"Many people say "Charly" -as we know him in Argentina- is completely crazy. But most of them consider him just a great musician (or not)... He's more than that. He's a real artist, driving into a constant change and into his paralel world. He has understood for more than twenty years our "blessed country's history" and dumped it into his songs. Once, a journalist asked him if Seru Giran (his group in the eighties) were "The Argentinian Beatles"... he answered the following: "We're not that , we're the "British Seru Giran". His whole work is there, in that constant blink of an eye, on those marvellous lyrics he has made....He's more that a musician He's an artist. But sometimes, he doesn't seem to be a human beeing. It seems he's beyond all that stuff.Boring people call him "mad" We prefeer to call him "genius""
WHAT A GENIUS!
Miguel Angel | 05/22/1999
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Para mi Charly Garcia es lo mas grande que hay. Y este CD uno de sus mejores. Todos los temas son buenos,la musica (que recorre todos los estilos, incluso en un solo tema) y las letras. Y aunque en Argentina muchos lo juzguen como un tipo que ya se apago y esta medio loco, yo creo que es uno de los mas lucidos y le queda todavia mucho para decir. No importa lo que digan, pero vale la pena escuchar "la Hija de la Lagrima" Mis temas favoritos: Fax U, La Sal No Sala, Andan."
The best "say no more" album
Miguel Angel | Lima-Peru | 12/28/2003
(4 out of 5 stars)
"In my opinion, this is García's best work before Influencia. This opera-rock shows all his genius with acoustic guitars and synthesizers. My favourite tracks are the Overture, Victima (great lyrics), Love is Love, the classical Chipi Chipi, Lament (one minute with Maria Gabriela...we miss you so much), Kurosawa, Andan....actually all the songs are great. I didn't rate this CD with 5 stars because Charly has better albums, but even so, I realize that "La Hija de la Lágrima" is tender and moving.No te mueras nunca MAESTRO!!!"
Beware the advise of anyone who unconditinally endorses this
Aparato SuperSonico | Orlando, FL | 07/26/2005
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Somewhere in the year 2000/2001 Charly Garcia had a mental breakdown.
Oh! The luxury, the fame, the fortune, the legions of fans, the readily available women!
A sensitive human being can only take so much!
After all, playing your music to adoring crowds night after night, city after city, the endless interviews, photo ops and TV appearances can break a man down even worse than staying out in the scorching Libyan sun.
So what happens when everything you touch turns to gold? It's time to make a "concept" album. The greatest rock album in the world. It's going to be bigger than Sgt. Pepper's.
Anyway, to make a long story short, Garcia is admitted to a mental hospital in neighboring Uruguay, a country not unlike switzerland in which they produce nothing of much value, but has benefitted form the rampant corruption in both Brazil and Argentina, by being the receptors of their citizen's money stuffed in their banks. Predictably, just like Diego would do years later, Garcia ran away from the clinic decalring himself "cured", rents time in recording studios in Buenos Aires and New York, and begins the journey that would ultimately bring him more fame, but less fortune (as his subsequent albums would fail to sell in great numbers), but a new adoring legion of young nihilistic fans all over latin America. Essentially this is the "story" of la hija de la lagrima ("the daughter of tears", or " the teardorp's daughter", or some thing in that vein - use your imagination) as "she" falls deep into the core of madness and redeems herself (I swear this is CG's description of this). There are lots of song fragments and other nonsense, but what makes this album somewhet WORK is the presence of Maria Gabriela Epumer, clearly one of the best guitarists Argentina has produced.
The best tracks take about half the album; the rest is just junk. It's a good addition to your CG collection, but it's not full of hits, or even likeable songs. It shows a turning point in his career as he decides to take the road more bitterly travelled and turns to the dark side in subsequent releases. Obvious crowd pleasers are Chipi Chipi, and La Sal No Sala (MGE is excellent in these 2), Other very good tracks are "Taxi" (instrumental, but I love the bass work, reminiscent of "persecusion en la autopista"), "kurosawa", "Locomotion", and "Andan" among others. "Fax U" is about 10 minutes too long, and the interlude is a disposable ditty. I wish some of the other fragments would have been turned into full length songs. They showed promise ("James Brown", "Workin' IN The Morning". Atlantis, No sugar, Intraterreno, jaco y Chofi are time wasters, as is Fax U.
Not a bad album, but not a masterpiece. Garcia could have done better. But everyone has a concept album inside of them; this is it for him.