Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Canciones para el monstruo



El Pais has a piece on Robert Wyatt focusing on his Rough Trade single "Stalin wasn’t stalling’" (1981)! It is written by Diego A. Manrique, and seems to have been published twice:
"Un ‘indie’ bolchevique" (31 March) and "Canciones para el monstruo" (1 April).

My Spanish is a bit rusty, but Google Translate might help you too, if your Spanish is just as bad as mine. Here is a small part translated into English:

"There were groans of discontent. Trotskyist contingent and liberal critics like Greil Marcus: how was it possible that such a model company as Rough Trade exalted memory (possibly) greater murderer of the twentieth century? Wyatt hid behind military history: according to Western popular culture, were British and Americans who finished with Nazism. In fact, the Third Reich was destroyed in Eastern Europe. He quoted the historian A. J. P. Taylor: "From the moment the Russians entered the war, had to fight most of the time with four-fifths of the German Army"".

Willie Johnson wrote the song in 1943, and you may read the lyrics over here.

This is the first verse:

"Well now, Stalin wasn't stallin'
When he told the beast of Berlin
That they'd never rest contented
Till they had driven him from the land.
So we called the Yanks and English,
And proceeded to extinguish
Der Fuehrer and his vermin,
This is how it all began".

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