The Time A Rock Star Dove Into A Hotel Pool -- From The Ninth Floor

If you only follow English-speaking (or -singing) bands, you're missing out on a whole universe of deeply moving and transcendental music. And, more importantly, you're missing out on the deranged stories surrounding that music. Like this one, from March 2000: 

The moment you click play on that, the second most bonkers video on YouTube, you see a slim figure in red trunks falling from the top of a tall building and disappearing behind a convenient wall that, at this point, you reasonably assume must be the only thing protecting you seeing a bunch of human organs redecorating the ground. But then, at 0:44, you see the same lanky figure just chilling in a hotel pool. His first words to the mass of journalists that rushed into this Mendoza hotel after witnessing the fall: "Can you grab me a Coca-Cola?" 

That immortal figure is Argentinian rocker Charly Garcia, who is sort of like the David Bowie of Latin America (or vice-versa): he started out in folk-rock, killed his massively popular band at the height of its fame in the '70s, sold out to the MTV gods in the '80s, did some weird crap in the '90s, and consumed so many drugs along that way that if you piled it all together, it would probably end up taller than nine floors. 

The biggest difference between them is that, whereas Bowie's trolling tendencies are unproven, we know for a fact that Garcia is a natural-born troll because here he is, minutes after a 50-feet fall, effortlessly screwing with some journalists: 

At 1:53 in the video, Garcia grabs the pool's ladder like a swimsuit model in a Sports Illustrated shoot and says, "This is the first sports things I've ever enjoyed." (Looking at his physique, that's not hard to believe.)

Later, he claims he does this "all the time," but admits he was "a bit" frightened during the fall. After delighting the journalists with his answers and elegant swim moves for a few more minutes, Garcia finally comes out of the pool and is asked about an incident in which a fan threw a drink at him -- which accounts for one possible explanation of this event. 

According to Garcia, the fan had accused him of assault, and some cops were coming to arrest him, so he exited his room in an unconventional manner to avoid them. Problem is, the journalists who were there said they saw no cops. The other possible explanation is ... drugs. Just, drugs. This one seems highly likely when you consider this video taken the next day, in which another famous musician accidentally kicks off Garcia's small mountain of cocaine during a live concert. This is the most bonkers video on YouTube because Garcia doesn't even kill the other guy (even though there was seriously a gun right there on stage). 

The whole mess at least inspired Garcia, who is somehow still alive today, to write not one but two songs about jumping from 9th floors, "Noveno B" ("Ninth B") and "Me Tire Por Vos" ("I Jumped For You"), in which he sings: "I was very bored / in my fatal Mendoza / I said, what else can I do now? / Only learning how to fly." Hard to argue with that logic. 

Maxwell Yezpitelok lives in Chile and also on Twitter. He has all of the albums / and a radical attitude. 

Top image: Bleff/Wikimedia Commons