Cavern's 5th Anniversary!!!

  

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Corvan's Cavern emerged exactly five years ago, on August 15, 2007. Back then, I was a guy with a lot of free time, and Blogger was in full swing. Corvan, as a character or nickname, emerged in 2004 on elcerebro.com, a primarily political forum where I met several of my current friends, as well as Hiz, my wife. On elcerebro.com, in addition to heated political discussions, I was free to talk about music and publish my own stories and poems. I like to write. A lot. And well, after elcerebro.com closed as a forum some time later, I kept my friends and my girlfriend, but I was left without a space to publish.

 

By 2007, I was living in an apartment with one of my cousins ​​(Harlock, whom you may have seen here), and he insisted I start a blog. He had his own, of course. So, one busy Wednesday afternoon, I spent the whole afternoon trying out various platforms, and blogger was the one I liked the most. That's how Corvan's Cavern came about, launching the first welcome post around 9 p.m.

 

La Caverna had a format very similar to the current one from the start, with a black background and a crescent moon on the right (for which I had to apply HTML, since I'm not a designer, or programmer, or anything like that), and of course, the enigmatic black and white photo that many people ask me if it's me (and I'm only just now confessing it's Jorge Luis Borges, hehe, my second favorite writer). The green letters came about because I initially wanted to differentiate each topic with a color: Politics in yellow, poems in purple, short stories in blue, rock in green, and so on. Then the rock topics began to predominate, and finally I removed my own material when I realized it was being pirated, so it ended up all in green.

 

When I started La Caverna, most of the posts were about various topics, stories and my own poetry, and I actually gave Rock a very short space, two or three posts a month, starting with the intros of the bands I call "the 5 pillars of Rock." The title La Caverna comes from several reasons: the most obvious, because of The Cavern Club; the second, because of Plato, since the idea was for the blog to go beyond the obvious in terms of music criticism; and the third, because that's what we called the rehearsal room of my first band, Moby Dick, which by then had completely disbanded. The subtitle "Rock & Lyrics" was due to the diverse topics I wanted to cover, but also because I wanted to give the reviews a different approach.

 

On the Rock side of things, it was George Starostin who inspired and encouraged me to create the blog. I love his entertaining and fluid reviews and his vast knowledge (I don't think I've even finished reading his entire old site). But at the same time, my intention was to give it a more literary approach, delve into the circumstances of each band at the time of recording, take advantage of my limited experience with lyrics, and also give it my perspective as a musician. Admittedly, I'm not a pro at it, nor do I know all the techniques, by any means, but I think the little or much experience I have with guitar and bass, and having played in two bands, allowed me to have a different perspective. Finally, one of the things I promised myself was that I would review each and every song on each album (and in order), something few critics did back then. I believe each song deserves at least a mention for the band's creative effort, and if it's bad, it should also be noted.

 

The Cavern started very slowly. At first, it was just with personal friends and old acquaintances from elcerebro.com. As I said, it was mostly a platform for my stories and writing, but I got to the point where I ran out of unreleased material of my own. So I started working hard on reviews and adding download links, always trying to include their source, since I wasn't actually uploading albums. At the same time, I was trying to improve the blog's format, adding Cbox, a music player, and Blogger itself allowed me the freedom to upload notes and videos, which I don't have on websites due to limited space.

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So I focused on reviews of my favorite bands, and more and more new people started joining, forming a huge community. Blogger also allowed me to automatically save each post and sent me an email for each comment, so I had full visibility (which I don't have today) and could respond to everyone quickly.

And it grew and grew. Not every band had their intro, but I always tried to go in chronological order, even though the first albums might not have been very good. Why is this? Because I don't want to go all out and review all the albums at once. After that, only the bad albums would remain, and I don't think you or I would be interested. This way, we go in chronological order, alternating good and bad albums from various bands, and it gets more interesting.

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The Cavern ended up transcending the original idea I had for it: a smaller, more personal blog for friends. It ended up being a community of many rock fans, other great critics with their own websites, people from all over the world who share, give their opinions, correct me, or encourage me to continue with the project, and the occasional reviewed artist (in Spanish, of course) who even sent me emails thanking me for the criticism (good or bad). Believe me, the one who has learned the most from all this is me. I often gain a new perspective on the album I'm reviewing, discovering details I hadn't noticed, or even you guys who help me improve my perception once it's released. I've found gems I'd underestimated, or discovered that the album everyone idolizes isn't THAT great. I've learned about the history of bands and the evolution of rock itself, to the point where I ended up turning it into a living character in the Ages of Rock. In July 2011, I found out there was no more Cavern! I couldn't access it, and I found out that Blogger had shut it down irreparably due to a DMCA complaint about Metallica download links (it had to be). Facebook helped me share the news with you, but it also provided great support so I wouldn't give up and look for a new space. That obsession of mine with backing up almost everything, at least, wasn't in vain this time. On the Webs, I lost a bit of communication due to notifications. I can no longer use HTML, and there's no RSS feed, and I removed the links. But we gained in format. In addition to preserving the style and representative elements of the old blog, it's much easier to navigate and find bands and albums, organizing everything more easily. It also allows us to have a discussion forum, which I've been a terrible host for, but which you've helped me maintain with your ideas. It also allowed me to complete the intros for all the bands and customize the backgrounds for each band, so I still think we're stronger, even though I had to shell out this time.

 

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On a personal level, a lot has happened these past five years. I got married, had a crazy son and a beautiful baby who I adore, I started another band, and it disbanded. I'm still growing professionally, and I've moved to a bigger nest, and above all, my own. All of this means that I have less and less free time to review as quickly as I'd like. But what do you want? I'm not going to give up. My greatest passions are literature and rock, and in this, I combine both, to a certain extent. So, although the reviews will become more spaced out, the plan is to continue until I've reviewed all the albums of the 100 best rock bands in English and 25 in Spanish. So, this is just the beginning!

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The Cavern is, therefore, a tribute. A tribute to the bands that made those enormous albums that continue to inspire and amaze us despite the passing of time. A tribute to those who taught me about rock, from Blue Jeans, who let me attend their rehearsals when I was a teenager, to StereoSoul, and especially to Claudia Angélica, who opened up the musical world to me until the radio station closed, to Benno Albarrán, who was also a tremendous mentor with his shows Leyendas del Rock and The Time Machine, to my bandmates in Moby Dick and Plastic Soldiers, and above all to you, who have made this space grow so much and supported me during the forced move from blogger to websites in July 2011, who give me smack, who correct me, and who continue to visit this space despite the sometimes long wait between albums. It's because of you that I continue, and in light of this anniversary, I decided to reveal several things you probably didn't know about this project, hehe.

 

 

Sincerely thank you for these 5 years and for this great community that is being formed through Rock and Words!

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By Corvan

Aug/15/2012 

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