By José Gandue @Gandour
In these days of strange fatalism and apocalyptic dreams, I haven't stopped thinking about a song, recorded in the early nineties, and which was very popular in Bogotá's alternative scene at the time. The song is called London, And the Colombian band did it Local time. It speaks of the end of the world, and begins with a narrative, made by the group's self-proclaimed "unlicensed broadcaster," Eduardo Arias, which says:
«"Half an hour after the fall of the great invisible cloud
Nobody knows what is happening in Western Europe.
Radio Prague and Radio Warsaw have issued confusing and contradictory statements
Nearly a century after its founding, the BBC in London has ceased broadcasting.
Of course, those were different times; it was still in my memory, very present., the Chernobyl disaster. In those days the Berlin Wall had barely fallen and the Soviet Union had not yet dissolved. Yes, we were talking about Perestroika, Glasnost and other Russian terms that Mr. Gorbachev taught us from the Kremlin, But the fear of a world war still took a long time to disappear.
As the song progresses, now sung by the official singer, Luis Alberto Uriza, The terrible situation is becoming clear:
«"Look at those yellow clouds: It's decomposing ozone.".
We all look for food and store bottles of alcohol.
I have a Pink Floyd cassette but there are no batteries in my recorder.
The walls are collapsing and it's cold mixed with heat.".
But at the end of all that bleak landscape, an unexpected turn:
«"The animals are dead and I don't understand why we aren't.".
And in the middle of a building, a group can be heard playing rock and roll.
We'll be back again, in about 2 million years.,
to repeat the same story, to reinvent rock.".
In short, we haven't had to witness nuclear disaster since then, but, just like that, out of nowhere, This bad joke is coming our way in the form of a virus. An epidemic that has shown us that, in a very large proportion of cases, We have elected the worst rulers in history, And in other, more optimistic scenarios, we've realized that those at the top in political power have had to learn to handle this new beast, with all the inexperience that entails. And aside from greater misfortunes such as death and the economic hardships that this whole affair has brought, This pandemic has turned us into overly cautious, lonely, and paranoid beings for who knows how long. And of course, the music. We all know it'll be a while before we can go to a real concert, with people around us, including the one who talks nonsense right when the band's best song comes on. or the girl who decides to climb onto her boyfriend's shoulders, to block out the entire scene. We're so desperate that we're even missing those kinds of characters right now.
Given the apathy of most of our state leaders, Much of the economic structure that surrounds us is collapsing, And, of course, everything that sustained our music scene. Forget about festivals for many days. Also, Hundreds and thousands of auditoriums, bars, restaurants, rehearsal rooms and recording studios have closed permanently. When we return to "normal," we will find devastation. Not only will the shutters of these businesses be closed, but potential investors who have the capacity to recover the structure will not feel confident enough to invest just like that. These entrepreneurs have learned, from what has happened, that there is no support whatsoever and that the obstacle will be very high. Will this be the end of music?
At this point, Let me tell you a story. In Bogotá, just 25 years ago, the city's rock scene testified to the significant number of bands active, but the number of suitable venues for concerts was very limited. And here's a very particular fact: Very few businessmen were interested in investing in a scene they considered extremely poor. We're talking about a time without the internet on our side. Forget social media. There were barely any radio slots on university stations. and the almost total disregard for commercial frequencies was superfluous. Bogotá, which until a few months ago some international newspapers described as one of the world's music capitals, appeared on the surface, in the mid-nineties, quiet and boring. But beneath it all, In their underground world, something was happening that proved their valuable resilience.
The best example of this was a house located north of the city, on Pepe Sierra Avenue. Diagonally across from an area of seedy nightclubs, There was an abandoned building, about to be demolished. A large space that had neither light nor water. While the owners decided what to do with that space, A character named Ariel Pérez came up with the idea that he could hold events there every weekend. Contrary to all health regulations and assuming risks of all kinds, He began putting together shows with the most interesting bands of underground capital city. Every Friday and Saturday, someone would hang from the lamppost and plug in the sound equipment to blast music from the stage. If the girls needed to use the restroom, the neighbor would generously open his door for them. The boys had to do their business against the wall of the inner garden.
In that nameless dive (people knew it as the house of 116), Every weekend, between 300 and 500 people would come in. Some of the best acts of the moment performed on its stage: Danny Dogde, Cathedral, Yuri Gagarin, Orange Series. Even the legendary ones 1280 souls They filled the place, and some say a wall collapsed that night (fortunately, no one was hurt). Bands came from Cali, Medellín, and the Coffee Region, and upon entering, they were shocked by the awful venue where they were about to perform. At first, they complained, but a few hours later, with the crowd packed, They couldn't stop expressing their gratitude for the experience. Today, just to give you a laugh, there's no sign of that house. Perhaps some ghosts are still singing the anthems of that era, but on that lot Now there's a bland McDonald's, and one or two medical offices.
These were awkward times, when artists and those interested in making a scene thrive were already struggling, a scene that no one else believed in. They had to rent communal halls, second-rate theaters, relatives' garages, and nighttime brothels in the afternoons. In short, absolute discomfort and total uncertainty. The organizers, almost always inexperienced companions of the musicians, stood at the door making calculations as the public bought their tickets. They reached their point of equilibrium and breathed deeply, Knowing they had saved the night. Even then, they were praying not to attract the attention of the damned uniformed authorities who were coming for their cut. Thus a rock movement grew during that time Which neither the radio, nor the record labels, nor the so-called media experts (those whose job was to read the weekly Billboard charts, and nothing more, stubbornly insisting that the civilized world ended in Miami) believed for a single moment. Perhaps we weren't living in an atomic atmosphere, but everything was against us. Still, something good came out of it.
Anyway, in the coming days, We will return and find, I repeat, scorched earth. And we'll have to revisit some of the manuals from 25 years ago and relive the discomfort, the despair, the darkness. But perhaps—and it's better to think of it this way—we'll have times of renewed creativity, of a renewal of sounds, of experiences necessary to rekindle our spirit and our music scene. Maybe we'll even reinvent rock.
