Soda Stereo

Debut album (1984)

Out & about in Guadalajara with venue visits, meetings and a music conference called FIM. The keynote talk was by Charly Alberti the drummer of Soda Stereo, an Argentinian rock group. We chatted beforehand and I embarrassingly confessed to only really knowing the name and not their music, but he wasn't put out at all. Cool guy, leather jacket, shades, looked a bit like Andy Summers of The Police... And that's what his band sounded like when they formed in 1982, before going on to become pretty much the biggest band in Latin America selling (and playing to) millions. 
And yet, because they sang in Spanish, no-one's ever heard of them in Britain, even though they were heavily influenced by British rock, especially new wave - an interesting choice in their early years given the Falklands/Malvinas 'issue'. They split up in 1997, then reformed, but tragedy struck in 2010 when lead singer & guitarist Gustavo Cerati suffered a stroke after a concert in Caracas. He lay in a coma for four years until dying just two months ago. The streets of Mexico City, let alone Buenos Aries, were (literally) full of grieving fans.