Dinner for five

January 19, 2007

Picking a restaurant came down to as simple an action as me swivelling my chair around and asking my colleague which restaurants she likes in Cambridge. The choice? Strada. Unfortunately by the time we worked out how many people were coming and I finally made the call to make a reservation, the restaurant was more than half full. Walk-in attempt did not work out either. Perhaps we'll try again next week if this Friday evening dinner thing continues as a "tradition." In the interest of being able to find a table quickly, we ended up at Pizza Express. According to our Pizza connoisseur Nat, Pizza Express has better pizza than Strada or Café Adriatic (Café Adriatic is the worst of the three). Final roll call - Cyrille, Natalie, Sergio, Stephanie and me. At this rate, we'll have six next week and seven the following week.

Once again, I was a little late arriving at Club Salsa. Vishal had a CD playing on autopilot once again - same CD as last week. I decide to let it play for a while. I ended up letting it play to the very end - for well over an hour. I just stood at the DJ booth, which probably made it look like someone was paying attention. I don't think I want to do it again, but it was alright as a one time lark.

The songs in the CD included the following -

Salsa
Salsa
Micaela - Sonora Carruseles
Thinking Of You - Lenny Kravitz
Salsa
Salsa (with the word Besame in chorus)
Bachata
Salsa (with the word Margarita in chorus)
Montuno Street - Azabache
Tambo - Susie Hansen
Timba, Temba, Tumba - Los Van Van
Salsa
Merengue (not overplayed)
Salsa (so so)
Cha Cha (over 5 minutes long)

Most of the Salsa songs were pretty energetic, bouncy and happy - typical Vishal fare. Many of the songs had not been played by Vishal more than couple of times over past 3-4 months (with Micaela being an obvious exception). If the general tenor of musical selection is like this, it would be nice. Throw in a few more surprises, some Mambo - even better. Then again, I suppose we would think of new things to complain.

I started playing songs starting almost exactly at 11 PM - after the dinner gang (minus Nat), Euvian, Zern and many Friday regulars have arrived or had settled down for some time.

Playlist

Acabo De Llegar - Tabaco Y Ron
Mi Mujer Es Una Bomba - Oscar D'Leon
Muneca - Alfredo De La Fe
Ave Maria Lola - Conjunto Imagen
Meneame La Cuna - Roberto Torres
No Critiques - Manny Oquendo (1)
Merecumbe - Johnny Colon (2)
Musica Ligera - Toke D Keda

break (3)

Cuando Te Vea - Tito Puente (4)
Ran Kan Kan - Tito Puente (Mamborama version) (5)
Cao Cao Mani Picao - Tito Puente (6)
Cucala - Celia Cruz & Johnny Pacheco (7)
Guaguanco Del Gran Combo - El Gran Combo (8)*
Me Dejo - Oscar D'Leon
Gotas De Lluvia - El Gran Combo (9)*

(1) Two reactions stood out. One CBL dancer (I cannot recall his name at the moment) commented, "Great song." I guess he heard the song many times elsewhere. A dancer on the floor looked at me seemingly questioning whether I was playing two songs at the same time during an especially busy chaotic part of the song.
(2) I think I spied Eva around this time. She recognized me and stopped by to say hello.Vishal mentioned that she would be coming along with Chris. I was a little surprised to see Johnny and Pete dance Rueda, but it's a free country. Also the amount of free dance space was adequate.
(3) Vishal started off with two songs I didn't recognize. Was it because of our special guest? The first song was okay for dancing but was very long. The third song was Playa No More - I didn't think Vishal was going to keep it up. I also danced with Serap, who stayed considerably longer than she had been doing for past couple of months. I also danced with Euvian (2-3 times this evening - more than with anyone else… but I only danced with 5 people altogether - mostly just once for the evening); Un Verano En Nueva York was probably a little too fast to attempt more complicated moves. Vishal's set ended with two Merengue songs in a row.
(4) Guaguanco
(5) Call it Mambo if you like. Chris and Eva made to the main dance floor for the first time and stayed until the end of Cucala.
(6) Mambo? Sure.
(7) Now we're getting to 1974 - early but solidly into 70's Salsa period.
(8) Guaguanco. See the song title. Vishal stops by to say something about Mambo and people starting to leave. I find it difficult to believe that there is a sizeable contingent of people who are so unhappy about 10 minutes or so of Mambo especially considering that it never lasts very long. Then again, people leave for all sorts of reasons. Some people leave when Merengue comes on. Some people leave when Reggaeton comes on. Plenty of people like Mambo. The dance floor was in decent shape from second half of Cuando Te Vea to the end of Cucala. It only emptied out for a minute or two as I moved out of Mambo or Mambo-like material. It didn't help that this CD was a little finicky and required raising the volume a lot more than I originally thought. In a later conversation, Sergio made a comment from the other side saying that some of the songs sounded too same throughout.
(9) Vishal (seemingly still unhappy about that string of "Mambo") came to relieve me for "10 minutes" to play things many people were requesting. It gave me a perfect opportunity to dance with Eva - Euvian was taken by Sergio and Stephanie was nowhere to be found. I also tried that new move with Eva - it wasn't new for her - of course.

Total 15 songs. 14 Salsa. 1 Bachata. 2 new songs (*).

Vishal's second set seemed a little shakier than his first. Sergio commented at one point that the song being played at the time was by Richie Ray and Bobby Cruz (Pancho Cristal) - it wasn't clear to me whether he liked the song. It seemed very familiar and arguably overplayed but it wasn't that bad. Then came the predictable sequence of Reggaeton - do these come in same order all the time? It gets stopped after 3-6 songs presumably because Vishal runs out of songs. There was Shakira (Hips Don't Lie), which was introduced by Vishal as a song that he had to play (or otherwise someone was going to kill him). Finally, Vishal said, "Salsa." Micaela came on, and immediately there was a collective groan from people around me. Would the reaction have been as bad if it were another overplayed song like "Me Libere" or "Lloraras" or "Caballo Viejo?" I don't know. Probably not. I think Micaela will hold a special place.

There were some long-time people who seemed to be dancing happily to Micaela. This led to an exchange between me and Sergio.

me - "I would have thought that after all these years, people would get sick of hearing this song all the time."

Sergio - "I said the same thing three years ago."

Anyhow, Micaela or our reaction to the song might have finally driven Euvian away. A few songs that followed were disastrous in all accounts - unpopular for pretty much everyone who was still there. Almost miraculously, Vishal followed this with … Mambo.

Stephanie was the first among us to notice and dragged me to the dance floor. Supposedly she only danced four times tonight - she was feeling a little clumsy tonight after having fallen off her bicycle twice while we waited for others to arrive outside Strada. Otherwise she thought it was a great night (with a massage by the huge-handed bouncer presumably being one of the highlights). The song also brought some others onto the floor, including Chris and Eva again (they danced separately during the Reggaeton phase). It was essentially Mambo rest of the way including "Caravan" by Eddie Torres Orchestra (not a favorite of Stephanie's and Sergio has mentioned in the past that he finds this song tricky now), another version of "Merecumbe" (least favorite version in Sergio and my opinion) etc. Still - miles better than what was there before (sorry for nitpicking - aren't we a difficult bunch to please?). I went up to the DJ booth after my dance with Stephanie with a jest for Vishal, "Nice adjustment." He laughed.