[Contraportada, April 23, 2012]
Mexican writer Álvaro Enrigue returned to Contraportada to talk about the flexible use of time in his latest novels, Vidas perpendiculares and Decencia. Enrigue is currently working on a new novel thanks to a fellowship from the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library.
[Qué Pasa, April 13, 2012]
Little by litte I’ve begun to recover the record and concert reviews I wrote for Billboard en Español in 2008 and 2009, before the site was absorbed by MSN/Telemundo and all the previous content was deleted.
Here’s the link to my most cherished piece, a review to the concert Argentine band Los Enanitos Verdes gave at Manhattan’s Fillmore East on November 10, 2008. I don’t think it’s a highlight of my writing career, but when the singer of the band left a comment on the site saying Billboard could be sued for publishing, I knew I had hit the right note.
Many fans of the band also accused me of panning them because they were Argentinean and I was Chilean, which was also a first. Those commentators missed the essential point of my review: I think Argentina has produced one of the only (if not the only) solid rock and roll canons outside of the United States and Great Britain. That’s why that concert was such a disgrace.
[Contraportada, April 10, 2012]
Guarco’s Fiebre is simply one of the few new records I’ve listened to in repeat in the last year. You can say he didn’t do anything The Clash, Manu Chao or Caetano Veloso didn’t do before, and you’ll be right. But something in the break-up candombe-rock “Monster,” the trippy dub of “Qué Pasó?” or the tropicalia of “Se Terminó el Carnaval,” something that goes beyond his lyrics —simultaneously earnest and playful— will get you every time.
José Manuel Simián 