Amor amarillo - Gustavo Cerati

Se sabe que un músico es un genio cuando puede pasar de esto:

...a esto...

...y a esto.

Cuatro caminos - Café Tacvba

Hubo una época en la que a Café Tacvba se le comparaba con los Beatles ("Bicles", en mexicano de alcurnia) y Pink Floyd. La comparación surgía por el carácter inovador del grupo: cada disco era un experimento o, para ser más preciso, un conjunto de ellos: son o jarabe jarocho combinado con caja de sonidos, por poner un ejemplo. Incluso cuando Café Tacvba regresaba a las raíces del rock and roll clásico se le calificaba de innovador, como en el Unplugged que hizo para MTV, que fue la primera vez en la que usaron batería en vez de caja de percusiones.

En Cuatro caminos, la innovación llegó al extremo de que cayó en el pop comercial. Cuando oí "Eres" por primera vez, por ejemplo, pensaba que estaba oyendo alguna canción de Emmanuel. "Soy o estoy" es simplemente mala, y "Encantamiento inútil" es un homenaje a Nora Jones.

Cuatro caminos es un disco mediocre tirándole a malo, en el que Café Tacvba pretende permanecer leal a sus orígenes de chavo banda unamita que toma el metro a la vez que intenta llegar a audiencias más pop. Se dirá que se comercializaron por mandato de Televisa, el enano fecal espurio de las manos ensangrentadas, y yosoy132, y etcétera, pero lo más probable es que Cuatro caminos haya sido un experimento musical sincero que no pretendía hacer dinero: Café Tacvba ya tenía una audiencia fresa bastante grande antes de este disco: el Avalancha de éxitos les trajo éxito en todos los estratos sociales de la población.

Desde el Cuatro caminos, las únicas innovaciones de Café Tacvba son los nombres del cantante, que un día se llama Rubén, y al otro Cosme, y así.

Algún día Café Tacvba volverá a hacer buenos discos.

MTV Unplugged in New York - Nirvana

Nirvana's MTV Unplugged was issued after Kurt Cobain's death. It is no exaggeration to say that this performance increased exponentially the celebrity of both the band and the chain, at least outside the English-speaking World. 1994 was the year when a number of countries lifted restrictions on cable TV, of which MTV was the ultimate symbol.


MTV Unplugged in New York is aslo, according to some critics, an indication of what kind of music Kurt Cobain would do in a hypothetical post-Nirvana era. There is some truth to that; after all, we know what Dave Grohl and the other guy have done since.


But this is mainly and simply a good album.

Joaquín Sabina y Viceversa en Directo

Ningún artista se atrevería a hacer una canción como "Cuervo Ingenuo" hoy, y en el caso de que algún ingenuo lo hiciera, ninguna estación de radio la transmitiría, ninguna compañía la sacaría en un CD, y seguramente no llegaría a Youtube. El contingente políticamente correcto español, ese que le dice "africanos subsaharianos de piel negra oscura" a los negros y al que tanto critica Arturo Pérez Reverte, dirían que es irrespetuosa a los pueblos indígenas de América, como le pasó a los cuentos de Tin Tin.

Es una lástima, porque la letra de "Cuervo Ingenuo" es tan vigente hoy como hace 25 años, o quizá más: en realidad, no sabemos si Felipe González hubiera sido tan permisivo con los bancos o si hubiera perdido tiempo precioso en la legislatura pasando leyes que beneficiaban a clientelas específicas del PSOE (Memoria Histórica, matrimonio de homosexuales) en lugar de reformas económicas que blindaran a España del caos en el que está sumergida.

Quede "Cuervo Ingenuo" como un testimonio de una España que ya no es: un país rico, sin complejos, y con ganas de mirar al futuro.

La revancha del tango - Gotan Project

La revancha del tango combina tres cosas: tango, como su nombre lo indica; música electrónica y beats, y todo el espectro de la ideología comunista argentina; es decir, fragmentos de discursos guevaristas y peronistas.

Para el optimista, esta es una fusión de lo moderno con lo nuevo con cierto toque de lucha de clase latinoamericanista con alcances artísticos -para ponerlo en términos fidelistas- intergalácticos. Para el enemigo del pueblo, los tonos de bar de la elite de La revancha del tango son una muestra de cómo la izquierda sólo quiere convertirse en derecha (cómo olvidar al Ché en los yates de los gusanos días después del triunfo de la Revolución): listillos que quieren adueñarse de los medios de producción en nombre del pueblo mientras toman martinis en sus casas en la playa con sus meretrices, como hacían los oligarcas anteriores. 

En realidad, La revancha del tango fue un disco revolucionario cuando fue lanzado, hace diez años. Después le siguieron gente como Nortec y otros que buscaron mezclar música tradicional con electrónica. Por su culpa, La revancha del tango es valorado desde una perspectiva política y no artística. Peores cosas han pasado.

From Babel to Dragomans - Bernard Lewis

Bernard Lewis is the author one must read to start having a broad idea of the Middle East. For one thing, he was the creator of the expression "clash of civilizations", later popularized by Samuel Huntington, and taken as a guidance for policy by some neo-conservative ideologues in the aftermath of 9/11.

From Babel to Dragomans collects 51 essays written by Bernard Lewis on the Middle East. The topics covered range from gastronomy to U.S. foreign policy, passing through Turkish historiography and several comparative analysis of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. The book is divided in three sections: part 1 deals with   "past history"; part 2, with "current history", and part 3 collects essays on historiography and Orientalism. By construction, books that collect essays tend to be repetitive and From Babel to Dragomans is not an exception. From that perspective, part 1 is probably the best part of the book by providing a quick introduction to Middle East from a scholar perspective -part 2 is too ideologized, and part 3 is too academic.

There are a lot of remarkable quotes in this book, though there is probably one that comes out for its prescience regarding the current events in the Middle East: 

"Where the so-called fundamentalist Muslims and democrats are both in opposition, the former have an immense advantage. In the mosques and preachers, they dispose of a network for meeting and communication that no government, however tyrannical, can entirely control and no other group can rival."

This quotation comes handy now that the popular revolts in Egypt and Tunisia are getting stopped by the military or kidnapped by the Salafists. 

People were too optimistic about the prospects of these two countries to implant functioning democratic regimes. Obviously, the images of young people going out to the streets and risk their lives is shocking and moving at the same time, but any cold and fact-based analysis could see from the beginning that both the military and the Salafists had something that the protesters have lacked since they took the streets: organization and command chains. A political movement cannot be run like an assembly if it really wants to survive. 

Of Mice and Men - Lewis Milestone

This is a great movie. I have nothing to add to the description of the booklet:

Oscar-nominated for Best Picture of the year (1939), Of Mice and Men was adapted from the classic novel by American literary giant John Steinbeck and features stunningly memorable performances by Burgess Meredith (In Harm's Way, Rocky) and Lon Chaney, Jr. (The Wolfman, High Noon) and a moving, Academy Award-nominated score from legendary composer Aaron Copland. The film,set in the bucolic valley Salinas Valley of California in the 1930s, paints a bold, vivid picture of life in the Depression era and tells the tragic tale of men searching for a safe heaven from the cruelties of a world where true poverty is loneliness and alienation from the loyalty and kindness of other men.

George and Lennie are a pair of itinerant farm hands who dream of someday having their own modest ranch, but in the meantime toil for uncaring ranch owners. George (Meredith) must constantly watch over Lenni (Chaney), who has very few wits but an enormous strength which is always getting them into trouble when he finds a small animal or pretty girl that he innocently wants to caress. Always just a few steps ahead of disaster, the two friends land at yet another farm where circumstances and the help of a fellow dreamers seem to bring their fantasies within reach. It is all the more tragic then when Lennie finds trouble thatthere is no running away from and George is called on to carry out a final and ultimate act of friendship.

For director Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front, The Red Pony) Of Mice and Men was a labor of love.He had wanted to adapt the popular novel and play for film since he first read it, but lacked the studio backing. In 1938 he found himself on a legal battle over money he was owed by Hal Roach Studios, and Roach agreed to settle out of court by paying for the production Of Mice and Men. With script in hand, Milestone went to John Steinbeck for his approval and input. Steinbeck requested only a few minor changes, gave his blessing to the production and even took Mileston on a "field trip" to the Salinas Valley farm where the actual events which inspired his story took place. Of the film, Steinbeck would later say "it is a beautiful job. Here Milestone has done a curious, lyrical thing. It hangs together and is underplayed."

The film opened to rave critical reviews and, unfortunately,poor business at the box office. Of course, competing films that year included Gone with the Wind, The Grapes of Wrath (another Steinbeck adaptation) and The Wizard of Oz. Of Mice and Men has since been rereleased, remade on film and television and revived as a play many times for audiences who know a classic when they see one. Critics and scholars agree that this film version remains one of the most faithful and compelling translations of a literary masterwork.

The full movie is available here: