Rock And Roll Talks - 1st edition: Seru girán, the latin-rock gods

Serú Girán was an incredible band with a lot of trajectory. Both for the band itself and for the individuality of the members. That is why it's impossible to summarize their career in just one post. In this section, I would like to tell you all about the beginnings of Serú Girán and their first self-titled album released in 1978, which opened a surrealist world in the Argentine music.

Serú Girán: Formed by the great Charly García, Oscar Moro, David Lebón and Pedro Aznar. Each one had a interesting musical career, so, the union of these four Argentine elements made that the band had a solid sound and, at the same time, a sound very different from the rest of the rock of the country.

What made this project so interesting? Well, Charly came from incredible projects such as Sui Generis and "La Máquina de Hacer Pájaros" (Translate: The Machine to make birds). Pedro Aznar came from explore sounds with underground bands such as Amalgama, Madre Atómica, and others. Moro in his case was a musician with an incredible trajectory, his participation in Los Gatos and other groups of big caliber, gave him recognition to his incredible drum skills, and of course, he had already play with Garcia in the group La Máquina de Hacer Pájaros, an orchestral experiment that came after Sui Generis group. David Lebón, did not lack any experience, he had already play in bands like Polifemo and the incredible group of Pescado Rabioso, sharing music with Spinetta. Having David in the band was the perfect union of a band full of musical masters.

One day, Charly visit David with his lover Zoca. At that moment, David was in a band called Seleste, a project categorized by himself as "a very emotional band". In this way, Charly sit down and said: "You are the guitarist that I would like to have in my band. Come with me, I'll pay you the ticket to Buzios. " Lebón refused the first two offers. "No thanks, I'm fine; I have my band, my family, my children, I am in peace," he answered. On the third time , García convince him and they planned to travel together to Brazil.

At that time, Aznar and Moro had not made presence. The group that Charly had in mind was included Gonzalo Farrugia, former member of PorSuiGieco, and José Luis Fernández, old partner of La Maquina de hacer pájaros. After a quite sudden change of plans, the formation ended up with Oscar Moros of "Los Gatos" on the drums and Pedro Aznar on the bass, an underground jazz lover who had met García through Fernández in a Pastoral band recital when Aznar barely had 18 years old. In 1977, García decided to make the travel with Lebón and they met in Sao Paulo to undertake a 3-hour trip to go to the new site that would be their musical home.

"We are a band" they said after having rehearsed for half an hour without stopping at their first day in Buzios, a small town located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The connection was magical ; They did not stop improvising and they had too much in their favor. 3 composers, 2 producers and the progressive rock along with academic music as main influences.

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Already with the deal with Billy Bond and Oscar López, Seru Girán recorded the bases of the songs in Sao Paulo, in a studio called El Dorado. Once the album was ready, they decided to travel to Buenos Aires to show the music work made for so long. The debut happened in November 78, with terrible results. Charly had been outl of the light for almost a year, and when he and Seru Girán had contact with the public again, things get more complicated than they seemed. The social situation was deplorable and the sensibilities were affected . They played the song "Disco shock", a song made with the intention of making a joke to the disco music, but people and media critics misunderstood the jokes calling them "gays" with the voices of girls, arguing the historical quote of: "These are not the four Serún Girán, they were a replacement of them. They are not the real Seru Girán".

Leaving behind all the criticisms, which were probably influenced by the social situation and intolerance towards introspective music, Seru Girán continued on their way. The cover of the album had a obvious and sentimental meaning: the image spoke of all the trips and adventures that had undertaken together to form the band and keep it standing. In the art of the album, everything is accompanied with a "photo-novel" that had with it titles in the language invented by García.

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The invented language narrated with the key titles each image, and the most important, that white box that only said "Seru Girán". Understanding the language was impossible because even the band members they don't knew what does it mean, but is probably that "Eiti Leda" means Coca-Cola, Charly's favorite drink. From the rest, everything seemed like a compilation of saved stories, saved songs for projects that reached their final phase or songs that they never dared to show.

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To understand the reason of the band, let's see "Seru Girán" as a surrealist universe where everything was possible, something utopian that was directly related to the soul of each member of the band. And that's what contained the lyrics of the songs: love, pain of love, utopia, dreams, paranoia, drugs and loneliness. The introspection of feelings, the things that their never said, the non-existent wonders and a place of peace, an escape. Maybe that's why the people, in their social blindness caused by the dictatorship with the times of war could not understand the signs of 4 musicians who had always lived under the light of music, concerts and media.

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There were very special things within the group, and one of them was the utopia created by the members of the band, specially Charly. Creating an universe that apparently the critics could not contradict, the musical transitions of each song (each song had a connection), musical transitions that turned the songs into masterpieces, and that special, distinctive and individual feeling that each of them added to their songs. They all had an important moment in every song, a moment of leadership; the game of harmonies, drum solos, García's keyboard game, Lebón's ability, and Aznar's incredible lines that gave fullness and personality to the songs.

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If you ask me (and it's something in that too many people agree) Seru Girán was considered as The Latin American Beatles, in theory. Most of them knew rock through The Beatles; Garcia, a fanatical prodigy of classical music, met rock and roll through The Beatles. Lebón gave his first steps on guitar with Harrison, and Aznar, meanwhile, received in his 7 years the masterpiece of "Revolver", his first album, which opened a world of musical possibilities. We can also observe that in their first album, the compositions were leaded by Lebón y García, (mainly García). The magic of Lebón y García, although it was a difficult relationship than it seemed, was very similar to the Lennon - McCartney relationship. The work in of vocal harmonies of the band had a sonority very similar to the album Abbey Road, and the artistic work of the disc of 78 had an influence to The White Album. In fact, we can find that in their second album "La grasa de las capitales" (which we will talk about in the next article), the song that had the same name on the album, has a drum solo similar to "The end", song of The Beatles. In short, The Beatles was a huge influence for the band.

I just can say that this is just the first part of this investigation and it was incredible to learn about the universe of this 4 Argentine dreamers. I can identify with Seru Girán in many aspects, and one of the things that I could notice about each one was the dedication and work they did in the band. Even Spinetta admitted that they has been practically the most important band in Argentine rock. And in their beginning, we could understand that no matter what of the future of Seru Girán, every musician of the band had an incredible presence in any project that might come later.

Next, I would like to leave you an underground file where the 4 greats played some themes of this album. This appears in an special box of the argentine TV.

Serú Giran: Underground videos