With a certain innocent pride, I reflect on how lucky I was to witness the first live performances of some of the most popular Colombian rock bands. I remember the first gig with 1280 people in an empty house in northern Bogotá. I also remember Superlitio's debut at a band competition held by the University of Valle in Cali, where I was a judge. But the memory that amazes me most, considering the passage of time and the impact they later had not only in Colombia but throughout the continent and, why not say it, the entire world, is that I was at Aterciopelados' first concert at Barbie, a venue in the north of the Colombian capital, a place that is now a laundromat and where there is no trace of what happened there. Like almost everything that happened during the 90s in this city, the moment vanished without leaving much of a trace.
All these memories come flooding back as I look at the book published by the District Institute of the Arts (Idartes), a cultural entity of the Bogotá Mayor's Office, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the release of "Con el corazón en la mano," Aterciopelados' first album. This beautifully produced book contains a wealth of material about the history of this band and their journey over more than two decades.
There's a little-known aspect of Aterciopelados' story that makes me feel even more affection for them: Without them, and especially without Héctor Buitrago, the history of Bogotá's nightlife scene wouldn't have been the same. I have no doubt that if anyone was responsible for giving an "alternative" face to the then-nascent rock movement in this city, it was him, through his bars, his concerts, and his not always successful record label ventures.
Remember when I mentioned Barbie as the venue for this band's first gig? Well, it was the second venue created by Buitrago, with the initial involvement of Andrea Echeverry. The first was called Barbarie and was located in the central La Candelaria neighborhood. In the late 1980s, Barbarie operated out of a colonial house on a street where a young, still-rocking Carlos Vives also had his entertainment venue, Estación Central. The second project, Barbie, was located more than 150 blocks north, in a warehouse that, before hosting New Order, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, or The La's, might have been a soap warehouse or perhaps a storage space for automotive parts.
Yes, of course, Héctor and Andrea were known in the underground rock scene for having played several times under the name Delia y Los Aminoácidos, a band that played fun songs and a variety of covers of current Anglo-Saxon music. But before the debut of Aterciopelados, they were more distinguished for their work in those nightclubs. Héctor was an experienced collector of hard-to-find records in Bogotá, and every time he stood in front of the sound system in his bars, he blasted the latest music, songs that weren't even played on some of the major radio stations in New York or London. It was common for more than one music nerd (myself included, of course) to approach the bar as soon as an unfamiliar song came on and ask who it was by, so they could go to the central Avenida 19 and order the album from Saul at Musiteca or go to Calle 85 and look for it with Oscar at Antífona. Hector, without any selfishness, shared the information.
When I was lucky enough to run into Buitrago at a concert, or perhaps even at Rock al Parque, the conversation almost always revolved around new record releases. I remember one day, in the middle of a party, he asked me if I'd heard a British band, a group called Radiohead, who had just released an album called Pablo's Honey. There were times, because of these kinds of conversations, that I suspected some of the biggest labels in the world sent him samples of their new releases before putting them on sale anywhere in the world. I'm sure more than one person discovered bands like Primal Scream, The Charlatans, Fobia, La Lupita, and many others through him.
From the bars he owned throughout the 1990s emerged the vast majority of the best bands of the time. Barbarie, Barbie, Transilvania, Astrolabio, Kaliman, and Terlenka hosted Hora Local, La Derecha, Catedral, Yuri Gagarin, Sidestepper, and countless others. International artists like Caifanes, Babasónicos, and Víctimas del Doctor Cerebro also graced his stages, and there was even a historic free performance, put together in just a few hours, by Mano Negra at Vena Arteria, an auditorium that lasted perhaps only a few months before the residents of the La Macarena neighborhood shut it down. While most business owners focused on opening elegant venues catering to conservative, high-spending clientele, Héctor, with limited resources and in cramped, cramped spaces, was creating Bogotá's underground scene.
Some of the nostalgic folks from my generation say that the best time for Colombian rock was during the 1990s. People went to concerts to discover and celebrate the city taking on a new color, a much more joyful tone. Bogotá had music in every corner because there was a spirit of not waiting for others to create the spaces to produce their events. The "alternative" experience could happen anywhere, as long as there was the capacity to put up a stage and get people there. Theaters, abandoned houses, galleries, community centers were all used. Advertising consisted of sticking black and white photocopies on lampposts and spreading the word so that hundreds of people would come and experience it. Something happened then, and we became bourgeois. Perhaps, as Aterciopelados' career took off and Héctor had to give up his other jobs, some outsiders convinced us that things should be done in a more conventional way. Yes, a few years later, we have the internet, better equipment, more professional recordings, and ways to reach virtually every fan in the world. But it's clear that something was lost along the way.
Reading the book about Aterciopelados reveals all the details of the band's history, but it also paints a picture of a bygone, happy time in Bogotá. Perhaps this publication will allow us to consider the possibility of reconstructing some of the intentions of that era. I can tell you that despite undeniable progress, twenty years ago some things were more fun than they are now. This isn't just the ramblings of a nostalgic old man. Even Héctor himself could confirm that.
