Rubén Blades vs Wolfmother

I know it’s not a fair fight, and more to the point, music is not a fight, not an either/or. But whatever, Wolfmother are ‘it’ right now on the Aussie scene. Good tunes, from what I’ve heard. But like most Australian music, the really striking thing is how little they have to say.

Then the other morning I put some salsa on and marvelled at how Blades can get away with an opening line like this:

I was leaving the hospital, after visiting my mother, fighting against a cancer they can’t cure.

So straight up, so devoid of irony, and so spot on. The lyrics get me every time, but so does the music, and this applies to most salsa. Even the songs without any real lyrical content (I’m thinking lluvia con nieve) have something that is so unflappable, like the sound of someone dancing in the face of a storm – a force-ten, jaws-of-hell type storm. It’s that storm that we’re missing here in Australia.

Used to be that I’d get annoyed when we out to clubs and they always trotted out the old standards. Why don’t they ever have new stuff? Suddenly I’m in Sydney, washing dishes on Sunday morning, listening to salsa and crying into the sink, and realising that they play the old songs all the time because they’re still fucking great. If it’s not broken.

I’m still very keen on the idea of going back after three years, but three years … man. We’ll probably finally have ourselves sorted out by then and the idea of pulling up stumps all over again does not appeal. Very tricky.