Viejas Locas

Viejas Locas was born in the monoblocks of Piedrabuena, in the south of Buenos Aires, between stolen rehearsals during the breaks at Colegio Comercial n.º 12. The name came from a nickname that outgrew its first singer, Mauro Bonome, but ended up defining the spirit of a quintet that formed to play covers of Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd in garages and bars in Villa Lugano. The sound they were after wasn’t an imitation: they wanted the dirty groove of heavy guitars, riffs that tangled like old wires, and a singer who belted out lyrics as if shouting from the bottom of a well. This style, which they later dubbed rock stone, set them apart from the rest of the bands in the Buenos Aires scene.

The moment everything sped up was when Pity Álvarez —a guitarist just starting out— sat behind the drums to replace Gastón Mansilla. With him at the helm, the band went from a cover group to a machine cranking out original songs. The first punch was Intoxicado, a track that sounded like a midnight bender in a dive bar, yet with a structure that hooked from the first chord. They recorded it in 1992, just as the rock stone scene was taking shape, and the album put them on the radar of a generation craving something rawer than the commercial rock of the time. By then, the band had already lost its original founders, but Pity assembled a new lineup with Sergio "Pollo" Toloza on bass and Fabián "Fachi" Crea on guitar, while Abel Meyer took over the drums. The quintet worked like an imperfect gearbox: Fachi and Pollo had played together years earlier, Abel was Pity’s neighbor, and they all shared the same neighborhood code and distorted guitars.