Buena Vista Social Club

The Buena Vista Social Club is not so much of a band, but rather a celebration of famous Cuban musicians and the music that they play. They were essentially discovered by the American guitarist Ry Cooder in the mid 1990’s and brought to the attention of the world with the album of the same name, Buena Vista Social Club.

Over the years since I have owned that album; some of the noted members of the original incarnation have passed away, including Company Sequndo, Ruben Gonzalez and Ibrahim Ferrer. Despite these deaths, the ensemble continues to tour to this day and last night they played at the Hammersmith Apollo.

They were incredible, simply incredible.

My parents had been to see them play last week in Manchester and after my dad spent ages enthusing over their performance to me down the phone, I managed to get a ticket for the show last night. I really enjoy going to the Hammersmith Apollo, I’ve never seen a bad gig there - the atmosphere is always good.

There was a real mix of people there last night, not the usual gig going crowd for Ryan Adams, Sheryl Crow or the Dandy Warhols, but a cross section of Spanish, Latin Americans, young and old. After a quick set by the support act to get everyone going, the main event started at about 7.45pm.

As the band walked onto stage, the blind double bass player was helped to his instrument and then they started. Two hours flew by as they went from song to song. All the chit chat between the songs was in Spanish and atmosphere was electric. It was as if they were having their own private party to which the crowd was invited. As band members played a solo piece, they hugged and congratulated each other as they finished as the crowd cheered and hollered.

Once they had finished, they came back out for an encore for about ten minutes and then they were done, with huge applause for every one of the thirteen people, with the loudest for the oldest and original members still playing.

I took some very amateurish video -

They still have some dates left on their tour and I heartedly recommend going to see them if you can, you will not regret it - and you’ll be seeing some living legends doing what they do best.

The evolution of the walkman and the return of the BGW

Many many years ago I fondly remember receiving my first cassette walkman. I must only have been eight or nine and I marvelled in my new found world of musical entertainment. It wasn’t really a walkman, rather a version made by Boots. I clearly remember that it was quite bulky, had buttons for play, fast forward and stop. Once you’d listened to one side of your cassette you had to take it out and turn it round. It also had headphones with orange foam on them.

Over time I progressed to a much smaller cassette walkman, then one that you didn’t need to take the cassette out when the side you were listening to was finished as well as having a reverse button!

I marvelled at my first CD walkman, yet now laugh at the sheer bulk of it along with the huge quantity of batteries that it consumed.

It might therefore come as a bit of a surprise to hear that the first MP3 player I got was a hand me down, from of all people - my father, about 8 months ago. He had bought an iPod and therefore his Creative Micro was no longer needed. The one time an MP3 player came in handy was when out walking the dog, without some music my head just churns and my mind goes off on incredible tangents. I also used the albums that I listened to as a guide for the distance I was walking. For example, Ryan Adams - Gold, is a 2 1/2 mile walk. A few weeks ago the inherited MP3 player lost its ability to hold a battery charge, which rendered it pretty much unusable. However I had a fair chunk of Amazon vouchers and found that they had some great deals on MP3 players.

On Monday I pressed the button and ordered this. An 8GB player is more than enough for me and it will force me to change my music around every couple of weeks. Ironically, it was cheaper to get it on next day delivery rather than normal first class post. I also bought a batch of CD’s to rip for use on the new player at the same time. After a quick charge and some time spent loading songs on during the day, it was suddenly walk time on Tuesday evening.

We walked and walked, then walked some more and then walked a little more. After about 6 miles the dog stopped and looked at me with a look that told me she’d really had enough, so we headed back home. She promptly flomped down on the sofa and fell asleep, snoring loudly for several hours.

The big giant walk (BGW) is back. The dog is now dead tired at night and I’m enjoying being out for long music filled walks once more. Every time I change the music I’m going to pick an obscure album that I haven’t listened to in a long time and listen to it, I have some CD’s that I haven’t listened to for ten years I’d say.

The tout

So, on Friday evening I found outside the Hammersmith tube station needing a ticket for the Ryan Adams gig that was to shortly start a few hundred metres away.

Tout A was chirping away immediately as you exit the tube station, asking people if they had tickets to sell. He saw me walk towards him and asked again. “No,” said I, “I need one ticket.” “Hang on mate,” he replied, “follow me.”

There began the transaction.

I soon realised that Tout A was working with Touts B & C. We walked under the subway leading to the other side of the row, whilst the ticket was sourced from Tout C, then we walked back out as the ticket had been given to Tout B who was on the original subway side. Tout C then handed me off to Tout B and as we walked back through the subway he produced the ticket and handed it over rather surreptitiously in exchange for two crisp £20 notes.

And then it was over, I carried on walking, he simply melted away into the background and was gone and moments later I was supping on a beer and choosing the sauce to go on my hot dog inside the venue.

It was all good fun really. I’m aware you should never buy a ticket off a tout, but I wanted to see the gig, it was a very last minute decision to go and I had no other choice. Besides it is daring to break the law occasionally!