‘Matador’, the biggest hit by Los Fabulosos Cadillacs that was not going to appear in ‘Vasos Vacíos’

The Argentine group The Fabulous Cadillacs (LFC) will give a free concert this Saturday June 3 in the Zócalo in Mexico City, and members of the band recalled how their most successful song “Matador” was almost not included in the album “Vasos Vacíos”.

Last week the mythical Argentine band performed at the Arena Movistar in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in front of 15,000 people and previously gave an interview for the streaming service Star+.

LFC bassist and co-founder Flavio Cianciarulo -who wrote and composed “Matador”- recalled that during the production of the compilation album “Vasos Vacíos” in Los Angeles in 1993, the producers didn’t want them to record their biggest hit.

“They didn’t want to play it, they told us ‘what for, they’re (only) the greatest hits, needless‘”, added the vocalist and also founder Vicentico.

Flavio Cianciarulo even remembers that he had no notion of the weight that the subject carried, nor did he measure the great acceptance of the public towards what became the biggest hit of LFC.

“It’s not like we said ‘look, I’ve got a bomb!’” he recalled.

During an interview in 2022 for the magazine rolling stones Flavio Cianciarulo also elaborated on “Matador” and the inspirations he adopted for the emergence of the song.

“I perfectly remember how ‘Matador’ was born. I composed it without a notebook, without a guitar, without a journalist’s recorder, I never had one”.

The album “Vasos Vacíos” consists of 15 songs that had already appeared on previous albums and two previously unreleased songs were added: “V Centetario” and “Matador”.

“This concept of a very salsa melody began to sound in my head, the clave inserted in a Bahian rhythm. I had been in Brazil and I had been blown away by this rhythm and to that I added a reggae ska base, very Cadillacs, with a bass line inspired by the song ‘The Bed’s Too Big Without You’, by The Police. And with the lyrics of Rubén Blades, my Spanish-speaking Bob Dylan”, recalls Flavio Cianciarulo.

Matador will resonate this Saturday, June 3, on the Zócalo plate of the capital, where around 110,000 people are expected to attend.