I first stumbled across Alvaro Peña-Rojas (probably better known as ALVARO - The Chilean with the singing nose, and former collaborator of Joe Strummer in The 101ers) on the Nurse With Wound list and finally managed to get ahold of a CD copy of his mind-blowing 1977 solo debut album Drinkin My Own Sperm. Now some German filmmakers (Hans Kotter, Jochen Hägle and Christian Zschammer) made a documentary about Alvaro, who is living in Konstanz, Germany, and still going strong. Here is the trailer for Full Dedication ALVARO, with English subtitles.
There is no DVD available yet, and all the screenings are taking place in Germany, but I am sure it will make its way around the world eventually. For now, here is one of the tracks from Drinkin My Own Sperm as MP3.
MP3: Alvaro - Palido Sol (MP3, featuring Cathy Williams)
Also, don't forget to check out the live set Alvaro did on Brian Turner's show in 2003: [ Playlist | Real Audio link ]
Nice post Lukas, looking forward to the documentary!
"Palido Sol" is an awesome track, first heard it on one of those great Hyped2Death CDs
by the way, that the Alvaro set on Brian's show is also available for download from the Free Music Archive: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/alvaro
Posted by: jason | June 30, 2009 at 02:08 PM
Thank you so much for the introduction!
Posted by: Jrld | June 30, 2009 at 07:54 PM
The documentary was just premiered here in Chile last saturday, introduced by ALVARO himself (!). After that, he played a set of three songs using his lovely casio mini keyboard.
I feel he's one of the chilean greats from C20, whose work is being very recently recognized here
¡Viva Álvaro Peña!
Posted by: Gerardo Figueroa | December 15, 2009 at 11:41 PM
Great footage. Would be awesome to have this on DVD as a doco. Can't wait to see it..I'd heard of him but never seen the images...thanks. joanna
Posted by: Sydney Psychologists | December 25, 2009 at 09:49 PM