PEQUEÑAS ANÉCDOTAS SOBRE LAS INSTITUCIONES

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A few years ago a good friend borrowed me a bunch of Latin-American progrock he received from an Argentine record label. For me it was an excellent opportunity for a further investigation of the captivating Latin-American progrock scene, so often an unique blend of many styles.

Sui Generis is an Argentine band that made many albums, I would like to focus on their most progressive effort entitled Pequenas Anecdotes Sobre Las Instituciones from 1973. Here Sui Generis is a four piece band (including the inevitable keyboard player Charly Garcia who later founded La Maquina De Hacer Pajaros) with additional musicians and they present us wonderful and varied music: every track has its own climate and is loaded with interesting musical ideas and surprising breaks, they often use a wide range of instruments. The one moment the atmosphere is mellow with twanging acoustic guitars, flute, violin or Grand piano, the other moment it is blues with mouth organ or sumptuous symphonic rock with Moog synthesizer flights or beautiful strings. I cannot refer to symphonic rock dinosaurs like Yes, Genesis or Pink Floyd, this is an unique progrock band but you have to be up to moments that are close to soul or other musical styles, indeed, a very progressive musical experience! My rating: 3,5 stars.

Longer, bigger, deeper, angrier, and much more progressive. This is one of Argentina's best progressive rock albums out there. Nevertheless, it wasn't a critically acclaimed effort. It was actually received with a lot of criticism at the time. The reason is that Argentina was expecting more charming acoustic folk. This is not folk, this is electric, political, biting, and quite eclectic. Luckily, people eventually began to appreciate this different album and it is now considered a classic that is more well known than the "Maquina de Hacer Pajaros" albums.

The album begins with the title track, which at first (apart from electric drums) sounds similar to the second album's opener, just much better. Later, it goes to a more urgent vocal style and after the second chorus you get electric strings, synthesizers, powerful electric guitar, mellotron, angry vocals, and all of that stuff that we progheads just gotta love. This is possibly my favorite song from the band.

"Tango en Segunda" starts only with vocals and virtuosic, yet subtle, electric piano running in the background with a slight tango element. Afterwards, there's a memorable and quite ununsual riff which goes up and down one fret at a time. After the theme plays out once, drums introduce a loud, nasty moog synthesizer that gets wilder until it reaches the end. It sounds as if Keith Emerson was invited to play with Mahavishnu Orchestra.

"El Show de los Muertos" is yet another dark song, featuring electric piano and the saxophone as main instruments. It is less frantic than the previous two pieces and seems somewhat influenced by Supertramp.

"Señor Tijeras" is once again another social/political song, now about censure. The album is actually somewhat of a concept album because it deals with all the 'institutions' that made up Argentina's oppressive government at the time. The lyrics are effective, describing a "mr. scissors" as the censurer cutting a woman's body in dramatic fashion. The music is slightly light-hearted and sinister at the same time. Lots of minimoogs here.

"Pequeñas Delicias de la vida Conyugal" . This is like the catchiest thing ever, not only vocal-wise, but also due to that playful synthesizer theme during the verses.

The next two tracks are very interesting, but what comes next is special, a full instrumental inspired by the "Rock Progresivo Italiano" movement. The music is dynamic and features plenty of interesting musical ideas in its six minutes. I especially love the guitar solo in the beginning and the violin breakdown in the middle.

"Para Quien Canto Yo Entonces" is an acoustic and bluesy folk tune that closes the actual album. Quite pleasant with nice harmonica lines which come across as soulful. This was the last album because the last two tracks were too political during a difficult time before the beginning of the "dirty war"

"Juan Represion" is about police oppression. Musically it is not progressive, but it has excellent lyrics and a beautiful fadeout while "Botas Locas" describe Charly's feelings of alienation when being in the military (the lyrics are apparently not true, because Charly got himself out by feigning to be crazy). Anyways, the music for this track is uptempo acoustic music with Charly harmonizing with himself on vocals. It has catchy choruses.

Highly recommended for Latin Rock collectors and still recommended to any symphonic prog lovers.

"Pequeñas Anécdotas Sobre las Instituciones" is the Sui Generis' third and last studio effort that incarnated the ultimate development of Charly Garcia's vision for this folk-rock act. In fact, this band had been born out of earlier acts devoted to the practice of late 60s art- rock, and so it came to be that when the influence of prog rock was beginning to catch flame in some areas of Argentinean rock (the first gigs of Crucis and Ave Rock, the reinforcement of Arco iris as a major fusion-rock name), Garcia became more than willing to instill this line of work into Sui Géneris. It is common ground that this was their most accomplished work and that it only made sense that it should sell more poorly to an audience that was determine to accept their usual folk-oriented side exclusively. Sure, songs like 'Dime quién me lo robó', 'Un hada, un cisne' and 'Tribulaciones, lamento y ocaso de un tonto rey imaginario' were artsy songs from previous albums that were highly acclaimed by the SG audiences all over the place, but now this same audience was asked to proceed with a leap of faith and embrace this artsy trend as their beloved band's redefining method and not just as a casual resource. Of course, only a limited range of their audience accepted it, but all in all, it didn't affect their appeal to the public's eye in terms of gig attendance. Well, musically speaking, the artistic satisfaction of Garcia's did not match Mestre's, so it was only natural that this peak of art should signal the band's descent into conflict and separation. In fact, a planned and aborted fourth release was supposed to enhance the new progressive trend started in this album. Another fact that revealed the chasm between the band's own evolution and the audience's appreciation was the limited acceptance of the band's augmentation as a quartet: this line-up change was the result of the need to have bassist/ guitarist Rafanelli and drummer/percussionist Rodriguez become active contributors to the band's refurbished sound, not just as back-up performers. Well, now that I have described the band's state-of-affairs to some extent, here are the tracks themselves. The opener 'Instituciones' makes such a lovely statement of the dominant symphonic factor: this band is headlong for a demonstration of how Genesis- meets-PFM would sound like, and they do it quite fine. 'Tango en segunda' is more like a jazz-prog attempt, soft and reasonably constrained, which is apt for the creepy lyrics: the amalgamation of guest David Lebon's guitar and Garcia's synth is well constructed. The segued follower 'El show de los muertos' continues in the jazzy vein and bears even more creepier lyrics and musicality. The symphonic thing returns for the warmly sarcastic 'Las increíbles aventuras del Sr. Tijeras' and the dramatic 'Música de fondo para cualquier fiesta animada', while the jazz thing returns in the vividly mischievous 'Pequeñas delicias de la vida conyugal', but nowhere does the artsy direction get as magnificent as in 'Tema de Natalio', the amazing instrumental that delivers an exquisite 6 minute sequence of genuinely progressive motifs. You can almost watch how Garcia enjoys his Moog excursions, gran piano phrases and ARP string orchestrations. Also, the guest presence of violin master Pinchovsky and master organist Cutaia (soon to become Garcia's keyboard partner in LMDHP) provides the ultimate touches of color for this one. The folk thing is also present in 'El tuerto y los ciegos' (arguably, the best acoustic song ever penned by Garcia, and that also includes Pinchevsky's involvement) and the closer 'Para quién canto yo entonces', a correct protest song that signifies the usual Bob Dylan influence. I very much prefer the serene beauty of 'El tuerto': incredible how Garcia felt inspired to write this tiny beauty in a couple of days in replacement of one of the completely censored songs (three or four actual songs also had a few lines censored each in order to be included in the final album). The ultimate Sui Géneris album makes a fine progressive album: I think it is a 4- star folk-rock effort and a 3.75-star prog one. A big farewell for SG, indeed.