A musical odyssey

The early days:

Lenny came into this world in mid-2006. Even before the actual line-up, there were Emiliano, a drummer whom I used to make music with when I was an early teenager, and Hernán, a local bassist who was a member of Desamparados ("Homeless" in Spanish), a Rock & Blues band from Tigre. This trio was more of an idea than a real band. We didn’t go further than four or five rehearsals with Emiliano, who left pretty soon as his real band was his priority. Even with Desamparados as his priority, Hernán didn’t quit the idea of taking part in this trio I had in mind.

Soon enough, I was asked to occupy the guitarist’s role in Desamparados. Lucas, the guitarist I was supposed to replace, was quitting. (Desamparados always had two guitars, though both shared the job equally. It isn’t that one was lead and the other rhythm.) I accepted the invitation, and even before becoming an official member of this band, I’d agreed on playing some keyboards on one or two of their songs for an upcoming gig. During the rest of that night’s set, I played backing guitar except for “Mary Had A Little Lamb” (S.R.V.’s version), in which I was special guest on lead guitar.

The whole point is that a rehearsal at my house had been arranged for this show. However, I was taken by surprise when the band rang the bell that evening. I had completely forgotten about it! It was no big deal though; we ended up rehearsing anyway.

This was the day I met Lenny’s future drummer: Gogui. Maxi Larreta, a great drummer from our city (and drummer in my original song “Heaven”) had stopped playing in Desamparados too. He neither quit nor was kicked out. It’s just that he has never been an official member. He had been only helping the band until they could find another drummer. Gogui has been friends with Martín, Desamparados main rhythm guitar player, for several years. Back then, he was Maxi’s apprentice. Martín asked him to join the band. He got into it.

When the rehearsal came to an end and I was seeing the band to the door, Gogui started to ask me about my musical tastes and such. We had a short yet fulfilling conversation about it. Eventually, we grew fond of each other. Our good musical relationship made me want to invite him to play with Hernán and me on our side project. It became a promising trio. However, we couldn’t develop as much as I would’ve liked to, but it was enough for me to see that this long-time idea of mine had potential.

One of the songs Hernán, Gogui and I managed to play right was “Friends” by Joe Satriani. We only played live once as openers for Desamparados during a gig that took place at my backyard. I remember we played “D.O.A.” and “Learn To Fly” by Foo Fighters as well. But “Friends” remains in my mind the biggest achievement with these two guys.

The truth is that Desamparados wasn’t my kind of music, honestly. It wasn’t bad, mind you, but my musical direction had a different path to follow so I couldn’t go further than a couple of gigs. Gogui wasn’t very comfortable either. He also left at the same time I did. Hernán quit the band too, but he stopped playing with Gogui and me at the same rate. The inevitable dissolution of Desamparados happened to be, and Hernán felt sad and even angry with the whole situation, not strictly with the members of the group, totally or partially. At least I didn’t get that feeling.

Gogui and I agreed on keeping our project alive even though there was no need of seeing each other until finding a bassist. Four months had passed before he phoned me with the good news: he asked Nicolás Morales, a friend of his, if he wanted to play with us, who in his turn said yes.

When we finally met each other at Gogui’s house, I realized I already knew Nico from somewhere else. It was during private math lessons. Gogui and he needed them for things related to university, and I for high-school stuff.  And here we were, together again but under very different circumstances (and surely more welcomed ones).

Nico was a Police fan. That suited some of our musical ideas. “Message In A Bottle” was the first song the new trio ever played. “New World Man” by Rush (one of their most Police-like songs) used to be a frequent number during rehearsals when Hernán was bassist. We kept on playing it, now with Nico on the 4-string.

This line-up looked more official to me; more time together, more songs rehearsed. At some point we had quite a few numbers down so we put up another gig at home. It was on March 24^th, 2007, the same day The Who was supposed to play live in Buenos Aires for the first time in their career. Unfortunately, the South American shows had been cancelled with months of anticipation. The coolest thing though is that Lenny (we already had the name of the band figured out by then) played “The Seeker” that night (based on Rush’s version). The point is that after all, music by the British group made itself heard in Argentina that day. Besides “The Seeker,” Lenny played these other songs as well: “Purple Haze” and “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” (The Jimi Hendrix Experience), “Message in A Bottle” and “Synchronicity II” (The Police), “New World Man” and “Closer To The Heart” (Rush), “Couldn’t Stand The Weather” (Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble), “Learn To Fly” (Foo Fighters), “Money" (Pink Floyd) and “Aeroplane” (RHCP). As you can see, all covers. Two originals made their way in later shows. One of them is nowadays pretty ruled out in my book, maybe with the exception of its guitar solo. But the other one works fine and it's ready for its official release.

Three or four shows were the only thing Lenny could do until calling it quits. Nico and Gogui were becoming increasingly busy with their university careers and jobs. I kept on playing music by and to myself, writing in the comfort of my bedroom. Some of the stuff that’s now available at my site is in fact music that was born during those days. It took years to finally be recorded. But time shouldn’t matter as long as things become real in the end.

Another chance to shine:

In 2010, we had another chance to play live. We took advantage of a Rock festival that the town hall organized. It was “The coming back of Lenny,” as it were. The most transcendental thing this time was, to me, Nico bringing up a Camel song: “Chord Change.” I only knew Camel by its name, never heard a song before. Nico searched it on You Tube the day we got together to talk about the upcoming gig. He wanted us to hear it and gave him our opinion. I immediately started playing my guitar on top of the recording, figuring out the single notes on the first part. “It sounds like a difficult song to play,” I said. But Nico said I was already nailing the notes and it was only on my first listen. So I gave myself time to learn it in its entirety during the following days.

Something kind of magical happened when I was in my bedroom sitting in front of the PC with the same You Tube window open on the next day: suddenly, I was inspired to extend the guitar solo by realizing it could be perfectly linked to “Aquatic Ambiance,” a David Wise composition he wrote for my favorite video game: Donkey Kong Country. This piece has marked my childhood. As a teenager, I stopped playing video games at all. For years, this tune had escaped me until one day my father, brother and I decided to have the Super Nintendo repaired. Next thing I know, my father got on the car and drove downtown to the service store, taking the Super NES with him. To his great surprise, the technician said the system was working perfectly and that there was nothing to repair. It was only rusty after all those years of not being used. Even all cartridges were in good conditions except for one: International Superstar Soccer, DELUXE!, another game I played tons of times when I was a kid. Pity, but both, DKC and DK2 (Diddy’s Kong Quest) were working fine and those were the most important to me.

     

By using the Super Nintendo again, I was able to learn “Aquatic Ambiance” on the guitar. My brother would select the first underwater stage on the island and go through all its difficulties, and I would listen carefully in order to figure out the tune’s main melody and bass notes.

Apart from the guitar solo, what follows in “Chord Change” is an organ break in F minor and Bb major. Now, if there’re two different kinds of solos and two different video games from the same saga my brother and I played over and over again at some point, DK2 OST (Original Soundtrack) mustn’t be left out of this musical/inner-child experience. “Forest Interlude,” the poignant main theme from the island’s haunted area, became the extension of the keys solo (Marian, my brother, was invited to play the keyboard in this number). This turned out to be my favorite part of the cover.

So all this made “Chord Change” the gem of the stuff we were going to play at the festival. We played it in every rehearsal prior to the final day. The other songs were “Sweet Miracle” (Rush), “Spirits In The Material World” (The Police), “All Along The Watchtower” (Bob Dylan, The Jimi Hendrix Experience version), “No Way Back” (Foo Fighters), “Couldn’t Stand The Weather” (Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble) and “Kashmir” (Led Zeppelin). The latter was only rehearsed one week before the day of the festival. I had the intention to make Marian play in not just one number. We opened with it on September 26^th, 2010 (Gogui’s twenty-fourth Birthday). Several local bands signed up in order to perform so there were only twenty minutes per band. After “Kashmir,” “Chord Change” followed (we had to make sure we were going to be able to include it!). Next came “All Along The Watchtower,” a very reliable and fulfilling song on many levels. That was the wrapping-up of our turn onstage.

And again, Lenny was put to rest for some time…

Present day:

The engine was restarted in late-2011 when Cristian Kukar, a drummer from my city, wanted to get together with me to jam and see how it went. I got to know him via Facebook through another drummer and Rush fan, Marcelo Camisay. I’d known this other guy because of his Blog dedicated to Rush: VT suena mal (Vapor Trails sounds bad). Please, don’t be fooled by its name. He loves that album, but he also has an acid sense of humor, and we all know many Rush fans aren’t happy with VT’s mix (it’s worth clarifying I’m not one of them).

Marcelo is from Boedo, one of the many neighborhoods downtown. So here’s a crazy thing the Internet allows: I finally got to meet a really good drummer who not only Rush is his favorite band but also likes bands such as Genesis and King Crimson (and lives just seven blocks away from home!!!) thanks to a stranger (almost) downtown, who I met face to face only once and had contact with via Blogger (nowadays via Facebook). What should it be made out of this?

Our first rehearsal together was as a guitar/drums duet. The first song we tried out was “Dreamline.” We were pretty amazed at one another and the way we pulled it off on that first run. It made me aware of how much Cristian was into Rush, especially Neil Peart. “Dreamline” is a song that I’d suggested to Nico and Gogui when Lenny was an actual band. They never felt O.K. with it for some reason, neither with “Omega Man” by The Police. These two songs waited a long time to make it to the stage (by Lenny obviously. “Dreamline” has been frequently played live by Rush ever since it was released as part of the Roll The Bones album, and “Omega Man” could’ve been performed somewhere by somebody else than the British trio between 2006/2012). With Cristian, it was easier to choose songs thanks to our mutual musical tastes. 

You know, this is nice and all, but a piece of the puzzle was still missing: the bassist. Now, you can have a show without keys and/or rhythm guitar if you strategically choose Power Trio songs. But in Rock and Popular music in general, drums and guitar alone can’t survive. The bass is what links both instruments as it works rhythmically with the drums and hits notes at the same time, which work hand in hand with what the guitar does. A keyboard player yielding synth bass notes with his/her left hand or feet (in the case of the latter, by triggering sounds with foot pedals) may do, yet an actual bass player is the real deal… and that was missing.

Gustavo Centurión is a very good, experienced bass player. He’s a member of Chop Suey, a band in which my father sang in the Nineties. He was the only one who commented on my Facebook Status addressed to any bass player in the Northern Area of Buenos Aires saying that I could count on him. We rehearsed “Dreamline,” “Omega Man” and “All Along The Watchtower” as a duo only once. I was eager to arrange a rehearsal with the three of us after having jammed with him. But as good a bassist as he is, it’s obvious that he’s on constant demand. He had too much projects on with other people already, and after a summer tour with Los Hermanos Butaca (The Butaca Bros.) he realized he wasn’t going to be able to join Cristian and me. This initiated a new search for the much needed bass player.

My phone number guide still had Gervasio’s number in it. He’s a guy I met twice in my life. Now for another crazy anecdote, though the Internet isn’t involved in its craziness…

In December of 2008, I went to Jardín Musical (Musical Garden), a CD/DVD store that has everything I’m interested in buying when it comes to music. If that desired product isn’t right at the store, the ones who run it ask for it from abroad. This time, I had to pick up an Eric Johnson album I’d ordered long ago: Ah Via Musicom. As I was wearing my Fly By Night T-shirt, the one that Carlos Prete painted for me in Villa Gesell (a coast town where tourists go to for holidays), this complete stranger approached me, pointed at Carlos’ drawing and said “Hey, go Rush!” That sparked a half-an-hour conversation that simply began with him introducing himself: “Hi, I’m Gervasio.” That name took me instantly back to San Isidro, around a decade ago when I was just a child…

Javier, my childhood friend and neighbor, had invited me to one of the McDonalds in San Isidro as it was the only one nearby with a ball pit so kids could have some fun besides eating their hamburgers (IMPORTANT: It’s been many years since I visited any McDonalds for the last time). His mother drove us to this place. During that night, another kid spent the whole time with Javier and me. He was called Gervasio, a very unusual name for sure. It was one of those typical moments when you become friends with strangers of your own age just for the moment. When I heard that name again at Jardín Musical and saw the guy straight in the face, I couldn’t believe it: it was the same person indeed, though much taller now. I didn’t say anything because it felt kind of strange, plus I would’ve found it hard to explain at that very moment (I guess that, in his turn, it would’ve been hard for Gervasio to understand). It was the wisest choice after all. It allowed us to focus on music right from the get-go, which was the whole point. For instance, he’d gone to the CD store in order to buy a copy of Foxtrot, that classic Genesis album.

Before saying goodbye he gave me his cellphone number and the name of his band: Girana Clown. I gladly accepted those contacts of his even though I wasn’t into playing live in those days.

Quite a long time had passed until I finally searched Girana Clown on You Tube. I was a bit confused when I read comments left on one of the videos and channel. They were encouraging and supportive towards the members of the band more than the band itself. After reading a bit more, I understood them: Santiago Urbani was their guitar player, a young boy from Tigre who was murdered. I was shocked, and all I could think about was the injustice and terrible sadness that’s attached to such a hard thing as that. I preferred to stay away from the band. It felt too sensitive, and I could notice such a strong bond between the members of GC (understandably so).

By this same time, my cyber activity saw its beginnings. (More on this is found in “Dreams…”, a post from the past available at this same Blog.)

Cristian and I were still in Limbo. We couldn’t move forward without a bass player. That’s how I fell for coming back to the general phone number guide at home to search Gervasio’s number again. Seconds after doing this, I encountered a major drawback: the number didn’t apply to a client in service anymore. The only way I could contact him was through Girana Clown. My Facebook account had been reactivated by then after six months of being put down because of me getting fed up on that social network. I browsed at their page (an alternative to Girana Clown’s You Tube channel) and read a lot about Santiago again, which made me stop in my tracks once more. I saw they were closer than ever, and once again that made me feel awkward. You know, to ask the band a contact of their bass man in order to invite him to play in something else that GC. “How would they take it?” was the burning question I was making to myself. But in the end, it proved to be silly because my plan wasn’t to form a band, let alone steal Girana Clown’s bassist. That’s what I eventually explained to Gervasio after he replied to my message, the one I sent to Girana Clown’s E-mail address, two weeks later.

The idea of this thing I was building up was to present music that was, in my opinion, worth it. I typed a possible set list and sent it to Gervasio. Eventually, most of those songs became a part of the final show. He was enthusiastic about it and showed commitment right from the beginning. He had his hand insured after a soccer match he’d had with his friends so he couldn’t rehearse the first time, but he wanted to be present at the rehearsal anyway to listen to the stuff Cristian and I had been working on. Fortunately, he liked everything, covers and originals alike, and was eager to start learning the songs as soon as his hand was back in shape.

Some stuff, as I said before, works well as a Power Trio, but other songs that were worth playing needed something else. That’s the case of “Cosmic Suspension,” one of my originals. This song incorporates keyboard sounds, and they’re far from being secondary. Marian was the one who tackled the keyboard part in the end. His input made the song sound different from the virtual collab version, in which I played keys myself, even though the structure didn’t change. Now it was improved and more adventurous.

It wasn’t in my plans to play something by Yes as I’ve never found a way to cover their complex music live properly. Gervasio was a bit insistent about adding a Yes song to our repertoire, though. I knew there was no chance, let alone if the idea was to play something by the classic line-up: Anderson, Squire, Howe, Wakeman & White, which was Gervasio’s mind in the first place. Well, I was wrong. Life showed me the way by randomly making me select (from a folder filled with more than a thousand songs) “Ritual” twice, not in a row but the first time during one night and the second right on the next. I grabbed my guitar and started to figure out its parts without even listening to the recording. I went for it with no boundaries at all. Here’s when I understood there wasn’t any need to strictly respect the structure of a Yes song in order to make your own version of it. This 21-minute+ epic has so much to it, one can learn many parts and put them together the way they think it’s better. The results were a 7-minute+ cover (the 40-second guitar intro wasn’t part of the virtual collaboration with Dave Becher, Ron Hall and Cees Van Ooijen, neither of the live version as the latter’s intro was treated with the keyboard’s Strings sound).

Regardless of having come up with this manageable version, more viable and rewarding, I kept on believing Lenny wasn’t going to make it work. Gervasio suggested that we should at least take between one and two minutes of material out of the 7-minute track. My ears pricked. This made me think of a seamless connection between the “Ritual” experiment and “Cosmic Suspension.” Both songs require keyboard, and Marian already knew how to play the latter. “Ritual” became kind of an extended intro to “Cosmic.” We only played from 5:00 onwards plus the addition of the strings intro, which suited Marian coming onstage for his spotlight during the show.

All this matter wasn’t making Cristian happy. He’s more inclined to the other face of Yes: the late-Eighties and early-Nineties. Besides, I’d already announced on Facebook that we were going to play music by the English quintet, and two minutes of one of their songs connected to another one that wasn’t even written by the same artist wasn’t enough. He had a point. We discussed it though Facebook Chat and finally came to the conclusion that adding “Soon”, third movement from “Gates Of Delirium,” was the solution to this particular issue. I know, it’s also a Seventies piece, but it’s one of those Cristian likes all the same.

The other original song that didn’t work well as a Power Trio was “The Battle Of The Pelennor Fields,” one of the two originals I wrote inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Its official version contains the following elements: lead & rhythm guitar, bass, drums and orchestral arrangements (sampler sounds). There were a total of twenty-nine audio tracks for it before Dave Williams (sound mixer) was sent all of the files to do the final mix.

When playing live, the responsible for the creation of the music that’s meant to be presented wants to do the original version as much justice as possible. In the case of “Pelennor,” I was far from expecting an eighteen-piece orchestra to share the stage with the Rock ensemble. At least, I saw that I could edit the master orchestra track by reducing it to a 30-second intro (live sampler), which was a nice touch. However, a rhythm guitar was essential to pull “Pelennor” off.

My Facebook activity made me cross paths with many good musicians from Buenos Aires. However, I couldn’t get anyone to fill the rhythm guitarist’s spot for the show, which anyway was still on its foundations. In all this, I was having frequent Facebook conversations with Nico Haut, my brother’s friend and band partner in Shimatria as guitarist. During one of these conversations, I said to Nico “Wait a minute… you’re a guitar player.” “Ah… yes” he said, replying to my obvious affirmation. “I’ve been looking for one in order to cover ‘Pelennor’ live. How is it that I didn’t think of you in the first place? You’ve been right here all this time!” Needless to say, I invited him right then. He gladly acceded. 

Apart from the rhythm guitarist, I needed an alternative bassist too. Gervasio learnt most of the stuff in time. “Pelennor” was the only song he couldn’t learn with the necessary anticipation. (A date for the show had already been set by this time so we couldn’t fool around). I thought of Gustavo Centurión again. It was only one song, not an entire set list now. Maybe he would agree on playing it. He replied days after I messaged him saying that, in his opinion, the song was awesome, but he was still very busy giving shows with other people so he had to decline my new invitation.

You could say Nico (Morales) was probably the obvious choice right from the beginning. But given that he’s also a very busy person, though maybe in a different way than Gustavo, I let the chance of inviting him pass. For almost two years we’ve been working together on DelgiftC08, my website (apart from being a bass player, he’s also a web designer). This means that we’ve been having contact recently, no matter if it’s been through E-mails mostly.

“Pelennor” was such a great number, maybe the most important out of the four originals that made it to that tentative set list I’d sent to Gervasio months before, as it’s some sort of a fan-favorite. It would’ve been a shame to leave it out so I went ahead and invited Nico to learn and play it. Glad I did because he didn’t hesitate in saying yes.

Late-September, 2012:

Two or three months before the Lenny gig, an alternative one came out of nowhere. I called it Prog at the Gallery given that it was going to be part of a series of gigs at Art galleries in Buenos Aires, where other musicians were also going to perform. Lancelot, the organizer whom I met through Ale Sganga (more on him later), wanted me to be in charge of the September Gallery Night. My mind was busy enough with Lenny, but I said to Lancelot that if I came up with something good for this in time, I would do it. And so it was.

The Prog at the Gallery concept was… well… Prog. I took it as Classic Prog Rock rather than Neo Prog, therefore, the following numbers:

1) Panacea (Rush) - guitar & vocals by C

2) The Clap (Steve Howe) - guitar by July Valls

3) A los jóvenes de ayer (Serú Girán) - piano by Axel Taglia

4) After The Ordeal (Genesis) - by Axel (piano), July (acoustic guitar) & C (electric guitar)

5) Epitaph (King Crimson) - by Ale (violin) and C (guitar & vocals)

6) Soon (Yes) - by Ale, Axel, July & C

7) Ritual (Yes) - “virtually live” by Dave Becher (drums), Ron Hall (bass), Cees Van Ooijen (synths) & C (guitar)

What a great experience was to perform at that gallery! Each track had a life of its own. “After The Ordeal,” to pick up one song, ended up in there because Axel had watched “Chord Change” virtually covered by Dave, Ron, Marian & C after I shared the link to that video on his Facebook Wall. If Lenny played that song a little less than two years earlier it’s because Nico had seen Axel’s band, The Farm, play this instrumental by Camel before we got together again. When I shared the virtual cover of “Chord Change” with Axel and explained all this to him, he said he was in for any other virtual collaboration project. I told him to choose a song of his preference. Genesis was his choice. He suggested “After The Ordeal,” a song I’d never really heard before, and I even have a copy of Selling England By The Pound! But up to that point, I’ve only been paying attention to the first three songs on that record, “Dancing With The Moonlit Knight,” “I Know What I Like… (In Your Wardrobe)” and “Firth Of Fifth.” I took my copy upstairs and played the CD on track #6. I was glad to see that the guitar part was just melodic lines and not chord sequences. It’s easier to figure out single note patterns rather than complex chord structures, especially if you aren’t familiar with the original composer’s style, which was my case even though people generally comment on my videos saying that they can hear a bit of Steve Hackett in my playing. Cool, but I haven’t heard much of his music except for these Genesis songs plus the A Trick Of The Tail album. Maybe I’ve been influenced by guitarists who, in their turn, had been influenced by Hackett at some stage in their careers, I don’t know. 

There was no need to play the record again to learn the bass part. It’s incredibly easy. In fact, I came up with my own bass work. As usual, I helped myself with the kick drum. Dave was the one in charge of the drumming and tambourine on the virtual version.

July came into the scene via You Tube. For years, he’s been friends with Julie Rupp Oakes, a mutual virtual friend of ours from Florida, United States of America. I got a positive comment from him in one of my originals. Two comments actually, one in “Clovers In The Field” and the other in “The Battle Of The Pelennor Fields.” When I entered his channel to thank him for his words, I learned that he was a guitar player too, and from Buenos Aires! Small world, huh? Months later, I found out he had a Facebook account so I added him as a friend. Many conversations we had until one day, we agreed on doing something together. That night at the gallery was the first chance we had of doing so. Instead of my playing both parts on “After The Ordeal,” as I did on the virtual cover, we split the job in two: he played the lead during the first half on the acoustic guitar and I played the electric guitar from the middle to the end.

On Ale:

Ale Sganga was my fiddle teacher in early-2010. I wanted to play Celtic music with a proper instrument for it for the first time. I commented this to Nico, who also listens to Irish Celtic music (this is also why we hit it off), during an early meeting this same year. His only recommendation to me was Escuela de Música Celta de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires Celtic Music School). “Ale Sganga is the fiddle teacher,” he simply said. 

I searched this Celtic Music school on Google. I found its site rather quickly. Ale’s personal E-mail address was at the bottom of the site’s home page. After exchanging E-mails, a first and private lesson was arranged. I took some more after this one, one per week. I think it was during the third when I had my Test For Echo T-shirt put on (another Rush album cover painted by Carlos). And how odd, this other T-shirt sparked a new conversation based on music, as it happened with Gervasio less than two years earlier. It made Ale say that during his teens, he was really into playing bass, and that there was constant talk about Rush’s bass player, Geddy Lee, for he was very skilled (and still is). That inevitably led us to Prog Rock in general. King Crimson was the second band we talked about. Ale played the riff in “21^st Century Schizoid Man,” though I didn’t know the song back then. But when he brought up Yes, the only thing I heard coming out of that violin was “Soon,” its vocal line. Right there, I knew it was a MUST. Ale’s been a Yes fan for more than thirty years. I’m sure it was second nature to him to play melody lines from his favorite songs on the violin. But it was something quite special to me, something that lingered inside.

I contacted Ale again months later, but now I did because I wanted to make a virtual cover of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” by U2, based on different Celtic instrumental versions I’ve heard on some of my Celtic compilation CDs. Lance Reed from Minnesota, USA, a percussionist I met through one of his videos on You Tube, was going to play Bodhrán. My job was to add the acoustic and electric guitars plus a little bit of synths and soft percussion. The essential fiddle was missing though. It was already envisioned on the arrangement. I wasn’t good enough and by then I’d stopped taking fiddle lessons and practicing at home at all. (But I feel the eagerness to play fiddle is coming back to me, little by little.) Whatever, I only needed someone to lay the fiddle track down. Ale agreed on adding the missing piece.

We both felt “I Still Haven’t Found…” was going to work better than “Soon” for some reason. Now, I know the problem with the latter was the lack of a meaningful excuse to present it. When Prog at the Gallery came to be, and July and Axel were met and in for this project, Ale and I finally found what we were looking for: the right people, and everything under the right circumstances. This is also how Lenny itself eventually ended up performing this Yes piece of music. 

Prog at the Gallery ended up being a very spontaneous thing, even though you may find it hard to believe. I’m amazed by the fact that I was able to put four musicians (without counting the virtual ones for “Ritual,” who were displayed on a giant screen) together in such a short period of time. It worked fine. It had the advantage of being a non-official opening act to Jon Anderson just ten blocks away. Ale and I attended that concert after our gig. Some of the people in the audience did too, all of them Facebook contacts. It was a great night for sure.

October:

Now there was one month left before Lenny at Cendas so rehearsals for that kept on going. As we already know, the Yes issue was thankfully left behind, but there was one more thing to pay heed to… I had promoted the event saying that King Crimson’s music was also going to be part of the show. But the truth is Cristian, Gervasio and I had only thirty seconds of “In The Court Of The Crimson King” as outro to “Son Of Mr. Green Genes” by Frank Zappa, a far worse case than playing “Ritual” for two minutes and that’s it. Fortunately, the solution was already there: “Epitaph,” but now in its rocking version, not the acoustic Ale and I had played at the gallery. And what’s even better, it connects perfectly with the KC “wink of the eye” as the latter finishes in B major, the dominant chord for E minor, which is the first in “Epitaph.”

Even before encountering this other problem, Gervasio had said that the ending on “The Wreckers,” a Rush song from their latest album we were rehearsing, could be linked to “Epitaph” pretty seamlessly too given that the ending I’d come up with (the original studio version fades out) was in E minor. But “Epitaph” wasn’t part of the set back then, not even Prog at the Gallery was in existence yet. Of course, it was eventually thrown in there anyway, though it had nothing to do with "The Wreckers" after all. We even changed the ending on this Rush song after the band set off with their Clockwork Angels tour. Cristian preferred the more energetic ending, the song’s intro in the key of D major played as outro.

And finally, thanks to the fact that we went through all this necessary process, the ideal set list saw the light:

1) Xanadu/Dreamline (Rush/Rush)

2) Caras Galadhon (C)

3) The Battle Of The Pelennor Fields (C)

4) Omega Man (The Police)

5) Future’s Mystery (C)

6) Between Sun & Moon (Rush)

7) Soon (Yes)

8) Ritual/Cosmic Suspension (Yes/C)

9) The Wreckers (Rush)

10) Son Of Mr. Green Genes/In The Court Of The Crimson King/Epitaph (Frank Zappa/King Crimson)

11) All Along The Watchtower (Bob Dylan, The Jimi Hendrix Experience version)

Now, it was all about playing these songs together every Saturday night until the final one on October 27^th.

And that night finally came…

The set went as planned… almost. Marian turned around while the audience was applauding and cheering us after “Ritual/Cosmic Suspension” to say he was actually playing his keyboard song. One week before the show during lunch he told me he wanted to include a keyboard solo he’d been writing. I said that if he felt comfortable with it, he was more than welcome to do it. His composition seems from another dimension, as it generally happens with what he writes on his own. That was the kind of vibe many people at the audience claimed to have felt.

Apart from Marian’s solo, the other unexpected thing that occurred was that instead of us saying goodbye before “All Along The Watchtower,” we played everything we had prepared non-stop. People asked for another song but there wasn’t anything left… Unless… “Panacea!” I remembered it from Prog at the Gallery, of course. It was just one more tune, which didn’t even need band. So there was actually a real encore, a thing that came completely out of the blue. At the gallery, I played and sang it better, in my opinion. We should take into account that I had been rehearsing it a lot for that first 2012 gig. I didn’t play it anymore and suddenly, I was right there onstage, facing an audience eager for more music. It was the perfect song to wrap the night up though. Even someone cried “Something else by Rush, Claudio!” Hope he liked it. During the Gallery Night, an unexpected band was playing inside one of the places where pictures were at exhibition. They stopped when July followed with “The Clap.” I saw myself forced to sacrifice “Panacea,” the opening number, in order to make them shut up as it was our turn. I took this encore as life wanting this beautiful and peaceful Rush song to have a proper spotlight, the one it always deserved.

Homeward cyclers:

Something had been making me restless ever since this live gig was put up: how was I supposed to come back home from the show? I knew the best way was to make it a bike ride, but I needed to put things in order if I wanted to do that.

On Wednesday night, I called my friend Juani to ask him if he’d like to be my riding partner. He’d told me he was preparing himself to travel to North-Western Argentina, province of Salta, in February of 2013. He’d go by bus with his bike disassembled as another piece of luggage. He didn’t intend to visit places in there if there wasn’t any biking involved. My invitation came in handy for him, kind of an excuse to train his body for the upcoming trip. He immediately agreed. As he did, he got inside the front cabin's truck, the one rented to move all of the equipment plus the bikes from home to the venue, with me once the driver arrived in perfect time that Saturday.

After saying hi to everyone who approached me after the show and receiving a really nice gift from my friend Odalis (strawberry jam made with organic sugar) Juani and I left the building. I had to make sure everything was packed and ready to go before allowing myself to return home. My father, who apart from renting the venue also rented a van to bring friends from Tigre to the show, was going to bring all of the equipment back by the means of this same vehicle. Once everything was checked, Juani, Juampi (responsible for the filming during Lenny’s performance) and I, three friends still together from our days in school, went to the first corner that was at our right on the opposite sidewalk as there was a pizza house: Zapi. I never eat before singing live. I don’t want to feel heavy, as it were. It always works, but now I needed to regain energy after so much work, whether it was during the setting-up or the performance itself. Either way, both things were physically demanding.

We didn’t have pizza after all. The food house also had veggie empanadas and Napoli cheese cake on its menu, and that’s what we had for a bite.

The guys in Pitagorax Anselmo, a Progressive Metal band from Quilmes (Southern Area of

Gran Buenos Aires) came to the show. Gastón “Gatex” Bernstein, their keyboardist, guitarist and singer, is the one I know from Facebook. He came and brought his girlfriend and two other friends, one of them being Pitagorax Anselmo’s bass player, Pablo Chamorro. When Juani, Juampi and I sat down on a table outdoors, these people were already there having their meal at the next one. I had a short conversation with Gastón. He said he’d like to do something together in the future. There’s plenty of stuff that could be done so we’ll surely join forces sooner or later.

Around a quarter of an hour later both groups left the tables and started to walk towards the streetlight in which the bikes were chained. “I was sure you were joking when you said through the microphone you were coming back to Tigre by bicycle,” was Pablo’s comment when he saw our non-motorized vehicles for himself. Another comment I got from him, related to music this time, was that executing “In The Court…” and all of a sudden switching to “Epitaph” was surprising; a good move, so to speak. In a way, that was the idea, similarly to what I first intended by playing “Xanadu” (intro only) and adding a “Permanent Waves” sound (the one at the end of “Natural Science”) to Theo Heidfeld’s electronic percussion sampler at the end so Cristian could start with “Dreamline” while the wave sound faded out.

It was time for Juani and me to ride back. We said goodbye to Juampi, who drove to the gig and now had to cross the street to reach his 4-wheel. Pablo wished us a “bon voyage” while we were bidding Pitagorax Anselmo farewell.

The night was the best you could ask for: great weather, not a strong wind but a refreshing one. We felt maybe one or two drops of water coming down from the sky, but luckily, it never rained.

Downtown is full of bike paths. They helped us to avoid the typical traffic that can be found in this area. However, on Saturday nights it isn’t as crowded as, say, Monday at midday. We took advantage of all the bike paths in our way to make the best time possible. Following them eventually led us to Avenida del Libertador. Here’s when I turned around and cried at my partner, who was a few meters behind me: “Now I feel as if I’m already at home!” This is an avenue that covers around thirty kilometers. It stretches from downtown’s central train station to San Fernando, right in its limit with Tigre. We only had to ride it almost in its entirety. (Even though we had to reach its furthest point and beyond, we hadn’t been led from the last bike path to Libertador’s point of start at Retiro - train station mentioned above - but a bit closer to the Northern Area where we belong to, therefore, “almost in its entirety.” I thought it was worth clearing that out.) Anyway, both of us have ridden this whole area, whether it was together or alone, many times in the past. We knew where to take a parallel and more comfortable road if we had a mind to do it.

Juani had ridden his bike with Cristian Caceres, another friend of ours and riding partner on “The Tale of the Great Journey,” at noon on this same Saturday, which was now early-Sunday really. He was, understandably, a bit tired and needed a rest. We stopped at San Isidro’s main park next to the hugest cathedral I’ve ever seen. What I clearly remember from this stop was Juani’s comment about my riding back instead of getting on the rented van with the rest of the people who were coming back to Tigre that way. “Now you’d be there, still talking with everyone about the show and such, yet you aren’t.” He completely understood, without my having to explain anything, why the bike was my choice. A show is an occasion in which a lot of time is spent with people. That’s something I truly appreciate a lot, the fact that family members, friends and Internet contacts alike come to enjoy the music you’re delivering. Then you get their much welcomed feedback (if the job was done well and they know how to appreciate it). But that nice moment should stop in time, not be stretched for too long. The bike gave me that sense of freedom, an escape from that stream of comments about something that had just happened. Time on your own allows reflection, and that’s also much appreciated. Plus it was an emblematic ending, a celebration of everything I’ve been doing for so long, all in one single night.

We hit the road again a few minutes later. Maybe a little more than half an hour after our stop we finally arrived at our city. At the first bridge we encountered, the nearest to Tigre’s train station, we said goodbye to each other. But just before the two of us parted ways, Juani said another thing that was really simple, yet nice and true: “Well, everything ended up perfectly.” It really was like that. It felt great to be so close to conclude months and months (not to say years) of experiences and quickly look back and realize everything worked out in the end.

It didn’t even take me five minutes to arrive at my house. When I took the keys out of my bag, Liu came from the shadows to greet me with her gentle meowing and tender body caress between my ankles.