It was now. No moors on the coast, no enemies, also good with the new generations with whom Fito Páez shares recordings and stages (Lali Espósito, Thunder, Getting to know Russia). With current bridges to the past of Argentine culture, such as the journalist and writer Roberto Arlt, to whom he has dedicated part of his recent discography, and the well-known musician Gerardo Gandini, whom he will see again in October this year at the Teatro Colon.
With pragmatic confirmation, a record number of shows at the Movistar Arena (eight) and two recent stadiums in Vélez, which the album Love after love (1992) is the best way to get along with all his fans and Don’t be embarrassed to deliver the ultimate nostalgic. With an autobiography also brand new, to complement the combo.
The fact that it wasn’t spontaneous doesn’t make it suspicious. That has the characteristics of plan and that the wise old fox of daniel grinbank is currently your manager, does not inhibit your merits. He sharpens them, in any case, and makes them more profitable.
As if something was missing for this kind of TEG by Fito Páez to reach a new peak of popularity thirty years later, comes streaming. Love after love (available on Netflix) is called, not surprisingly, the eight-episode series that has been running for almost a week hegemonizes the attention of Argentinesand even transcends borders.
strong impact
While it’s premature to say it will have the same impact, it’s somewhat similar to Luis Miguel, the seriesthat product of several seasons which served to give air and time to the Mexican crooner fallen into a certain ostracism to revitalize, if not his career, the interest in his music, myth and legend.
In both cases, Luis Miguel and Fito Páez were in charge of greenlighting and providing details and narrative to the achievements, to the point of giving them the appearance of “authorised audiovisual”.
Since grandeur and megalomania matter (we are in an age where artists are appreciated by Spotify listeners and newspaper articles look like excel sheets when it comes to presenting them and raising credits), Love after love It begins by presenting a couple of flagrant exaggerations.
The first thing we have is a number, broadcast by a television reporter who is at the door of the Vélez stadium, covering in April 1993 the presentation show of, once again it must be written, Love after love.
“Today, more than 60,000 people gathered here to attend Fito Páez’s recital, which may be the most important in the history of national rock.” More gloating: “After 11 sold-out dates at the Gran Rex…”. And he expands: “It can only be explained as a revolution in the history of Argentine music.”
It is no less the fact that in Vélez there is no capacity for more than 45,000 spectators, at most, but that is not the point. The important thing about 1993 is to cite the artist by the magnitude of the call and the collection. And that’s the first thing the viewer knows.
Data of the time
Then, a couple of minutes later, teenage Fito tries to smuggle his keyboard from his front door in a load. Outside the sirens howl and the patrols go by, while the radio speaks of clashes and deaths. It’s 1979, after all.
After the Blue Terror, the guy from the series achieves his goal and sets off on a night rehearsal. He is overprinted: “Artists are persecuted. Rock is considered a voice of resistance”.
A touchy subject, again. Let’s put it this way: overestimating the alleged heroic role of rock during the dictatorship, when in the midst of horror the concerts were still going on, the records came out, the protagonists lived here and the releases didn’t stop, ends up discrediting the palliative, poetic functionality , consolatory, stimulating and vital of the young Argentine music of the period.
Advance a few boxes in a series full of flashbacks and you will see how a spectacle The machine for making birds From Charlie Garcia in Rosario, dated 1976, will change the life of the pubescent Páez. Like many other extra musical events.
Apart from these considerations, what follows is an external biography of the musician, and there the details become, for the most part, part of the privacy exhibited by the narrator.
And you don’t need to be a fan (o which he hatesperhaps the only two ways to approach the series according to the order of social media these days) to side with an artist marked by family tragedies, who very quickly realizes the dream of interacting with his idols (Charly/Spinetta), but who goes beyond , always on the axis of its most salient quality: tenderness.
An ideal life for a miniseries
The story, or the life of Páez, has all the necessary seasonings for the format. Especially epic. It could be deduced Love after love it would allow for an expanded universe of strips about Argentine rock, but no story has the power of ellipsis, drama, and transversality as the one told here, talents on the fringes.
With Charlie Garcia and the Indium Solari retired from the scene, with Andrés Calamaro deserter of the will, with Louis Alberto Spinetta, Gustavo Cerati AND Pope in another dimension, Fito repositions himself and equalizes comes to reclaim his place on the podium of Argentine rock.
In the series, and in the story, he can be seen as the prodigal son swaying in the arms of Charly García and Luis Alberto Spinetta. He is no longer the “son of Charly and Nito” as Luca Prodan joked in his face, during an eighties interview on Supplemento Si! From clarion.
Here the focus is on Charly as a father figure as the musician tries to have an affair Rodolfo Páez, father and namesake. Meanwhile, Spinetta, already part of the aria since his death in 2012, serves as metaphysical and textual guide.
And if Charlie is the Father and Spinetta the Holy Spiritin this messianic story Fito must try on the tunic and be the Son, in a probable Holy Trinity according to the Christian canon. At 60, and with a long way to go, he has to decide for himself, as he always has, whether to continue living off the story or prepare a sequel with his own skin.
Source: Clarin
