Abrazame, de la vida yo ya estoy repuesto

Pescado Rabioso - Desatormentándonos - 1972

By 1971, Almendra, the previous band led by Luis Alberto Spinetta was over. I talked about Spinetta a bit while back, when writing about Almendra's self titled debut album.  So I have already mentioned his crazy genius and I don't want to repeat myself here.
But there's one thing I would like to mention, that I'm pretty sure I didn't before. In a way, Spinetta was a kind of musician not unlike David Bowie: One of those strangely talented people that always seem to be leading the way and who, for some reason, never want to stay put, and always feel the need to change and evolve between albums and projects.
And that's how after Almendra was dissolved, Spinetta formed a new band, Pescado Rabioso (Rabid Fish), and changed the Beatles-esque sounds for a much heavier / hard rock vibe.
Argentinean bands have chronically suffered from a lot of trouble staying together and, therefore, Pescado would only release 2 albums (officially it's 3, but that's a story for a later post). Their material is the heaviest that Spinetta ever released and, naturally so, my favourite in his extensive discography.
This album sounds like a mixture of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, but with less virtuosity from the musicians, which is not necessary a bad thing. And while I think this may be the lesser of the band's two releases, it's a brilliant album because it has some of the best hard rock tunes our rock ever produced.

• I will, of course, post a video as a sample here but, as the album is not too easy to come by, I'm posting a link to youtube for the whole album. You can find it here . I will do the same with the other albums I'm posting today.
• The name of the album means something like "Un-torturing us". Or something like that. 
• The opening track "Blues de Cris" is about a former Spinetta's girlfriend, Cristina Bustamante. An Almendra song "Muchacha, Ojos de Papel", was also dedicated to her. It's a heavy blues-rock, and a brilliant track. 
• These were days of military dictatorship and while Spinetta's lyrics were never overtly political, some songs allude to the times that we were living. In particular "Algo flota en la laguna" ("Something floats in the lagoon", also known as "The Monster in the Lagoon").
• The original vinyl only included 5 tracks, the B side lasting less than 15 minutes. I only found out about that today, because I only ever bought this one as a CD, which had 3 bonus tracks.
• One of the bonus tracks is the song I am sharing today, "Post-crucifixion", which is my favourite track of the album, and one of the best Pescado songs. 

Sabía correr, podía reir, y creo también que era feliz

Sui Generis - Vida - 1972

A while back, while writing about Vox Dei's La Biblia, I mentioned how some of the songs were really difficult to think about objectively, since they had been such an important part of my adolescence. 

Well, multiply it by 10 or so and we're here. Every single song of this album was a classic growing up. Argentinean rock had a strange way of lingering across time and while I was a bit of a freak for liking 1960s and 70s international rock in the midst of the 80s, absolutely everybody adored these guys. 

Also, the acoustic, almost folk rock style of the album lends itself extremely nicely to sing along when you're with a bunch of friends and someone can more or less play guitar. 

So I'm going to just give a bit of information, starting with the band, which was actually a duo, formed by Nito Mestre and Charly García. Charly would go on to become one of the most important and talented musicians of Argentina and, while I have always disliked him personally, he really is a hell of a talented guy, and I think that shows from this first album.

As I said, this album is pretty much a collection of simple and beautiful folk-rock songs, plus one blues ("Toma dos blues" -- "Take two blues"). If I had to compare it to something, I would think of Simon & Garfunkel, with less neat vocals, perhaps, but I really think that the beauty of the melodies can offset any technical shortcomings the album has. 

And that's all I'm going to say about it. I can't listen to it without singing every song with a lot of feeling and nostalgia. It's a huge part of my life, and listening to it again, I love it as much as I always have.

• You can listen to the full album here.
• Some of the songs were really simplistic and almost childish. Because of that, Spinetta would tease them and say that they sounded like songs by Maria Elena Walsh, who was a very famous writer of children's songs.
• The simplicity of the music doesn't necessarily extend to the lyrics, which deal with loneliness, death, lost dreams and lost friends. 
• One of the darkest songs is "Mariel y el Capitan" ("Mariel and the Captain"). It starts with the lines "Ella toma el ascensor cada mañana sin temor a que se caiga" ("She takes the elevator every morning not afraid of it falling down"). It's one of my favourite opening lines, in how it sets up for an unavoidable tragedy.
• It's very hard to choose a song. I'll pick "Dime quién me lo robó" ("Tell me who stole it from me"), a quite heart-wrenching song about loss: loss of dreams, loss of faith, and a song I really love. 

Bronca cuando rien satisfechos

Pedro Y Pablo - Yo vivo en esta ciudad - 1971
Pedro Y Pablo - Conesa - 1972

I can't believe I completely missed their first album when going through last year's music, especially since I absolutely loved these guys growing up. 

This also was a duo, formed by Miguel Cantilo and Jorge Durietz, Cantilo being the brains behind the operation, writer and main vocals of most of the songs. 

As I said, there was a military dictatorship at the moment, and this band were among the first to actually write protest songs. Which was quite daring, and eventually got them banned for years. By the time I was a teenager we also had a military government (a different one, same shit), and they were still banned, so they had the added value of how difficult it was to be able to listen to any of their songs. 

The sad and horrendous Malvinas' war, in 1982, brought about two things: On the one hand, all English language music was then banned from radio broadcast, which brought a resurgence of national music. On the other, it brought about the fall of the military government. And while they would stay until 1983, by mid 1982 their power was much lessened and we got to listen to these guys finally. 

And being a teenager, the sheer rebellion of their lyrics was extremely attractive to me. Listening to them now, I find that their first album is orders of magnitude more to my liking than the second one. 

Yo vivo en esta ciudad (I live in this city), is pretty much what it says in the tin: an album about Buenos Aires. Its lyrics talk about our city, its people, their loneliness, their consumerism, the forgotten ones. It also has two clear-cut protest songs: "La Marcha de la Bronca" ("The Anger March"), which is a clear protest about the system, and "Los Perros Homicidas" ("The Homicidal Dogs") in which the dogs allude to the police. Musically, it's a strange mix of something that sounds a bit like 1960s rock, but doesn't shy away from some classic jazzy sounds, tango, ballads, a bit of everything. I absolutely love this album. 

Conesa is less appealing to me now. I guess by then both musicians were in their "let's leave everything behind and move to the countryside",  so this one is much more of a folk album and I think both the music and the lyrics lose a lot because of the change. It's not a bad album, and the lyrics are actually more mature, but it's just not too much to my liking. It also lacks the freshness and, almost, innocence of the previous album.

• Here are the links to the full albums: Yo vivo en esta ciudad, and Conesa. The guy who put these up took a lot of trouble and there's tons of information there. 
• The name of the band came about because " 'Jorge & Miguel' sounded like we were coiffeurs". They chose Pedro & Pablo both because of the apostles (they both went to catholic schools), and also because of The Flintstones.
• Conesa is the name of a street in Buenos Aires where they lived at some point. I don't know exactly when they lived there, but I used to live a couple of streets from there for a while. 
• Listening to many songs again, I realise that some of the lyrics are so brilliant (and cheeky and funny, especially in Yo vivo... ), that a lot might be lost for non Spanish speakers. 
• My choice of songs are: From the first album, the title track. Musically is the one that best represents the album. From Conesa, I'll pick the opening track, "Padre Francisco", a beautiful song about religion and social injustice. 
• I still have Yo vivo... in cassette. Remember those?