Archive for the ‘spain’ Category
Paco de Lucia Concert Review, Austin, TX 5/2/2012
I don’t quite know how to review this show. My brain hurts yet I’m extremely relaxed because of the events of last night’s show with Paco de Lucia.
It was because if Al Di Meola that I found out about Paco…and really it was Riot<Di Meola<Paco. The album Friday Night In San Francisco with Di Meola, McLaughlin and de Lucia was my introduction to his playing.
I’ve always heard that after Segovia died, Paco pretty much was deemed the greatest living guitar player. I think that may be true.
I bought tickets for this show 14 months ago and we were 2nd row in the center section. The amazing One World Theatre put on this show and they used The Riverbend Church for the venue since it holds a few thousand people. The place was beautiful and the sound was great. With our tickets we had VIP status which basically just gave us a nice dinner before the show. All this week leading up to this show I’ve been a little giddy. Last night’s show and this weekend’s Arch/Matheos show close some gaps for me for bands to see before I die.
After the dinner and milling around the courtyard we went in and got a nice look at the venue. Really not a bad seat in the place.
The lights finally come down and Paco takes the stage on his own and plays for a while. It was beautiful. Even in his mid-60s the man showed why he has such a high status of a guitarist. He was just phenomenal. After about 10 minutes some of his band mates came out to add some vocals. The vocal stylings sounded very Arabic but were clearly in Spanish. Of course there is that whole invasion of the Moors thing and this sounded like an influence from that. It was quite interesting.
For a few numbers one of the singers did some flamenco styled dancing and it was pretty impressive. His percussionist was great as were the harmonica/keyboardist, the bassplayer and the 2nd guitarist. It was a great combination of musicians and musicianship.
Paco didn’t have a vocal mic and only spoke into his guitar mic to introduce the band. I heard rhythms tonight that I don’t think I have ever heard before. Listening to the music and watching Paco’s leg in the count was pretty mind-numbing. And of course Paco shredded in some spots, but not in the same way you’d see Yngwie or Di Meola do it. It was just f’n awesome and damned near perfect.
Cameras were not allowed during the performance but I managed to catch a shot or 2 when he came out for the encore.
The show looked to be just around 3/4 full, maybe a little less, which is a pity. He doesn’t come to the US very often and he’s not getting any younger. Many thanks to One World Theatre for putting this on!
The Courtyard
The stage before the show started
The first adios
Encore!
The final adios.
Overlife – Between Passion and Madness – 1998
1998. I was really buying a lot of music at the time betweenwhat I was selling through my online music store and what 
I was buying for myself. A lot of the stuff I was buying for myself was from Denis Gulbey at Sentinel Steel Records. Back in the old days when you could call in and jibber jabber, Denis recommended Overlife to me. So…thanks Denis!
Overlife hails from Alicante, Spain. I built their first website (long since gone) and used to correspond with Fabricio quite a bit. What really drew me to them was Leandro’s voice. Very unique and a lot of emotion. The music itself was a little sloppy in places and even the vocals seem a bit out of key sometimes, but this album is really good overall. It’s sung completely in English but I included 2 bonus tracks in Spanish. They are good European power/prog metal with a hint of wanting to sound like Dream Theater. Their later albums sounded more like DT type prog which was a turnoff for me. So, this album it is. I still listen to it a few times a year. It’s a bright memory of a darker time in my life where the death of my father and my divorce seemed to dominate my every day life.
So if you’re into the aforementioned style of power metal, I recommend this highly.
Sixburgh!
I considered going this year but decided to use my money a little rmoe wisely and pay off a credit card. Done!
When Super Bowl XXX was happening, I had a party at my house and I was married at the time. When O’Donnell threw the 2nd interception for a TD to the Cowboys I got a little pissed and kicked everyone out of the party. Yes, I take it a little too seriously sometimes.
This year’s game was pretty good. I had another party (3rd year in a row) and had about 12-15 people there throughout the course of the game. Lots of food and beer and great friends. I was pretty excited through the whole game until the 4th quarter when the Steelers got lax and let the cards start scoring. Typical Steelers football. Irritating.
Some things I noticed about the televised game and even more confirmed after speaking to a few folks who attended the game.
1. The cameras rarely panned the crowd. According to one friend who was there, he said it was easily 100:1 Steelers fans to cards fans. Not too surprising. NBC is a bunch of wussies trying to make it appear “fair” on TV.
2. The crowd noise seemed enhanced. When the Steelers made a big play, you heard cheers and such. But when the Cards made big plays, the volume seemed to double. I’d bet dime to a dollar NBC, again, was trying to make it seem like an even crowd.
But hey, whatever. The Steelers won and for that I am happy. There were awful calls on boths sides of the ball for both teams and a ton of no-calls. Harrison should have been ejected and I am not convinced that Warner’s fumble at the end was a fumble, no matter if the NFL claims they reviewed it in the booth.
Here’s the precursor to my party:
The Metal Files 
You must be logged in to post a comment.