It is the musical event of the year in Argentina. Los Piojos, the most popular Argentine rock group of the nineties, separated for 15 years, returns to the stage – and will do so in a big way – with seven concerts at the Estadio Único de La Plata in Buenos Aires, the first scheduled for this Saturday. More than 350,000 people will attend the reunion of the band that marked the Argentine musical scene of the time—53,000 per date. “There is a lot of joy and enormous expectation. It is a reunion for 15 years (of the separation) and I think people are going to enjoy it a lot,” said Ciro Andrés Martínez (Buenos Aires, 56 years old), leader, vocalist and lyricist of the band, in conversation with EL PAÍS in Madrid in September of this year. He did so as soon as the group’s return was announced and during a European tour with his other group, Ciro y los Persas, the one he founded when Los Piojos broke up and which he still leads. “Los Persas are in very good health and almost all the members of Los Piojos have their own projects. The reunion is for a limited time,” he said.
“Ciro is the one in charge, obviously,” says Marcelo Gobello, Argentine writer and journalist specialized in music. From the vocalist comes the idea of rediscovering the “signature rock group in Spanish,” according to Gobello, which was “for ten years the best and the most popular.” A band musically recognized for mixing genres and rhythms. “The fusion of Rio de la Plata music with rhythm and blues of the Rolling Stones was something very new,” says Juan Cruz, music journalist and author of the book Lice in the 90s. From the neighborhood to the stadiums (Gourmet musical, 2024), a text that he planned to write about the Argentine rock of the decade, but which he ended up dedicating exclusively to the group composed of: Ciro a la vocal, Daniel Had to Fernández on guitar, Miguel Ángel Micky Rodríguez on bass, Daniel Buira on drums and Gustavo Yours Kupinski on guitar and Lisa Di Cione on keyboards.
The union emerged at the end of the eighties and in 1992 they recorded the first of their eleven albums. “They started in very small bars in Buenos Aires and quickly generated a connection with people. They always had progressive growth, they never stagnated,” says Cruz. In addition to his music, the journalist sees in Martínez an indispensable element of the band’s success: “Ciro is an artist who is looked on by the intellectual elite, but who resurrected, renewed and vindicated Argentine lyricists.” Before starting music, the band’s singer first tried performing arts and studied for a time at the El Baldío theater in Ciudad Jardín in Buenos Aires. His concerts are the union of his two passions. “He is an entertainer, in the best sense of the word. An actor who sings, not a singer who acts,” Cruz argues.
That and the band’s enormous love for soccer —Martínez is a Boca fan, Yours, Had to y Miki of River and Dany of Independiente—, always reflected in their concerts, make their audience overflow with passion when listening to them live, a euphoria very similar to that of the stadiums. “It is a very football-loving band and in their concerts the public has a lot of prominence. And Ciro’s voice is like someone singing on the field, but in tune,” says Cruz.
This overflow of passion explains, for Marcelo Gobello, why the group can generate so much attendance years after their separation and in a country in a perpetual and deep economic crisis: “In the worst crises, the stadiums continue to fill up for football or for the music. “People spend their money on this.” Ciro Martínez is also aware of what his group awakens and that also allows a feeling of patriotism to flourish: “At the time of the military in Argentina (after the military coup of 1976) they were owners of everything. And patriotism was like a bad word. We Los Piojos contribute to recovering that, returning to being proud of our national symbols and the good things we have as a country.”
After the separation of the group due to internal problems, and with the success of Los Persas, there were not many signs that anticipated a return. It all started on November 9 of last year when Ciro invited Daniel to the stage of a Los Persas concert. Had to Fernández, the guitarist of Los Piojos. “We are going to receive an old adventure companion, an old friend,” he said to introduce him. Both had not found their paths since Los Piojos’ last concert in 2009 at the Monumental Stadium in River Plate, as had happened with the rest of the members of the original band. The event began rumors of a possible reunion, which intensified in mid-May of this year, when the band’s Instagram account announced that the recording of that last concert would be released, 15 years later. “With the theme of 15 years, I was thinking about the possibility of a reunion, of a celebration. But before we said: ‘Of course, it’s time to release the album we have.’ I had already mixed it up with the engineer a while ago, we were just hoping for a good date,” Ciro Martínez told EL PAÍS.
The official announcement came on September 4. Los Piojos confirmed their return with two concerts, which became four and then seven, at the Estadio Único in La Plata. The band will return, however, without one of its original members: Micky Rodríguez, who, according to what he said, was not consulted. “I found out through the networks like you that there was a return, if you can call it that. I found out through the networks that the place was going to be La Plata, I found out the dates through the networks. I am one of the founders of Los Piojos and I did not participate in any decision. None,” the guitarist published a few days after the announcement on his account.
“It’s like the Rollings come back without Keith Richards,” compares Marcelo Gobello. A controversy that has not alleviated the expectation that has been generated one bit. “There is a lot of anxiety among people and among musicians too,” says Cruz. Starting this Thursday, Los Piojos will return to the stage, to calm popular anxiety, with a “great show”, according to the leader. “The emotion is going to be very great, something very nice to experience,” he said. And he anticipated: “There will be surprises that I am not going to tell.”