• Home
• About
• Music
  • Interviews
  • Featured Artists
  • Editor’s Picks
  • Sizzling CDs
  • Press Releases
• Columns
  • Bambi Monroe
  • Dirty Jenny : Jen Leigh
  • Rebecca Kane
  • Tanya T6
• Store
• Networking
• Archives
  • Past Articles
  • Grrrls@nite
    • Grrrls Bios
    • US
      • sanfrancisco@nite
      • detroit@nite
      • NYrox@nite
      • LA@nite
      • newyork@nite
      • orangecounty@nite
      • boston@nite
      • philly@nite
      • nashville@nite
    • International
      • argentina@nite
      • budapest@nite
      • scotland@nite
      • munich@nite
      • sweden@nite
      • germany@nite
      • australia@nite
      • london@nite
      • tokyo@nite
      • hongkong@nite
      • calgary@nite
      • spain@nite
• More
  • Contests
• Contact

Here I am about to enter the end of our Southern summer, but before that I’m gonna tell you all about the biggest Argentinean summer fest: Cosquin Rock 2004!

Someone out there might remember last year our band Hyperstatic played at the fest, and as I said before we won the band competition last December to go there and play again.

Alright, so to refresh your memory and put you in situation, Cosquin Rock is THE summer rock festival in Argentina, held in the city of Cosquin in the province of Cordoba, right in the heart of the country.

This year it ran over 4 days from 5-8 Feb, with over 55 bands on, and featuring for the first time some non-Argentinean bands as well, like Mexicans Molotov, La Vela Puerca from Uruguay and Ultramen from Brazil among others.

Here we go then!

On Thursday 5^th Feb two of my bandmates picked me up to go to Cosquin Rock’s first day. We arrived there at around 7pm, it had started a few hours earlier and we caught the last few songs by Massacre from Buenos Aires, they’re a cult skaterock band and it was a real bizarre thing to watch them play in a huge mainstream festival, but they went down well and their fans made them feel at home.

After this, and wearing our musician backstage passes good for Friday night, we made an attempt to get through an access to the VIP area, and we made it! Hey, who wants to be squeezed in the crowd when you can be at the bar mingling with rock celebs. networking, and drinking for free?

I must say the fest organisers changed the beer sponsoring from last year, to an alcoholic beverage very popular here called Fernet, which is really supposed to be a digestive kinda drink, and you take it mixed with Coke and ice. To me It’s awful but hey, it was free!

From the photographer’s pit we got to watch some more shows. Like Catupecu Machu who are as hyperactive and rocky as usual in spite of having a new drummer and a new technoey sound, but it’s their earlier stadium rock tunes what really gets the crowd going. Check out our photo with Fernando, their singer/guitarist.

Intoxicados from Buenos Aires play straight up rock with a twist of the Stones, lead by singer Pity Alvarez are beginning to get a massive band status this year, judging by the fact they’re playing a nightime show unlike 2003, also people know the words to all their songs, and there’s a lot of “banderas” (flags) in the moshpit showing the band’s name.

Attaque 77 is still going after 16 years…and still playing the same music. Punk rock shouldn’t be this boring, but they’re as popular as ever so I might be wrong. …excuse me while I yawn…

Anyway, by the time Bersuit starts playing their headline show we leave. All I can say is they’re huge, they’ve been going on for 14 years, and who am I not to like them? Friday’s bill is so much my kind of fest!

Friday 6^th noon, we leave from Cordoba city in a bus with other bands from different provinces. This time around, we get to Cosquin early at around 2pm. After dropping our gear in the dressing room, some of us go upstairs to the stage while Babasonicos is beginning to soundcheck. It’s packed with drumkits and cool amps and cabs of all kinds, what you call a rocker’s heaven! After failing to fugure out what kind of fx pedals Mariano from Babasonicos uses to get that retro guitar sound, we are NOT kindly asked to remove ourselves from the stage by a roadie. Fair enough.

Back in the VIP area we somehow managed to score an interview for Much Music (for those non-Canadian of you, it’s like the Argentinean MTV). So they made us choose one of us to talk on behalf, and of course I was pushed by my bandmates to the set…alright alright! I’m going. Hernan is the VJ who interviews me from behind the camera, but I have no idea what I answered coz, strangely, I got a bit nervous! They we gave them our show´s set list and marked the song we wanted them to shoot for the festival’s TV special, which is being aired on during Feb/March on Much Music to Latin America. We saw it, and we looked pretty cool on TV, I must say.

After setting up our gear and doing a bit of soundcheck onstage, we hung out in the dressing room till the first band started. Then we were called to go up to the side of the stage, and since the whole day started a bit late luckily when we got on to play there was already a huge crowd inside, probably over 6000 people at around 5pm. It’s said that over 24,000 made it to each day of the festival…Cosquin Rock is getting bigger and bigger every year!

And then we played! We had a 20 minute set, and we played 5 songs that went so fast it was over before we noticed! The Much Music cameras shot the song Bsides like we asked, and we had no tuning, sound or monitor problems ! WOW! The second time around is so much better!

When we got off stage I was congratulated by living legend Vitico, bass player of 80s hard rock band Riff, which was really bizarre coz he looked like someone’s dad in a leather jacket!

Then there was the press conference where we got asked a lot about having won twice the band competition to play at the fest, to which we answered “we hope next time we get invited and skip the trouble of being hated by the bands that lost!”. Then we did a lot more interviews for radios and websites from all over the place, also handed out tons of Hey, Wait! singles to the press.

The rest of the day/night was spent in between the pit watching bands and the bar getting free drinks and posing with some stars, as well as getting our photo taken with the fest logo, coz we never know when is the last time we con our way into one of these!

Now, on with the shows I got to see.

Cabezones from Santa Fe were the first ones to rock the place at around 7.30pm, opening with Hombre Paranoico from 2001’s Alas album. They have a new second guitarist who gives lead guitar Esteban much more space to lay down those dark ambient chords in the air, while singer Cesar is becoming one of the best vocalists around with great emotional tunes and that rare ability to connect to the audience without having to scream like a pig, something you don’t see often in the darker side of hard rock/emocore bands these days. Later on at our dressing room Esteban asked us for a Hyperstatic Tshirt which we glady gave him, so we hope to see him wearing it!

Power hardcore trio Carajo may not be as imaginative as Cabezones, but they have a powerful show going, lead by former A.N.I.M.A.L. bassist Corvata now turned lead singer too. Towards the end of the show they pulled a funny stunt by promoting their single “Sacate la mierda” (Wipe your shit off) by throwing at the crowd dozens of toilet paper rolls with the band logo printed. Everyone went mad, turning the stage into a harmless good ol’ war field of toilet paper! Check out the photo.

After shows by ALMAFUERTE, LA 25, LA VELA PUERCA from Uruguay and CALLEJEROS, it was time to check out Grammy winning superchilangos Molotov!

The Mexicans did pretty much the same show we saw here in August, but were funny and effective as always. Wearing their usual black Tshirts with prints like “Los Bitles”, the foursome ran thru’ their hit list for everyone’s delight, while bassist Micky Huidobro’s hilarious anti-Bush comments in between songs in a Helium-like voice fx were cheered by 23,000 people. They closed their set with classic hit Puto. (Chech their photo “holding” one of the festival’s organisers)

Babasonicos have reached after 12 years a point where they are a one of a kind band, they play whatever style they want and get away with it because of their now massive loyal following, thanks to some radio hits like Delectrico and Los Calientes. Disco, hip hop, metal, electronica, retro, folk, they are all that while sounding unmistakably Babasonicos, lead by crooner Adrian D’argelos who has the crowd in the palm of his hand, they’re by far the coolest most original Argentinean band.

The next day we checked out show by Arbol (Latin-reggae-hardcore-rock mix), Los Pericos (a classic reggae band that live sounds perfect like a CD, if you’re into that), Pappo (our own blues guitar hero who’s played with everyone including BB King), and Los Violadores (real scruffy punk rock).

And that’s what I remember seeing live! It was over 55 bands, a total of 100.000 people on 4 days taking over a small town, not enough toilets for the 20 thousand crowd everyday, ridiculous beer prices, the usual sound problems and star ego-tripping (Charly Garcia and Bersuit complaning about everything onstage) but for now it’s over, and I hope to see it again next year…as a guest band! No more band competitions please….too stressful!!

You can check out all the photos in our band website, now in English too.

Catch ya all later!

xxxxxxkari

PS: Thanks to all at Coogrrrls for including Hyperstatic on the new compilation CD!