Mil horas
"One thousand hours" is a song of the Argentinian band Los Abuelos de la Nada (The Grandparents out of nowhere), included in the second album Glasses and kisses, published in 1983. Composed by the keyboardist and singer Andrés Calamaro, the song becomes one of the most attained successes of the band, and was one of the most known songs of Rock in Spanish in the 80s. It occupies the 5th place in the top list "The 100 magnificent songs of the 80s in Spanish" according to VH1 Latin America and the place 14 of The 100 hits of the Argentinian rock by Rolling Stone.
History
Origin and meaning of the song
One of the interpretations is about the use of drugs, and not to singing to your beloved one, or a composition on the avatars of the life, also is interpreted like a self-evident against the War of the Falklands.
With the peak of the Latin Top list rock in Spanish, the success of the band keeps youth and force by dint of intensive repetition in the local radios, that have stood up the song 25 years after having been edited.
Included in the second plate of The Grandparents, Glasses and kisses, «One thousand hours» is probably, for Calamaro the mother of all his songs, one of the original seeds of a compound discography by double albums, quíntuples, returns, direct, stray, found and a bunch of subjects in the tip of the popular tongue.
«Perhaps the public of The Round wants me by the sentence "bite the hook and go back to start afresh" (of the fear Argentinian Habits), that is one of the one thousand that wrote to speak of drugs without that noticed . Or by One thousand hours, that speaks of a red star that was an acid. Or "A red star on Argentina" was an image on the blood? I do not know it. But yes I know that I was born a 22 August, the same day of the massacre of Trelew. "Have a rocket in the trousers" is the porro. I spoke of all this when anybody spoke of this», confessed Calamaro in an interview to the daily Page/12.[1] «A red star on Argentina» wrote Andrés in years of political transition, when the albiceleste remained deleted of Spain 1982, while he looked for words that rhymed with 'ina'.
On the way, to «One thousand hours» have gone out him several homages at the front, between them in voice and music of the Enanitos Green, The Taken out and The Tipitos. The understood some time thought that the subject had arrived to his last border with the version of the Argentinian Union of the Hip Hop, but a recent cover of Magic Juan seems to show that «One thousand hours» continues re-discovering in new registers.
Curiosities
The song has two different versions, the first belong to the studio album in where a part says ..."A red star that imagines all it to him". Whereas in some recitals like the one in 1983 in the Moon Park, Calamaro sings ... "A red star flying on Argentina".
Musicians
- Andrés Calamaro: keyboards and voice leader
- Miguel Grandfather: percussion and choruses
- Gustavo Bazterrica: guitars and choruses
- Cachorro López: low and choruses
- Daniel Melingo: sax, clarinet and choruses
- Polo Corbella: battery