Milestones

Los Prisioneros

Name: Los Prisioneros – La cultura de la basura
Item: La cultura de la basura
Author: Federico Romagnoli

La cultura de la basura

1987 (EMI)

new wave

by Federico Romagnoli

Los Prisioneros are the most important Chilean band to have emerged from the the Eighties onward, and in the entire history of local popular music only Los Jaivas can claim a cultural impact of similar magnitude.

The most important part of their output consists of four albums released between 1984 and 1990, which sold a record half a million copies combined in their home country. Those were followed by numerous compilations and a reunion which between 2001 and 2006 produced several more albums, none of which were well received, with the exception of the live records with setlists focused on the classics.

Released on December 3, 1987, "La cultura de la basura" is the band's third album and the least commercially successful of their four classic records, as well as the one that left the fewest songs behind in the collective memory. It's also generally the least regarded by critics: when the Chilean edition of Rolling Stone published its ranking of the greatest local albums of all time, "La voz de los '80" (1984) sat at number three, "Pateando piedras" (1986) at number fifteen, and "Corazones" (1990) at number nine, while "La cultura de la basura" didn't appear on the list at all.

Yet in retrospect it has many of the traits needed to be considered their most representative record: for one, it's the most balanced among the three members, whereas the first two albums were conceived entirely by bassist and singer Jorge González, and “Corazones” was essentially a solo effort by the latter in disguise.

Moreover, whatever judgment one might pass on its content, there's no doubt that “La cultura de la basura” is the trio's boldest album: not only musically, with a deliberately harsh production unfriendly to radio standards, but also lyrically, containing what are arguably the most violent lyrics ever written by any artist based in Chile against the regime of Augusto Pinochet.

Deciding on such a move at the very peak of one's fame is certainly something only a handful of artists in the world would dare, especially bearing in mind the context (the dictatorship had begun with the killing of folk singer Víctor Jara, and the repression of anyone voicing dissent was the order of the day).

Claudio Narea (guitar), Miguel Tapia (drums) and the aforementioned González met as teenagers at Liceo 6 in San Miguel, Santiago, and after going through various projects, they formed Los Prisioneros: the antagonistic streak toward the military regime was thus evident from the very name they chose.

Success came almost immediately: “La voz de los '80” was released in a limited run in December 1984, thanks to the support of radio host and concert promoter Carlos Fonseca, and was reissued by EMI in August 1985, going on to sell over 100,000 copies within a year — a figure never before seen for a local band's debut album. The follow-up, “Pateando piedras”, did even better, reaching 140,000 copies.

The trio arrived at their third album as dominant forces on the local scene, and still very young: while recording it, González and Tapia were twenty-three and Narea twenty-two. They had already made powerful enemies, particularly among television network executives, who had on more than one occasion banned them from performing the songs deemed most provocative.

In February 1987, state television excluded them from the Viña del Mar International Song Festival [note 1], while the headline act called up instead was Argentina's Soda Stereo, an extremely high-calibre band, but one whose lyrics were decidedly less confrontational (after all, the dictatorship in Argentina had fallen before they even debuted). This caused deep resentment among Los Prisioneros: years later, the three would admit that Soda Stereo bore no blame for what happened, but that they had unwittingly come to symbolize the kind of music the regime deemed acceptable, and that could only breed rejection towards them, given the climate of oppression and the twenty-something fury the band carried at the time.

If "La voz de los '80" is a fundamentally guitar-driven record, moving between post-punk, power pop and ska, "Pateando piedras" shifted towards synth-pop, sparking the first frictions within the line-up, with Narea feeling sidelined.

Recorded at Fonseca's Fusión studios, with the support of sound engineers Alejandro Lyon and Antonio Gildemeister, "La cultura de la basura" is marked by a production that, heard today, might come across as rushed: the sounds are flat and skewed towards the high frequencies, almost like listening to demos. The contrast with the deep, meticulous sound of "Pateando piedras" couldn't be starker.

This wasn't down to a lack of resources, though, given that Los Prisioneros were regarded as a cash cow by EMI's Chilean branch, but a deliberate choice: to make the least accommodating record possible for the Chilean media, starting with the music itself, rather than leaving the job of protest entirely to the lyrics. This is evident enough if you look at the arrangements, which pile up plenty of instruments and constantly play with filters and processed sounds, pointing to a high level of care put into crafting the record.

This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Federico Romagnoli, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition

Stylistically, the album sums up every facet the band had shown up to that point, moving between guitar-driven post-punk and electronic pop, with influences shifting from track to track.

The tracklist [note 2]opens with “Somos sólo ruido”, written by Narea, an obsessive march cut through with noise industrialin which Tapia's vocals list all the accusations leveled at the band by media outlets aligned with the regime's propaganda:

We are nothing but noise, our fingers are freezing,

the drums are wrong, the vocals are out of tune,

the music is very simple, the keyboards are distorted,

a voice shouts something, barely intelligible

Next up is “De la cultura de la basura” [note 3]written and sung by González, who despite giving his bandmates more room than usual remains the group's main creative force, putting his name to ten of the fourteen tracks.

The rhythm rests on a gated-drum effect so harsh it sounds like beaten sheet metal, while on top run a funk bassline, guitars veering between syncopation and surf-music influences, and samples that incorporate metallic clangs as well as unexpected quotations (at 2'20" Louis Armstrong's trumpet pops up).

The lyrics mock the mass culture built by Pinochet's regime in Chile, which pushed local culture – from Violeta Parra to Los Jaivas, via Víctor Jara – into the background in order to spotlight bland Spanish and Mexican pop stars, along with Anglo-American rock music, seen as a useful outlet for young people and, at the same time, harmless, since its lyrics didn't touch on Latin America's political situation.

The song also highlights the inner conflict with which many young people approached these artists: the opening lines show appreciation for Julio Iglesias, as if representing the desire to fall in line with common opinion so as not to be left isolated, but in the second part the singer is rejected, underlining how certain music acted as a sort of social anaesthetic, used by the government to keep the favour of the wealthier classes at the expense of workers and the weakest sections of the population:

Listening to the radio we go to the stadium,

we like Julio Iglesias and rockabilly,

we have the culture of garbage,

we have thick skulls.

We eat bread with bread, we read comics,

television makes us sleepy, but only at night.

I keep a poster of Raphael and comb my hair like him,

I have a Luis Miguel cassette and I collect tissues.

We don't go to the stadium listening to the radio,

we can't stand Julio Iglesias and Lux soap,

we hate the bosses at our factory,

we copy the bosses at our factory,

we have dinner with the bosses at our factory,

we march with the bosses at our factory.

Criticism of Chilean society runs through the whole album, from the synth-pop of "Que no destrocen tu vida", which urges young people to rebel against their parents' impositions ("Don't let their failures drag you down and kill you, don't let them destroy your life"), to the hybrid of punk and funk on "Usted y su ambición", echoing "Rock The Casbah" by the Clash, which calls out the abuses of power employers – seen as complicit with the regime – inflicted on their subordinates ("His thousand workers greet him and shake his hand, but they'd rather see him eaten by worms. Nobody likes him and they call him boss, because unemployment is the worst thing there is").

The slow reggae of "Algo tan moderno", written and sung by Tapia, tells of a gay teenager coming out to his family, a subject that is taboo par excellence for dictatorships of every age and culture:

Tonight you have to think about how to explain it,

it scares you too much to imagine how mum and dad will take it,

you're not the first, it's something so modern.

They won't look after you anymore, your grandparents won't know what to say,

and illusions today are just worries,

there's no way to turn back.

There won't be a party to celebrate what your clothes have to hide.

The present was future and past, and today you're almost a good citizen,

but tonight your son wants to talk

about something he had to hide out of fear,

you weren't the first, it's such an old story.

"Lo estamos pasando muy bien" opens with a roughly forty-second spoken passage from González, introducing the fictional community of Villa Feliz, where every inhabitant is apparently happy and fulfilled:

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow countrymen, friends all: we are gathered here to celebrate and kick off the International Year of Happiness. With the motto "I'm poor but I'm happy", we want to symbolize a total upheaval. The spirit of our people, which, without a doubt, flatly denies everything that has been said and made up about us, the noble reason of Villa Feliz.

The arrangement once again draws on funk syncopation and surf guitars, with electronic rhythms, dense layers of samples, metallic cacophonies, organ pads and digital horns, declaimed lines from Narea answered by the choruses and counter-vocals of the other two, staging what looks like a perfect society:

As you can see the shop windows are full of things to buy,

people happily drive to work in their cars,

there are no problems, no needs,

we all have plenty of money to spend,

we shop at Parque Arauco and at Almac,

nothing is too expensive when it comes to our happiness.

We all have a dignified, well-paid job,

nobody is disadvantaged or mistreated,

our bosses smile at us and so do we at them,

nobody steals here, nor is there any reason to steal.

We're having a wonderful time,

we're nice and plump,

this is magnificent, this is a blast.

The food is very good if what you want is to eat,

the wine, the meats, a nicely roasted chicken,

we're all satisfied after lunch, aren't we?

If it's about studying, there's the university,

you can become a lawyer, an architect or a nurse,

the treatment is serious, the teaching very good

and the cost... who cares about the cost?

The illusion is nevertheless shattered twice. First, halfway through the track, when a dialogue from the Spanish-language edition of The Flintstones appears, where Fred and Barney become Pedro and Pablo:

"Fail, fail... you keep thinking negatively, Pablo. You have to think positively, understand? Posi-tive-ly." "Right, Pedro. We'll fail posi-tive-ly."

Later, just before the grand finale, González pronounces:

I don't like this song, but I like dancing to it.

From there the track seems to derail, taking on a hysterical tone and gradually descending into chaos, complete with frantic screams that, in the common perception of the band's fans, symbolize those of tortured dissidents.

The mood is lightened by airier, if still sarcastic, tracks such as “Maldito sudaca”, a ska anthem that calls out the racism suffered by South Americans outside their own continent (“sudaca” is a derogatory term coined in Spain, occupying a place in Castilian roughly comparable to “terrone” in Italian), “Él es mi ídolo”, a synth-pop tune bizarrely driven by an acoustic guitar, likely a dig at Gustavo Cerati Soda Stereo (“He's so handsome, he's so sexy, I don't know where he grew up, it's like a star has fallen”), and “Pa pa pa”, the record's biggest hit, a brisk power pop electronic track whose backing lifts “Shake It Up” by the Cars [note 4]while the lyrics play on the contrast between the lightness of the era's chart music and the terror of nuclear war that ran through the postwar decades all the way into the 1980s (“I love love songs and songs that call for a better world, I live in fear of the finger that will press the button”).

The album's most imposing track is saved for last: clocking in at eight minutes, “Poder elegir” takes direct aim at the regime, with no metaphor or symbolism whatsoever.

Life is no joke,

there's something more to it than eating and crying,

than watching the years go by,

always thinking you're thinking.

Lives are no joke,

there's something more you can do,

much more than sending in coupons to the TV,

more than ironing your jeans,

more than fighting for a decent wage.

At the end of every month there are people feeding

on your not knowing what to say,

their strength is all of our ignorance.

Vampires who believe we're happy just to survive

and make sure it stays that way.

We want the power to choose,

we have to choose how we want to live,

to claim and to fight,

to force yourself to stop crying,

and don't let anyone take advantage of you.

It's so hard, I know there's fear and frustration,

they laugh in our faces,

a few drops of blood in exchange for a thousand tons

and just singing songs.

The backing track is a techno-pop ride, driven by a bassline borrowed fromhi-nrg di Giorgio Moroder, an acknowledged influence on the band, and once again shot through with a series of disruptive elements, ranging from out-of-tune electric guitars to a build-up of synthesizer-simulated orchestration, right up to backwards tape loops piling up in the finale.

It's an anthem to freedom that pushes right to the extreme limit of what an artist could risk under the regime, although González actually wanted to go even further: during the sessions, in fact, a track was recorded titled "Lo estamos pasando muy mal", which manipulates the backing track of "Lo estamos pasando muy bien", slowing it down and distorting it, while the singer recites the impressions of a soldier from the repression forces as he prepares to kill a dissident.

The track was scrapped [note 5] at the behest of Max Quiroz, an EMI executive, who, through Alejandro Lyon, sent word to the band: "If we put this out, we'll all end up in prison."

Presented with an iconic cover featuring a yellow star against a blue-and-white background [note 6], the album sold extremely well right out of the gate, thanks to the anticipation built up by its predecessors, but due to the media boycott enforced by the regime, it failed to match their previous success, stalling at around 70,000 copies [note 7]. Yet the very reaction it provoked at the highest levels stands as direct proof of its worth and of the role the band played for young people at the time, both in Chile and in some of the surrounding countries (even today, it's easy to come across Los Prisioneros songs at street protests in Peru and Colombia as well).

[note 1] An annual event, established in 1960 and still considered the most important televised music event for the Spanish-speaking countries of South America.

[note 2] As far as the Chilean market was concerned, only the cassette version of the album featured fourteen songs, while for the vinyl, since there wasn't enough space, two tracks were dropped ("Otro día" and "Poder elegir").

The tracklist was later reshuffled, with some of the songs re-recorded from scratch in 1988 in more accessible versions, and the addition of the previously unreleased "We Are Sudamerican Rockers", for release in Colombia and Venezuela.

CD reissues, starting in 1991, have restored the fourteen-track listing with the original versions.

[note 3] The extra preposition compared with the album title is intentional.

[note 4] In 2001, during a concert at Chile's National Stadium, the band performed an acoustic version of "Pa pa pa" working in the chorus of the Cars song.

[note 5] In 1996, following Pinochet's fall, it would be included on the compilation "Ni por la razón, ni por la fuerza".

[note 6] The star is an obvious nod to the socialist symbol, while the colours – blue, white and yellow – echo those of the Chilean flag during the transitional period of the Old Homeland (1810-1814), the first step towards independence from Spain.

[note 7] Both this figure and those cited earlier refer solely to the Chilean market. Unfortunately, there are no official figures for the band's sales in the rest of Latin America.