Los Blops were a

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...

band, regarded as one of the foremost bands in the country. The band originally formed in the town of

Isla Negra Isla Negra is a coastal area in El Quisco commune in central Chile, some 45 km (70 km by road) south of Valparaiso and 96 km (110 km by road) west of Santiago. Pablo Neruda Isla Negra is best known as the residence of Chile ...

in 1964 to perform

cover version In popular music, a cover version, cover song, remake, revival, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording by a musician other than the original performer or composer of the song. Originally, it referred to a version of a song release ...

s of pop hits in local clubs. They took their name from characters in a popular comic strip, ''Condorito''. The original band members were Julio Villalobos (guitar, vocals), Alejandro Greene (guitar) and Pedro Greene (drums). After Alejandro Greene left in 1966, the remaining pair were joined by Felipe Orrego (guitar) and his cousins

Juan Pablo Orrego Juan Pablo Orrego is a Chilean ecologist, musician and environmentalist. He is the current president of the Ecosistemas (NGO). He is one of the most influential environmental voices in Chile, and Latin America as consequence of his important parti ...

(bass) and Andrés Orrego (vocals). In 1969, Felipe and Andrés Orrego left, shortly followed by Pedro Greene, and the classic band line-up formed, consisting of Julio Villalobos (guitar), Juan Pablo Orrego (bass), and new members Eduardo Gatti (guitar, vocals), Juan Contreras (keyboards, flute), and Sergio Bezard (drums). They performed versions of songs by such bands as

The Rolling Stones The Rolling Stones are an English Rock music, rock band formed in London in 1962. Active for six decades, they are one of the most popular and enduring bands of the album era, rock era. In the early 1960s, the Rolling Stones pioneered the g ...

and

Cream Cream is a dairy product composed of the higher-fat layer skimmed from the top of milk before homogenization. In un-homogenized milk, the fat, which is less dense, eventually rises to the top. In the industrial production of cream, this process ...

, and also incorporated elements of

Chilean folk music Chilean music refers to all kinds of music developed in Chile, or by Chileans in other countries, from the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors to the modern day. It also includes the native pre-Columbian music from what is today Chilean territo ...

and increasingly performed their own compositions. The band members lived communally in

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whos ...

, together with several members of the Instituto Arica de Santiago. Their first LP, mainly of

instrumental An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to inst ...

s, was recorded in 1970, in 12 hours on a two-track machine and produced by DICAP (Discoteca Del Cantar Popular). It included the hit single "Los Momentos." Villalobos left in 1972 and was replaced by pianist Juan Carlos Villegas. The band recorded two more albums, ''Del volar de las palomas'' (''"The flying of doves"'', 1972), and ''Locomotora'' (''"Locomotive"'', 1973), before splitting up in 1974 following the coup led by

Augusto Pinochet Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (, , , ; 25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean general who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, first as the leader of the Military Junta of Chile from 1973 to 1981, being declared President of ...

. Gatti and Orrego later reformed Los Blops in 1978, recording a single, "Los Momentos"/ "La Francisca," but they split again in 1980.

External links

Los Blops website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blops, Los Chilean rock music groups