while I have been studying Argentine music for about 20 years now, and own something like 500 albums of it, I never really clicked with Solari.
I will have to go back and listen again.
Rock Nacional is a pretty porous description.
The early stuff was heavily influenced by the Beatles, Creedence Clearwater (everybody over a certain age LOVES Creedence) and british prog rock like Genesis, Yes, and Emerson Lake and Palmer.
Lots of 70s Rock Nacional is very classical/rock like, because almost all Argentine musicians, even the punks, have some classical music background.
I have all three of the original Sumo albums, and I like them a lot.
The best songs are all in Spanish- especially No Hablar and Rubio Tirada.
And while Luca was Italian, he was also Scottish, and he came to Argentina from the London punk rock scene, where he played in the same venues as bands like Joy Division, XTC, and Wire.
I think the really significant thing he brought to Argentine music was the ska/dub influence, as nobody here had really heard the 2 tone bands, like the Specials, Selector, and The Beat, who combined horns, afro-caribean music, and punk.
That was what made Sumo really different, and some of that influence still shows up in many bands today.
To call Luca a "heroin addict", while accurate, is somewhat misleading.
I mean, there are heroin addicts, and then there are heroin addicts.
Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose.
John Lennon and Keith Richards were both heroin addicts.
Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin were both addicted to opiate pills for well over a decade- Lewis used to take 15 percodin pills a day, enough to literally kill a horse.
and yet, none of them is primarily described as an addict- we tend to gloss over that in favor of the music.
I feel the same way about Luca- the music is unique, and, by the time he died, he was 100% Argentine, regardless of the fact that he attended the same school (GordonStoun) as King Charles.
