Freeloader, by Throwing Muses

That day, me and my friend Luis Antonio had skipped classes just for the sake of it. Whenever we skipped classes we either ended up at his place, pretty drunk and playing (Luis in the drums, me playing some crazy chords on my guitar), or we ended at Tower, watching records and flicks we wouldn't buy for lack of money.
Luis was a gifted drummer, but he had little idea about music. That day he had some cash and bought some Marilyn Manson record. When he was paying, he was given a CD that read on its cover: RYKODISC SAMPLER. When we were leaving the store, heading to his place, he told me: "I don't know any of the bands here, if you want it you can have it". I knew few bands, one of them being Morphine. Other performers included were Frank Zappa (I knew him), John Cale (I didn't know him back then), Oranj Symphonette, Golden Smog, Bob Mould, Alejandro Escovedo. When we arrived to his place, he wouldn't let me play the CD, and he obviously played the Marilyn Manson one. I left him listening to the Reverend, and I headed home. As soon as I arrived I played it. Track one was Morphine's "Super Sex". I liked it. Track two was Throwing Muses' "Freeloader". I didn't need to listen anything else contained in the sampler. From there I fell in love with Kristin Hersh, from there I began to track every single Muses' release.
Eight years have passed since that epiphany, and to this day I still keep the sampler. Throwing Muses was definitely one of the bands that have changed my way of listening to pop music, one of the very few bands that really made something move inside me, and this song tells me so much I don't even know where to begin.

Only Love Can Break Your Heart, as performed by Saint Etienne

In the early nineties I wasn't very interested in Neil Young, but Saint Etienne offered this rendering that made his lyrics meaningful and touching. Only Love Can Break Your Heart became a maxim to live for, pretty much like "love will tear us apart" or "shyness is nice, but..." It was the cool keyboard loop and the danceable-yet-nostalgic beat. Along Everything But The Girl and His Name is Alive (very different projects that still found a common dancefloor in my very own internal Hertbreak Sound System), Saint Etienne evoked rainy Sundays, cobblestone roads and sad-yet-stylish breakups. She sang with childish ache:

When you were young
And on your own
How did it feel to be alone

Every heartbreak needs a soundtrack. Now, after fifteen years or so, I can finally listen to this song feeling "safe", somehow immune to its structural sadness while still able to enjoy it. This is a song to hold to but a song to leave behind, to grow: only love can break your heart, indeed, but only true love can put it back together.

Dominoes, by Syd Barrett

I haven't tired of this song after playing it dozens of times over the last month. I keep going back to it because it's exactly what I look for in poetry: a moment that transcends its own origins to become something instantly familiar and beautiful to the reader/listener.

I feel foolish because it took me so long to find Syd Barrett. It was only two years ago that a good friend of mine in Tampa handed me a copy of The Madcap Laughs and said: "You have to hear this, you're gonna love it."

The opening verses of this song from his second album are exquisite, the way he phrases each word, modulating them with such intuitive elegance, his voice soft as though he were in someone's living room.

"It's an idea someday
In my tears, my dreams..."

There's a line by Rilke that goes: "You must change your life." Syd Barrett's music has had that effect on me. I feel somehow we're privileged to have been around while he was alive.


--Guillermo

Midnight in a Perfect World, by DJ Shadow

Cuando salía a la calle y tomaba el micro o se subía al metro con los audífonos puestos, entonces todo fluía, todo era más líquido y todo parecía estar mejor, tal y como en ese momento se presentaba todo estaba bien: las calles angostas y las avenidas anchas, iluminadas por las luces anaranjadas, los carros deslizándose por el arroyo y la gente caminando en tríos o dúos, vestidos con ropas oscuras y caras frías; "todo está bien", dijo, "todo está en su lugar y resplandece"

Wave of Mutilation (rehearsal), by The Pixies

Argel ha recordado aquella fiesta en la colonia del Valle que ocurrió hace varios años. Debo decir que esa reunion, tal vez ha sido la mejor de mi vida porque todavia recuerdo los matices diminutos de esa mañana. Recuerdo que Natalia solo tenía un cd player con un par de bocinas sencillas que apenas podían liberar las canciones en un volumen decente. Ella fue quien dijo alrededor de las 9 am.

-¿Tienen que hacer algo hoy? ¿Qué tal si nos quedamos aquí y no hacemos nada?-


Y asi fue. TODA la mañana estuvimos escuchando las canciones que salían del cd player. La mirada de todos se concentraba en el techo, paredes o los ojos de los amigos. (El sonido de la máquina de tortillas era un eterno loop.)

Yo llevaba en cinta el Barbed Wired Kisses de Jesus and Mary Chain y tenía ganas de escuchar Sidewalking esa mañana. Y de pronto ella preguntó:

-¿Qué canción les gustaría en su funeral? -

Yo fui el primero en responder:

-Sin duda "Wave of mutilation" de los Pixies. Es una canción corta que desde la primera vez que la escuché me dejó en pasmo. Porque me gustaría que mi vida se fuera así: con la sensación de partir ("sail away in a wave of mutilation") después de haber caminado sobre la arena sin ninguna huella possible ("walked the sand with the crustaceans"). Me gustaría ser recordado con esa canción porque la muerte ocurre así ("cease to resist/giving my goodbye") y porque, al final de cuentas, no sé qué demonios es un "wave of mutilation" (así como no sé qué demonios es la vida.) -


Wave of Mutilation, by The Pixies

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Story of My Life, by Social Distortion

I would rewind the tape again and again. I had discovered SD in 1990, the first track by them I ever listened being Mommy's Little Monster, which I had recorded on a tape compilation of my favorite skate rock. (Yes, I was a skater back then). But I think I must have been seventeen at the most; maybe 1992, I really can't remember, when I first listened to this track. I worked at a stakeboard shop and all my friends were either skateboarders or amateur tattoo artists.

Social Distortion had introduced me to Mr Johnny Cash through their cover of Ring of Fire, but it was this song the one I played again and again. The lyrics spoke loud and clear to my teenage heart: I started listening to them when I was going through a period of isolation, when I was feeling already nostalgic for my junior high years and everything I had never been able to do. I got my first tattoo listening to that song, and soon it became a symbol of the passage of time and the intense feeling of finiteness I would so often drown into. Rewind. Play. Rewind. Play. Rewind. Play.

Life goes by so fast
You only want to do what you think is right.
Close your eyes and it's past;
Story of my life


Now that I think about it, it's probably in some way their fault that it's permanently written on my skin: vita brevis. I listen to this song and it sounds so naïve now, but it still works like a time machine that sends me back to a time in which, without knowing it, I was the happiest. In a way, it defines the way I am, always missing someone, always thinking about what could have been and was not.


Good times come and good times go,
I only wish the good times would last a little longer.
I think about the good times we had
And why they had to end.


This is what punk rock was to me, really. Outlaw love songs for times that would never come back.

Everywhere, by The Cranes

cualquiera que haya estado en esa fiesta recordará lo que sigue:

lo mejor no sucedió en la noche, sino a la tarde siguiente. Ninguno de los que pasamos la noche en su casa nos fuimos temprano, de hecho estuvimos toda la mañana y parte de la tarde acostados en unos colchones que había en uno de los cuartos. Nuestro equipo de sonido, creo, se reducía a un discman y a unas bocinas. En esas bocinas escuchamos "Everywhere" y vimos cómo amanecía y luego como la mañana se hacía la tarde y así.

El ruido que nos despertó fue el de una tortillería que estaba justo enfrente del departamento y el ruido que nos anunció el final de la tarde fue, precisamente, la ausencia del chirrido de esa misma torillería.

Cuando nos dimos cuenta de esa ausencia decidimos pararnos y aceptar nuestra hambre. Ella nos invitó a comer a un "Burguer King" y pagó con su tarjeta. Después de la comida algunos nos fuimos para el metro y allí nos despedimos, yo iba al norte y los otros al sur.

Así se acabó esa fiesta.

Temptation, by New Order

The first time I saw Trainspotting, back in 1998 several memorable scenes caught my attention. But there was one in particular which kept moving in my mind over and over again for the next weeks. Renton waking up at Diane's flat. Diane singing: "Oh, you got green eyes, oh you got blue eyes, oh you got gray eyes. And I've never met anyone quite like you before". One of the reasons I believe this film works so fine is because its soundtrack. The soundtrack marks the film pretty well and even when you listen to it you an identify perfectly well the scene in which a song is located. I can't listen to "Temptation" without imagining Renton's surprise face when he looks at Diane in her junior high uniform.
"Temptation" is also one of the songs that makes me happiest. Seven minutes of pure joy with its mesmerizing and endless guitar/bass line and the very high-pitched snare drum. Besides it is a perfect song for these cloudy days, full of uncertainty. A song full of hope, if you ask me.

D'You Know What I Mean, by Oasis

En 1997 tenía 14 años. Todos los días saliendo de la escuela caminaba unos metros para entrar a Plaza Universidad y ver discos en Mixup. Mi colección de música se limitaba a unos cuantos casetes, algunos originales, otros copiados de las copias y otros grabados del radio. Recuerdo que por agosto, justo entrando a clases salió el nuevo sencillo de Oasis, D’you know what i mean?. También me acuerdo de que el OK computer salió en Julio, pero era inalcanzable para mi. Fue cuando descubrí los sencillos. Un día en el aparador estaba, no en el Mixup, sino en otra tienda de discos, -hoy ya no existe-, cuando lo vi abrí mi cartera y descubrí ese billete de 50 para emergencias, entré a preguntar cuánto costaba. Ese día me llevé mi primer sencillo de Oasis por 49 pesos. Una versión nacional, cuatro canciones, una de ellas grandiosa, Heroes de Bowie, un demo de Angel Child y Stay Young. Ese sencillo con sus cuatro canciones representa toda mi secundaria. Mis amigos no entendían porqué trabajaba y no salía con ellos. Tenía que comprarlos todos. Unos meses después los vería en vivo. Para ese momento ya tenía todos los sencillos, pero ya no versiones nacionales, todos importados. El OK computer podía esperar. Creo que no estaba listo. Era el momento de Oasis.


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