On October 10, 1987 Sumo played at Obras Sanitarias. José Luis García, as cameraman, went to look for Luca Prodan at his house, they took the bus and arrived at the rock temple of Núñez. With the Italian’s endorsement, he had access to dressing rooms and filmed the backstage and staging of one of the band’s last shows, two months before their leader died. The record now comes to light under the name of Fuck You!, in honor of the song with which they open the recital, and It is exhibited at Bafici 2024 (it will be seen on the 26th and 27th of this month).
“We are happy that this material can reach the public and not remain in a drawer. It is important that it arrives like this, as cultural heritage, in this difficult moment that we are experiencing,” says Aníbal Esmoris, producer with Marcelo Schapces, about this type of “exhibition does not pay” with which the film was signed. Then there will be a tour of festivals around the country, and it will be screened in universities.
The registry directed by García includes sound test, the intimacy backstage, and the complete concert. Great classics sound like Exploding from the Ocean, The Armored Eye and Tomorrow in the Supplyand Andrés Calamaro, Gillespi, Tito Fargo and Marcelo Arbiser appear as guests.
Luca wanted it to be recorded. He commissioned director Rodrigo Espina to film the show, for whom he had acted in his short The Day the Gas Chambers Burst, but since the filmmaker could not go because his brother was getting married that night, he entrusted the task to José Luis de his staff. “Here,” he told her and gave her the camera. “And what do I do?” “You follow Luca.”
Today, 37 years later, and with Espina deceased, García continues his audiovisual legacy in this kind of spin off from the documentary Luca (2007). And he explains: “With Luca as a guide, the band volunteered and everyone participated. Some parts are in Rodrigo’s film, but it remained to take advantage of this material so that it would reach the fans as it is, so we leave it as raw as possible”.
And he adds: “Luca was a very sweet guy, a truly divine guy, as you see here. “Many people only have the image of the beast he was on stage.”
“Luca was a very sweet guy, a truly divine guy, as you can see here. “Many people only have the image of the beast he was on stage.”
-There is a feeling of farewell throughout the filming, how did you deal with that?
-García: The only one clearly aware of that was him. He told Rodrigo that he had a bad stomach and that he was going to die at the end of the year. For us Luca was immortal.
-However, he seems very energetic on stage.
-García: Yes, but when you see the Works from the previous year, it was a bulland here you see a different guy.
-Esmoris: As Stephanie Nuttal, the band’s first drummer, said, Luca gave himself completely, he was the same person on and off stage. He didn’t act, he didn’t create a character. What you saw was what he offered to people.
-García: I went to look for him at his house in Alsina and Defensa, and we went to Works in the 29th, in the seat five from the back. It wasn’t a pose, the guy was like that. He arrived with the same shirt that he surely would have had lunch in, he did the sound check and the show in that. She only took it off to put on the t-shirts that the fans threw at them from below. That’s how he was and that’s how the group was. Zero maskall guts and heart on stage.
-In the sound check, Mollo appears singing instead of Luca, a postcard from the future…
-García: That moment excites me a lot, they are things that one thinks about again with Monday’s newspaper, right? Luca felt that I was leaving a legacy already. He left it to Mollo and Germán Daffunchio, what would become Divididos and Las Pelotas later.
-Schapces: It’s good to see Sumo in action, for us it is a document of musical and cultural anthropology, because you see a real, concrete moment, and there is no falsehood: Luca is there, offering himself. It is the complete document of how that group functioned and why it represented what it represented, and everything it continues to generate. And why, even the two bands that emerged from there, 37 years later, still exist.
It is a document of musical and cultural anthropology, because you see a real, concrete moment, and there is no falsehood.
The legacy
Luca was born in Rome and studied in London, but when he arrived in our country he was adopted as one more Argentine, for his closeness to the people. He was seen in bars and corners of Buenos Aires as an everyday character of urban fauna, far from being a rockstar. Punks, rastas and moderns loved him. The neighborhood rock of the ’90s I would take it as a stamp, just like alternative rock. In his own way, he was both popular and experimental, a chieftain who united all the tribes.
Until his death, in December 1987, caused by an overdose of heroin, he recorded three albums with Sumo, he left some home recordings that were later released as solo albums, he had the Espina documentary and the Jorge Coscia film, a tribute album, three books signed by Carlos Polimeni, Damián Damore and Oscar Jalil. The latest was the announcement of a biopic starring Peter Lanzani. The myth lives on.
-What legacy did Luca leave?
-Esmoris: The most important thing is freedom: the freedom to live, to not be in the system, to express yourself, to make art. He says it in the film when he talks to Marcelo Arbiser, the boy who plays the accordion: “I have classical training, but I used it to fly, to be free.”
Luca’s most important legacy is freedom: the freedom to live, to not be in the system.
-Like the part where the audience insults the showgirls and Luca says “no machismo.”
-Schapces: It was quite a novelty: Luca was ahead to the culture of the time. There she stands up and says “my grandmother used to say ‘we are all trolls’”.
-How was the post show?
-García: There was access thanks to him. “Everyone is leaving except the musicians”, he said and I stayed. There was complicity with Luca, she knew that he was making a search. The photo that all the musicians took together ended and we left.
-Was material left outside?
-García: The editing is very crude, does not alter the chronology of what happened in any way. Almost everything that was recorded was reflected. Everything is flowing, it is a feeling that Luca is alive, that Sumo is alive.
-How do you think the new generations see Sumo?
-García: I have a 17-year-old son and I was surprised that he has friends who listen to Sumo. Somewhere they connected. Let’s see what audience this attracts when it happens more. We have to see if it can be achieved, because today children have a huge amount of incentives.
-Schapces: Luca says in the bar part that “he who benches, comes up and is with us, that is Sumo.” Hence the choice of the title. Sumo is a huge thing that is planted. The kids will learn that in addition to autotune there are other expressions.
With the Sumo documentary, kids will learn that in addition to autotune there are other expressions.
-Esmoris: I have a 24-year-old kid and he loves Sumo because connects it with freedomwith being able to express yourself, with being able to say things that matter to you.
-Schapces: There are musicians like Wos, Ca7riel and Dillom who look back a little, they bring things. Everything is becoming resignified.
-Esmoris: Sumo is the closing of that enormous hatchingmarking a break with the tango and folklore that was Argentine rock, adding post punk and reggae.