Robot, Versión 1 y Versión para T-Shirt

¿En qué se parecen Phil Collins y la revista Playboy?/ What do Phil Collins and Playboy magazine have in common?

¡En que ambos tienen la calata en frente! En 1986 Phil Collins era la superestrella del Pop blanco mundial, sin duda alguna. Había superado en ventas a gente como Sting y a su ex-compañero en Genesis Peter Gabriel. Esta entrevista fue rescatada de la revista fundada por Hugh Hefner.

What do Phil Collins and Playboy Magazine have in common? Both of them have the naked one on front! In 1986 Phil Collins was, no question about it, the White Pop Superstar, having defeated, in record sales, people like Sting and even his ex-partner in Genesis Peter Gabriel. This interview was rescued out of the Hugh Hefner-founded Magazine.

...cuz you know I cannot believe it's true...

CacaoRock goes shopping for bargains

The following article appeared on the San Francisco Chronicle on February 2nd, 2009. One day before the 50th anniversary of the "Day The Music Died." In order to preserve the authenticity of the article and the collaborators' input, I will continue with my picks at the bottom.

https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Chronicle-writers-bargain-bin-album-picks-3252475.php

Javier Moreno, www.cacaorock.com

The Record Store: Rasputin Music in Berkeley (2401 Telegraph Ave., http://www.rasputinmusic.com)

Grace Jones, "Living My Life" ($2.95) her voice, as her beauty, requires an acquired taste. But this Jamaican-born model/actress/singer/icon can really make you dance if you let her convince you. She will do it anyway.

Chick Corea, "My Spanish Heart" ($5.95) As Chick himself explains on the liner notes, a "recent" trip to Spain made him discover his Latin-spanish roots. Chick is from Italian descent, but the Iberic flavor is here.

Kid Creole And The Coconuts, "Off The Coast Of Me" ($2.95) A great finding considering this album is very hard to get and it's their debut. August Darnell's band weren't just a dance act for nightclubs, but actually they created a genre known as "Mutant Disco" -latin percussion blended into disco beats- that ruled European dancefloors in the eighties and evolved into house music. Darnell's your daddy.

Stan Getz, "Another World" ($5.95) Another out-of-print gem from the outstanding saxophonist's catalog (the others include "Children Of The World"). In this double album Getz connects his sax to an echo-plex and teams up with young musicians like Andy Laverne on piano to play acid fusion.

Wings, "Goodnight Tonight (Don't Say It)" [12" Extended Single] ($1.95) Paul McCartney's second band's last single, ten years after the release of the "Let It Be" song. This Maxi single is great for discotheques that rely on the smooth and conforting beats of the past. Macca never played the bass so well on a riff this tight. If you think this one is the best Paul McCartney song he ever recorded without the Beatles, you're not alone. 

Thomas Dolby, "Hyper-Active"  ($1.00) a 12" single off the Flat Earth album. Dolby sped up the tapes and added a sense of desperation in this song that will make us thing of the Beastie Boys' "Intergalactic." But this one is so much punchier! And it's an unfairly underrated and forgotten New Wave dance number.

Lenny Zakatek, "Lenny Zakatek" ($1.00) maybe the greatest bargain I ever found on a record store, since it's an out-of-print, hard to find record never released on CD featuring Alan Parsons Project's great lead vocalist. Parsons himself produced this album.

El Rock Llegó Para Quedarse/ Rock And Roll Is Here To Stay

February 3rd, 1959 is considered by Don McLean as The Day The Music Died. Well, not only by him but by an entire generation who saw how the first Rock And Roll wave crashed and faded away by the end of the fifties. Fifty years ago Buddy Holly, J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson and Ritchie Valens died on a plane crash after a concert in Clear Lake, Iowa. Terrible news indeed. Three rock pioneers dying extremely young (Valens was 17, Holly 22 and Big Bopper 28) and the curse gets spread afterwards: Little Richard decides to resign the wicked ways of rock after fearing death on a plane crash, Chuck Berry gets incarcerated accused of proxenetism, Jerry Lee Lewis marries his 13 year old cousin and his career is over and Elvis gets enlisted in the Army. Rock And Roll wasn't there to stay.

It was something very similar to what happened later in 1994, after the death of Kurt Cobain and the end of the Grunge era. And nowadays we realize it's all part of a cycle, like the wheel. We can't have it all the time, but its energy must pull us through in this world of trouble.

So the untimely and tragic deaths of Holly, Valens and Big Bopper didn't happen on the day the music died, but when it became immortal. Holly, after dying, released four horsemen of the Apocalypse called Beatles who conquered the world in a way he couldn't have ever imagined, using mostly his influence (Buddy Holly's band was named the Crickets!). Ritchie Valens died too young and his legacy in Latino Rock was barely felt with songs like "La Bamba" and "Donna," but he, as well as Holly, was a pioneer. Big Bopper was starting a career as entertainer that could have reached very high places. His song "Chantilly Lace" is one of the most suggestive, sexy and powerful tunes of the Fifties. Songs like these aren't made anymore and I dare you to compare.

Dead? Fuck No! Rock And Roll Rules My Life Bitch!

End of an awful Era, and the Beginning of a Hopeful, New One.

Obama takes office,
Bush leaves.
Thank goodness.

Today I witnessed not only the beginning of a new era for United States. I saw how Bush was booed off the stage and boarded a helicopter, flying onto retirement. If he had any blood in his veins, he must have cried when nobody saw him.

This awful era started in November 2000, when the most powerful country in the World -at that time-, couldn't figure out how to count votes in Florida, a state that always voted Republican (except on November 2008), so they had to solve the situation with a little help of the Supreme Court. The U.S. put the Tree's son in power and the rest isn't history, but current drama the country needs to get out because it desperately needs to.

Our hopes are with Barack Obama, a guy who has a lot of work to do. We too.

Kraftwerk's Florian Schneider leaves

It seemed like a bad joke, but so far it seems true. Florian Schneider, founder and one fourth of the excellent electronic German act Kraftwerk, has left the band. He won't be touring with them this year in Central and South America.

Although he didn't perform on any of the 2008 Kraftwerk concerts, the reasons for his official departure are not totally clear. Rumours say he had a legal beef with Kraftwerk's company, Klingklang, and this might involve a lawsuit the company filed against a U.K. band named Kling Klang for copyright infrigment. The band has a little bit of Kraftwerk's influence, and of course, one space separates their name from the Germans'.

Ralf Hütter remains the only original member of the band when it started in 1970. Hopefully Florian will change his mind, but honestly, knowing his reclusiveness and reserved behavior... we might as well enjoy Florian and the guys in they hey-day:

Art Oriented Rock

Emerson, Lake & Palmer (Cotillion, 1970)

EMERSON, LAKE & PALMER

I'm sure the members of this supergroup (see above) didn't know at the beginning they would last so long. A streak of years from 1970 to 1978. And it all started when keyboard virtuoso Keith Emerson decided to leave his band the Nice to go solo. His name was too big to be hidden in a band. bassist Greg Lake quit King Crimson after a big debut (1969's In The Court Of The Crimson King) and drummer Carl Palmer was approached by Emerson and Lake while he was playing in Atomic Rooster. Previously, the idea included having a supergroup featuring Jimi Hendrix on guitar but the project got trunked when he died on September 1970. Had Jimi lived and agreed to join them, the band would have been called HELP.

They worked hard and argued a lot about the material they would include on their self-titled debut album. Emerson and Palmer hated a cheesy ballad written by Lake at the age of 12, "Lucky Man," but they decided to go forward and play something more appealing to the masses than to virtuoso rock adaptations of Bartok and Janacek. The three of them also realized they would produce something experimental and new, and they would disband if the project didn't work out. Something like Blind Faith did, we suppose.

Of course it wasn't that way. ELP kept its momentum and popularity among Progressive Rock fans (geeks like us) all through the seventies, harvesting more fans than any previous band they were members of. Their debut album makes them burn a lot of calories: Keith Emerson tries all possible sounds with his Moog on "The Barbarian" and "Knife Edge" and proves he's a virtuoso, yet again on "The Three Fates," testing circus pipe organs, and "Take A Pebble," strumming his grand piano's strings with a pick at the opening. A breath-tak,ing performance indeed. Carl Palmer breaks snares and bends cymbals on a brutal solo on "Tank" and Greg Lake, producer of the record, proves he has a storytelling and folky heart when he switches his bass for an acoustic guitar in "Lucky Man." At the end of this tune, he finds himself not alone: Emerson allegedly taped the grandious solo on one take and Palmer provides the perfect drumming for a song otherwise plain and simple, yet beautiful.

The album promised wonderful follow-ups, and they were indeed: Tarkus, Pictures at an Exhibition (1971), Trilogy (1972) and Brain Salad Surgery (1973) gave the band material for a tremendous world tour that burned their relationship down into fights, apathy and contract-ending records.