From time to time I take the liberty to post something that is not really Brazilian here at BMoF, such as the post on Cesária Évora of a few weeks ago. In a similar vein, today I heard that Luis Alberto Spinetta, one of the greatest talents in Argentinian rock of the last decades, just died yesterday, aged 62. His career spans over many decades and several bands, Almendra being perhaps the most famous of them. I can’t claim to know all of his career very well, but when I was doing my master’s in Amsterdam many years ago (more than I care to disclose…), I was good friends with Carlos Areces, an Argentinian who was doing his PhD at the ILLC at the time (and then went on to have a brilliant career as a logician and computer scientist). Carlos got me hooked on Spinetta, and in particular on his 1976 album with the band Invisible, El jardín de los presentes. I spent months listening to this album non-stop, and now that I heard about Spinetta’s death, I had to think about it all over again.
So here are three of my favorite songs from this album, ‘El anillo del capitan Beto’, ‘Los libros de la buena memoria’ and ‘Las golondrinas de la Plaza de Mayo’. It’s progressive rock 1970s style at its very best, and yet with a characteristic Argentinian twist. Brazilians and Argentinians have a bit of a troubled relationship (us with them, in any case), but one can’t deny that there’s an unmistakable, melancholic coolness about them, and Spinetta had it all the way.
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