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Micky Huidobro
Will Molotov ever change? Will that day ever come? As of now, the answer is "no." Those who were expecting the four Mexico City little bombs to finally come to terms with their maturity as musicians… well, should keep on dreaming, basically because the band’s comeback is far away from the seriousness that might be assumed in their new album’s title.
Con Todo Respeto (With All Due Respect) is a covers album, yes, but Molotov’s style. That is, run for cover! Everybody will be punished. The original music, the authors of some of the most popular songs of past decades, and the Mexican TV personalities that represent the mainstream in their country. Actually, not even the band members are exempt of some of the witty puns included in the album. That is clear right from the beginning, with a hilarious remake of 1986 Falco’s hit "Rock me Amadeus," now dubbed "Amateur," working as the first single of the twelve-songs collection.
"Paco picked Amateur, which is a prank that we use every time a guitar is muted just because a switch is off, or every time stupid little things like this happen... we’re always singing ‘Amateur, amateur’… and Paco came with a demo of that song and all of us started to add bits of new lyrics to it," says guitarist Tito Fuentes.
"Amateur’s lyric talks about all those things that we have gone through, and actually we’re still going through, because we’re still amateurs. I think that by including that kind of remarks we are able to keep our eyes wide open," adds bassist Paco Ayala about one of the three songs he brought to the band to work on. That was the method behind the album, each one of them worked on three songs at home, and the band later scrutinized those resulting 12 songs.
The single is a good example. The songs in the album only maintain bits of their original identity, as some of the hooks are easily recognizable but invariably get lost in all the new layers. Most of the time the lyrics are completely new, and what dresses them musically is unexpected. Let’s put it this way, what used to be cumbia is now punk rock, and vice versa.
What comes out meets the basic Molotov’s requirements: the wall of sound is as brutal as always, but somehow it is also more accessible; their sense of humor is intact, as sarcastic, raunchy, and political as they always get; and the overall musicality of the album is surprisingly refreshing. Most of the songs, no offense taken, are way better now than they used to be back in the day.
Now, is it having fun with some other people’s songs a way to avoid the responsibilities that come with the follow-up of such unanimously praised album as Dance and Dense Denso? Tito and Paco agree that such speculations can’t be farther from reality.
"I wouldn’t mind assuming that we wanted to have a break, or to get rid of any kind of writing responsibilities, but that’s not true. We always have fun with other people’s songs, and not only in the rehearsal’s room but in sound checks and live. The thing is that there are only seven notes, and as soon as we approach to a musical progression that sounds similar to an existing song, we always start singing on top of it, replacing the lines with as many silly things as we can think of. We were planning to document this kind of spontaneous inspiration for a while now," points out Tito.
"I think this album isn’t coming out of any kind of pressure, whether the previous was well or badly received. Since we discovered that we were able to have fun with this kind of ‘tributes’ (like we did in 1997’s Tributo a Queen with Rap, soda y bohemia, based on their ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’) we’ve been doing it a lot. Most of the songs that ended up in Con Todo Respeto are the songs that we play live, or those that we do in rehearsals or even when we wake up in the morning. Doing a covers album can be a strategy to avoid disappearing out of the public’s eye, I know that, but in this case it was about properly closing a year that has had a lot of live action," says Paco.
He also unveils the golden rule behind the release: their respect for the artists whose music is included in the album is in fact implied; but at the same time, with all due respect they decided to tear these songs down to pieces.
The album includes provocative reinventions of such different artists as Gil Scott-Heron ("The revolution will not be televised"); The Misfits ("I turned into a Martian"); Trio ("Da Da Da"); Vico C ("Mi abuela" using The Clash’s "The Magnificent Seven" bass line); Lipps Inc. ("Designer music"); Beastie Boys ("Girls"); Los Toreros Muertos ("Mi aguita amarilla"); Alex Lora’s seminal band Three Souls In My Mind ("Perro negro y callejero" includes the music of ZZ Top’s 1973 hit "La Grange"); and two of the Mexican popular names they remember from their childhood years, such as La Sonora Santanera ("La Boa") and Chico Che y La Crisis ("Quen Pompó".)
Thrilled by the idea of producing the album themselves for the first time, the four band members worked in their Mexico City studios –Micky Huidobro’s Cantabaras Limited, and Tito and Paco’s Barbaperro- along engineer Robert Carranza. They met Carranza, who mixed Con Todo Respeto in California’s Glenwood Place Studios, through producer Mario Caldato Jr. while working in the album Apocalypshit in 1999.
Con Todo Respeto was released on October 26 simultaneously in Mexico, Argentina, Spain & United States among several other Countries.
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