Sixty percent

March 16, 2008

I had an itch to scratch, but it wasn’t so overwhelming that I absolutely had to go. Then again I didn’t have any reservations about going either. I didn't go last week because it was a performance night – i.e. less time to dance and more expensive (by £1!!!). There was that announcement about Shaan being one of the new DJs, and as I expected he was the DJ last week. Shaan’s okay, but he’s very conventional based upon what I heard at the LDA social and Bar Salsa Mondays. Next week of course won’t be any good because of Scala Latina. It seemed like this week was a reasonable time to go, and the schedule worked out by the time I had to depart to make it all worthwhile.

A quick scan at arrival gave me following information. The DJ was Amir - this is good. The crowding is not excessive - good again. The ratio seemed to be slightly against men - not so good, but not fatal. There weren't very many friendly familiar faces among followers - somewhat of a negative once again. Overall - reasonably promising but nothing to build a great deal of expectations; it probably made the evening better.

The music was remarkable in that I knew about half of the songs flat out (too many so that it became difficult to remember all of them) and was familiar with another 20% of the songs. The artists and songs I knew included: Chivirico Davila – Silencio, Eddie Palmieri – Lo Que Traigo Es Sabroso (or at least I thought I heard the ending of it when I walked in), El Gran Combo – I think there were two of them but I couldn’t think of the title, Jimmy Sabater – Salchicha Con Huevos (shorter version), Joe Cuba – La Palmilla (last song of the evening), Johnny Colon – Merecumbe (this song seemed to freak out my partner), Mark Dimond – Brujeria (fairly sure it was this one) and Ya No Tengo Pena (next to the last song of the evening), Mongo Santamaria – Sofrito, Orquesta Broadway – Isla Del Encanto, Ray Barretto – Quitate La Mascara and Soy Dichoso (fairly sure), Tito Puente – Hong Kong Mambo, Tito Rodriguez – Hay Craneo, La Toalla (or at least I think it was his version), Willie Colon – La Banda. Also there was a version of Sonero (Ismael Rivera is my best guess). There also were straight Latin Jazz tunes (e.g. My Favorite Things and more) that I was familiar with even if I didn't know their names. No Bachata tonight.

Dancing was good. I think I danced a little more than usual by my recent SOS standard. Familiarity with the music helped (although I didn't dance to all the songs I knew and would have liked to dance to - Silencio being the biggest example). Relatively large amount of space helped too. There was one somewhat annoying song with a very promising partner. The sole On2 dance was choppy. Merecumbe freaked out my partner as mentioned above. Everything else was good to great or at the very least effective. I also had one of my best Cha Cha to date. All in all I had a quite a good time.

On the train ride back, I discovered that I had packed a book after all. I still couldn't finish it - with maybe 5-6 pages to go. American Psycho refuses to end.