Bundle - Set of 2 items: Memoir and Vinyl Album

On my first day, I walked into the classroom and saw this kid sitting in the back row laughing.

He looked at me from across the classroom and began waving for me to come over and sit next to him. He must have heard that I was from America. From the looks of the kid, I had a feeling that sitting next to him might lead to trouble. I didn’t know what to do.

There I was standing in front of a full classroom, the teacher not in the room yet. These were my very first moments ever at a school in Argentina—everything around me seemed so strange. I had to make a decision. I welcomed his invitation and took my seat. His name was Sergio, and he later became my best friend throughout the rest of my time in high school.

My school, Instituto Ricardo Rojas, was located in a tranquil, sunny suburban neighborhood called Cerro de las Rosas, which means Hill of Roses. It was surrounded by beautiful homes all in a row, with flower gardens, orange and grapefruit trees blossoming, the type of homes that you might see in Italy.

As my first day of class was underway, I was looking out the classroom window next to my desk, and I could see a house that had metal shutters with bullet holes in them. The houses surrounding it were all lovely homes with cars parked in the driveways; you could tell families lived in them. But this one house had bullet holes in the shutters.

Using my broken Spanish and hand gestures, I asked Sergio, "Why does that house have those bullet holes?"

"Well, a few years back, there was this girl with a machine gun in the house who would not surrender to the police, so there was a standoff. The girl was a university student, and part of the communist guerrilla movement blowing things up and trying to take over the country," Sergio explained.

"A university student?" I asked.

"Yes, and her dad was a doctor and well off," Sergio continued. "She had been holed up in her house with a machine gun and refused to surrender, so one day the military drove a tank up this street. She was shooting at them from that window up there, so they blew her away."

I couldn't believe what Sergio just recounted. He said it very matter-of-factly, unfazed.

Only 90 days earlier I had been in Darien, Connecticut, watching reruns of "The Brady Bunch."

"So how long ago did this happen?" I asked.

"Maybe two or three years ago."

"How come they haven't replaced the shutters by now?"

"Because no one lives there—it's empty."

"Well, why not?"

"After that happened, no relatives wanted to say they knew the girl or the family, or claim the property, for fear of being associated with the girl's guerrilla network and being "disappeared." It's been empty ever since."

May 1985—Como’s first performance.

There was no sound check—heck, there wasn't even a stage. We were going to be playing in the corner of the room with cafe tables just six feet in front of us. I was frantically plugging in my effect pedals and tuning my guitar, and all the while, I could hear the crowd getting more and more rowdy, and they started chanting for us to play.

Everything was feeling chaotic. Marcelo had his fingers bandaged because of blisters. I had no PA to sing through—instead I was going to sing through Marcelo's bass amp, and we had only rehearsed four times.

Javier had brought his boom box, put it next to his drum kit, pushed in a cassette, and hit record to capture our first performance. I was feeling under pressure, as I knew everyone was going to be looking right at me. I started hearing a few wisecracks from the audience, so I knew we had to start right then.

I turned to the band and saw both Javier and Marcelo staring right at me, and I counted off "The Rock," the epic instrumental original Javier and I came up with, and perfect for an opener. An AC/DC hard rocker mixed with a Police vibe and Chuck Berry guitar solos.

We took the audience by surprise and held their full attention for the entire song. Because of nerves, we played at a ridiculously fast pace. I don't think it was what the audience had expected at all, but at the end of our opener, the audience gave us an immediate, thrilling response. We delivered and met the hyped-up expectations, luckily.

No one noticed that we got lost on the ending. I stopped where I thought the song was supposed to end, but Javier just kept playing, so I quickly started playing again like it was on purpose. We just barely knew our songs and weren't totally sure where or how to end any of them—we'd just look at each other when we felt it was time to stop.

I had already played live many times before, but this was the first time for Javier and Marcelo. After the show, Javier confessed that in the cab on the way over, he had a panic attack, and Marcelo felt like throwing up the entire ride.

After opening with our best song, "The Rock," we risked losing the crowd if we didn't keep delivering at the same level. Well, when you had a room full of riled-up Argentine rockers, you had to—that was the challenge of performing. Our second song, "Ode to the Great Depression," which I wrote during my lunch break in New York, was a fast-paced, melancholy rocker. We quickly launched into the song which introduced the audience to me singing in English.

The audience was surprised again by our music, and I could see many turning to each other, likely commenting that I was singing in English. The song itself and our energy maintained their attention, and when we finished, they reacted with surprised excitement. They realized we were a band worth sticking around for.

But it was when we were in the middle of our third song that things got completely nuts. "I've Changed My Mind," another original, was a blisteringly fast, power-pop song that had an epic break in the middle with major power chords like The Who. During this break, the audience started cheering and yelling, which juiced us up even more, and we started to really get into it.

Then, at the height of the epic break with The Who power chords and Javier going nuts on the drums, one guy in the audience lost it. He suddenly stood on his chair, jumped up, and literally started swinging from the light fixture above him. He was swinging back and forth in the air, letting out a long, sustained yell, while we were rocking out. I couldn’t believe how anyone could do that and not care about the possibility of the light fixture along with the whole ceiling caving in and falling all over him, but there he was, swinging and screaming, while we were peaking the audience with this song. And the guy never fell.

It was electrifying to watch from the stage—it was just fantastic!

I knew in rehearsal that we sounded good, and we had something special. However, I never expected this kind of reaction from our first performance.

I was completely surprised, and so was the audience.

Entering this small mountain town, I was completely bewildered by what I saw; all the houses looked like they were German. "How could there possibly be a German mountain village in the middle of Argentina?" I wondered.

We passed through the small village, and then traveled a winding road way up the mountain almost to the top, until we finally arrived at the house. There were no neighbors anywhere, just this large lodge-style home at the top of the mountain with a beautiful panoramic view and a parking lot.

Yes, the house had a parking lot, meaning paved blacktop with white-painted parking dividers for like a dozen cars. I was simply amazed. I couldn't get over it—who in the world lived here?

We parked in one of the spaces, and walked up to the house and rang the doorbell.

We were greeted by a beautiful blonde girl and her brother, the birthday boy, who was also blond and very effeminate. They were both dressed in loose white linen high-end clothing.

We introduced ourselves, and the birthday boy asked us to follow him and walked us through the house to what looked like a large open living room, except it wasn't. It was more like a private performance room for an audience with a white semicircle elevated platform on the far side of the room. It all looked very modern and minimalistic.

"You'll be playing here," he told us.

He then started running around the room in his flowing white clothing with his arms spread out like he was dancing in some kind of modern ballet. He then made an exit out of the room and kind of ignored us after that.

The birthday boy seemed quite extravagant. He gave me the impression that he came from a high-status family of European, perhaps German, descent who had the ability to have a band play at his party in this impressive performance room in the mountains.

The fact was, we weren’t formally invited to the party itself, as we didn't know the host personally. We were just the band for the birthday boy's grand celebration, so after we grabbed something to eat, we decided to have a bit of a celebration of our own by opening some beers in the car while we waited in the birthday boy’s parking lot.

We hung out laughing and joking, enjoying our beers until it was about 15 minutes before we were supposed to take the stage. We got out of the car, and started getting our things together when Federico whispered, “Hey, guys, I’ve got a great idea.” We all looked at him as he slowly pulled out a spliff from his pocket and lit up, suggesting that it would be a great idea to make sure we really rocked on stage.

Soon enough, we were all ready. We walked over to the house under a moonlit evening in the mountains.

There was a guy standing at the front door when we arrived.

"Who invited you?" he asked.

"We're the band, and it's time for us to play," Federico replied.

The door guy waved us in. I wondered, “Who would have a door guy at the top of a mountain?”

Federico and I each entered with our guitars strapped over our shoulders, and Martin with drumsticks in hand.

We saw that there were already quite a lot of people in front of the performance room dancing. A DJ was playing Duran Duran’s “Planet Earth,” which really surprised me, and the crowd was really into it. Everyone looked at us as we walked through the crowd of trendy, beautiful twenty-somethings all around us. There was a mystery about who we were and what we would play.

As I was walking through this sea of bodies and faces, the spliff really started to kick in, and I wasn't sure which way the stage was, but I was enjoying this euphoric feeling and everyone looking at me. The whole experience was enhanced, and I was in seventh heaven with excitement and anticipation that in a minute or two we'd be on stage performing.

All eyes were on us, and we felt it. I wore my blue paisley blazer with '80s shoulder pads which I had picked up in Greenwich Village, a black T-shirt and red cargo pants, with an '80s spiky haircut shining with gel.

Federico wore a black leather jacket and his '50s pompadour haircut, T-shirt, and red All-Star high-tops. Martin wore denim, black boots, and a T-shirt with a denim vest.

The magic moment had arrived as we climbed onto the stage. A bit of nervousness started to flow through my veins, which added to the thrill as I realized that we were now live on the stage and everyone was watching us even though we hadn't started yet. It was time for me to plug in my guitar.

I looked around the stage for my cable, but I couldn't find it. This is when things started to unravel.

I walked to my amp and started to follow the guitar cable trying to find the end that plugged into my guitar, but I was too disoriented and I just couldn't seem to find the end of the cable.

I realized I was too high from the beer and the spliff. I could also tell the audience was waiting, so I went over to Federico and said, "Hey, Fede, I can't find my plug to plug in my guitar. I'm so buzzed. Can you help me find it?"

Federico smiled at me with a huge grin, and started laughing and said, "I'm totally fucked up right now."

I was relieved it wasn't just me, but he was totally no help at all.

I tried to gather all my superhuman powers of concentration to find the plug end of my cable. I started to follow my cable foot by foot using my hands, thinking I'd get to the end, but I ended up at my effects pedals on the floor.

I dropped down on my hands and knees and tried to follow the cable from my effects pedals to the end of the cable, but I got lost on the stage again. The red and blue stage lights on us only further added to my complete disorientation.

I began crawling around on all fours on the stage in front of a live crowd, not capable of plugging my own guitar in. I realized we were now in huge trouble.

In Carlos Paz there was an exquisite nightclub called Keops, which was shaped like a pyramid and rose two or more stories high. It was considered the premier nightclub in the area. There I was, 17, motivated by the hundreds of girls packed into Keops, gin and tonics in hand.

Saturday nights, I was lucky enough to be one of five passengers in Luis Albertini's car driving at full speed toward Carlos Paz from Cordoba. Our crew usually consisted of Luis and his younger brother Tomas, Sergio, myself, and Pimpi.

Luis was a great-looking guy—every girl's dream, and he had the car. He also had his pick of any girl in the entire nightclub. He would just have to stand at the bar, and I was always amazed at how many absolutely beautiful girls would actually come up to talk to him. He was a super-nice, down-to-earth guy—really funny, and always wearing a smile.

His younger brother Tomas was just 14, but he was tall and looked older, so he got into the clubs with us without any problem.

Pimpi was the anomaly of the group. He was definitely not the brightest, a bit of a goofy guy with buck teeth. I had no idea how he became part of the Saturday night crew. Perhaps he was someone's cousin or something. He could always be found dancing on his own under the disco lights, smoking a cigarette. The thing was, Pimpi was always up for anything, just like the rest of us. He loved to dance, and he could be really funny and would make us all laugh. He was just always there and ready to go when it was time to head to Carlos Paz.

Luis and Pimpi were quite the sight making their club entrance together, polar opposites, each with their own swagger.

It was a thrilling experience going at unlimited speeds while listening to pumping music on the car stereo. As you got closer to Carlos Paz, from the highway you could see a multitude of lights dotting the perimeter of the lake. You knew that many were cafes, bars, and nightclubs, all promising us an exciting evening ahead.

The strange thing about this beautiful backdrop was that just a few years before I arrived in Argentina, the general population knew that "los milicos," slang for the military, would fly helicopters in the middle of the night and drop people into the lake alive with arms and legs bound and with cement shoes. This was one way they would "disappear" people. A friend of a friend said he once saw a body at the bottom of the lake while swimming underwater. It scared the hell out of him.

That explained why none of my friends ever wanted to swim in the lake.

These things weren't discussed much, and certainly never in public—I'd hear about them and then was advised not to talk about it; you still had to be very careful. The Dirty War apparatus was still fully active while I was there.

A trendy, affluent lake village with beautiful girls, and dead bodies at the bottom of the lake.

I was in high school and I just learned to accept things and live with them.

It had been about a year now since I first heard stories of how the military police would stop people and hassle them, or worse, much worse. This evening, I got to experience such an event firsthand.

There was a bridge that went over a river just as you approached the town of Rio Ceballos. We crossed the bridge, and there were a few military police cars pulled over on the side of the road with several police holding machine guns, waving us over and gesturing for us to stop.

It appeared they were doing random checks that evening, as we hadn't done anything wrong driving-wise. Martin, who was driving, whispered to everyone, "Oh, shit, just stay calm—nobody goof off—be cool and just do as they say." He knew that except for himself, the rest of us had been drinking a good amount of beer and just moments earlier were whooping it up to loud rock and roll.

There was a quiet tone of tense annoyance and restrained fear of the military in his voice. Here was true emotion from an Argentine who had grown up hearing and seeing all these horrible stories and having to live in an unpredictable environment of secret military crimes and random guerrilla violence.

Being in high school, I guess we all had a feeling that everything would work out and we'd be on our way, but there was still a tension of uncertainty. For good reason, though I didn’t know it at that time—thousands of high school kids and minors had been disappeared in Argentina.

I'd been told a story that during daily high school morning assemblies, which took place outside, when the students would sing the national anthem, sometimes the military police would arrive. The school staff would step aside while the police looked over all the students standing at attention. They would pick out a few students they were looking for and take them away—never to be seen again. So, although we were in high school, the risks that night were still very high.

"Los milicos," the military police, first shined bright flashlights into the front and back seat, looking inside the car and at our faces. Then they told Martin to roll down his window and asked for his documentos. Then they asked everyone to step out of the car and asked each of us for our documentos, where we lived, and what we were planning to do.

In the meantime, the other milicos were searching the car. They looked through the glove compartment and under the seats. They opened the trunk of the car and went through everything. It was a surreal but tense moment.

I could see other cars driving by—faces peering through their windows at us as they passed—with an expression like they were glad it was us and not them.

Many apartments in Buenos Aires, especially in the older downtown area, were French-inspired and built in the early 1900s—many have French-styled open elevators—like small cages where you pull open folding metal doors to enter, and you can see the floors go by as you ascend.

Viviana and I, tipsy from the night, closed the elevator door behind us as we ascended the beautiful turn-of-the-century apartment building.

The elevator stopped on her floor, and we stepped out of the cage. The lights were dim as we walked down the narrow hallway of beautiful dark wood. The doorways were ornately carved in the Art Nouveau style. After months of hanging out, I was finally going to see where she lived as she let me into her apartment.

Looking around, I was impressed. "You have a beautiful apartment."

I felt transported back to Paris during the turn of the century. Old black-and-white photos of relatives were on the walls. She had antique furniture mixed with '70s mod pieces and a Persian rug. Plants were on windowsills and throughout the room.

"I like it. It belonged to my grandmother," she replied as she lit a couple of candles and sat down in an armchair. I sat on the couch across from her. She took out her rolling papers and started filling one with tobacco.

She was acting differently than she normally did when we were all out together. She was more serious. She stared at me with a slight smile, knowing she would be offering herself to me. She was just deciding when.

Viviana dressed in layers—she had the soul of a bohemian in 1920s Paris. She had the features of a Spaniard—dark hair and dark eyes like a flamenco dancer.

She went into the kitchen and came back with a dark brown bottle.

"What is it?" I asked.

She put down two small antique liquor glasses. "It's Madeira. It's like port—wine with brandy."

She had a Persian cat that slowly walked around us.

"My cat is checking you out, Yanqui. She wants to know if you are a good guy or a bad guy," she said, and then laughed a wonderfully seductive laugh.

She paused, taking a sip from her glass.

"I'm a Scorpio. Did you know Scorpios never forget?" She stared at me with a growing smile.

There was now complete silence in the room—it was the middle of the night.

She looked at me to see if I dared to approach her.

I was feeling pretty good by the time we arrived at the house party. I was taken aback by the architecture of the home, a beautiful and expansive Spanish ranch-style house. It felt like being in the Caribbean or Florida—surrounded by palm trees and greenery.

As we approached the entrance, there were young attractive Argentines both arriving and leaving. The party was on. We walked through tall, dark, carved wooden doors and into the home. The living room was huge with Mediterranean white plaster walls and Spanish terracotta-tiled floors.

We could see that the party action was taking place in the backyard, and so we headed through and out onto the patio.

The patio had dozens of strung light bulbs overhead, and the ground was covered with little white rocks. The warm orange glow of the bulbs made for dreamy outdoor conversations on the lounge chairs that were scattered about. As I stood there, taking in the whole scene, I realized I had lost track of my bandmates and was now alone.

I saw a table with a large bowl of clerico, an Argentine white wine sangria, with peaches, green apples, bananas, and strawberries plus lemon-lime soda to add fizz. I thought, “Sure, why not," and walked up to it and poured myself a glass.

I looked around and noticed how many beautiful girls there were everywhere I turned. The ratio of Argentine women who are attractive is unusually high.

I started to slowly wander around the stone pathway of the backyard.

There was a sort of luxury tiki vibe throughout that evening. Everyone was having a good time, chatting and lounging about. The warm summer atmosphere seemed to put everyone in a relaxed, festive mood. It felt like everyone had been shipped in from a party on the French Riviera.

I ended up sitting on a low stone wall that bordered the patio, clerico in hand, my mind hazing over as I watched the party drifting around me.

Then a girl sat down next to me in jeans and a white blouse wearing colorful stone and crystal necklaces.

"You're the guitarist," she said. "I liked your songs."

Surprised by her sudden appearance, I was thinking of what to say when she continued.

"This party, it feels like a dream, doesn't it?"

"Yes, I wonder if it is?" I said with a smile. It made the girl laugh. I liked her.

I know we continued talking for some time, but I must have been drifting in and out because the next thing I remember is that she was gone.

The rest of the evening became increasingly hazy until I heard Marcelo saying, "There you are, Yanqui, where have you been? This party is killer, but Javier's friend wants to leave now, and they're waiting for us in the car."

I got up and followed Marcelo out of the patio into the house, and as I walked out the front entrance to get into the car, I saw her standing there, outside.

I didn't know a soul in Buenos Aires, so I immediately called up Laura.

"Yanqui! What the hell are you doing here? I thought you were in Cordoba playing in a band with Fede?"

"Yeah, I was, but I got robbed."

"What?"

"Yeah, it's a long story, and then our drummer kicked me out of his apartment cause they had tied him and his sister up. He gave me like 5 minutes to throw everything into my suitcase and leave – he was screaming at me. He freaked out. No one would let me into their houses, except Fede. They all thought I was toxic, and they were all scared I was involved with something nefarious."

"You? That's hysterical. These Argentines are just nuts. Oh, I miss the States so much."

"You miss Miami and shopping."

"Yeah, that too," she said.

"Well, I'm glad you're here, so when are you going back?"

"I have 3 weeks to kill. I have no band, I'm stuck in Buenos Aires, I don't know a soul except you. And, I have zero plans."

"Yeah, you do. Tomorrow one of my girlfriends is having a party."

"Am I going to like her?"

"You leave her alone—besides, you wouldn't stand a chance; she's got a boyfriend."

"Okay, we'll see."

"Look, why don't you come by tomorrow at 11:00, and we'll all go together. Marcos is coming too. You haven't met my brother, have you?"

"No, I didn't even know you had a brother."

"Yes, you do. I've told you! You're just a space case."

"You have a brother?"

"Yes, and he's totally cool, and he's into new wave bands. You guys will get along so well. Oh, I'm so glad you called me—I'm dying for some excitement."

"Me too. I haven't spoken to anyone in English in like 4 months—it will be great to hang out."

"Come by my place at 11:00, okay?"

"Definitely. I’ll see you tomorrow!"