The Argentine photographer Uberto Sagramoso told the magazine Rolling Stone that when he lived in New York, in the eighties, every day he walked through some alleys near his house and his studio in Chinatown; He believed that “they were a set perfect” to photograph some punk group. When Charly García, who was already the most important musician in Argentine rock, told Sagramoso that he wanted to make the cover of his new album by spray painting a wall, the photographer had identified the place for the session. The corner of Walker Street and Cortlandt Alley was immortalized on the cover of Modern clicksa key work in the history of rock in the country, which was released in 1983. 40 years after that, the city of New York has named that corner after the artist and has declared November 6 Charly García Day .
“I feel honored (…) that he has chosen me to have a corner bear my name. I don’t know many world-famous artists to whom this has happened no less than in a city like New York, a metropolis so important to me and where only there could the sound of Modern clicks”García expressed in a letter dated October 30 and signed in his handwriting. The artist, 72 years old, is away from the stage and public life and did not travel to the American city to participate in the tribute, but he said he was “happy” and “excited”: “I can’t wait to tell a taxi driver : ‘Leave me here, on Walker St. and… me.’ Thank you very much to those who achieved this.”
The dozens of people who attended the ceremony in Manhattan this Monday laughed at the closing of the letter, which was read by the Argentine consul in New York, Santiago Villalba. In addition to the Argentine and New York authorities, some of the musicians close to García participated in the ceremony, such as Hilda Lizarazu, Fernando Samalea, Fabián Quintiero, Alfi Martins, Kiuge Hayashida and Toño Silva, who performed some of García’s songs. Modern clicks. Also in the audience were Joe Blaney, the album’s sound engineer., who worked with The Clash; the musician’s sister, Josi García Moreno, and the actor Mariano Cabrera, promoter of the initiative to create the Charly García corner.
In 1983, when he traveled to New York, García was 31 years old. In Argentina, the last military dictatorship was coming to an end after seven years. The musician had managed to avoid censorship with his lyrics and had not had to go into exile like other artists of his generation, but when the return to democracy approached, he left. He went to the United States to buy instruments and in the end he stayed to record an album.
“I am motivated by the desire to participate, to integrate into the artistic movements of New York (…) I came to start over. Furthermore, I wanted to isolate myself from what was suffocating me in Buenos Aires,” he told the magazine at that time. Week. García had released his first solo album the previous year, Going from the bed to the living room, which was a bestseller, and he wanted to be in a place where no one knew him: “I want to make music that comes from my heart. (…) There they sucked more energy from me than I received. And that has nothing to do with my audience. Those who follow me know that I am going to come back with something really good.”
The result was Modern clickshis second solo album, which brought together nine songs, classics like The dinosaurs, video tape eyes either They keep hitting us low. The album was going to be called New rags and for the cover García had imagined a photo in which the title of the album appeared written in aerosol spray on a wall. The musician told Sagramoso the idea and he thought of the alleys that he had identified on his walks around the city. The artist and the photographer did the session there, but when they returned to the studio they discovered the corner of Walker Street and Cortlandt Alley. At the intersection, there was a black silhouette, like a shadow; a shadowman painted by artist Richard Hambleton.
García has said in different interviews that the silhouette reminded him of the white figures with which those who disappeared during the last dictatorship were represented in Argentina. “The image sucked us in like a magnet,” Sagramoso told the magazine Rolling Stone. The musician then sat at the foot of the shade and the photographer took several photos. The final version, in black and white, shows the musician with a cigar in hand, a corduroy suit, short hair, metal-framed glasses and staring at the camera. Above García’s head, another graffiti remained: the inscription Modern Clix, made by Fran Powersthe singer of a band under place that had that name. Modern Clix was translated as Modern clicks and García’s album went down in the history of Argentine rock with the new title. “It was so perfect that it stayed there,” García said in an interview.
The writer Martín Zariello recently reflected in a test that García’s move to New York in 1983, when democracy was returning to the country, was “counterintuitive.” “García’s ability to synchronize his work with history without appealing to demagoguery and cliché is valued. Modern clicks “It is the peak of this artistic commitment,” wrote Zariello. The city is different from the one where García arrived in the 1980s. Where Sagramoso took the photograph 40 years ago, today there is a hotel; The wall baseboard where the black silhouette was is painted a light color and there are no traces of spray. From García’s time there, there now remains a copper plaque on the wall and his New York record.
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