Don Lucero

About

Don Lucero is the ninth solo album by Argentine musician Luis Alberto Spinetta. It was released on November 20, 1989, by Del Cielito Record. It was chosen as the best album of the year by the annual poll of the Sí supplement of the Clarín newspaper, while the song "Fina ropa blanca" was considered the best of 1989. A few years before his death, Spinetta stated that Don Lucero and El Valle Interior were his favorite albums of his career. The musicians are Spinetta (guitar, vocal, and programming), Juan Carlos "Mono" Fontana (keyboards), Horacio "Chofi" Faruolo (keyboards), Didi Gutman (keyboards), Guillermo Arrom (lead guitar), Javier Malosetti (bass), and Jota Morelli (drums). It was presented on December 8 and 9, 1989, at the Obras Sanitarias Stadium. Historical Context The previous year, Spinetta had released the album Téster De Violencia, which proved to be an unexpected success and was chosen by Clarín's annual "Si" supplement poll as the best album of the year, an accolade also extended to the song "El mono tremendo." The world and Argentina were experiencing turbulent time. In November of that year, the Berlin Wall would fall, marking the beginning of the end of the Cold War, which had begun in 1947, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union two years later. This ushered in the historical period known as globalization, with the widespread adoption of neoliberal policie. In Argentina, the first elections to renew a democratic government since 1951 were held that year, with the Justicialist Party winning with Carlos Menem as its presidential candidate. For the first time in Argentine history, a democratically elected president was handing over power to a democratically elected president from another party. Spinetta had actively participated in the electoral campaign, supporting the defeated candidate, Eduardo Angeloz of the Radical Civic Union. But at the same time, in March, a hyperinflationary outbreak had erupted, plunging most of the population into poverty, while successive impunity laws set free the criminals who had committed crimes against humanity in the 1970s and 1980. After Téster de violencia, a concept album designed to provoke reflection on violence by placing the body at its center, Spinetta sought to make an album that took the opposite approach. To paraphrase his own reflection, if Téster had been an album for thinking, Don Lucero was an album for feeling. It was the first album recorded in the studio Spinetta set up in his home. Originally, that studio was called Cintacalma; it would later be renamed La Diosa Salvaje when he expanded and modernized it in response to the conflictive behavior of record companie. Title The title relates both to electricity (in its musical sense) and to light, the latter being a central symbol in Spinetta's work. In an interview with Fernando Bravo coinciding with the album's release, Spinetta confirmed that the title refers to light and clarified that the word "don" is used in the sense of "grace" or "ability." Originally, Spinetta had considered titling the album after Segba, the state-owned electricity company that provided service in Greater Buenos Aire, but ultimately opted for "don lucero" (Don Lucero), to refer to the power to generate light and electricity. With a similar connotation, Spinetta often referred to musical creators as "usinas" (power plants) or "centrales" (power stations), as he did publicly when introducing Mono Fontana. Along the same significant line, Eduardo Martí wrote in 2013 that "his mind was like the Corpus-Itaipu Dam, something that generated a terrible energy." The album title is unanimously written in books and specialized publications with the word "Lucero" capitalized. However, since it is an expression meaning "gift of giving light," the grammatical rules of Spanish indicate that the adjective "lucero" should be written in lowercase, as in Don lucero. The album does not allow for resolving this dilemma because it is written entirely in capital letter. Cover The cover is a drawing by Spinetta. A black background features a human-shaped face glowing in a bluish hue, like a planet or a humanized star. The drawing was created on a Commodore Amiga computer. Spinetta had studied drawing and painting at the School of Fine Arts and drew daily. The cover of Almendra's first album, the famous "man on the cover" or "man with the tear," was one of his drawing. Up to that point, he had also designed the cover for David Lebón's album, El tiempo es veloz ; later, he would also design the cover for his final album, Un mañana. The back cover of the album features a series of variations on the front cover drawing. The inner sleeve contains photographs of the musician, taken by Eduardo Martí. Content The album has nine track, four on Side 1 and five on Side 2. Due to time constraint, Side 1 features all the softer, more direct song, while Side 2 contains the melodically and harmonically harsher and more insular track, giving each side a very different sound. As with Téster De Violencia, this album also contains no instrumental track. .

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