rock’s golden retirement arrived

In rock, they don’t even leave exquisite corpses anymore. The damn 27 Club is far away. Today Bono blesses U2 from the Vatican and Mick Jagger, who taught us how to be young, now teaches us how we should grow old.

Little by little, rock became an almost century-old culture. Charly García already lived longer than the Polish Goyeneche. Any exponent of the movement was older than Pichuco. The Beatles stopped playing half a century ago. The Rolling Stones have been working for Guinness since 1962. It is almost time to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Elvis’s death. Almendra released his first album on November 29, 1969. Paul McCartney is about to turn 82 years old. He already lived more than twice as long as John Lennon.

Rock is on its way to being classical music. When history becomes blurred, the last names of Mozart and McCartney will be in the same encyclopedias. Rock was no longer synonymous with breakup.

in his book Retromania, Simon Reynolds says the following: “We live in an era of pop that has gone crazy for retro and fanatical about evocation. Bands getting back together and reunion tours, tribute albums and box sets, anniversary festivals and live concerts of classic albums: Every year is better to consume music from yesterday”.

Even the poor Luis Alberto Spinetta (ringleader of “tomorrow is better”) knew what it was like to have to bring together all his groups from the past to do a single and unparalleled recital in Vélez called “The eternal bands” (2009).

The singer of La Beriso, Rolo Sartorio, declared in this newspaper that people do not want to listen to new topics. And he’s not going to release any more albums. “It’s useless. If I started the band again today, I would have released the first four albums and nothing more. People just want to hear that. People want to sing. So if we are going to play songs that people are not going to sing, it’s a mess…”

Rock will never die, noted Neil Young. It’s true, worse things can happen to you. The past returns as a rereading. Reviving could be like living in abundance.

Javier MartínezRIP, former drummer and singer of Manal – who died last month – was annoyed because art, like everything else, needs mausoleums. He knew it: for there to be history there must be perspective. And that irritated him because his name, like that of Litto Nebbia or that of Morris, served as a starting point. “Rock was young music when I was young. Today it is simply music,” she told us with that loud voice of a thousand storms.

There was a first rock meeting. Surnames that function as pillars. People with an aura or a historical fog, useful to start by saying: “Once upon a time…” For all these years of national rock to exist, it is necessary to have martyrs. And Martinez.

“This is how they are liquidating me,” the leader of Manal told us in an old interview. Javier had lost a tooth. It wasn’t necessary for me to say it because it wasn’t just any tooth: it was the tooth of Alfred Neuman, the magazine’s mascot child. MAD. One pretended not to see anything. We feign dementia. Not a word. For the photo, there was no smile. Javier posed with his mouth closed.

The theme is unavoidable: a kind of golden retirement of rock. As if we had signed a blank check to classic bands. Divided You can go more than a decade without releasing an album. Babasonics he has been making variations on the album Jessica since 2001. Virus insists on demonstrating that its eighties catalog stands the test of time. The parrotswith nothing new under the sun since he left Bahian. Bahiano, missing in action without Pericos. Miranda!recent winner of the Gardel de Oro, celebrated his career spanning more than two decades with an album that reviews his greatest hits.

La Bersuit became a kind of tribute band to Pelado Cordera. The Fundamentalists of Air Conditioning, without a doubt, is “the” most popular tribute band in history.. And León Gieco? Do you remember León Gieco?

Fernando Samalea, Charly García’s favorite drummer, says that things are not so black and white. “It is logical to think that rock is no longer the music of young people. That’s how it must be, right? New ideas continue to do their thing in slow transition. Personally, I love it. I have always been a futurist and I am very curious about what is emerging in terms of trends. And I know that technology will have a lot to do with it. At the time, someone had the idea of ​​plugging a Spanish guitar into a speaker and rock was born, as has been said. Keith Richards”.

“Some of the current projects that I hear – says Samalea – have similarities with those of the 20th century, but others are taking on a character that is less and less understandable by said canons. Even, It is not unreasonable to think that we are going through the last decades of Humanity of natural talents and that, in the near future, wireless brain extension linked to a computer will make it possible to play instruments or create music and images simply by downloading applications. A kind of great artistic democracy, let’s say…”

He presents himself as a psychologist who specializes in treating rock bands and soloists. His name is Fabio Lacolla. He published books like be in band, where he chats with patients or potential patients. Names like Daniel Melingo, Juanchi Baleironfrom Los Pericos, Guillermo Novellisthe singer of La Mosca, Manuel Morettifrom Stellar, Lula Bertoldifrom Eruca Sativa, Andrea Ávarezformer percussionist for Soda Stereo.

“I have been maintaining that After Cromañon, rock had a slight stroke that worsened as time went by. And of course, when you have a stroke you start to depend on other things and you no longer have as much autonomy. This made the public take power and in that dialectic between the master and the slave, the artist remained on the side of the slave. In some cases, the public even dictates to the artist the lyrics he should write, because that is what they want to hear.”

Very tough, Lacolla. “This favored the appearance of new sounds and currents that grow, leaving aside poetics and even musical harmonies. Rock remained as a kind of tango with electric guitar.”

Wos finished canonizing Indio Solari with his collaboration on the subject you will burn. Lali made A Thousand Hours by Andrés Calamaro (The grandparents of nothing). What does this mean? What does it mean to do Thousand hoursone of the most covered songs in national rock, the best known by the only vital hero left in the movement?

It can mean many things. For example, “total thanks” to rock. Of course, it is about Thousand hours, a theme that flutters like the cape of Saint Martin in Boulogne sur Mer. The song chosen by youth to turn one of their heaviest pages?

You might also think that Lali doesn’t miss a single idea. That she has no scrutinizing spirit. That she tip-kicked in the middle.

A tribute is not just a way to praise our loved ones. It is also a way to distance oneself. A compliment that comes when something or someone tirelessly believes in one’s own values.

Trap is a movement less musical than cultural, and less cultural than generational.

Did rock put an end to the last sophisticated way of listening to music?

Lacolla says that rock is weakened in many ways. “At the time, militancy occupied the space that rock left empty. Trap and reggaeton changed lyrics and harmony for the mere rhythm of a beat, and in this way rock ended up becoming a caricature”.

Rock has long since stopped arguing with novelty. The intensity, in that sense, is very low. Everything became calculated, speculative, professional. Tautological. Rock now does recitals as if to say: if you are listening to this in 2024 it is because you are also a legend.

A more than authoritative voice speaks on the matter: Roberto Pettinato He’s already close to 70 pirulos. “First, retirement does not exist as long as one continues to play. Second, rock’s golden retirement comes when you’ve already passed $70 million. Third, what La Beriso says about not making more new songs, it happens to the Who, it happens to Genesis, it happened to Sumo, to Paul McCartney, who at the beginning made 70 songs by him and four by The Beatles, and he ended up making 97 Beatles songs and three of his songs that, obviously, nobody cares about.”

Pettinato believes that the new trends are just the result of “an orgy between the Movistar Arena and River. On any radio I turn on they keep playing Bryan Adams. Honestly, I don’t listen to rap, trap or hip hop on the radio. Trap doesn’t retire anyone”.

December 18, 2021, however, could be remembered as the day rock entered the nursing home.

That day he inaugurated, at the National Historical Museum, an exhibition dedicated to the beloved Argentine rock. Such institutional solemnity made us a little sad: the posters with the clippings of the Supplement Yes! of this diary. Ruffles, handmade tickets. A truly moving gathering value. The urban poster of the album Modern clicks by Charly García, a poster of Celeste Carballo about to play at the legendary Palladium. The Pigs in Halley, the poster for the Pan Caliente festival, from January 1982 at the Excursionistas club.

Photos of The Rapistsa flower power piano from Miguel Mateosthe harmonica of Leon Gieco. Costumes of the members of The Twists. A giant photo of Parakultural. The whistle with which Miguel Grandfather he did his exclusive whistle solos. Handwritten letters by Spinetta and Gustavo Cerati.

In a showcase, like a curved saber, the open suitcase with which Luca Prodan arrived in Argentina. Rock deserved treatment worthy of any father of the country. Behind glass, a photocopied flyer Don Cornelio and the Zone framed as French’s cockade might be. Or Beruti’s.