THIS ISN'T AN ELEGY

 

 

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I didn't want to say goodbye, because it seems like burning bridges and closing the doors. I always say, "This week I'll find time to write something." But let's be realistic, the last review was dated May 31, 2018. I don't want to say there won't be more, or that this is a goodbye forever, but I think it's more than necessary to express the reason for such a long silence.

Before giving reasons, I want to thank all the comments, messages, and expressions of support. From Marlaior, with all the willingness in the world for her next review, to the emails and messages on Facebook. Although I've resisted saying goodbye, there were a few reasons that made me decide. First, someone commented on C-Box with my name a few days ago, which bothered me a little, errr a lot... If I were to say goodbye, it wouldn't be like this, definitively. And second, a message from Hugo Horseman that he sent me a few days ago on Facebook. I asked his permission to publish it in full here, because I thought it was relevant to this non-farewell. Hugo told me that he actually intended to publish it in the c-box, but the size was an obvious impediment. This is his message:

 

“I remember starting to read Corvan, I think, in late 2010, when he published reviews of his three favorite albums of the decade: Funeral, Kid A, and Origin of Symmetry (two of which are still among my favorite albums). I remember reading the reviews of ten albums while listening to the albums. Many of my musical opinions seemed like exact copies of what Corvan said. This is understandable since I was 14 at the time and just discovering music, even starting to play guitar.

 

I discovered classic Beatles, Zepp, Progressive Rock, indie music, Grunge (which was very important in my teens, and even today Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam are some of my favorite bands), Radiohead, and how Radiohead became my favorite band was all thanks to La Cavern. I was even involved in both platform changes and the closure of Blogspot.

 

But as I grew older, and especially in recent years, my musical spectrum widened. He expanded enormously, finding a taste for genres that I hated and didn't understand until I gave myself the opportunity to listen to them. I reread Corvan's reviews and each time his opinions seem more his own than mine. I disagree greatly with his opinions on music in general. Even the fact of giving a number as a representation of the value of a work seems wrong to me. Generalizing entire genres and underestimating their value are typical of the Rock fan who does not allow the entrance to new forms of expression. However, I understand that Corvan was never a critic who dedicated himself completely to writing, much less to listening to all the references in a work. Although today his reviews sound much more like the opinions of a Rock music fan than those of a music critic, I must always be grateful for having shown me a musical world so rich and divided into so many subgenres as rock. My favorite Beatles album is still Abbey Road, like his. I consider many 10-point albums to be great albums, and I will be eternally grateful for everything he did for a desirous teenager. to discover more music and not get caught up in new genres without first knowing what's behind them. Even at 23, I still remember phrases from his reviews when I listen to the albums Corvan recommended to me.

 

He even passed on to me his love of Trova and his fondness for Silvio (which I understand less and less; using music as a means and not an end still seems difficult to accept).

 

I'm incredibly grateful to Rafael for so many years, and I understand that the blog as a medium is practically dead, but I hope one day he'll return and review great albums that are still pending, like Superuknown, Silvio, etc. I would even encourage him to stop doing it in chronological order and focus only on albums that represent Must-Haves or Iconic Albums.

La Caverna may not be a complete and chronological bibliography of rock, but it was a great blog, and that won't change. Although it seems increasingly imperfect, it's also true that I remember it with more affection."

 

Well, I asked Hugo's permission to publish his message because it touches on several important points. When you're young, you think you know almost everything and want to swallow the world. That happened to me when I started La Caverna, or at least, when I began to give a more focused approach to the reviews. In retrospect, it's clear that most people came to my Blogspot site for the links, but it's inevitable that ego gets the better of you when daily visits number in the thousands... At one point I thought about subtitling it "The Encyclopedia of Rock," but it was very pretentious, and ultimately that was never really my intention, but rather to write from the musical perspective of a normal person. Hugo is right, I'm not a critic. This is a hobby, and I think it gives me much more freedom of expression than a critic would have. I can be as subjective as I want. And I also completely understand those who disagree with me, and I think that's ultimately the goal of La Caverna, and that's why it could never be an "Encyclopedia." Let me explain. I started writing precisely when the same thing happened to me with Starostin. After a year of devouring his reviews and agreeing, I began to disagree and form my own ideas. And that's when the urge to start La Cavern was born, out of the need to say what I thought was missing. That's why, when I receive messages like Hugo's, far from being upset, I'm glad that people follow the same process, that they form an opinion, that they get angry about the ratings, or because I say I don't like Velvet Revolver!

 

To be honest, many times I don't even agree with myself! It got to the point where I got tired of correcting already published reviews or ratings because I had changed my mind, as it would be a never-ending process. I would have liked to rewrite many reviews, especially the first ones, but at the end of the day, they mark a moment, what I believed or knew at that point. And the truth is, you never stop learning. There were tons of bands I was asked to review that I had no idea about, like Bob Dylan or David Bowie, who I later took a liking to. Or Tool, whom I completely ignored until last year when I became a fan. No, you never stop learning, but I didn't write many reviews even when they asked me, simply because I didn't know about them or didn't like them. I still hold out hope that maybe one day I'll understand Zappa...

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Okay, but why did I stop writing? There are several reasons. Time. That inexorable god introduced to us in the magnificent series "Dark." It's not the same as being a recent graduate, starting out in the food chain of a multinational corporation and having all the time in the world, and then 15 years later still working at the same company with a thousand more responsibilities, trying to keep the fire in your marriage alive (you're not always a genius), and also having two children. Little Janis is now 7, and RISP is 10 and will be starting high school in a year. And honestly, that time with them won't come back. What I taught them in these years is largely what will shape them in the future. My son will soon stop talking to me, imbued with his adolescent grandeur, and soon I won't be able to carry my daughter anymore.

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And another reason is that to write, I need to be in a certain mood. I need to read, I need to listen to the album with my eyes closed, listening to it following the lyrics, getting into the album for at least a week to get into the mood and be able to launch into the review in one or two sittings. A year ago, I attempted several reviews, Superunknown and News of the World (taking advantage of Queenmania), but when I had the time, I found it impossible to reach that state where the review comes out on its own and says exactly what I want to say. With all reviews, there's always the feeling that I could have done better, but with these, I realized I'd lost my touch, my rhythm, and they were unpublishable, even after starting them two or three times. Even for this non-farewell, it took me a long time to ruminate over the words so I could express them comfortably and reach the right mood. And the first paragraph, before Hugo's letter, written 15 days ago, is an example of mechanical writing without a hint of inspiration.

 

​What if so few people come to La Caverna anymore? That's irrelevant to me. On one bad day, it actually affected me, but I got over it when we moved from Blogspot to websites. And my always-wise wife even said, "Dude, you're still getting tickets even though you haven't even said thank you in a year!" It doesn't bother me that the younger generations prefer other media, like pre-digested YouTube videos with apples and pears, instead of reading. What bothers me is that these media put so many obstacles in the way of doing quality work. What would be the point of doing a video review of an album if I can't play the song? Okay, Corvan, try it. After all, you don't play the album here either. Well, have you tried to see how boring album review videos are without music? And I'm not saying they're bad reviews, but they have to cut down the time quite a bit to avoid being boring, and that's not my format. My gift is writing; live, I'm as boring as an oyster. And to do what I have in mind, the way I'd like, I'd have to work really hard and monetize for others. And frankly… no.

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What really depresses me a little is that music has reached such a low level. Rock is already a secondary or tertiary genre, hanging on by the fame of the few bands from the eighties, nineties, and some from the two thousand, but without any new figures to give it freshness, with exceptions like Greta Van Fleet, who are not without their drawbacks. Otherwise, the charts are full of reggaeton at worst, or trip hop at best. Even indie has faded away.

 

These are the reasons. And I want to apologize for taking so long to express myself. More than anything, it's a matter of not wanting to put an end to it. I think I'll be back. I can't promise anything, but there are still many reviews to write. Corvan, why don't you follow Hugo's advice and review the remaining Must Have and Iconic albums? Screw chronological order! Well, a year ago I already had the final list of 60 albums, but as I mentioned, the problem is time and inspiration to make something that meets expectations.

 

What will I remember?

 

All the people I met. I won't name them because there will always be someone missing, but readers and other bloggers I met through this medium who left a profound impact on me. The opinions they gave, the times they talked me into reason, the anecdotes and knowledge they shared. In some ways, and despite the fact that they changed over time, this felt like coming home and being with family.

The reviews of Marlaior, El Hombre Mojón, and Homer, which helped me enormously with bands I wasn't familiar with and which helped round out the meaning of La Caverna. They opened my eyes to Argentine rock, to bands I might never have paid attention to, like INXS or 10cc, and to genres like metal, of which I consider myself a budding fan.

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I'll stick with the comment Severo Viñas, bassist for Real de Catorce, made on Blogspot when I reviewed Azul. It made my pants drop, especially because, as a bassist, he's one of my idols, and I never imagined someone I reviewed would read it. I've had it on Facebook ever since.

The review of Live at Pompeii. I already mentioned it in the 10 moments of La Caverna. But I also mentioned The Final Cut. It's an example of when inspiration takes over. It's perhaps my favorite review, because I had almost nothing to say about the album, which I still find very poor, but it's perhaps the most creative review I've written.

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With the name. "The Cavern" started out as the nickname for the rehearsal space for Moby Dick, which was obviously a reference to the dive where the Beatles became the Beatles. Over time, it took on a different meaning. Seeing beyond. At least musically. What were the musicians experiencing at the time they recorded that song? What did they want to say? What were they expressing? What does it make me feel? Seeing-Beyond! I'd like to think that slowly the reference shifted from Liverpool's Cavern to Plato's Cavern… if Plato had been a rocker.

 

What would I change?

 

Well, the early reviews have more of a Starostin influence than I'm happy to admit, but maybe I'd add more history and context to the album, like I started doing with Webbs, especially the ones about the 5 pillars.

 

This is a confession: I feel guilty about Homer's departure. He sent me the reviews to correct the spelling, and although he had promised not to change anything he'd written, I had the brilliant idea of ​​raising the rating of Charly García's Piano Bar from 9 to 10. Homer had told me that Charly had two 10-point albums, and for some reason I thought he'd given Yendo de la Cama al Living a 9, so without checking, and when I saw that he'd given it a 9, I changed it to 10. I don't know if it was a coincidence or not, but it was the last review he sent me, and he had every reason to be upset. The Shit Man did give me his reasons, and I understood them. Homer simply stopped talking to me. I guess I understood too.

 

The Rating of Aftermath. It's an album that has a special resonance for me. It's the Stones' Revolver, the moment when they were most united as a band. It was the third album I owned, after their debut and Out of Our Heads. I KNOW the rating is entirely subjective and that it's below the so-called Big 4 (with Jimmy Miller as producer), but I once lowered my rating to 9 and the next day I HAD to give it a 10 again.

 

The whole rating system. The numbering from 1 to 10 is, I don't know, archaic, objectifying something subjective. Another legacy of Starostin, I guess. The more I progressed, the more I realized it wasn't the right way to do it, but there were already too many reviews to change everything. I know the weight of VU & Nico, but according to this model, it's just as impossible for me to give it a 10 as it is to lower it to Aftermath. I loved Starostin's icon model with his most recent reviews, and I even tried it when I was in the middle of migrating to Wix, but that would have been too blatant on my part.

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I really liked Wix for its visuals and animations. Buuuut, it was very complicated to upload each review. Uploading and publishing each one took me at least an hour and a half, since I had to manually scroll through all the elements of the previous reviews and do it again for the mobile version. That's why I asked Marlaior, Homer, and Hombre Pojón to send me their writings, to avoid the drama of publishing them, NOT editing them. However, what I regretted most about Wix was that it didn't have a translation system, unlike Webs. I had visitors from Europe and Asia there, but by losing the option to use Google Translate, I completely lost visitors outside of Latin America on Wix. It's something I should have anticipated.

 

Anyway, I don't like goodbyes, and I think it's Stereo Soul's fault (see the "About Corvan" section). That's why I want this to be a "See You Later." I'm not burning bridges to see if the wind will blow one day. But I had to explain. I have a lot of affection for La Caverna; it's been a project that has kept me sane for a good part of my life, and for my mental health, I hope to take it up again someday. I like to think of it as my legacy to my children, and to a lesser extent, my contribution to the world. If someone, somewhere, discovered Silvio because of the review I was able to give of his albums, it would all have been worth it.

 

All I have to do is close with two simple words, which say so little, and you already know who they're from and who they're for:

 

THANK YOU, TOTALLY!

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Rafa.

Aug/15/2019

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