muchacha (ojos de papel) ALMENDRA

wandering the streets of buenos aires, full of incident, in search of old records is not unlike ingesting a pharmacological dose of nutmeg before trying to memorize a recipe in hebrew.  i'm certainly one of the first to tip my hat to intuition, a handy bit of inference-free consciousness, but it won't get you anything more than several james blunt imports simply beating feet through this enormous city.  feeling more like a typecast object for jungian dissection than a media hungry journeyman motivated by my sensory faculty alone, i cruised the net and found that the shops worth shopping were tucked away in plazas:  atrium-based mini-malls with shops like satellites, selling optical hardwares, leatherwork instruments, and any other imaginable trade tool.  i had the most luck in microcentro, the financial district of b.a.  the shops are tiny, but impeccable.  it was in these shops that i was introduced to yerba mate and the stories of argentina's inimitable ROCK NACIONAL.

after about three stops in, it became perfectly clear to me that the story of rock music in argentina from the late 60s on is an allegorical companion to argentina's political story, the two acting as cultural cross-pollinators, telling of struggle and identity.  one of the loudest voices from this generation, to this day casting a maradonnian shadow, was LUIS ALBERTO SPINETTA, founding member of ALMENDRA, a group i had listened to on south american comps.  he was nineteen when the group released their self-titled debut in '69, a difficult time politically for argentina.  almendra released only two full lengths before spinetta expatted to europe for several years, only to return several years later to continuously evolve with projects like PESCADO RABIOSO and INVISIBLE.  spinetta's voice, througout his career, is one of clever, metaphoric polemic, one situated within his melodically propelled songs, and one that has incredibly deep roots in the collective memory of the argentinians, evidenced by the anthem RUTAS ARGENTINAS.

the cover's a strange one and the story goes that spinetta drew this figure for the cover, but several days before printing, RCA lost the drawing. spinetta searched through the trash and recovered it.  the meaning of the figure and it's hieroglyphics, viz a viz, via tete a tete, the tear drop, the plunger, and the eye all figure into the names of the songs printed on the back of the record.  the tear is given to a woman from this character on the front, which represents one thousand years of sadness.  what is completely clear, though, is the impact this album had on establishing the sound of rock nacional.

muchacha (ojos de papel), girl (paper eyes), is the first song on a strong side A from their debut, released in mono on RCA subsidiary VIK.  the tune explores spinetta's relationship with his first girlfriend and stands as a benchmark in the sexual revolution occurring in argentina at the time.  spinetta's guitar work became extremely popular and this intro guitar is referred to as spineteano in its style.