Three authors write about three rock bands to which they each dedicated a book: Walter Lezcano, author of La belleza del ruido, una aproximación al viaje de Suárez y Rosario Bléfari (Gourmet Musical, 2024); Humphrey Inzillo, coauthor along with Martín Correa and Pablo Marchetti of La última noche de Patricio Rey (Gourmet Musical, 2021); and Vera Land, coauthor along with Enrique Symns of Los tres, la última canción (Gourmet Musical, re-issued in 2024).
Bands belonging to the Latin American rock explosion of the nineties, with roots in the eighties underground, broken up in the early 2000s, and whose legacies are currently expanding.
Rosario Bléfari was an Argentine composer, singer, actress, and poet, a fundamental member of the cult band Súarez, of great inspiration for the thriving indie rock, experimental pop, and alternative rock scenes. Born December 24, 1965, she belongs to the golden generation that renewed Argentine rock and forms part of the sad list of artists who died in the dreadful year of 2020, in her case, after a long illness. Both Suárez’s discography as well as the development of Rosario’s repertoire as a soloist, with seven studio albums, have attained growing recognition. Her work came to fruition with the books Poemas en prosa (2001), La música equivocada (2009), Antes del río (2016), and Diario del dinero (2020), among others.
Patricio Rey y sus Redonditos de Ricota is an Argentine rock band about which biographies, essays, memoirs, and articles have been written. Prohibited from playing live in the city of Buenos Aires, they had an audience willing to travel to any part of the country in order to see them (or their songwriter and leader, Indio Solari, after their break-up), generating a positive economic impact in provincial or southern towns invaded all of a sudden by hundreds of thousands of followers, families, groups of friends; a multitude stigmatized by the conservative mass media, which, however, was capable of creating “the biggest mosh pit in the world” without anyone getting hurt. Indio Solari started singing for a limited college audience in the city of La Plata, with an artistic avant-garde audience, and in the mid-nineties he reached the popular masses, with their dispossessed youth. Currently unable to give concerts because of his advanced Parkinson’s, he still writes songs and leads his second band, Los Fundamentalistas del Aire Acondicionado, who play the songs in a way that is superior to the original. At concerts, Solari’s participation is limited to a hologram and over-dubbings of a selected song.
At first, Los Tres was a rock & roll, rockabilly, American folk, and jazz band. However, meeting Roberto Parra endowed songwriter Álvaro Henríquez with the influence of cuecas choras and guachaca jazz, which resulted in a new creative territory. After breaking up, the projects begun by each one of the band’s members, and their reunion with a different arrangement, demonstrated that the sound of Los Tres can only be achieved with the original members. Currently reunited once again, they are the interpreters of their own legacy, and they rock new generations; innovative and controversial, they’ve become unrefuted classics.
Translated by Luis Guzmán Valerio
