Luis Alberto Spinetta

February 11th, 2012 35 comments

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RIP a revolutionary rock pioneer from Argentina; Luis Alberto Spinetta’s work in Pescado Rabioso, Almendra, Invisible = South American dynamite on par with some of the best psych/prog songcrafters of more spotlit locales. My fave work of his is the 1973 2nd Pescado LP, which followed his stint with Almendra and a great solo record. He had absorbed a lot of European influences from his time there after Almendra, and that record was kind of a solo project in itself. Without a doubt it had one of the best 1970′s rock covers to boot (above). (Brian Turner)

Via Billboard:

Luis Alberto Spinetta, one of the fathers of South American rocanrol and an archetypal Argentine rebel whose music became arallying cry against political repression in the 1970s, died Wednesday, February 8, in Buenos Aires. Spinetta died of lung cancer at age 62.

Spinetta recorded over 40 albums with his different bands, starting in 1969 with the legendary Almendra, one of the first rock groups to write songs in Spanish. Spinetta brought a highly poetic lyricism to Argentine rock that still characterizes the national sound today.

 ”Rock is not only a certain form of rhythm or melody,” Spinetta wrote in a manifesto distributed at a 1973 concert of his band Pescado Rabioso. “It is the natural impulse to transmit through total freedom the profound knowledge, to which, because of repression, the common man does not have access to.”

Starting at one o’clock Thursday morning, according to the Argentine newspaper Clarín, musicians including Fito Páez and Leon Gieco, along with hundred of fans, gathered at a funeral home in the Belgrano section of Buenos Aires Thursday to say farewell to Spinetta, commonly called “El Flaco” (the thin one).  

“He was one of the first to get us all into this,” Gieco told the newspaper.

Spinetta is survived by four children, including Dante Spinetta, founder of the well-known hip-hop/rock group Illya Kuryaki y los Valderramas.