Interview: Eduardo Pávez by Alberto Leon

I honestly think that I learned quickly from these events. As I continued on my journey to non-snobdom, it wasn’t long before I could genuinely respect other people’s music tastes and shut down any judgments that subconsciously arose. Still, that didn’t mean that I wanted to expand my own listening, because I knew what I liked and I definitely knew what I didn’t like. But then we get to point 3: I started dating someone who loves prog rock — the epitome of dad rock — and when she plays it for me, I don’t mind. I enjoy it.

Of course, music is situational. It’s experienced and enjoyed differently depending on the situation. Live music is very different from a studio recording. Townhouse parties are for mosh pits and scream-singing, not a chord-bychord breakdown of the latest indie chart-topper. The point of music is to enjoy it, or to critique it, or to process emotions, or to get something out of it — and at that point, exactly what you’re listening to is kind of irrelevant. Still, when it comes to dad rock, there’s a lot for me to overcome before reaching the point of enjoyment. Music is situational, and they’re not always positive situations. I use the term “dad rock” for a reason; to me, it’s the music that my dad and his friends have always tried to convince me to listen to. It’s the music that I’ve been told that I should respect and appreciate. It’s the music whose sexist or other harmful messages I should overlook because that’s not the point, and aren’t these men geniuses? I hated hearing these comments, and when my shiny new GWSS major “intimidated” my dad and his friends, we all knew it was because there was plenty to criticize — and now I had the language to follow through on it. I’ve talked about these experiences with friends, and it turns out that “Bruce Springsteen trauma” is surprisingly common. (Nothing against Springsteen himself, only the role that his music has played in my life.) And while I don’t fault others for listening to dad rock, I’ve always been pretty sure that I never would.

But music is situational. And somehow, I’ve recently been able to replace some of these negative memories with more positive experiences. I’ve learned that listening to music with someone who makes you feel safe and supported is a much better experience. Trying to find your own beauty and sensation in music is a lot more fun than having it forced on you. And now listening to dad rock doesn’t always feel so bad anymore. ◆

Interview: Eduardo Pávez

Alberto Leon

Tenemos Explosivos is a Chilean rock band. It was formed in 2009, and its members include veterans from Chile’s punk scene. They have been first-hand witnesses of Chile’s complicated social situation, from before and after Pinochet’s dictatorship. Their music offers a more complex approach to post-hardcore, both musically and lyrically. I had the opportunity to interview their frontman, Eduardo Pávez, who is currently a Ph.D. student in Theater & Performance at Columbia University. Eduardo’s interest in theater is one of the reasons for the band’s richer lyrical content, including influences from Greek tragedies and myths. This interview was translated from the original Spanish.

Alberto León: Eduardo, a great pleasure. I have known your music since I was in ninth grade, put on in 2018. Your music was crucial in my intellectual formation… A great honor to be able to interview you and be face to face.

Eduardo Pávez: My pleasure.

AL: I wanted to start by asking you, where did the idea of forming “Tenemos Explosivos” come from and what does that name mean?

EP: Tenemos Explosivos was formed when the guitarists, who are brothers, Juan José and René Sánchez, had a band called “Cría cuervos.” When “Cría cuervos” ended, they were left wanting to continue playing and making songs. I knew René, because René was part of the family of my wife at the time. I knew that he played the guitar;

he knew that I sang. Sometimes we got together to play for a while, it was entertaining, but we had never done any project together. In 2009 he calls me one day and tells me: “Hey, I was in a band, the band is over, my brother was on tour in Europe, now he’s back”, his brother played at the “Asamblea Internacional del Fuego” and they had finished the tour of Europe.

So they tell me: “We want to form a band, would you be interested in singing?” and I said “Yeah, sure. Let’s get together.” And that’s how it started.

The name “Tenemos Explosivos” emerged because we were going to have our first show and we said to ourselves: “Ok, what are we going to call ourselves?”. We had been rehearsing for three months without a name and Juan José said: “Hey, I’ve always liked the idea of putting a band with ‘Tenemos Explosivos’ and we all said: ‘Yes, it’s good, but I don’t know if we like it. Let’s see and think about it.’” About two weeks went by and we couldn’t think of anything better, and Juan José said: “Now, do you like it or don’t you like it? Shall we name the band that or not? “Yes, ok, yes, Tenemos Explosivos”. So, “Tenemos Explosivos” as a name came from chance and it is a name that we have learned to love. Also, we hope that the name has learned to love us; we have a relationship with the name as if it were a person, it has become something we carry and everything is fine.

AL: It is a name that attracts a lot of attention. How would you categorize the music of “Tenemos Explosivos”? What label would you put on genre or style?

EP: Rock… Post-hardcore and Chilean rock would probably be my labels. I’m also not very good at etiquette because it’s as if I asked you what Radiohead is, it depends on the album. “Kid A” is not rock and “Amnesiac” is not rock either, but they are Radiohead. What I am going for with the idea of the label is not to say that we are Radiohead in any case, it is to establish that there is a difference between the relationship with the label from the

AL: So, what were you trying to convey with the band? What did you try to convey from the beginning and what are you trying to convey now?

EP: It is the same, it has remained. I think that from very early on we realized that we all felt a very deep dissatisfaction with what was happening in Chile. In 2009, there had not yet been a University Revolution, the Penguin Revolution had been a few years ago. There was a very dark feeling in 2009, when Piñera was about to become president for the first time, we were all kind of tired.

AL: A very heavy atmosphere, I would say.

EP: Yes, and it is also important. All of us who play in the band were born during the dictatorship, our childhood memories are memories of the dictatorship. Therefore, the image of the military, the massacres, the rivers with bodies, all of this is part of our childhood, in one way or another. When we got together, we said: “OK, we don’t like what is happening in Chile, we have a history regarding the violence of the State against the citizens, of the de facto powers of the State that use violence as the element that determines the categorical contradictions of society. So, what are we going to do about it? Ok, we’re going to make a band, and in this band, we’re going to talk about it.” The attempt is an exercise in making music, and at the same time, with that music, rescuing the historical memory of the country, and if possible, the historical memories of other places. Much of the historical memory of Chile appears, but there are nods to the Spanish Civil War, to the assassinations of certain politicians in Mexico, to certain revolutions elsewhere, in Honduras or Vietnam. There are other details that appear on the album, but the basis is in the maintenance of memory, using music and rock as a political element that has to do with the recovery of that memory; in an advanced capitalism, the usual exercise is forgetting. This being so, our attempt is the opposite exercise to that. That would be.

AL: From that, what you showed me with political ideas, your last album was “Victoria”, right? In 2017?

EP: Yes.

AL: OK, that was before the protests in Chile.

EP: Yes.

AL: Did you think that they were going to happen, were you predicting it in your music?... Is that moment in Chile going to be fundamental in your new material?

EP: What happens is that the band has never been a band of ephemeris. For example, we released the first demo in 2010... “Intervención enérgica en los asuntos de la nación” and there are six songs, half of “Derrumbe y Celebración” is part of that demo. while we were recording it in August 2011, every day there were marches; and I went to take photos of the marches, the police beat me, my head split open, I helped people; It was a terrible street fight. While this was happening, I was taking photos of these marches, we were recording the album, and it happened that there were sessions in which we were recording, because what do I know… “Today I am not

going to go to the march, I am going to record, I have to record a song”, and in the studio we couldn’t record because the smell of the tear gas came in and we couldn’t continue. So we’d stop recording, put on our hoods and go out on the march...

The album was recorded in that logic, if you look at the cover of Derrumbe, it’s a drawing of a fox and the photo on the back is a march, the photo on the back of the album is a march, all the photos of the interior art are marches, they are photos that I took at that time, that I took with a film camera and revealed them in my bathroom. They are pure photos of that moment; it’s an album very much from that moment, but the album doesn’t talk about that. There is a separation between form and substance, in the work of the records, which has been maintained in a stable way... The form of the record does not depend on this political background, but is connected to it.

AL: Let’s switch to another question. I find it curious how Greek myths are incorporated, there are many references to Greek and Roman mythology. Where do all those classic references on the album come from?

EP: What happens is that, more than the classic, what interests me are the myths. In short, I am interested in myths as a social operation. On the one hand, myths as a value maintenance operation; That is to say, myths exist to generate values in society, so we value something and create a myth for it, right? Like the myth of Holiness is the value of letting go, or the myth of the Collective is the value of life in community. But they are myths, we generate myths that acquire a life of their own within the intersubjective circulation in society, so I am very interested in myths, and just as I am interested in myths and I am interested in theater.

I decided for the first album to work with Greek myths that were related to the theater, also because I know them very well. In fact, I have written many works on myths, or rewritten many myths, and in “Derrumbe y celebración” there are some references to classical myths such as Prometheus in between; there is Antigone; there is the Mosaic of Pella, which is where the first centaurs are; it’s like certain references, it’s Thyestes. On the second album, there is a story, the central story is this character who leaves home, travels the world and sends messages to his father on the radio while he travels, that character for me is inspired by the myth of Iphigenia; Ifigenia in Áulide, before going to war, so that the winds blow, she has to sacrifice her daughter. So, like Abraham who has to kill his son, Agamemnon has to kill his daughter.

AL: Is there any possibility of a special tour or concert? In other words, do you want to take the pandemic factor into account, yes or no, what is the situation?

EP: What happens is that our project is a project that has the size of friends, when we travel to Mexico, we travel because we have friends there who know people who can find a place, we get financing with friends and we travel to play. When we go to Argentina it is the same movement. The same in Colombia, like everything is between friends. So, every trip depends on having friends. We have always wanted to tour in the United States, but the problem in the United States is travel. It is very expensive to move a band because it is not only us, it is also all the teams.

Eduardo, aside from recording new material and working towards his Ph.D., is also currently running a YouTube channel about photography.