By José Gandue @Gandour
I'm bored by nostalgic rockers, Those who insist on telling us that the music world should have slowed its growth and expansion after certain iconic moments in artistic history. I yawn the longest when people think everything collapsed when the Beatles broke up, when Cliff Burton, Metallica's bassist, died in a car accident in Kronoberg, Sweden, in 1986, or when Kurt Cobain tragically discovered how to use a shotgun against himself. Of course, we all have that ideal moment in our memory when we long to return to the sounds of yesteryear and imagine them lasting forever., battling the adversity of contemporary resonance. Obviously, personally, I'd love to go back to the moment I first heard The Stone Roses or The Ganjas at Rock al Parque 2005, sitting to the side of the stage, mouth agape, amazed by the air filled with the blessed sound of guitars. But, as I said at the beginning of this piece, nostalgic rockers bore me. And I also believe that they are primarily responsible for the slow but almost certain decline of the genre.
Is rock dead? No, but in many cases it remained stuck in old formulas, in silly resentments, in outdated speeches and in antiquated macho complexes. Do you know who really died? The rockstar. Mind you, Keith Richards, Gene Simmons, Ozzy Osbourne (already on his way to his final farewell), Bruce Dickinson, and other legends who have managed to endure are still alive, and we will always be grateful for their presence and their audacity. Without them, the world would be a rather ordinary and depressing place. But the rockstar, or (worse) the aspiring rockstar, wanting all the unjustifiable excesses and a repeatedly decadent view of life, no longer works.. Nobody is saying that we should behave like the most depressing of office workers or like bitter accountants, but we cannot confuse murky melancholy with the necessary rebellion that the arts must always contain in order to break the flaws of the times.
Yes indeed, I believe that rock (the good rock we always need) still finds its best cradle in garages, in rehearsal rooms, at neighborhood jam sessions, at impromptu festivals of underground of each city. It exists in the desire of musicians who feel they can still reinvent the sound, in turning to the collective listening of records by their idols and feeling that everything they did can be improved and revitalized. And I also believe that the best rock music of our time does not necessarily have Anglo-Saxon origins and should not be sung in English. And, at the risk of sounding exaggerated, and hearing the intemperate mockery of some journalists stuck in the old ways, I believe that one of the best bands on the planet came from the city of La Plata and is called He killed a motorcycle police officer.
Why do I say this? Because I feel that this group, without needing to complicate their lives and pretend to be something they're not, He makes powerful songs that talk about what we can feel every day, without needing to resort to clumsy monsters or stories far removed from his own streets. El Mató is a credible band, one we feel close to, and although they could be our neighbors, They create tunes that move us with a refined use of language and without losing sonic contact with the times we live in. As Morrissey would say (yes, the same poor man whose ego swallowed him up badly), they make songs that speak of our lives or of events and feelings that we can make our own in our memory.
We're talking about El Mató because they're premiering on YouTube his live session on the North American radio station KEXP. With a repertoire recorded in the studios of the radio station located in the city of Seattle of just four songs, these originally published on his albums La sintesis O´konor and La dinastía Scorpio, They manage, without fanfare, to confirm the conviction of their proposal and the solidity of their compositions. They don't need to dress up as luminaries or pose as unapproachable figures to make us repeat their moving lyrics that rise above seas of beautiful distortion. We have ordinary people in front of us, just like the rest of us, who, luckily for us, He makes extraordinary music made to celebrate rock in these strange and turbulent times.
Friend, Rock is not dead. It's simply that, at times, by unduly praising nostalgia, we are not listening to those we should be listening to.