speaking rock and blues singers, another male voice that compares to his… and he benchmarks well with the best English speaking ones. His technical toolkit is always subordinated to emotional communication: the audience enjoys but does not notice his techniques, as far as they keep transported by the stream of feelings.

As an unexpected bonus among the encores, the Chevys offered Joe Cocker’s super soul version of "A Little Help from my Friends". At the counter-singing, the voices of the guest performers Rusito Diego Beiserman, with a beautiful high register, and Mariana Sosa, a mezzo-soprano with impeccable R&B resources, sounded exceptionally well.

The Chevys are at very high, world-class level. Juan Pillado demolishes the drums with no apparent effort. Together with the seamless perfection of Gabriel Gómez’s bass guitar, they build a rythm base that sounds at the same time powerful and dancing. Gómez, Vasco and Pillado are the three historical members of the band.

The Chevys have always been fantastic musicians, and those who joined along time brought in a similar, superlative level: Jorge Blanco’s virtuous guitar, Walter Galeazzi’s multi-expressive keyboards, and the somewhat jazz-contemporary biased harmonica of Leandro Rao, another skilled player at his debut with the Chevys.

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Support musicians also shined bright. Sol Pillado’s percussion and the metals of Lucía De Luca (saxo), Jesús Silva (trombone) and Miguel Sinagra (trumpet) gave density to the mosaic of sounds and orchestral breadth to the band. Actually at ND/Ateneo the Chevys brought onto stage a real show, with capital letters, similar to what we see on international bands’ DVDs.

It is true that, at some moments, I missed the road atmosphere of the old times, the beer poured on the floor, the visits to lovely underground enclaves. But, no doubt, the Chevys have kept growing, and the changes that came as a consequence of growth are okay to the extent that the essence of the ritual remains untouched. To certify this, the old and the new songs were there (among the new ones, Jorge Blanco’s sensitive piece dedicated to the people who died at Cromañon), and earlier band members were also invited onto stage: Mario "el Tano” Pugliese and his wise guitar, Blanco’s predecessor Javier Amoretti, the keyboardist Federico Sellés. The wineskin circulated around, no matter if the fancy seats of the theatre were in danger of receiving the splash. Fun and emotion as always. My heart does belong to the Chevys.

A word appart for Pulpo Negro’s high quality production. The robot-arm cammera that moved stage-wide (same as in Scorsese’s “Shine a light”) anticipated that the coming DVD will look fantastic. Really good bands preceded the Chevys: Stuka-racuda, Secuaz and Consumo. Their styles seemed a bit too diverse; maybe the selection should have pursued greater unity.

In January, 2010, the Chevys will move into studio to record their fifth CD.

Related links: Chevy Rockets' official site; Chevy Rockets' Facebook; “Buena Estrella”; “With A Little Help From My Friends”; “No pibe”; “El Ritual” (Warning: all videos posted in YouTube were shot by amateur cammera men).

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Children of Llullaillaco and Natgeo

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On August 27, 2009, the National Geographic Channel put on TV a documentary film about the inca mummies of Llullaillaco. The so-called "mummy-children", currently kept and shown at the Museum of High Mountain Archeology in Salta City, Province of Salta, Argentina, were found in said Province in 2001. Both their bodies and attire were astonishingly preserved by the frozen environment of the heights of the Llullaillaco Vulcano. In advance, Natgeo publicized the emission of that documentary intensively, and launched a contest by which the participant who provided the most creative justification to be chosen would win a visit to Salta and the museum. With the justifications of an ancient culture, the three mummified children were also chosen, centuries ago, for a sacrifice that would probably make of them the intermediaries between their people and the gods. Sacrificed for the first time in their childhood, they were sacrificed again when the Spanish conquerors subjugated their people, and the culture of which they were icons themselves was muted and replaced by that of the invaders, as much as or even more cruel as regards discretionality to dispose of human life. And they are being sacrificed once again now, taken away from their elevated resting place, subject to exhibitions and autopsies. At the time the mummies were discovered, based on the fragmented information that was available by then, I wrote a poem of which I quote a few passages below. I sent this poem to Natgeo some weeks before the emission of their documentary. Also, I circulated it through different Internet fora, including that of Natgeo itself. The full text of the poem, in Spanish, was posted  by my friend Queima on 08-28-2009 at his site "¡Es la gente, estúpido!"

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Ritual death (Mummies of Llullaillaco)
A poem by Roberto Imperatore, 2001. Extracts.
See full text in Spanish at "¡Es la gente, estúpido!"

(. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .)

"Because children speak / the tongue of the gods
'cause their souls are pure
and neither their bodies are polluted
they were made the messegers
of their people's pleas."

(. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .)
"Not even the traces / of those people remain.
Only remote sons of the sons / of the sons of their sons
who are treated like pariah."

"What happened in the end
with the dead children / of Llullaillaco:
they are barely objects, jewells for exhibition 
materials of study / for white men.
Their bodies can be handed, humiliated, 
desecrated, rented."

"If their sacrifice has always been unnecessary, / now,
with their people deleted from the face of Earth
it is twice as in vain."

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Heart open 24 hours a day

"Corazón abierto las 24 horas - Cancionero para música popular 2000-2005" ::: "Heart open 24 hours a day - Songbook 2000-2005 for popular music" ::: Author: Roberto Imperatore ::: Editor: Editorial de los Cuatro Vientos, Buenos Aires, 2007.

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"Corazón abierto..." gathers lyrics, a few of them in English, that were created for a variety of popular music styles. The author confesses that, at the same time, the songbook "slightly aspires to look like a poem book". In support of a definition of poetry that were free from intellectual prejudices, he proposes to make the border line between song lyrics and poetry as diffuse as possible. Music has been attached to a number of the songs in the book; however, the scores are not included.

The songbook is divided into two sections. The first one is dedicated to rock and blues. It includes the pop-rock song "Moda retró", the blues "Baby this is life", "Manjares secretos" and "Blues de la calle vacía", the rock'n'rolls "Mamita en el pub", "Sissí Todatoda", "Rock de los barrios duros" and "El indio", the heavy rock theme "Corré la losa", the blues-jazz song "Doménica matina blues", and the country-latin fussion "El bálsamo". The music of these themes were composed by either Julián Carschenboim, Oscar Garrido, Santiago Mangudo or Luis Scarnati. Besides, there are in this section many song lyrics that have no music. The most oustanding among them are probably "Kursk", a touchy progressive heavy metal song, and two rocks dedicated to the victims of the 2004 "massacre of Cromañon", when a fire killed almost 200 youngsters at a rock festival in Buenos Aires.

The second section is dedicated to Argentine tango and folklore, as well as to melodic songs. The music of the Uruguayan candombes "Serás tú" and "Montevideo negra", the bolero "Qué cosas" and the fussion-malambo "La huella" were composed by some of the above mentioned musicians. That of  the Argentine zambas "El naufragio" and "Zambita de un beso más", the chamamé "El descaminado", the "Chacarera enamorada" and the carnavalito "Tierrita y rosita" were created by the folklore musician Franco Nazareno Delmonte. Tango lyrics probably contribute the highest poetic moments of this book, but no music has yet been composed for them.

Each one of the two parts is followed by a glossary, in which the meaning of argot words and colloquial expressions can be found. For Spanish speaking readers, the glossaries are a contribution to a broad cross-culture understanding of the book. The diversity of musical styles enriches the songbook too. The aesthetics that are characteristic of each style translate into the lyrics by means of the subject, the lexicon, the more or less rigorous grammar, the sintaxis, the colloquial expressions and the poetic images.

The author was born in 1952. He writes since his early teens. Nevertheless, at the moment of publishing this songbook he considered himself "a home author" who had made little effort to have his poetry and prose disseminated beyond meetings of friends and other small circles. By end 1999, however, he started to work with musicians to compose rocks, blues and Argentine folklore songs. Publishing "Corazón abierto..." was for him a vehicle to offer his lyrics to readers, and also to musicians in general in the hope that there will be those who will create the music for the songs that still do not have one.

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About El Transbordador's (The Shuttle's) blog

«Transbordador» is the Spanish word for shuttle. For younger generations shuttle is, first thing, the space vehicle with which the NASA launches or maintains satellites, and commutes between land and the space station and lab.

But many other things, such as a ferry boat or the small bus that takes you to the train station or to the airport, are also shuttles.

According to Webster’s dictionary, shuttle is “a public conveyance, as a train, airplane or bus, which travels back and forth at regular intervals over a particular route, especially a short route or one connecting two transportation systems”.

I want this page to be a vehicle. A connection. A trip I can share with others, no matter how short it is. A link that makes part of other people’s itinerary for a while that may become a larger amount of time if you commute frequently.

Bring on your luggage.

Meet you aboard the shuttle.