“Justicia" (who-stee-see-ya) and how it came to be.

I wish I could remember more…

I remember Fernando and I were at a family barbeque off Belmont St. and it was mentioned that he and his father José were going down to Argentina for 40 days (and 40 nights). After casually remarking I’d like to go, I was offered the chance to stay with la familia. My grandmother (RIP) funded it and off I went with El Padre y El Hijo from Portland to Buenos Aires. Fernando and I were both firmly in the clutches of a romance with early-70’s Argentine rock, or rock nacional, the pinnacle of which was (and shall always be) Luis Spinetta of Pescado Rabioso, Almendra and Invisible fame. In 1999, it was difficult to obtain this music, and though I had managed to get some mail-order CD’s, this would be a chance to acquire the likes of all things “El Flaco” (Luis Spinetta’s nickname) as well as Sui Generis, Leon Gieco, Vox Dei, Almendra, Manal et al. So in this “espiritu” we boarded the plane and touched down, intending to be merry while we stayed with Fernando’s abuelo y abuelita. Grandpa had bad lungs, and being Christmas, the weather was sweltering and thick. He definitley needed the only fan available. His grandmother was doing, doing, doing, and for this everyone called her "La Maquina”. And she certainly wasn’t about to speak English to me. All the better to help sharpen my rusty castellano. It was a wonderful extended family, and I would name everyone for you, but you’ve been to the wedding, so I’ll skip it. Needless to say we touched down, and repaired swiftly to his uncle Ricardo’s backyard where Fernando and I regaled them all with song until I was ceremoniously tossed into the pool, clothes on. The adventure began...What followed was BBQ after BBQ…there was always a new relative and their accommodating family. Fernando and I ballooned. Me from skinny to sort-of skinny, he from full-figured to "let’s change the subject”. Oh yeah and we went to some resort towns like Villa Gesell. The core family hit the beach while I looked for escaped Nazis. We also hooked up with a promoter named Cacho who played bass and we actually did a full set (bass/drums/gutar) in a massive mall where we proceeded to blow the fuse thereby blacking-out the entire structure! José bribed the guard of the Recollecta Cementerio to let us in after closing time, and the three of us wandered around gazing at crypts, trying to ignore the glaring Hooters sign just outside. “There’s Eva Peron”! “Jesus Cristo, is that her skeleton??”. The year culminated in the sight of the entire hemisphere lit up with the hope of a new millennium. All the while Fern and I found CD’s of rock nacional wherever we could. The Holy Grail would be a video-cassette of a concert film called “Rock Hasta Que Se Ponga El Sol” featuring the cream of the best of early-70’s Argentine rockers, including sacred footage of El Flaco himself, and lo and behold at the 11th hour we got a line on one at some record shop and commissioned a remis all the way across town for it. Imagine our disappointment when we gathered the whole family around the TV (which warranted another entire cow being slow-smoked) and it was just static—pure snow! Needless to say we vowed then and there to collaborate on an all-Spanish record to follow up our first collaboration, Pacoima. It would be a love-letter to the Argentine rock we treasured. At the end of the long, strange trip (which involved a bad Sandro Impersonator, highly illegal dirtweed, getting chased out of a bar when I--the only yanqui for miles—received sideways looks), Fern decided to get his hair cut real nice for Kristin--from Abuelo’s personal barber, no less! What resulted was a sham. A farce. An abomination. Imagine his wavy hair crimped with an iron into some sort of pompadour-type shape and then hacked-away around that, so that if one were to mess it up (me) it would come crashing down all around him like a bowl of unruly, black worms. Enough to weaken the heart of any seasoned hairdresser. Needless to say it was immediately shaven upon return and soon he and I sat on his porch on 48th & Belmont, cooked thoroughly on marijuana butter, and commenced writing the music. The songs morphed and swam, shaping themselves out of Spinetta-like chords and stories told from la tierra abajo: The Pigman of Cañuelas--a poor, slow, deformed soul who was endlessly picked on by gauchos on the dark trails of the farm town where Fernando’s father and grandfather were raised. Songs about the savage human cost of the unholy alliance between fascism and greed (glad that’s not a thing anymore!). Songs about feeling like a rat in a cage and the existential screams of one simple statement: "It’s only my life you’re giving me…" We eventually realized the record would encompass two sides: earthy and acoustic like the folky campesino rock of vintage León Gieco, then molten and electric like the blistering dread-rock of Spinetta, Pappo’s Blues, Vox Dei and company. The conduit would be our most ambitious piece of music, privately dubbed “The Minstrel Cycle”: “Cielo Sin Color”, the tale of a woman slowly going insane and her denial of the encroaching storm in her mind’s skies. The record would be called Justicia, and we’d knock the acoustic side out in Fern's basement and do the second side at the old Jackpot! Studios with a hand-picked cadre of our favorite musicians, which we dubbed Mota For Sex: Fred Trujillo on bass, Sean Oldham on drums and Paul Brianard on guitar. Now that the pieces have finally been assembled it resembles nothing less than what I imagined that we imagined nigh on 20 years ago: a fever dream split in two, looking back on the picaresque dream that was hearty, proud Argentina of ages-past...all the way to what it had become at present (along with the rest of the world): a funhouse ride on a slippery slide to hell. But what remained, as ever with Fernando, was hope. Oh, and when we got home we realized that the videotape was just a different region and there, resplendent for our rainy selves to witness was the shining moment that Buenos Aires and the rest of the counterculture got to enjoy in Technicolor: a festival of beautiful music as the sun set, looking like the fiery face in the pale blue and white of their ever-waving flag.

Luther Russell
Pasadena, CA
July 11. 2020