Rock and Roll Talks 4th edition / The 80's movement - Charly García and the modern clics revolution (Part one)
Welcome to the Rock n' Roll Talks!
Made by @exzorltg
"This world will tell you that it's always better to look at the wall". - Charly García
It's a big pleasure to come back with you in this 4th edition to give you more music, more reviews and more facts about the music that I really love. This edition is VERY important for me because you all, the anglo-people, those lovers of the 80's revolution, needs to know about the eternal legacy that Charly gave us through this work. In this post, I want to talk about the second album of this musician, and in this case I'm very excited for all the anglo facts that I'm going to show you.
First of all, this is the first album of Charly recorded in USA (New York) in one of the best studios of NY with an anglo producer. Yes, Joe Blaney, producer of Prince and The Clash. Joe Blaney, Charly García and Electric Lady's studios (founded by Jimi Hendrix) in the same sentence!
Before starting, I want to apologize because I didn't post more about my Rock and Roll talks section. Every edition deserves a rest, the respective investigation and be able to inmerse my mind into this energy. When I write this reviews, I'm not Aida Rojas; i'm obsessed listener that is looking for understand the Charly's mind and decode beyond the words.
This post it's gonna be crazy and musical, why?
- Because we want to gonna about the 80's revolution, the graffiti's movement (The shadowman, an interesting phenomenon in the walls of NY city) the samples, the avant-garde songs and the post-dictatorship rock sound. Don't forget that in those times, Argentina was celebrating the end of a dictorial government.
In this first part we want to talk about Ferro's Concert, the Charly's travel to NY, the 80's music, the influences, the album cover, the social background, the shadowman and the samples. In the second part I will talk about the meaning of the songs, the technical aspects and the people who participed in the process of this work.
Sit down and read more about the most important musician in Argentina!
Rock and Roll talks is an idea that comes from my need of talk about my favorite music and review those artists who has changed my life. With a magazine aesthetic, facts and details, the Rock and Roll talks is one of my personal projects that I want to show you with special editions. I understand if you don't want to read about this, it's too much info, hahaha. Anyway, I would like to receive some feedback of what I'm doing here because I want to feel that I'm connecting with the people (somewhere in the world, I hope so...)
T H E F E R R O C O N C E R T
In the last post, we talked about "Yendo de la cama al living", the first album of Charly accompanied with the movie soundtrack "Pubis Angelical".
In that album, he explored the modern music machines as the Polyphonic guitar sintetizer Roland GR- 300, The Moog liberation keytar and of course, the Roland TR 808 (a drum machine). It was the first sounds, the first Charly and the first phase of his music. If you want to read more about the first album, you can read the previous edition here.
But let's talk about that amazing concert on the Ferro Stadium with 25k fans. This concert gave him the opportunity to show his incredible work as a soloist and start a new phase of his music. With special guests like Nito Mestre, Pedro Aznar and more, the concert was full of events with songs of "La Máquina de Hacer Pájaros" (a progressive rock band of Argentina founded by Charly), Serú Girán (a.k.a the latin beatles), Sui Generis (the first musical project of Charly) and his own songs. It was his first concert as a soloist sponsored by a brand of jeans and with an amazing production work.
Everything started after this concert; Charly was needing a little rest from Argentina and that old dictatorial city So he decided to travel to another place, and what better place than New York? When he arrived in that city, he fell in love with the people, the music and that new vibe that he was feeling. So, he rented a loft in the city center and started to meet new people and go to concerts of bands from the New York musical movement (mostly underground movement).
As an obsessive musician, Charly felt inspired by all the new sounds and he started to buy the most avant-garde music machines to compose new songs. Another stories used to say that Charly was looking to record an album in NY from the beginning. I dont think so, but may be he's intuitive.
I have to say that he was the first argentinian musician who began to innovate with danceable rock after dictatorship: electronic drums, nostalgic lyrics and metaphoric lyrics (as always), stories, samples and songs tempted to sound in the clubs. One of the musical machines that he bought for him and his demos was the Roland tr 808 (we talked about this), not that new for him because he used the same machine in his first album.
1983: The dancing rock music and the end of the dictatorship
The argentinian background:
"In 1982, the military government undertook the Malvinas War against the United Kingdom. The defeat inflicted caused the fall of the third military group and months later the fourth group called for elections on October 30, 1983, in which the candidate of the Radical Civic Union, Raúl Alfonsín, won. Alfonsín created the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons to investigate the human rights violations that occurred between 1976 and 1983 and then promoted the trial of the members of the first three groups for the crimes committed during his government, as a result of which five of its members were convicted and four acquitted."
1983: Some musical facts of this year
The 1983 was the year of the electro-pop, the danceable rock and the beginning of some musicians (As Bon Jovi).
Some of the facts of that year was the album "Thriller" of the king of pop, Michael Jackson, a universal hit for the history of the music.
)The compact disc on sale in USA! A revolution of the music format.
David Bowie and his dancing release Let's Dance: a new beginning for his music
The beginning of a queen: Madonna's first album (self-titled)
Metallica and Kill 'em all: the revolution of the thrash metal
In the end of argentinian dictatorship, the people starts to dance and the danceable rock was growing up. The clubs was full of teenagers and dancers celebrating the democracy after nine years.
There's a list about the most popular songs in 1983 (around the world):
The influences in the Charly's second album
The Clash - Sandinista:
The Clash was one of the favorite bands of Charly. In the song "No bombardeen Buenos Aires" from his first album, you can listen The Clash references and Charly screaming "Sandinista!"
The Police (not a specific album)
David Bowie - Let's Dance
)
The history behind the cover
This is an important topic to talk about. In the second post we gonna talk about the songs and other things, but this is very important because the history behind this photo.
In the beginning of the story, the album was going to be called "Nuevos trapos" (it means like, new sounds making reference to the new beginning of Argentina with the end of dictatorship). He was walking through New York City with Uberto Sagramoso (his photographer) and then, Charly painted writing "Nuevos trapos" in the walls of NY, but then, they discovered a interesting black shadow figure painted on the wall, next to the name of a missing band from the underground scene called Modern Clixs) and they decided that this would be the name and cover art of his new album "Modern Clixs". New sounds, modern music and the meaning of a "clic", like the shot of a photograph.
Richard Hambleton, the shadowman
The legend behind this photo; a black figure in the walls of Manhattan will be part of an amazing album, but what's the meaning? Who painted this? His figure of shadowman decorated a big part of Manhattan.
“I painted the town black,” Mr. Hambleton told People magazine in 1984. “They could represent watchmen or danger or the shadows of a human body after a nuclear holocaust or even my own shadow.”
Richard Art Hambleton was a Canadian artist known for his work as a street artist. He was a surviving member of a group that emerged from the New York City art scene during the booming art market of the 1980s. - Wikipedia.
One of the most crazy facts is that the same shadows appears in the walls of Argentina (Buenos Aires) but in white in rendition to the people who dies in the dictatorship. That made the album marked a revolution in the history of argentinian rock, which makes it the second best album in Argentina according to a survey by Rolling Stones magazine.
I want to make a entire post about this man and his dead legacy. I mean dead because at the end, he used to run away from the hard life as an artist.
You can read more about Mr. Hambleton in this article from NY Times
This is just the beginning of an amazing album, and we gonna talk about the rest in another post. We need to know about the influence of NY city in a latinoamerican musician and we gonna see how Joe Blaney, Electric Lady, Larry Carlton and the other musicians contributed to a new legacy, the change and innovation of the argentinian rock and the avant garde sounds till this day.
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