✒️ |Live off rock by drinking peppermint tea [Transcription]
Before the stories were told, we wrote them. In this opportunity, we wanna tell you the story about an álbum of Serú Girán called “Peperina”
[Mateo Mejía, presenter:]
Hello everyone to a new episode of Lo Único Mejor que la Música. My name is Mateo Mejía and before we start, I want to invite you to visit our profile on Instagram as @lounicomejorquelamusica where you can find written content, like transcriptions of chapters and articles. Also, you can communicate with us through our profile.
Mariana and Lorena: go ahead.
[Mariana Uribe, host]: “I want to tell you a good story about a girl and a band that lived the euphoria and the Argentinian rock stumbles during the 70s and 80s.
This is the story of Peperina, the legendary song of Serú Giran, and although we say “legendary”, we know that those “important” things are not suited for everyone and maybe there is someone that listens to us that doesn’t know who is Charly García.
It was the year 2000, and this person had already passed through two bands: La Máquina de Hacer Pájaros, Sui Géneris and the person we’ll talk about today: Serú Girán.
A band which it’s name doesn’t mean anything, just like the name of one of their songs, Eiti Leda. This band was born as an excuse of Charly, a child from a rich Argentinian family, whom would later play with David Lebón, who was convinced via Cordobese invoices so he could’ve joined the band after being in the depths of the “hippismo”.
[Maxi Forestieri, producer]: Serú Girán, the other day I was precisely talking to parents that lived during that era, you get me? There was also a couple of friends of them that are super fans of the band.
[Mateo Mejía]: But hold a second, Mari, he is Maxi Forestieri, a productor and has worked with bands like “Mi Amigo Invencible”. We met Maxi by a remaster he did of the album we’ll talk shortly: Peperina, but whatever, continue Maxi.
[Maxi Forestieri]: This meant a Vanguard movement in that moment, which we have to take in consideration those years, which if I’m not mistaken, the first disk which is Bicicleta (Bicycle) which came out in 78 o 79.
We were in the midst of a military dictatorship and the context was very grim. People were being disappeared in the hands of the de facto government that was installed in the country. This generated an interesting and overwhelming artistic proliferation.
The first thing, I say, that we think about that scene during that moment it was great also. For example, Alberto Spinetta was there in the same vanguard league there with all his sets and cultural wealth that he contributed in that era; but definitely the role that Serú Girán was to bring a elevated music to fruition.
[Mateo Mejía]: The impact of Sui Géneris and the legend of Charly are undeniable. In 92, the band sold 200.000 copies of Peperina, but it wasn’t always like this. The first of their concerts were disappointing for many in November of 78. In the midst of the dictatorship, the lyrics of Serú Girán at first had nothing of politics; but later on their following albums would start to highlight metaphors about the country’s situation or the Argentinian’s youth wishes and, of course, about love.
[Maxi Forestieri]: Charly started being involved with this journalist, and well, that added more fire to the controversy. I think beyond the media issue, I believe that the song is very beautiful, very rich in many aspects.
It speaks, well, like an almighty sensation of Charly, that he could be like: “don’t screw around with me”.
[Mateo Mejía]: But…what did Maxi refer to when he said that Charly was involved with a journalist? Well, Mariana will continue on with the story.
[Mariana Uribe]: Well, although right now Maxi, us and hundreds of people love Serú, in 78, criticism wasn’t missing. “For the second time in this year, Serú Girán will be playing in Córdoba. This time the rendezvous was concretized on the 16th of November at Club Municipal. 2600 people attended which each person paid 7.000 pesos to enter. Was it worth? Absolutely not. We were part of a decadent show (may the record show that I said “show” and not concert” in which García used his time doing hybrid cabriolas.
That is what Patricia Perea whom the band wrote Peperina. That song affirms to tell the story about the girl that, according to Charly, “lived rock by drinking tea”.
About the tea of peperina was a reference about that she was in Córdoba, and in Córdoba, the mate (Argentinian beberage) has peperina. But the rest of the song is enough to understand how offended Charly was about the critic done by the young Cordoban.
[Mariana Uribe]: Perea also affirmed: “If Charly throughout his career pretended to be the masculine rock version of Marilyn Monroe, frankly I’ll tell you that in Córdoba, he emulated it”. And well, if we look in retrospective, of course Charly was bigger than Marilyn Monroe in his spectacles: he has jumped from buildings, hit journalists, has threatened to burn pianos and has left off stages without starting concerts.
Music
[Charly García, grabación]: It gives me a mix of paranoia and pride because you must have balls to do it, can I say this?
[Felipe Pigna, interviewer on the recor]: Of course you can.
[Charly García]: To be all the time so exposed.
[Felipe Pigna]: So exposed, of course.
Music
[Lorena Tamayo, host]: And if the song is about “balls” not only is he mocking censorship by putting a “beep” over the word, but he’s ridiculing Patricia with phrases such as:
[Peperina Song]:
“Típicamente mente pueblerina (Typical small-town mind)
no tenía huevos para la oficina (didn’t have the balls to be in the office)
subterráneo lugar de rutinaria ideología” (underground place of routine ideology.
[Lorena Tamayo]: During the era that the song was written, “Peperina” was dating Daniel Grinbank, a manager of Serú. There are rumors that the verse has to do with Grinbank and that the part of “Romántica entonaba sus poemas más brillantes” (The Sentimental intoned her most brilliant poems) came from some verses that she had created for him, but Patricia denied in future interviews that she did write poems but never based on him.
[Mariana Uribe]: Without a doubt, the song is violent and declares a profund resentment by screaming in the chorus: “Trabaja en los recitales, vive escribiendo postales, duerme con los visitantes y juega con los locales. Su cuerpo tiene pegada grasa de las capitales” (She works in recitals, lives by writing postcards, sleeps with the visitors and plays with the locals. Her body has grease stuck in the capitals).
[Lorena Tamayo]: And of course, we can’t deny the phrase: “Has grease stuck in the capitals” is a thundering phrase.
[Mariana Uribe]:
For Charly, Patricia loved to show the straws on other people’s faces, but what can we say about him? Yes, he took out a song and movie about a girl that only being a 17-year-old was writing “rough” notes about his shows.
That movie was filmed in 92, once after the dictatorship was finished, in a concert that took place in the stadium of River Plate. The movie came out in 95 and was played by Andrea del Boca, whom in her role shows Patricia as a fan that hides her love for Serú and has received public fame for being “peperina”. In addition, the film shows scenes that while songs are being played in the background like Cinema Verité, Patricia has sex with other male characters that work on the concert’s setup.
[Silvina Ferrandi, activist]: Charly was always like this character above “the stage” and it was there that his ego was…or ended up breaking a piano or hitting guitars. To me it seem a look like what Nirvana was doing. Then no, but he would say: “Oh, how funny it is what he’s doing”! I didn’t realize that he was under the influence of a lot of things.
[Mateo Mejía]: She’s Silvina, and has worked as activist for feminism in social movements in Colombia and her country, Argentina. She has followed Charly’s career for a while now and because of her ideology, we decided to chat with her.
[Silvina Ferrandi]: But the recitals, I love to see how Epumer and him would look at each other. He was very skinny and ugly but I liked it. Also it was consuming the idol that someone already sold you that idea. Then someone sold you that idea of an idol, just like heroes. And Charly was that, Charly was the great national idol for many generations.
With Charly, the following anecdote happened to me while I was entering a limousine. It was like, well, nothing, I was going to the same recital I had a ticket to. I knew that I wasn’t going to a hotel room to lock myself in, in a funnel situation, a reverse situation. In my tranquility was the reason my friend managed to get on, being the last one to enter. But at that same moment that I had Charly, with a black suit with flames that were coming out of his boot sleeves, from his feet and hands, he was right in front of me, and my jaw just dropped. I couldn’t believe what was happening to me.
Also I had that tingling sensation of adrenaline running through me. But I loved it. It was Charly’s 50th birthday. And love to hear that he was also nervous that day.
Because there is also something very crazy that doesn’t happen to men. It is like: “Yeah, I went out last night with Charly and I was there, so I have the right to tell the story”, and go on to know if all those events that happened aren’t being told or even the ones that are told.
And the groupies are like that, just like me that I was in the midst of many situations…not precisely with Charly, but with rockers…and wow! These girls know what they are going to, they know what they think that they already signed a contract that if they went up to the room. Sometimes that sisterhood question thought in retrospective kicks in, that says: “So if I accompany you and stay there…well it isn’t my ass that is getting saved”.
Because those thoughts are grounded culturally, that’s what I mean. “But, boluda, why didn’t you go inside the dressing room of this person”. “Ah, but what a boluda…no”.
No. It’s that, the story depends on what do you want to tell. If you’re going to be proud of whatever you going to tell. I have a great pride in my anecdote with Charly. It is like when I knew that story of Peperina, I said: “wow, look who’s telling the story”, it’s that. There is a very beautiful phrase that says” “If history is written by the victors, that means there has to be another version”.
[Lorena Tamayo]: Charly was a “spiteful male chauvinist” according to Patricia in some of her interviews; and being so, before dying, she swore to have forgiven him, and she sent him a copy of her book “Peperina por Peperina (Peperina by Peperina)” where she denied the whole story that García had created.
[Mariana Uribe]: Patricia went on to live with that “ghost” that the rock legend made her as a legend. She had to face family, affective and emotional issues and she was even taking meds for her depression. Patricia died in 2016 and although many people say that Charly immortalized her name, we hope that this story was told by us in a better way. In her memory, we dedicate this chapter.
[Mateo Mejía]: Thank you for listening to us.
This podcast was recorded in Medellin, Colombia. Produced, narrated and edited by Mariana Uribe , Mateo Mejía y Lorena Tamayo. Our team wouldn’t be the same without Verónica Rodríguez
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