Before the Big Bang

Yes, it's true... life existed before the Big Bang or, what it means in my case, I used to listen other music before my Dire Straits addiction.

Now that I think about it, it was a bit more than just listening to music. As I remember, those times were a lot about beeing something... Heavies, Mods, Rockers, New Romantics... In those late 70's and early 80's it was almost a must to identify with one of those urban tribes. Honestly, never got too much into those kinda things but my first memories come more associated to what here was called the Heavy movement than to any other thing.

Amongst other bands, probably Iron Maiden was one of my preferred. Some kind of fascination for their Eddie mascot had probably a lot to do with it, decorating my books and other stuff with their covers and wearing t-shirts with pictures of that funny evil was just a part of it. By the way, there was a game, a first person shooter, released in late 90's Ed Hunter, where Eddie plays a main role... :-)

Of course this theme is part of music history for me. And it's part of their history too, as they were branded as Satanics for their album with same title, their concerts banned in some countries like Chile, their discs burned up in public...

"As they start to cry, hands held to the sky.

In the night, the fires are burning bright,
The ritual has begun, Satan’s work is done.
666 the number of the beast.
Sacrifice is going on tonight."

Make your own opinion, hehe...

There were other bands, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Van Halen, Deep Purple,... and of course, real good spanish ones like Ñu, Baron Rojo, Leño, ...

No doubt this is part, and an important one, of spanish music. As part of spanish music, at least for me, and another important part, is this small jewell I leave to finish this blog. Probably most spanish readers will remember the "Discoplay" catalog, what was one of the most important contributions to music distribution in Spain.

They had to close their services years ago, but I found recently they scanned and published all the catalogs since 1982, just take a look at it if you want to recall this little pieze of history.

http://www.archivodocumentaldiscoplay.info/

The starting point

Hi readers... it's been a hard and long decision to start writing this blog, at least for someone like me. Maybe it's that absurd feeling of responsability about finishing the things one starts, maybe it's just that I've read too much blogs, a lot complete useless, some really amazing, that now, starting my own and making it interesting enough for someone else to read shows as such a huge task...

Well, anyway, here I am... writing my first (and who knows, maybe last ;-) ) blog entry. Why? I have been asking myself this question since I started thinking about this idea. Maybe it's just a way to do, in some organized manner, what I usually do in my emails with friends, facebook's wall and that kind of stuff... talk about music, talk about me. I could have ommited one of those talks, and the sense of my words wouldn't probably change. There is no me without music, that's absolutly true. Almost each and every memory I can recall have a song, a little piece of music associated that comes to my mind instantly when I remember it.

The title, comes from there. "A personal view of music history" what I could have changed transparently into "A musical view of personal history". Both would make sense when talking about my intentions for this blog.

Lions, well that comes for music actually. Though it's not my earliest interest in music, it's probably my first deep interest in it. It was... 1984 more or less, I was in my early teens when I started listening to those Dire Straits. Even though they had been out since 1977 more or less, I had only listened ocassionaly their songs. But during that year, and some of the next ones, their music became part of most of my livings. Friends, first deep loves, school, parties, first getting drunk, everything was done with Dire Straits rithms, lyrics and of course, guitar solos.

I could have chosen a lot of songs for this start, probably some well known, but this sweet soft piece represents all those years to me. If you are waiting for a musical analysis, explanation about the patterns in the song and those years, this is not the place or at least not he entry. This song smells, sounds, speaks, feels, has the touch of those years to me, feelings, that's all.

Her evening paper is horror torn

But there's hope later for capricorns

Her lucky stars give her just enough to get her home

Then she's reading about a swing to the right

But she's thinking about a stranger in the night...

Even much before understanding the lyrics I could feel the atmosphere in the song, a bit of mistery, a bit sad but at the same time some... playful... well, each one of you probably will get different feelings about it.

Just finishing, I want to beg for your forgiveness. I know I am probably ruining the english language. I could have chosen to write this in my native spanish but writing it in english added some risk to the task, and on the other hand some friends and family can't read spanish, so this way my bad english will at least make this thing open to a bigger audience.... ;-)

David