High voltage vs.Freedom Music: Classic Rivals on the '70

This is the story of how the music market settled its differences on television, through two programs that today have historical characteristics: high voltage and music in freedom.

Towards the mid-sixties two large multinational record companies dominated the sales of Long-Plays and Cassettes in Argentina.An era RCA (or RCA Víktor, as it was known among radio artists and musicalizers) whose building and studies occupied an entire apple on Paroissien street, in Parque Saavedra.The other was CBS, or the CBS Columbia, which from Emilio Miter Street was erected in sales rival and artists and product.Behind them ran, in a comfortable third place, the Emi Odeón, then located in Barrancas de Belgrano.They were times where to obtain the famous and coveted gold album it was necessary to sell 100 thousand units of a subject.

The great vendors of the time had already been left behind.True popular idols such as Palito Ortega, Sandro, Leonardo Favio and Santiago Leo Dan had met the cusp, and now they were in a placid plateau.That is: they continued selling records and conquering markets throughout America, but at the same time the local public began to look for something else.Younger artists who represent them not only from the musical, but also from fashion, dance and even language.

When the seventies begins, some artistic manager of those companies decides that it is time to repeat the fury and the glow they had met a few years before the hand of The Click Club.This was a television program that gathered young singers who recorded pop successes and who had left the quarry of a peculiar manager of the RCA, the Ecuadorian Ricardo Mejía.Palito Ortega, Johnny Tedesco, Jolly Land, Violeta Rivas, Perico Gómez were just some of his stars.

Let's go back to the seventies.Operational meeting and an artistic manager who threatens its marketing troop because sales are falling.Then what do we do?.Easy: Repeat the success formula.If it worked once ... the youth of the '70 is no longer the same as that of the '60s, obviously.New young people require new idols.That old idea of Mejía is reformulated, make up, a lifting is made and after a market study it is determined that the next idols of the young people must be girls and neighborhood boys who impose fashion almost unintentionally.

The incipient pioneers of rock such as Manal, Almendra, Los Catos and Vox Dei, do not want to know anything, resist the idea of being used for such purposes.Those long hair roqueritos are social, unmanageable and indomitable misfits.And so?Then we invent a new staff of girls and guys.More obedient, more neat and clean, that obey the reconquest plan together on foot.That is the strategy of the companies.Reach what is known today as a joint-venture, and join forces with different television channels, the great popular window of that time.

And this is where a new television program aimed at the next generation of fans appears.

"We with music in freedom were the first, because high tension began a year later - says Raúl Padovani, who sang in music...-.We were the only ones who were on the air every day of the week.Then came high voltage, and after them came Voltops, which was from CBS Columbia and there danced for example Cris Morena.The producer was Gustavo Yankelevich, there they met Cris.You had later Tip Top, and the fabulous twenties, which was led by Juan Alberto Badía.All those went once a week.So we were difference.They went on weekends where the audience went down.We also had another advantage: we spent music from all record companies.High voltage was from RCA Viktor, Voltops was from the CBS.Those of Channel 11 were published by the Music Hall label.At that time each record company had its own youth program on a different channel.

The system chosen by music in freedom, bet of visionary Alejandro Romay to make differences, was that they set up great photographs of the real artists who sang those songs originally.But as of course they did not have them on the floor, what they did was to surround that photograph with the boys and girls of the cast, although with a small trick: the camera "vanished" the faces.A quite bizarre thing.

"At the beginning the image was distorted, as out of focus," Padovani- continues.That was on purpose, so that it was not known that those who sang were not the originals but us.They put a three -quarter profile camera, put a photo of the singer and we behind half diffuse that did not see our face.There was a telephone driver who when the program began they called her and left her bag bags, imagine.They announced 'Now Frank Sinatra is going to do such theme' and we appeared!Until people got used to it and there was the fixed cast.

Nothing to miss coming from Romay, who a few years before had announced with bombs and dishes the arrival of the Beatles to Argentina.But what appeared in his place was an egendro named The American Beetles.Although that's another story.

"I was from Avellaneda, but my dad had some businesses in Wilde.There Sarita Pristipino worked, who was an assistant to Alfredo Gago, producer of great tango values.When this Argentine producer who lived in Chile comes, Raisman, they had nowhere to put it and put it in the great values office.This man asked Sarita if she knew boys who would more or less look good for the program I was going to assemble.So she told me and I went, I entered the office, this man came out, he looked at me, gave me an album and told me "Do you dare to do mimicry?".Did you know?I was twenty years old, I felt the rifle man.It was a Tuesday and tells me "we recorded Thursday".I went to my house with the album, it was a theme of Pedro and Pablo, I live in this city and I did it with another kid.We made a duo.And there I stayed inside, "Padovani recalls.

The idea of free music had been presented to Romay an Argentine journalist and producer named David Raisman, who came from working on the great television success of Chile, giant Saturdays, conducted by Don Francisco.At first a radial format had been thought, which was going to be issued by Radio Libertad (also owned by Romay, then expropriated by the Onganía dictatorship and that would be called Radio del Plata).Hence the name that was going to stay when it was decided that the best was a television program.Freedom music began with a huge cast, like forty young people who danced and pretended to sing, but then there was a reduction and only ten girls were left (baptized as "Las Margaritas") and ten boys ("the cactus").The shipment begins to collect so much flight that of course appears the "competition" under the high voltage title, a creation of Carlos Ileana that from 1971 puts the channel 13 on the air.One of the visible faces of that team was Rubén Mattos, which has two huge hits: small lobster jumps (which is still sung, with other lyrics, on the football courts).

"There were no drugs, they didn't even encourage you to get into that," Mattos remembers, ".It was another era, another atmosphere.The most we did with the boys was to take our drinks, out there a whiskey.We went to that stable place, which was fashionable.It was by Barrio Norte, half a block from Santa Fe, a small bowling alley, but there stopped Mostza Merlo, Bambino Veira, Coco Basile, and then all of us, the young ".

Mattos gets excited about the story as if all that had happened yesterday.But not.Passed fifty years ago.Rubén establishes substantial and fundamental differences between both programs.Let's see…

"Of course, because unlike music at freedom we sang and choreographies, and they made phonomismics.The same was terrible the rating of the two programs.They were programs that marked the fashion of the time, in terms of clothes, and also to the places where you had to go.Teenagers hallucinated, small boys or tell you.They stick to the TV and the steps were learned.I worked in Bagley, the cookie factory.And was a computer programmer and operator.In the first test I did not stay, but I was in the second.I entered with Maria Laura Vilariño, who today is Marcelo Tinelli's dressing room, as dancers.She was a baby, fifteen or sixteen, accompanied by her mother, I had nineteen.Thus we started on Channel 13, there we did the rehearsals and left on Saturdays at noon before Pipo Mancera and its circular Saturdays.We had so much success that later they spent every day at six in the afternoon.

Padovani sparks with mattos in this to remember and see which program led.

"First, Liliana Caldini began with Charly Leroy," Padovan's recalls, driving the basement Beat, on Channel 13, then we came to the saga, those of music in freedom, a year later or something or something like that.The program lasted an hour, we rehearsed three days a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, on Saturday the program came out.The new themes that wanted to spread the record company arrived and there we did some comedy step, for example when the ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti came out, we did like what we acted, or Candilejas was danced by a girl.It was a choreographic thing, we tried to have fun and fun.The boys made the steps that were fashionable in the bowling, all the artists of the Viktor RCA, from storm, stick, Katunga, Juan and Juan, Heleno, a lot passed there, a lot.

Another "cactus" who became famous in the 9th program was Cristian Andrade, who has been living in Peru for about thirty years: "With Padovani we are friends since children.He was a boyfriend with Maria Esther Pazos, one of the girls in the program.And she had a cousin who was Secretary of Management of Channel 9.He told him about the program and it was with Raúl and they were.They were like forty at that time, they rotated.A few days later they decided to do a new casting because they were going to stay with twenty and Raúl tells me to introduce me.And I answer: 'But listen to me, I'm not going to dance like a boludo!'.Then he tells me "they pay seventy -two thousand pesos", which was a lot of silver for us that we were boys.Luckily they took me.They stopped us in the studio, put music and made us dance a little, the producer Raisman approached me and told me "you are left".

Among the twenty chosen and in addition to Padovani and Andrade, were Silvana Di Lorenzo and María Esther Lovero (who has lived for years in the United States).Both hallucinated the little ones that music in freedom came to have their children's edition, driven by Liliana "Bunny" Aquino, one of the girls of the adult staff.

"At one point we started to do exteriors- says Padovani-.And to work on other programs on the channel.Sundays for my city, Saturdays of goodness, with Héctor Coire.Then all the rest came, but we were the beginning of that fever.Couples were formed in the cast.We got boyfriends, before we had to get a boyfriend.Apart from the girl's breast accompanied the recordings, the unavoidable female figure had to be careful at that time was called Liliana Maturano.Although everyone knew her as a storm.

"I debuted in basement beat and then went through circular Saturdays and Philips casino," says a storm. ".It was a very musical time on television.Until one day I was guest at music free, although it was already part of high voltage.At that time many albums were sold, and the companies earned so much money that they invested on television.The RCA towards these programs and then remove the long plays of colors and all were great successes, all gold records ".

- You were a kind of pioneer not only in Beat music but also in fashion matters.

- Yes, because it was the '70, where there were great changes for women, we dared to the miniskirt first and then the mini shorts.The boys dared to long hair.There began many changes that were important.Changes in customs and fashion.I went on tour, but individual, as a soloist.Tours and a lot of work, it was a time of abundance for music artists.Such a strong time that successes and classics were generated that until today they continue to be heard.Here and throughout Latin America ".

And follow: "My colleagues in those programs were Donald, Rubén Mattos, Fernando de Madariaga...In basement Beat was the young guard, Almendra, Manal, connection 5 with Carlos Bisso, Bárbara and Dick.Even Palito Ortega came to high voltage.

Padovani says that this issue of rivalry between programs (almost a true television mouth-river) were pure inventions.As was the classification of music at that time: progressive on the one hand (rock) and commercial on the other (pop).

"A year and coins I became a soloist and took the first theme.An Ortega Palito theme, an exceptional night -Padovani- continues.I always take it and say "black, if you knew what I was going to sell that issue you didn't give it to me".We were underestimated and told us "commercial".Now, over time...I have been working in shows production for thirty years and I made many rock productions, I am even a friend of musicians like Lito Epumer.I say "Lito, we never realized that we were inside the same shoe box, some for one side and others for the other, but all in the same box".Some journalists and speakers invented that crack.But it was all for silver and convenience.

High voltage began being driven by Leo Rivas and Graciela Zito, and was broadcast for the first time on April 1, 1971.But after two months in the air, the new driver became a young Fernando Bravo.At the beginning it was aired on Saturdays at 1 noon, but given the success obtained, it was seen every day from Monday to Friday.Freedom Music, on the other hand, had a young and unknown couple of newly graduated drivers of the Iser (Higher Institute of Radio Teaching): Maisabé and Leonardo Simons.The latter was going to end his life tragically twenty -five years later, throwing himself into the void from his office on a thirteen floor.Inexplicable things of life.

Cristian Andrade recalls: "Romay made us known, made us grow.Then one day Nicolás Mancera appears and wants to hire us to take us to Channel 13.Romay grabbed an attack.He called us, we went to the channel and locked us in an office literally.He separated Padovani and me and there he offered a mud of twine and I signed.Then my old man wanted to kill me, because I was minor and my old man had signed for me of Mancera.But it was so far guita ... And right there, Romay makes me debut as an actor in high comedy, which was the maximum.I made Mata Hari's son, I had never acted.We were all some carers, we had never done anything!The protagonist was going to be Nélid.And Silvia Montanari did it.

Andrade says that he would not go through all that tinglado of fame again.Listening to his anecdotes is well understood why.

"It overflowed all.We lived almost locked.I remember that some journalists from the Antena magazine told me “'We are going to make you a note, the idea is to go to the exit of a women's school to see how they react'.And with all my innocence I told you 'You are crazy, you will kill us'.'Do not be enlarged, don't be a fanfarrón'.We went to that school in Flores and when they saw me, such a big detach.That was the rage that was lived with those two programs ".

WD