“¿¡¡A DONDE VAN LOS DESAPARECIDOS!!?” (Where do the disappeared go?) twenty-thousand of us yelled in unison at the men gathered upon the illuminated stage. “BUSCA EN EL AGUA Y EN LOS MATORRALES!” (search in the waters and the bushes) they responded, as the tears began to mix with the sweat on my face, my voice pulling itself together just enough to scream out the next words: “¿¡¡Y POR QUE ES QUE SE DESAPARECEN!!?” (and why is it that they disappear?), and wait for the painful and begrudgingly true answer of: “POR QUE NO TODOS SOMOS IGUALES” (because, we are not all the same). It sounds like a scene from a political rally, and though often in Latin America these two things approach indistinguishability, we were actually at a concert. A concert I had waited patiently for 27 years to attend: Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, and they were playing the song I had only dreamt of hearing live.
I imagine there is a pretty good split right down the middle of either you have heard LFC and you love them, or you have absolutely no idea who this band is. Though they have been active for almost 40 years, and have legitimate claim to being the most popular band in all of Latin America for at least 30 of those years, they remain tragically underrepresented north of the Mexico/USA border.
Los Fabulosos Cadillacs formed in Buenos Aires sometime in 1985, and upon listening to their early records it becomes instantaneously apparent that they were directly influenced both sonically and aesthetically by 2-tone bands such as The Specials and Madness, as well as The Clash (covering songs by all of these throughout their career). Their first couple of albums are almost comically minimalistic and formulaic, and I say this without trying to sound pejorative, as I truly love every one of their albums (and to be fair, we all love the first Clash album, but the same could be said about it as well, in hindsight…). Most of the songs deal with the woes of excessive living: too much drinking, not enough pay, a tad heavy on the heartbreak, etc. Still, the 9-piece (at the time) group held enough talent amongst them to not get pigeonholed as overly cliché, and their full percussion section rounded out the sound in the ways that other early 80’s Ska bands couldn’t hold a candle to.
Like many groups whose careers successfully navigated the 80’s, LFC showed that they were more than a one-trick pony, and their ability to adapt to the changing times/styles would become one of the hallmarks of the band. Successive (and commercially successful) albums would have them incorporating elements of hip-hop, salsa, cumbia, metal, funk, bolero, tango…the list goes on and on. Their aptly titled 1988 album “El Ritmo Mundial” (The global rhythm) would feature the song that would propel them to renown all over Latin America: a reggae-tinged duet with Salsa queen Celia Cruz called “Vasos Vacios” (Empty Glasses). To this day, this is the song that, when it comes on at a party, you immediately stop whatever you are doing, put your arm around the nearest person, raise your glass, and sing along.
But it was the 1993 track “Matador” (The killer) that would put them on the path to the level of superstardom which they still inhabit to this day. A sort-of-greatest-hits-until-now album released that year, “Vasos Vacios” featured reworking of familiar favorites, and a couple of originals, one of which was the instant smash hit “Matador”. A song on the surface incredibly danceable (and chant-able), the lyrics reference the forced disappearances of tens of thousands of people during the years of dictatorship in both their native Argentina and neighboring Chile. Contextually, the song tells the story of a persecuted revolutionary, hiding anywhere he can from the death squads who have come to cut him down (it is almost a sister-song, thematically, to another of their incredible hits, “Manuel Santillan, El León”). Apart from being an instant hit all over Latin America, played at sporting events (even giving rise to the nickname “El Matador” for Chilean soccer striker Marcelo Salas) and parties alike, it was also featured in the AMAZING 1997 film “Grosse Pointe Blank”, both within the movie itself and later in full as the credits roll. By this time, LFC were selling out 60-thousand seat arenas all over Latin America.
In 1997 I was 16 years old and living in Alamosa, CO….where nothing cool ever happens. I was skateboarding with my friends every day, and we got all of our “cool” music knowledge from the skate videos we would mail order. Ska briefly fell into the category of cool for about 15 minutes in the 90’s, and it was actually a 10-second clip of The Special’s version of “A Message To You, Rudy” that made me fall in love with the genre, a love affair that continues to this very day. In December of that year I visited my family in Chile, and at SOME point I must have been discussing my musical taste when someone mentioned a band that I would probably like: Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. I got my hands on a cassette copy of “Vasos Vacios” shortly after, and I can tell you right now that the only other band that has ever given me a similar feeling of instant and total adoration is Bad Religion. Apart from “Matador” being the greatest song I had ever heard up until that point, my ears and brain couldn’t believe how diverse all of the songs on the album were.
Of course, this story takes place in Chile, the land of one million coincidences, and so as luck would have it, LFC were performing that very same week in Santiago, and my uncle took me to see them (ironically, this would be the same venue where, 26 years later, I would shoot two nights of Bad Religion shows…). We showed up late, and stood way in the back, and I really was in over my head…I had no idea just how insanely beloved this band was until that night…my memories of that show are a mix of fuzzy nostalgia and terror.
I went back to the USA and tried to get my hands on as much music by LFC as I could, which was absolutely no easy feat in the era before widespread internet and/or file sharing (not to mention living in a pop-cultural dead zone). When their confusingly death-metal tinged, super DARK album “Fabulous Calavera” came out, I special ordered it and devoured it nonstop for months. I had a notebook where I diligently wrote out the lyrics to every LFC song I had access to, painstakingly translating the lyrics into English on the following page. I was, in short, completely obsessed with this band.
Eventually, I owned everything that they had ever released, I knew every song forwards and backwards, I had spewed on and on ad nauseam to anybody who would listen about how they were the greatest thing that had happened, was happening, or will happen in music. I ate up any bit of news that came out about the band, followed the side-projects and solo careers of the members, felt the sting of the inevitable US Tour that came nowhere even CLOSE to me, endured the painful news of the breakup, followed by the rejoice of the reformation. But deep down, all I really REALLY wanted was just the chance to see them live again, and to get to feel that joy of screaming along to all of the (studied and re-studied) lyrics with my fellow super-fans. Not so much to ask.
One day in early October of last year, the news finally came: Los Fabulosos Cadillacs would be coming to Santiago, and lo and behold here I was living in Chile. I’ve never purchased tickets for a concert so goddamned fast, coordinating with my cousins over a frantic WhatsApp chat to make sure we were all sitting together. I think, in hindsight, that beyond how much I love this band from a sheerly musical standpoint, they have also always represented my connection to Latin America even while living abroad. They allowed me to feel as though I was actively participating in the culture, even from afar, and this forged an admiration in me that surpassed that of their musical peers, many of whom I also love and have a profound respect for.
A couple of months before the show, some MORE exciting news came my way: the band’s bassist Flavio Cianciarulo (Señor Flavio, to fans) would be coming to Esqueleto Libros in Santiago to do a reading and book signing from his new story collection the night before the show. You may recall that this is the same bookstore where Jim Ruland did his signing of his Bad Religion biography back in December, which I wrote about. I quickly RSVP’d, and couldn’t believe my dumb luck, once again, at how everything just seemed to be lining up perfectly. Then, a few weeks later, I received a devastating voicemail from Tana (owner of Esqueleto Libros and all-around badass…): Sr. Flavio had broken his clavicle and had to be operated on, meaning he would not be appearing at the bookstore, and far worse, they were looking at postponing the concert indefinitely. With only a small window of time left to us here in Chile, I felt the sand slipping through my hands…my dream concert would not happen after all, and the wait would continue indefinitely.
In a true example of the apple not having fallen far from the tree, both lead singer Vicentico and Sr. Flavio have raised sons who have inherited their musical talents, and have been incorporated into the lineup for a few years now. With the show hanging in the balance, it was announced at the 11th hour that Flavio’s son Florian would be stepping in to handle his father’s bass duties, and the show was, miraculously, back on. Amazingly, this would be the FIRST show in the 40 years of the band that Sr. Flavio would not play…let that sink in a minute. I, along with 20 thousand other ticket holding Chileans, breathed a collective sigh of relief. The event at Esqueleto Libros was restructured to feature a representative of the small publishing house that produced Flavio’s new book “Medano Oscuro”, and as luck would (once again) have it, the hotel I had booked us in Santiago was only 5 blocks away from the shop.
We had a really amazing couple of days in Santiago with the kids, finally feeling as though we were getting comfortable in the city on our own, able to navigate the metro, and knowing good spots to eat and hike with the kids. Within hours of arriving, we noticed a heavy police presence in our neighborhood, which turned out to be in anticipation of a massive strike/march by the CUT, the umbrella group which oversees the country’s labor unions. We walked toward the main avenue just in time to see the massive wave of marchers rounding the corner, thousands of workers representing everyone from schoolteachers to cemetery employees. At the head of the march were two flag-bearing, elderly women who let me snap their picture, promising to “erase the wrinkles”. The women were just two of hundreds of elderly workers who were marching in protest of the low pensions they are receiving after having devoted decades of their lives to hard work. The solidarity of the workers, and the visceral experience of the beating drums was enough to quicken the pulse, and reminded me just why I love this country so much, warts and all.
The night of the concert arrived, and I was a nervous wreck, the way I always somehow get before a major show: stomach in knots, ball of nervous energy, drinking way more caffeine than necessary (which may actually be the cause of the first two…). We arrived at the venue and I of course bought some highly coveted LFC merchandise (something I had never even been to track down online in the USA, for some reason), before going inside and being ushered to our seats.
I have this habit recently of tracking a touring band’s setlist on setlist.fm so that I know what I am getting myself into before a show, or sometimes just to brush up on which lyrics I need to re-learn so that I can sing along (which makes EVERY show better, right?). One song that was absent from this tour’s setlist was the band’s incredible cover of Ruben Blades’ song “Desapariciones”, which has always been a favorite of mine. The original of this song appeared on Blades’ seminal 1984 album “Buscando America”. Each verse is a different, everyday person looking for a member of their family who has seemingly vanished into thin air, during the time of an unspecified dictatorship. As the listener, we know that these people will never be seen or heard from again, becoming yet another name on a list that stretches far too long, as a family grieves without a body to bury. It is a story that has unfortunately repeated itself in Latin America time and again over the course of the last century, and one that has become emblematic of the region’s struggle for dignity and peace in the face of imperialism and its repressions.
The most iconic version of this song is the one recorded for LFC’s 1994 live album, during which Vicentico incorporates a verse of the famous folk song “Rio Manzanares”, itself a sad tale about a child asking the titular river to allow them to cross, as his mother is sick and they must seek help for her. This song was originally recorded in Venezuela (where the river is) in 1958 by José Antonio López, but was interpreted by several artists in Latin America throughout the 20th century, to the extent that it is now one of the most well-known and beloved folk songs of the entire continent. These two elements, when combined, create what is surely the most politically charged and emotionally poignant songs of LFC’s catalog, one that has evolved from simple party tunes to melancholic explorations on love, death, and obsession over the course of time.
The chances of hearing “Desapariciones” live, however, are next to non-existent, with it not having been in any setlist since 2002. But, my stupid luck in Chile being what it is, at this point becoming almost legendary amongst my cousins, I willed it into the Universe by stating out loud “La canción que más quiero escuchar esta noche es Desapariciones”. I just had a weird feeling about it, owing to the shared history of dictatorship and disappearances shared by Argentina and Chile, the fact that Chile recently marked 50 years since the coup, and then the weird fact that in the midst of 20 thousand people, I ran onto my friend Tana (from Esqueleto Libros) before the show started. The odds of that were SO ridiculous that I just knew at that point it was going to happen.
Look, I recently got to photograph Bad Religion for TWO nights in a row, RIGHT in front of the stage, and I will tell you right now that even if the Universe had NOT conceded me my ludicrous and statistically improbable fantasy, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs in Chile, with my amazing wife by my side, and my cousins on the other, would STILL have blown that experience out of the water by quite a wide margin. The energy of the show was incredible, unlike anything I have ever experienced. You cannot compare this band to ANYTHING in the USA because there just is not a band that has such widespread appeal as this one. You could pick ANYone off the streets in Latin America and ask them what their favorite LFC song is, and they would all have an answer, regardless of generation or social class.
When “Desapariciones” magically (or not magically, depending on who you know…) appeared in the middle of the setlist, there was an audible gasp from the crowd. I felt the tears just falling out of my face, a mixture of joy and raw emotion, a catharsis of sorts. Shedding tears for the disappeared. Tears for my little time left in Chile. Tears for the sheer goddamn beauty and bewilderment of life that was distilled into that singular moment. Every single person in that arena had a connection to the disappeared, even if their connection was “no connection”, which in and of itself gives more power to the song, that some could look away and pretend it wasn’t happening. “Estaban dando la telenovela/ por eso nadie miró pa’ fuera” says the song (“They were showing the soap opera on TV/ So nobody bothered to look outside”), followed by a cry of “AVESTRUZ” (ostrich), likening the passive masses to the bird that buries its head in the sand. When the song is being sung AT you, looking away is not an option, you are forced to acknowledge. I deep down felt like the reason I “knew” this song would be played was because of the notion that an Argentine band performing it in Chile is a way of extending an olive branch, a way of saying “We have our differences, but in this cruel act that was forced upon us both, we are painfully and inextricably the same”. The addition that night of the “Rio Manzanares” verse codified the moment as one that very few people who were present will ever forget. Maybe I am reading into it too much, and of course I am biased, but it was hands down the greatest concert I have ever experienced in my life.
Well, that’s my story…no time to write about books this week. If I did my job properly, you might be saying “Jeez, I should check this band out” so
This is by no means a comprehensive playlist, but it has a wide range and some of my favorites.
Be good to each other!
Andrés
Hi Andrés! How are things going? Man, these tales brought tears to my eyes. This band, as well as the rest of the musicians and artists in our country (ARG) are entangled with our history. I mean, it's art, it's the representation of the feelings of a person, a group, a society and well, you've said it; you didn't need to live those years of history to feel it, because the memories arise through the tears falling on your cheeks, the vibes you had definitely felt while you were all singing out loud the lyrics of those stories.
It always blows my mind how something so close to home, so well known by me and my fellow music lovers from Argentina, a band that's been in our lives for so long that sometimes we forget they're there, can wake up so many feelings and create such a beautiful timeline in other people's lives. It makes me so happy that you got the chance to experience this with your loved ones.
Damn I love music!
Lots of love and hugs for you!