The Only One I know, by the Charlatans

It was in 1995 that I organized my first britpop party in Mexico City. The independent party scene was completely taken over by illegal raves where mainly trance was played, and we decided to include The Smiths' famous battle cry, "hang the dj", in the flyer. It was a three-story building, and we put a sound system in each of the floors. Even some famous trance dj's from the local scene showed up to see what it was all about. By the time the Happy Mondays followed The Charlatans in my friend Demian's dj set, the main floor was filled with beautiful Mexican anglophiles -and a bunch of crazy expats- dancing with a previously-repressed nostalgia for a Madchester they have never experienced. I will always remember all the jumping and all the yelling and the smiles in everyone's faces and the yellow happy faces smiling in the tee shirts of all those vintage-Adidas-tracksuit-wearing John Squire look-alikes. It was a form of happy melancholia, a sad joy that expressed itself in dancing and hugging and the speakers blasting as if there were no tomorrow.

Back in 1995 I was 20, and I had never been to England but I had spent at least three years of my life reading NME's and Melody Makers and fantasizing about a scene that we would never witness but that defined our aesthetic itinerary and our sentimental education. By the time we were spinning it the track was already five years old, but it still sounded as if it had never been played before. Its power was delicate but ferocious, like fire. That year, some months later, they would release their collaboration with the Chemical Brothers, and the whole big beat thing would begin ruling the dancefloors of this side of the pond as well, even if in ridiculously small underground parties.

This was the sound of love and hope and possible futures and the pain of living. If you had asked me back then what it all meant, I would have said this was the music that defined the way I wanted my life to be like. This was me, this was my music, a sound that spoke to me like no other had before:

Everyone has been burned before, everybody knows the pain

The Blower's Daughter, by Damien Rice

Todavía recuerdo la sala cinematográfica. La textura del asiento. Las palomitas del de atrás en el suelo, crujiendo bajo mis pies.

Quizás ahora sea tan sólo un lugar común. Quizás, como a todo, el tiempo le haya quitado esa aura de originalidad, de dolorosa epifanía.

Pero la primera vez que se escucha ese "And so it is..." se sabe que algo se ha roto.

También recuerdo cómo, de repente (llovía afuera) el silencio se hizo en el bar cuando puse el blanco vinil de siete pulgadas en la tornamesa. Luego, una chica de ojos brillantes llegaría llorando a darme las gracias.

Los artistas verdaderos son capaces de traducir lo por naturaleza intraducible, el deseo que existe sin referente y sin significación porque es él mismo la significación misma. El deseo y la ruptura, la cercanía y la separación; la belleza de una melancolía repentinamente expresada.

Y así es, a veces, incluso en una sala de cine comercial, con el piso lleno de palomitas y el aire lleno de groseros murmullos y ringtones vulgares, se pueden dar las epifanías. Te descubres en la oscuridad de la sala, con lágrimas en los ojos y un dolor insospechado en el pecho. La pantalla queda a oscuras y no puedes más que decir, "putísimamadre".

Y, la mayoría del tiempo, olvidaremos esa brisa.

Para que, muchos años después, sin esperarlo, nos encontremos.

Common People, by Pulp

así era en las mañanas, y no sólo aquellas del fin de semana sino también las que había entre el lunes y el viernes, así era, tienes que recordar. Una vez acabada la escuela salíamos y éramos invulnerables, ¿ya recuerdas?, las calles largas y anchas, los bares repletos y llenos de humo, el frío allá y nosotros intocables. Así era. Sin un peso en la bolsa, sin mucho horizonte y sin mucha gana de saber cuál era el final, ¿para qué saberlo?, nos decíamos.

Acuérdate. Caminábamos bajo la noche y repasábamos lo visto en otras noches, las noches de otros días y de otros meses, así andábamos los cuatro. Tienes que recordar que el día de la gran lluvia alguno propuso algo y que todos dijimos que sí, que por qué no. Esperamos a que se hiciera de noche y empezamos a acobardarnos. Así que no lo hicimos y, sin embargo, hicimos lo que sabíamos hacer bien: gorreárle la cena y la cerveza a los que sentían por nosotros admiración. Eso hacíamos, ¿recuerdas?

Tienes que acordarte que vimos el amanecer y que juntos, ya solos, decidimos dormir. Dormimos hasta las doce y despertamos con hambre, nos besamos, nuestros labios suplieron la ausencia de pan, de leche, de fruta. Nosotros dijimos que eso era la vida e imaginamos un plan para que así durara. Decididos salimos para ver a los otros, a los que habíamos excluido de nuestro círculo, de nuestros abrazos, de nuestro amor.

Los vimos con sus trajes, con sus hábitos de oficina, criticamos el bigote mal recortado de un hombre y luego señalaste el tinte barato de una secretaria. Los vimos y nos dieron ganas de escupirles, ¿por qué no?, ¿para qué respetarlos?.

¿Ya recordaste? Tienes que recordar. Haz un esfuerzo. Haz memoria. Dijimos que yo moriría por ti y tú por mí. ¿Ya? Debes recordar. Haz un intento, el último, te juro que así eran esos días, que así se fueron tantas noches y tantas mañanas. No estoy inventando. Tienes que recordar. Así fue, te juro que así fue.

High & Dry, by Radiohead

Nine years ago Ok Computer was released. Nine years ago I was 13 years old. Nine years ago Ok Computer was named "The best album ever". Nine years ago my uncle Mauricio gave me The Bends and told me: "This one's far better than Ok Computer, you don't need that depressive crap". I didn't understand what he meant with that. To this day, I still don't understand.
"High & Dry" was the first song I learnt to play in guitar. Three or four chords and I found it very complicated, the solo was easy, though. My first performance was in the Mother's Day Festival of 1998 at the junior high I studied at. I played with an Oasis fan from hell, but he allowed me to do this song. He played the second guitar and I played the solo Johnny Greenwood-like, leaned forward my head facing the guitar. All the mothers in the auditorium/gym didn't understand what was going on. My mother couldn't make it, fortunately she didn't see her son playing the fool.
It's been a while since I don't play "High & Dry", maybe I should dust off my guitar, plug it and...

See them play the song at Jools Holland

Dirty Old Town, by the Pogues

I can't remember when it was I discovered The Pogues. I had never heard of them, but their name and the record covers got me interested and I started buying their albums. I must have been fifteen or so.There was something very literary about their songs and it was easy for me, as a teenage miserabilist, to relate to the whole vibe of the band.

For years, their songs decorated my room with a strange nostalgia for a life I had never lived. For years, I never found anybody else who liked them as well, so I felt completely alone in my fascination with them. This was the pre-Internet era, of course, so I had no idea what the Pogues actually meant for pop culture.

Shane MacGowan, along Black Francis-Frank Black, Tom Waits and Nick Cave and others, leaded my own private pop pantheon.

It hasn't stopped raining, and the city gets that strange glare; the light struggles with the sound of cars passing on wet roads. Pour yourself a glass of whiskey and show some respect. Cheers.

Anarchy In The UK, by the Sex Pistols

De las bandas que escuché de niño ésta es una de mis favoritas. Y de ella esta canción junto con "Who Killed Bamby?" y "My Way" fueron las que hirieron mi imaginación.

Quizá una banda como The Clash sea mejor que los Sex Pistols, pero la verdad es que la energía y el estruendo de los Sex Pistols subyuga mi imaginación y mi sensibilidad.

Por último, ¿quién no recuerda la escena de la película "New Order" (creo que así es el título) en donde los Sex Pistols están tocando y su público se reduce a 20 personas, 20 personas que después harán música?

Sweet Leaf, by Black Sabbath

En algún momento en noviembre, 1994:

Eran las once de la mañana, en algún sótano oscuro -el cuarto oficial del hermano mayor de mi amigo V.-, en una casona dejada al olvido por unos padres ocupados en un crucero especializado en la dieta Atkins, con la ruta Islas Bali-Tailandia.

V., H. y yo nos regodéabamos de estar en el cuarto del hermano de V. (no recuerdo su nombre) -único lugar donde se podía fumar sin que el velador se diera cuenta- en lugar de estar, como bien deberíamos, en el taller de mecanografía; y nos alegrábamos de haber cambiado los mecánicos golpeteos de: QWERT-espacio-POIUY, por los químicos tragos de Florida 7 con Oso Negro.

Yo, que acababa de descubrir a Bauhaus, traía el cassette de Mask y quería escucharlo. El problema era que no había aparatejo para tocarlo. Sólo había un viejo tocadiscos Sanyo, pero ningún disco a la vista. Ante la emergencia, V. se reunió de valor y entró en la recámara su hermano -y SÍ que se necesitaba valor, pues el hermano pesaba veinte kilos más que cualquiera de nosotros y además estaba con su chica, quien sabe qué haciendo- para pedirle un disco y de paso, más dinero para cerveza, que ya no había.

De la puerta entreabierta salió una mano con un objeto cuadrado negro, con grandes letras moradas que rezaban BLACK SABBATH y unas grises abajo: MASTER OF REALITY.
La mano sacudió el objeto.

-¿Sabes cómo ponerlo, V.?
-Sí.
-Chido. Ahora: escúchenlo y no me jodan.
-¿Y el dinero? Tenemos sed.
-Ah... no tengo, pero toma esto.

La mano le dio el disco a V. y regresó al cuarto. La mano regresó con un vil cigarro y cerró la puerta, sin más.

V. me entregó el disco y lo puse a andar en el tocadiscos, ahí fue cuando sonó la primera canción Sweet Leaf, y mientras alguien en el disco tosía, investigué el interior de la caja para ver la letra:

Alright now!!
Wont you listen?

When I first met you, didnt realize
I cant forget you, for your surprise
You introduced me, to my mind
And left me wanting, you and your kind

I love you, oh you know it

My life was empty forever on a down
Until you took me, showed me around
My life is free now, my life is clear
I love you sweet leaf, though you cant hear

Come on now, try it out

Straight people dont know, what your about
They put you down and shut you out
You gave to me a new belief
And soon the world will love you sweet leaf

Cuando la canción llegaba a la parte I love you, oh you know it, V. se levantó para compartirme del cigarro que tronaba y tenía un color raro y olía a pueblo quemado y que después me enteré era la verdadera Sweet Leaf.

Después de que acabó la canción, ya nadie quiso cerveza.

Sweet Leaf, by Black Sabbath

Pillows demo (AKA Oxigen), by Jj72

Regard this as an elegy.

It was the year 2000, the turn of the century. I was sixteen "clumsy and shy", a depressive teenager into The Smiths, Bowie, Pulp, Oasis, Blur and something else. The Smashing Pumpkins were my favorite American band although Pearl Jam was still respectable. Those were though days for me: once that summer was forever gone, suddenly I was out of school and nobody seemed to believe in me anymore; I was a complete mess and music was my only shelter. I'm not sure if it was August or September when I heard this song on the radio. Those guys in Radioactivo were playing some stuff they found at the European summer festivals. At first heard I believed it was a new single by Hole, I thought this was that song supposedly written by Courtney Love and Liam Gallagher (well, they might had been so "busy" or drunk to write a song if they ever met)...fortunately it wasn't. Actually it was the first single of this Irish power trio that I got to love.

Then I used to buy very often records at some tower shop, so those were Napster’s glory days and I also used to download 5 or 6 tunes daily with my 56 kbps dial up internet connection. As the Jj72 homonym debut album remained unavailable in Mexico until 2002 I downloaded the whole of it song by song that autumn.

Since the very first time I heard the A chord softly strummed by Mark Greany I knew this song would easily enter in my personal hit parade of that year, not the same in the mass media. Now I know that this song is a must in the soundtrack of my adolescence. The band was described as a new Nirvana, although the Smashing Pumpkins heavily influenced them; I didn’t care about what the press was saying about this band, anyway I bought a Melody Maker issue with them on the cover. Inside the magazine, which strangely was sold (almost given away with a price of 15 Mexican pesos) in Mexico City with a month delay, I found an interview with the band. The bass player, Hilary Woods was described as the sexiest woman of Indy rock and Mark, guitarist, singer and composer, was acclaimed as the next best lyricist of Ireland. Fergal, the drummer were also worshiped by one of the two magazines that build and break musicians in the UK; now “The maker” does not exist anymore, it was absorbed by the New Musical Express. Reading that I acknowledged that the band was formed in a Dublin high school in 1995. Mark attended a Jesuits school: Belvedere College where James Joyce also attended class when he was a youngster. The band members were aware and proud of it; half the interview was about literature. That lead me not only to pay more attention to what Mark sang in his songs, I also began reading Joyce. In that interview Mark also mentioned he love Manic Street Preachers, I downloaded some songs of them and in two years time I was delighted by the Manics.

Those things I discovered in the interview are things that matter for me now. But at that time what made Jj72 so dear to my ears was the teenage angst in their songs. It was the time when MTV became crap and the so-called teen stars and boy bands were spread around the world as a mortal disease. Jj72, being each of them 20 years old at that time, were a truthful teenage band as Artic Monkeys are now. Listening to their music I really felt that it had something to do with my life or the life of any sensible teenager living in any big city. As Joyce, Mark is very interested in the urban life as a theme; the difference is that Mark's Dublin is a real city, not that big town of Dubliners.

Airports and undergrounds
waiting to find the unfound
rising to pure insanity…

I played the guitar since I was 13. When I reached that hopeless months when I heard Jj72 for the first time I was able to play their songs, which I might still be able to play. At that time I also had a couple of years trying to write songs. The music to my songs was frankly bad, so the lyrics were not as silly as you expect from a teenager. May be listening to Jj72, and the references I got from Mark's lyrics lead me to focus on poetry and give up writing songs. When I was 17 I started exploring the effect of urban life in my first poems about circular streets and summers with sunny mornings and cold rainy afternoons as those we have in Mexico City. The treatment to that theme was contaminated by the pseudo-grunge desolated imagery of Jj72.

Oxygen is a song about love, even when I was a lonely weirdo that song made me feel fine for it gave me the idea that as long as I keep feeling young I’m able to be a “God in my world”.

Short sleeves and warm skin
losing coins calling next of kin
dropping words about the city we're in
ponds compressed by heavy air
us without care just sprawling there
god's in our world

Teenagers messing around and how well they feel to do so. That is exactly what this song is about, or at least what I caught the very first time I read the lyrics.

Two years later my life was still a mess but at least there was room for hope. I was 18, and then Jj72 released their second album. At that time I didn’t played the guitar so often as two years before. The band had a single that became a little bit successful in America and I felt disappointed. After all they didn’t become another U2 and kept being a cult band. That second album I to Sky, became as special for me as the first. It was 2002 and there is a song in the album responding to the fear after the well-known events in September 2001 at the USA. There were a lot of albums “concerned” of those events. Jj72 didn’t respond to it with a political song, the did with Serpent Sky, which might be their most powerful headbanger song with lyrics that evoke words spoken by Whitman:

“I was watching American television, not in a Delores O'Riordan type of way though, and there was a program running about Walt Whitman, great American poet and how he wrote how he felt after Abraham Lincoln was shot and he talked about the clouds had turned into serpents in the sky and very short poem but I wanted the song to have the same effect, an exorcism of intense feelings really.." Said Mark.

Mark also said about Glimmer, another song in their second album:


"This is the one I get really pretentious, I wouldn't say I've stolen, but I've borrowed heavily from certain poets like Yeats and a Portugese poet called Fernando Pessoa. Go read Fernando Pessoa. It's unashamed love song, not towards a partner but more towards family and everyone. It's the one song on the album which is trying to embrace every stranger, every person who listens to it...."

Once again listening to Jj72 was leading me close to literature; by the end of 2002 I was sure I wanted to study literature.

Back to 2006 almost everything I do is related to literature, or at least writing. Few days ago I knew it: Jj72 won’t release a third album, the band does not exist anymore. May be next year Mark will release a solo album or create a new band. When I knew it I listened to this song and a tear escaped from my eye. Jj72 is so far the only band I followed, single by single, since they appeared until the band split up. I lost all the hopes I had to see them if they ever came to this far off city or at least to Coachella. It feels as if a close friend of mine had passed away. It feels as an ominous sign of my adolescence’s dusk. I sit back once again and listen to this song, the one that caught my ears six years ago. There are days that won’t come back, but the songs remain.

Pillows demo(AKA Oxigen) as performed by Jj72.

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Ordinary World, by Duran Duran

The best-known of all New Romantic bands, Duran Duran could be as corny as heart-shaped balloons.

And still, who who has ever been in love has not been corny?

Not their best song, of course, but Ordinary World synthetised -indeed- the New Romantic formula to its simplest elements. This was a guilty pleasure; a song I would cherish secretly. It spoke to me in a way other songs did not dare to: directly and without complex metaphors; just the present experience of having to go out and live in the "real" world after realizing love creates illusions that reality cannot stand. A song to listen to after being woken up, violently, from a sweet dream.

I remember one of those rainy Thursday evenings, when ghosts would pass hastily before me on my way home, and I would wish I could listen to this song.

Came in from a rainy thursday on the avenue
Thought I heard you talking softly.
I turned on the lights, the tv and the radio
Still I cant escape the ghost of you
What has happened to it all?

A simple song about coming back into the world; about being haunted, and hurt, and in mourning. Everything ends apruptly and all too soon, like this song.

A song about coming home and finding nothing but ghosts; a song about surviving the past and learning to live again.

But I won't cry for yesterday...

Yes, corny, like falling in and out of love.

There is a Light That Never Goes Out, by the Smiths

La canción más romántica no es una historia de vidas eternamente felices o de promesas vanas de amor incondicional. No es flechazo a primera vista ni re-encuentro después de años. No menciona al destino y no le atribuye la magia a las estrellas.

Habla de un escape, de la gratitud, de la compañía y de la circunstancia.

Yo estoy agradecido porque el amor es la mejor compañía para escapar de la mera circunstancia.

First Breath After Coma, by Explosions in the Sky

Crise de Vers:

El cielo es un cántaro de luz y no nos damos cuenta: la respiración se puede borrar para siempre si nuestra oquedad acompasada ve por primera vez un crepúsculo en su estado original o descubre el onarmento de un atardecer perfecto. Escogemos sólo ciertas palabras como las grutas para llegar al poema, pero en el frenesí de la búsqueda la lejanía nos ahoga.

El cielo: como el rostro de una tentación cautelosa que nos obliga a ocultar la tristeza, esa postura agónica que tanto nos quita y nos disfraza, y nos hace recordar nuestra primera apetencia: the First Breath After Coma.



First Breath After Coma, by Explosions in the Sky.


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Rearviewmirror, by Pearl Jam

Salgo de la facultad temprano. No hay tráfico, los finales terminaron. Empiezo a pedalear, llego a la bajada, suelto el manubrio y me dejo ir. Llego al retorno y a lo lejos veo aquel coche gris; eres tu, lo se. Te alejas, pedaleo mas duro y te alcanzo en Cerro del Agua, tomo velocidad, ya me viste. Cambias de carril, sabes que yo lo haré, cruzo al lado izquierdo de la calle, pegado al camellón, voy atrás de ti.
Por la altura de la bici solo alcanzo a ver parte de tu cuello por el retrovisor.
Viene el tope, yo daré vuelta en la que sigue, te agachas, me ves, una sonrisa, y sigues derecho.

No te conozco, pero espero encontrar esa sonrisa de nuevo el próximo semestre cuando regrese a casa.

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Come Together (live), by Spiritualized

Primal Scream, and The Beatles of course, have songs of the same title. But this one has always fascinated me as a wicked, beautiful piece of pop pretentiousness. An artifact of noise which is also an anthemic machinery of organized melodic sound. Good to remember grandiose things can still be created. Great for these moments of national uncertainty and division. A song for us, the sad and the fucked, the ones who jump first and look later.

Tattva, by Kula Shaker

The excitement when Grandma gave me my birthday money. April 1997, my thirteenth birthday. And I only had one goal in mind. Go to the record store and find that album in which that song that reminded me to "Strawberry Fields Forever" was included. K by Kula Shaker. It was the first record I bought consciously. My unlce had given me the year before Björk's Post, but for the first time I was going to spend my money in a record. The begining of my passion. So, there I was at my home, listening to it at full volume. I didn't know exactly what their influences were, I only knew that they sounded Beatles-like in certain songs. I only knew that after that, my life would change drastically. I only knew that when Crispian Mills sang: "Like a flower and a scent of summer (...) Well the truth may come in strange disguises, never knowing what it means" a tiny door opened inside my head. And music was never the same for me. It made me want to know more, why did they sound like that? why using Hindu influences? why?