PRICE:
$30.50
IN STOCK
ARTIST
TITLE
Live Gila
FORMAT
LP

LABEL
CATALOG #
ELE 024LP ELE 024LP
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
4/19/2024

Remastered for vinyl at Abbey Road Studios, London. A straight-up folk record in the mold of Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, one that catapults Glomboh onto national spotlight. Most Gen X-ers who grew up in the mid-1980s Indonesia must have seen Soedjarwoto Soemarsono, known by his nom de guerre "Gombloh" performing on a state-run television station, playing some of his biggest hits from that era, pop gems like "Kugadaikan Cintaku (I Pawn Off My Love)" and "Setengah Gila (Half-Crazy)." But of course, it is not fair to judge Gombloh only from these hits. Dig deeper and you will find buried treasure in his early stuff from Indra Records, and there are many of them. Live Gila is a brilliant recording which, despite being recorded live, has sound quality so pristine that many to doubt the claim of being live. One of the best things about Live Gila is its perfect sequencing, beginning with Gombloh's social commentary on the rich's debauched lifestyle of preying on young boys and girls, one of the most popular subjects allowed by the censoring machine of the New Order authoritarian government. The second song "Untuk Persada" is a soaring ode to the nation. For this song, Gombloh could be heard drawing his inspiration from The Police, which was undoubtedly popular in the early 1980s, even in a faraway port city like Surabaya. Not a single composition in this record sound indigenous (the Malay-influenced rock of Panbers or Koes Plus come to mind); they all sound modern and effortlessly catchy, and had it not been for the language, this album could be mistaken for a musical output from someone growing up in Laurel Canyon or Southern France.