Just when I thought I should...

November 1, 2007

I arrived shortly after 9 hoping to catch Vish before he took off. I was too late. I sat around then stood around thinking about hopping in with the beginner class with 2:1 ratio. It didn’t happen because I got into a conversation with Channel – a quite good newcomer to the scene. Among other things we were trying to see if we had met previously in London somewhere.

Club Salsa has a lot of posters scattered about – advertising for a whole lot of things. Obvious ones include advertisements for Tony & Daniella on 27th of November (Tues) and Lee & Shelley for X-mas party on the 7th of December (Fri). The most unexpected one for me was the advertisement for a tryout for Cambridge Salsa team, which is not quite the same thing as the old CDC Salsa Team “Barranco” but with many of the same people. That was worth a small conversation topic between Ivan, Channel and me (and a shrug from Jane). I guess I should not have been so surprised after things overheard last weekend.

It turned out to be a surprisingly good night – an exceptional one I might say instead because I was able to string together many good dances with multiple partners and get into the groove so to speak. Many regulars were missing, but there also were plenty of nice people to dance with. Moreover, Sally was playing a lot of new nice material – supposedly obtained from Mauricio this weekend. When Haihan showed up (rather late), he went quite deep into the vault to dig up some obscure but nice songs – I would say that some of them could be considered “experimental” for Cambridge. It was actually a bit scary because I began to think, “How am I supposed to top this tomorrow?”

Some of the songs played are listed below.

Lejos De Ti (Angel Canales) – I had been baiting Sally to play this one with my last two DJ stints on Thursday … by playing other Angel Canales songs such as Hace Tiempo, Perico Macona, El Cantante Y La Orquesta as well as playing Son Boricua’s cover of Lejos De Ti. All this because I knew she should have this song via Ivan. Instead it was Haihan who played it. I was happy to dance to it (and it was nice) although I also felt beaten to the punch because I was planning on playing it tomorrow.

Salchicha Con Huevos (Son Boricua with Jimmy Sabater) – One of two Cha Cha played tonight. This was another song I was planning on playing tomorrow. Haihan does it again.

Porque Adore (Mark Dimond & Frankie Dante) – Sally played this one. Unlike other times, she played the song to the end. This led to another great dance of the evening for me.

Other songs included Vasos De Colores (Marvin Santiago), Hacha Y Machete (Alfredo De La Fe), El Flamboyan (Willie Rosario), Periodico De Ayer (Hector Lavoe). However, for the most part I didn’t know most of the songs. There was one case where Cyrille commented that the song being played is a really good one – he knew it evidently, but I had never heard it before. I would guess that my collection is pretty big for Cambridge, but in big scheme of things it really isn’t. I had to tell Haihan to keep his expectations down for tomorrow. I'll just do my own thing rather than try to top tonight's selections or any others.