Las increibles aventuras del señor tijeras

Dear James,

I was going to do a post about the UK Christmas number one, in light of that wonderful Alexandra girl's victory on Opportunity Knocks. I read in The Guardian that she "literally cried". Literally! Can you believe that? She didn't just cry cry, she literally cried. Anyway, then I saw the video to that evil satirist Peter Kay's Christmas song and only made it half way through before switching it off in disgust/boredom/the need to get to bed early. So I'm going to tell you about Sui Generis. No, not Genesis.

You'll know Sui Generis from a tape I sent you many moons ago which included their Cancion para mi muerte, or Song for my Death for those of us that don't have Spanish degrees. Well, last Saturday I found myself in the all-too familiar situation of an Argentinian asking me if I liked any Argentinian music, looking offended at the degree of negativity in my answer and then spending the rest of the evening trying to play me something I might like. This time it was one of Josefina's 297 cousins, Eduardo, and finally an Argentinian came good.

Las increibles aventuras del señor Tijeras, or the Incredible Adventures of Mr. Scissors, for those of us who thought a maths and chemistry degree would serve us well in life, being written in 1974 is about censorship, as you'll guess from the scissor sound effects at the start of the song. Taken from their third and penultimate album, the sound marks a change from the "hippies with a flute sitting round a campfire" aesthetic of their first two albums, and is all the better for it. In this respect, singer and songwriter Charlie (later Charly) Garcia is very much a latter day South American Dylan, although don't tell Argentinians that as they'll claim he's far huger than Dylan ever was, and indeed anyone else.

The things that made me like this song instantly are: 0:23 der der der der der der der der! 1:33 the "I'm bored of this musical direction, let's change in mid-song" moment of zen. Charlie had just got himself a new Moog from the States and couldn't wait till the next album to use it. My apologies for my use of the phrase "moment of zen", by the way. That's what we linguists call a snowclone. And then 2:45 when the synths come in, just when you thought the big musical change was at 1:33. One of Charlie/Charly's main influences was Procol Harum and Vanilla Fudge. I'm glad somebody was influenced by those bands.

Dear Daniel,

What wonderful, psychedelic nonsense. I love it. To me, there seems to be a gentle open-mindedness to this era of bizarre mixtures between Beatles-style harmony and avant-garde wierdness. A kind of engaging naivity which was completely missing from 70s prog rock, who is essentially the same hairdresser attempting the same job but with shinier scissors and an arrogant air of, "Who was the last person to cut this?".