Luka
(Versión española de Raúl)

Mi nombre es Luka,
vivo en el piso dos.
Soy el chico que vos
ya has visto en otra ocasión.

Si algo extraño escuchás,
algún problema, alguien que va a pelear,
no preguntes qué pasó…
no preguntes qué pasó…
no preguntes qué pasó…

Pienso que estoy muy torpe
y mucho no debiera hablar,
y quizás me vuelvo loco,
ya no sé cómo actuar,
porque vendrán, me golpearán
hasta que el llanto tienda a brotar
y no discutas nada más…
no discutas nada más…
no discutas nada más…

Creo que todo está bien,
hoy ya puedo caminar.
Si me preguntas, otra vez,
no es tu asunto responderé.
Solo, sabés, quisiera estar,
sin una herida, nada mal,
no preguntes cómo estoy…
no preguntes cómo estoy…
no preguntes cómo estoy…

Esta versión la escribí para que la cante mi hija, en un castellano de Argentina, donde hablamos de “vos”.
This version I wrote for my daughter sing in argentinian spanish, where we talk saying “vos” instead of “tú” and “You”.

Rauli from Rosario, Argentina.

Nice work!

But what do you actually think of Suzanne's Spanish version of Luka? I love to listen to her singing in Spanish!

Oh, Caspar Hauser: Thank you. Yes, I answer your question. I like the spanish version that Suzanne sings. I wrote this version in an amateur way, to my daughter, for she can understand this story in a daily language, here in my town. I ‘m not a musician. I write tales, scripts and novels, in spanish, of course. I tried to respect the spirit of the story in Luka, phrase to phrase. Luka is a great story, here in Argentina was much listened, long time ago, and today the radio stations play it. Luka is a classic. I like, I love others discs, others songs by Suzanne, but Luka is a classic, a great contribution to music history. I don’t know if Suzanne reads these things. I don’t know if Suzanne saw my spanish version about Luka. I’d like to know: what does think she? See you later, Caspar Hauser.

Confessions of someone who takes music too seriously, part 112...(longest post...ever)

I was eleven when this song came out.  I hated it then.  Or, more to the point, I thought I did.  I remember turning the radio off, telling people how stupid it was, so forth.  Anything to avoid that damn song.

It was a few years later that I got into the even more direct lyrics of 99.9.  Even then, and since, this famous song made me a little...I don't know....uncomfortable?  I kind of keep it at a distance like the one girl I said something to the last time I had a true scotch blackout but would really just prefer not to know any more than that there is a reason people keep telling me that I still know all the words to Tracks of My Tears no matter much to drink I've had ..I mean, I've heard that happens to people. 

ANYWAY, What about Luka does that?  Probably just because it's linked to the time and age when I heard it, I have to guess. 

Saturday night it provokes this huge, really really strange emotional reaction.  Unexpected and actue.  Twenty years for something to bounce around inside the brain.  Not so long, right?

 

---

The wind kicks up with the smell of rain
The kids are gone but the souls remain

At least two people I know (one of them my sister) have completely out of the blue said things to me like: "You know what song I really can't stand?" And then they began singing: "My name is Luka ..."

I suppose it does rub some people the wrong way, just like anything else in popular culture.

In my sister's defense, she said this in the summer of 1987, when the song was almost inescapable on the radio. Of course, if you were a fan of Suzanne's, that was pretty much the coolest era ever.

Around the same time, one of the newspapers in the town where I was living (Phoenix, Arizona, future home of the nuclear bomb explosion if you believe the "premonitions" thread) ran an article on the stupidest controversy of all time: radio listeners who were angry because they had started to enjoy this fun, catchy new hit on the radio, only to discover it was about child abuse. "What a bummer, man! Why do you have to bring us down like that!" Basically, they wanted songs about child abuse to be obviously depressing from the start, and maybe segregated onto some station that only aired songs about domestic violence, so they wouldn't have to think about it. Something tells me that most of these listeners did not later become fans of "Last Year's Troubles."