October 6, 2006
Playlist
Soledad - La 33 (1)
Mi Bajo Y Yo - Oscar D'Leon (2)*
Brujeria - El Gran Combo
Barreras Ninguna - Jimmy Bosch
Lindo Yambu - Cheo Feliciano
1-800-Quiereme - Luisito Rosario (3)
El #100 - Tito Puente
Playa No More - Crystal Sierra (4)
Es La Musica - Massimo Scalici
You Rock My World - Michael Jackson (Berna Jam Rmx) (5)
Y Eso Duele - Gilberto Santa Rosa (-4%)
Ven Tu - Dominic Marte
Ojos Chinos - El Gran Combo
Para Ochun - Hector Lavoe (6)*
Caravan - Pucho and His Latin Soul Brothers (-4%) (7)
break
Aprieta - Joe Cuba Sextette (8)*
Songo Soron - Isidro Infante (9)*
Soy El Rey - Pete Rodriguez (10)
(1) I was a little late - in part because I was working on reorganizing my CD collection to fit the new case. Vishal was nowhere to be seen. Johnny played two songs including Esta Cobardia - Frankie Ruiz. I raised the volume and changed the light setting as preferred by Vish.
(2) The new organization is causing a minor havoc (just because it's new and big and cannot be moved around or be held in my hand). It would have been more interesting to play this song much later (for example after Cristian arrived). As it was, it was a little too fast at this time. I originally had You Rock My World on cue.
(3) Some girl asked for Reggaeton already! She threatened to leave in 20 minutes if Reggaeton was not played. Even Vishal would not play Reggaeton until 11 at the earliest and usually not until after midnight.
(4) I'm thinking that it's one of those nights. Lowering standard way down. Vishal played the same track about 30 minutes later.
(5) Vishal finally comes in and utters, "You've changed your mind about what to play. This is good. Commercial Salsa is what the Friday crowd wants." Ummm. Yeah. If so, I'm going to run out of songs very quickly. Besides, I'm not that interested in playing a lot of commercial Salsa. I might add that Michael Jackson probably made no money on this remix.
(6) Vishal comes in and says, "People don't like long songs (like this)". The song is a shade over 6 minutes. He considers taking over, and I talk him into letting me play one more.
(7) I danced to this one. It was not the smartest decision because it was my first dance and this song was very fast even slowed down. I think I was just trying my best to keep up with the song and doing rather little with it. Oh well.
(8) Some Merengue and Salsa later, I decide to start off with a Cha Cha. Big problem. Only half the sound is audible. Vocals section for example was completely missing. I could hear everything using the headphones but the speakers are not translating. Bloody hell!
(9) I meant to play El Pito but I was too stunned by the previous song debacle that I played the wrong song. It really didn't matter considering the crowd. I thought they rather liked it.
(10) Cristian comes into the DJ booth with his CD collection and asks, "Did Vish tell you?" No he did not. But I don't mind. This crowd is not for me, and I think I want to dance a bit tonight rather than DJ. The debacle with the speakers made me lose interest a great deal too.
17 Songs. 15 Salsa. 1 Bachata. 1 Cha Cha. 4 new songs.
There was a birthday but no birthday dance. Yup. That kind of night. Perhaps some people were saving themselves for an early morning session tomorrow. There was a short stretch where the dance floor was full for some songs here and there but it never stayed that way. Vishal ended up playing only one Reggaeton the whole night, which meant more Merengue than usual. Maybe a little more Salsa than usual later in the evening too.
Highly unusual night of dancing for me. My first dance was to Caravan as I mentioned earlier. Things settled down afterwards as songs simply became bland. Over the course of the evening, I must have danced at least 4 Merengue, 2 Bachata and 1 Reggaeton as well as whole lot of Salsa (compared to usual Fridays). A number of records were broken. It was very good for me.
One of the dances led to me getting scratched in my forehead with a fingernail. She came by later to examine the damage etc and said, "I hope your wife doesn't get upset about it." What? No worries there. The comment was downgraded to "girlfriend." Laughter. I looked at the damage next morning and exclaimed, "I look like Harry Potter!"
Overheard comment of the day (possibly misheard) - "He's going to break your heart."
Here's a fairly recent write-up on the topic on londonsalsa.co.uk. One view among many.
[Added 5 days later - My first instinct was to say along the lines of "Because he has no heart?" or "What about his heart?" I thought it may be too flippant so I went against stating such reactions. I'm still not sure if this is okay, but my mind kept wandering back - so there you go.]
Advice of the day for leads - especially ones with fairly large repertoire of moves. Start the dance slow. Gradually build it up. This is true even if you know your dance partner very well. Do this especially for first dance with a partner for the night. Do this especially if you are dancing with someone you never danced with. Do this even if this is your second, third or tenth dance with the same person that evening. I think it's important to build comfort level between you and your partner. Build your partner's confidence for herself and her confidence in you. Don't try to fit everything into one dance. There's no shame in repeating moves. Even advanced leads have finite number of moves. Eventually, you'll run out. There's no hurry. These are kind of things I have heard a number of times (and even wrote about once - using Susana Montero and SuperMario's LDA class on dancing etiquette as an excuse). Robert Charlemagne is another advocate of this type of approach.
I ended up dancing until nearly 2. There was a bit of snafu at closing time, which led to us being stuck downstairs for maybe 20 minutes or so. The evening ended with a little excursion involving sightseeing a windmill.
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