For whatever reason 2007 turned out to be a year that saw countless bands of yesteryear reunite. Led Zeppelin, The Police, The Verve, Spice Girls and numerous others for sure. Nothing to make the blood boil in my musical books.
On the other side of the Atlantic, and south of the Rio Grande the Latin music business had also caught the big-band reuniting bug. What's more it was my #1 Latin rock outfit, Argentine Soda Stereo, that decided to bring themselves together and set out on an extsensive continent-wide tour. Unfortunately, unlike all those wealthy Led Zeppelin fans who seemed to jet into London from all 4 corners of the world the other week for their one-off gig, jetting out to Buenos Aires was unfortunately beyond my limited means. Instead I spent much of yesterday, the day of their final gig in el Estadio River Plate in Buenos Aires, with my mp3 player shuffling out tunes from all the various Soda albums I've managed to get hold over the years.
It's almost 10 years to the day that the went out with a bang on their "El Ultimo Concieto" tour of Latin America, and shockingly almost 10 years now since I stumbled upon an MTV video from those concerts of their hit-song "La Musica Ligera". Given that my entire CD collection to that point was made up of English language albums, it was definitely a minor momentous moment to head up to my local CD store in La Paz and leave with my first ever Rock en Españ ol CD, Soda Stereo's "El Ultimo Concierto". Who would have known, good decent rock does exist in other languages. Now it was just a matter of time before a plethora of other surprisingly good Latin Rock acts would come my way: Lucybell, Cafe Tacuba, La Ley, Cuentos Borgeanos, Attaque 77, Babasonicos, to just name but a few.
Still Soda Stereo tops the lot and it's good to see their popularity across Latin America is a high as ever, with countless record-breaking stadium concerts to their name in almost the countries they've passed through the last couple of months. Unfortunately it'll be futile to expect that they'll hop across the pond and perform here in London despite the ever-increasing ex-pat Latino community here. Nevertheless at least I can take heart from the fact that their lead singer, Gustavo Cerati, ventured here for a solo gig last year which was almost as good as it gets.
So being the end of the year and the season of end of year top-10 lists, I leave you with my own personal top-10 list of favourite Soda hits:
- En la ciudad de la furia
- Té para 3
- Toma la ruta
- Nada personal
- Tratame Suavemente
- Profugos
- Planeador
- Cuando Pase el Temblor
- Ella usó mi cabeza como un revólver
- Angel Eléctrico
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