This Owl prefers to pause in times of coronavirus and political storms to mourn the recent death of a great musician. I always imagined that Gerardo Manuel was immortal, endless and immune to the passage of time and his fashions. Enter the time tunnel. 1978, a key period for the history of rock in the world with the explosion of punk.
The appearance of the Sex Pistols, The Clash and company shattered the traditional groups of this genre, the ‘dinosaurs’ of classic rock. The musical landscape changed since that year. Intelligent musicians like David Bowie or Peter Gabriel sensed the phenomenon and were transformed.
Bowie dedicated a song to punks: ‘Heroes’. From that explosion, like from an asteroid, thousands of particles turned into musical genres exploded: punk, post punk with The Cure, rockabilly with Stray Cats, the neoromantics heirs of Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry, Spandau Ballet or The Romantics, the new wave that ranged from Blondie, The Talking Heads, The B-52′s and his amazing videos ‘Private Idaho’ and ‘Legal tender’.
The punks with the Pistols, Clash, Bob Geldof’s Boomtown Rats, with their endearing ‘I don’t like monday’ (I don’t like Mondays), Queen, Billy Idol; electronics like Gary Numan, Kraftwerk; classics like The Rolling Stones with ‘Undercover of the night’, where Keith Richards is a paramilitary in Central America and Mick Jagger a persecuted journalist. The Kings, ‘The video killed the radio stars’ by The Buggles, Joan Jett, Genesis, Fleetwood Mac, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen and many more music stars entered the simple rooms of Peruvian homes every afternoon , thanks to Gerardo Manuel and his legendary ‘Disco Club’.
The ‘leg’ Gerardo made his endearing program in 1978, via Channel 7. At that time, no one from my Mirones spot was at home. Sometimes we watched the program in a group, with a pitcher of ice-cold lemonade and buttered toast. For him we saw the most amazing and most viewed video in history: ‘Thriller’ by Michael Jackson.
With the new wave revolution, classics like Queen or Billy Joel became rock and roll, the British with ‘Crazy thing called love’, the New Yorker with his ‘This is rock and roll for me’. Gerardo Manuel was democratic. He went through everything, Pink Floyd’s ‘Another brick in the wall’ along with Elton John’s ‘Little Jeannie’. And of course, Peruvian rock was also present.
There was never a lack of ‘Avenida Larco’ by Frágil. Very few knew that Gerardo had been a pioneer of rock in Peru and went through emblematic bands such as Los Doltons and The Pepper Smelter, but it would be with Los Shain’s, along with the guitarist dinosaur ‘Pico’ Ego-Aguirre with whom he would enter the rock Olympus. National, in the mid-1960s.
In the days of the ‘mornings’, Los Shain’s were one of the king groups of middle-class fifteen-year-olds. His last band was ‘Gerardo Manuel y El Humo’, which dissolved in 1973, due to the repression of the government of General Juan Velasco Alvarado against rock. He was a pioneer and a survivor who managed to get a musical opening to present such a democratic and educational program that ranged from The Ramones and Nina Hagen, from The B-52’s to Joe Cocker, from Soft Cell to Iron Maiden. There, at ‘Disco Club’, I saw videos that I never saw on television again. Gerardo Manuel has just left for eternity. I feel that we all owe something to the teacher. I turn off the TV.
