Pop Music Reviews : Argentina’s Mateos Rallies New Generation of <i> Rockeros</i>

The raucous, roiling and rock-savvy young Latino crowd that packed the Palace on Thursday seemed to express one irrepressible expectation--that the first U.S. concert for Argentina’s Miguel Mateos would kick the door open for “rock en Espanol” once and for all.

“We used to be ashamed of rock in Spanish,” 22-year-old Miguel Cuadra said in Spanish. “Now it has a sound that competes with American music.”

Though record sales have yet to confirm Cuadra’s theory with U.S. rock fans, Mateos, backed by his brother, Alejandro, on drums, and four gutsy and polished U.S. musicians, made it clear early on that there would be no mere imitations of first-world rock heard this night.

More than any of the new rock groups from Spain and Latin America, Mateos seems to have done the best job of burning up the lyrical and sentimental jaulas --the “language cages” that have stamped Spanish-language rock as second-hand or derivative.

The idea of combining Mateos with veteran U.S. musicians playing a spectrum of hard to metallic sounds spells a giant departure for Argentine rock, which has generally emulated European bands. The band’s songs--most composed by Mateos--have the tough, rebellious bite worthy of rock ‘n’ roll’s aggressive, urban reputation.

But it was in the words of such anthems as “Solos en America” (“Alone in America”) that Mateos elevated an otherwise household North American rock sound by invoking the hemispheric vision of Bolivar and all-inclusive passion of Whitman and Neruda. One sensed in the crowd’s wild adulation the coming of age of a huge, youthful generation of rockeros confident of its own voice.