Litto Nebbia, in search of recorded time, recovers his own records and those of others

Projects

“Cosas que no quieren morir – Vol. 1” was already an original album from 1976 that combined songs from different projects, for example by the Nebbia Trio formed together with Jorge “Negro” Gonzalez and Nestor Astarita and which, among other things, included songs composed for a film by Jorge Pantano, “Bobeta”, which in tracks like “Title Theme” or both “Love Theme” shows the ability of the leader of Los Gatos to compose music for movies. The great novelty of these “Things that do not want to die” is that the new edition -available on CD- comes with an unpublished album, made up of the songs lost during the musician’s exile. This Volume 2 the track “Theme of the titles of a movie that was not finished”. We ask Nebbia if it is something literal. “Not totally, what happens is that over the years they have called me hundreds of times to compose music for movies or plays and sometimes things happen in between and I have the music but the project is not done, and if I like what I did of course I save it and see where it can go. Nebbia is not only a completist of his own work but also of other artists that he admires. David Crosby’s death shocked him. “I was looking through my record collection recently and I saw that I had about 60 Crosby albums, either by The Byrds, Crosby, Stills & Nash, plus the live and solo records.” Crosby is a true classic, but Nebbia is proud to be one of the top collectors of cult rock bands like The Pretty Things, and he assures that he has more rare albums and singles from that group in his collection than the English collectors themselves.

This obsession is transferred to that of the search for the works of the artists with whom he recorded. At the end of the year he released a new edition of “Songs for Losers”, by the late Mirtha Defilpo, who was her partner for a good part of the ’70s, and who recorded this only album of his own with his production and composition by the music. “I supported her singing on synthesizers, but what’s important is her voice and her poetry,” she says. “The master of this album was also lost, but we found a tape in another format at a different speed that served to remaster it with current technology.” Recorded in 1976 at Sound Center studios, this album is quite a find not only for the strength of Defilpo’s voice and lyrics, but also for Nebbia’s extensive use of synthesizers. “I was equipped at the time with the first Moog and something that was even more modern, the first Korg synthesizer; I studied them thoroughly, and I used them on almost all the records of that time, which were also recorded in the same studio. Those sounds got attention now when ‘Bazaar of Miracles’ came out in Europe, to the point that some dee jays used some parts for remixing.

Abbonizzio

Not all new Melopea releases are reissues or rescues. There is also “La suite rosarina”, an album in collaboration with Adrián Abonizzio where the author of “Beat N ° 1” remembers his hometown. “Around 2018, Adrián reminded me that he was one of the few musicians from Rosario with whom I had never recorded, so I told him that we should do a couple of songs, but he replied no, that he wanted to do a work of the dimensions of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ or ‘Gone with the Wind’. I answered him but he laughed and insisted. So we thought of an album with vignettes of our memories of places like the old cinemas in Rosario or people like Fontanarrosa and Olmedo”.

Among Melopea’s new crop there are some albums that are only on digital platforms such as Los Mersey Mustards, but Nebbia tries to maintain the physical format, as in “Sanata y Clarificación Vol. 3” by his late friend Rodolfo Alchourron, an avant-garde musician. garde student of Ginastera and conductor. “It was the most difficult thing to put together, two songs were always missing, but I gave myself the pleasure of completing it and releasing the album 50 years after we played it for the first time in the Planeta room”, says Nebbia. Melopea’s new releases also include reissues of Enrique “Mono” Villegas playing folklore, volume 2 of Adalberto Cevasco’s “Sesiones inéditas con amigos” and a brand new album by tango artist Carlos Buono, “Ni Chicha ni Limonada”. But Litto Nebbia does not stop to rest and is already preparing his new releases “I am recovering a lot of unpublished and lost music of mine, to the point that by my next birthday, July 21, I hope to have 13 new records ready.”