Although they were the last to join, César and Pablo faced the responsibility of putting together a series of shows during the summer. It was going to be the first tour along the Atlantic Coast of a group formed the previous year in Ciudad Jardín, on the near west of the Capital, and which did not even have an official recorded album. It was called Lice in honor of the song “Los lice del submundo”, by Fabiana Cantilo and Hot Dogsfor whom several of the musicians had worked as leads. César had just taken over as manager and Pablo Guerra came to replace Juan Villagra, one of the two guitarists. The other viola player was Piti Fernández, while the lineup was completed with Ciro Martínez on vocals, Micky Rodríguez on bass, Lisa di Cione on keyboards and Daniel Buira on drums.
Until then the group used to play in the Harlequin Theater from San Telmo and places in El Palomar such as the bar Graf Zeppelinthe Aviators Square y Mrs. Bakerthe latter on De Los Jacarandaes Street, which days ago was reopened as “Paseo Los Piojos”. However, César and Pablo traveled to Villa Gesell on behalf of the band before the start of the 1989 summer season because they said they had good contact there. The only thing they had to show was a recording of a rehearsal that included three songs: “Llévatelo”, “Ay, qué marvel” and “Uh! “Gabriela.” Nobody knew exactly what happened during that stay, but the truth is that César and Pablo returned to Ciudad Jardín exultant: they had made a series of presentations in that spa town that in the 70’s and 80’s had become a kind of mecca for dozens of rock artists.
The band lived a state of euphoria and complete happiness all the days prior to that long-awaited expedition. The trip was by train to Mar del Plata, and from there by van to Gesell, always with the instruments and equipment in tow. It wasn’t until they returned to Ciudad Jardín, a month later, that they learned that everything had been a lie: while the entourage settled down and unpacked their exuberant backpacks in the Villa, César and Pablo ran from bar to bar trying to fix something without the others. others will find out. The thing is that they had never achieved anything that was promised: they had deceived their companions with a little white lie so that everyone would be encouraged to travel with the certainty that once in the place they would get dates in one way or another.
And so they did, in fact, until they reached Toulousea pub on the extinct Avenida Costanera, almost on Paseo 111, facing the sea and next to the current hotel of the union of Light and Strengthwhere they were hired to do a total of thirteen shows in January in exchange for food, which always consisted of the same menu: a plate of ravioli. Authentic management success. Only later would they find out that its owner was Daniel Puccio, alias Maguilathe youngest of the fearsome clan that devastated Argentina in the 1980s with bloody kidnappings and murders and the first to manage to get out of prison, although he later escaped.
“We stopped at a tin lodge where we cursed because of the heat, although we also got involved in incredible rides,” he recalled in the book. Villa Gesell Rock&Roll Pablo Guerra, who was in the band until he left in 1991 to join the beginnings of another group from the western suburbs: The Knights of Burning. From those guitar playing of virulent youth between sea beds and flea festivals in a precarious accommodation in Gesell came some of the songs that Lice They would record three years later in Chactuchactheir debut album, like “Los mocosos”.
The shows began early in the morning, when the band performed a song called “I’m calling Toulouse” as a way to make themselves heard among the people who at that time were walking along the Costanera or were on the beach. Songs from the future were also in the repertoire Chactuchac such as “Llevatelo”, “Pega pega”, “Always going down” and “Blues of the gray suit”, as well as overa by Chuck Berry, Rolling Stones and a medley with songs by Moris, another who lived his first hours in the rock in the Villa. The narrative arc of all this would be condensed exactly ten years later, when Lice They would take from a show offered in January 1999 at the Geseline Drive-In “Zapatos de chamuza azul” (the Spanish-speaking version of “Blue Suede Shoes” by Carl Perkins that Mauricio Birabent made famous in his exile in Spain) to include it in the live album Ritual.
During that January of 1989, Villa Gesell was a stage for the unforeseen to happen. Like the nights in which Enrique Symns, historical monologist from The Ricotta Roundsto do his thing in front of the stunned public that watched his improvisations already known by then in pubs and bars in Buenos Aires. Or Ricardo Mollo himself, whom Ciro especially greets in a show that survived on cassette and the fan Rubén Pardo approached the journalist Maxi Martina so that he could share it in full months ago on the program Plasticine Clock from the radio Mega.
Despite the notorious housing inconveniences, the group knew how to make the experience flesh out and rounded off a wonderful and foundational January: throughout those thirteen shows at the Bar Toulouse of Gesell, the band strengthened its live performance, adjusted its first compositions on stage and made itself known to people who did not know them, but from then on they would begin to follow him around Buenos Aires and the Conurbano, beginning their escalation of popularity. That’s why they tested the venue’s administrators to see if they could arrange some more presentations for the month of February. The answer was a resounding no. But not because they didn’t like what was done by Lice in that modest setting, but because they had already committed themselves to another group that had debuted in June 1988: Divided.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
