Jack's Blog:
February 13th 2010
Casablanca:
"Casablanca" ... the first thing I think of is Humphrey Bogart - "Sam, I told you never to play that tune!" We would have liked to play in Rick's Café Américain... oh, well.OK, a kiss is just a kiss. Anyway, there is a lovely San Miguel restaurant called "Casablanca", on Calle Hidalgo near the corner of Insurgentes just across the intersection from our usual Friday night gig at Bugambilia (where we have been since July of 2008). We had never played or eaten at Casablanca, but through an accident of timing we did both last night (Friday the 12th.)
The town is full of Canadian tourists this week, and we had recommended our Friday night gig to at least 50 people we met. So then someone booked the whole restaurant (Bugambilia, that is) for a private party, without including us (oh grievous insult), and we were informed of this on Wednesday. We might have taken the night off, but then all those folks would have been showing up at Bugambilia... so I walked up the street and talked to the manager at Casablanca, and he was perfectly open to the idea of us bringing in a few tables for him, so Plan B went into action: a quick letter to our email list, and a handful of flyers in the hands of our obliging student Miguelito, who stood for two hours in front of the other restaurant ("Sorry, closed for private event" ) redirecting our friends and fans a few doors up the street to Casablanca.
So we had six or seven tables show up to hear us, and that meant about 20 people who weren't turned away disappointed, thanks to the accomodating nature of Luis, the manager at Casablanca. Plus they fed us ... so we were happy, too. Although Luis had set up a space for us near the entrance, as soon as we got a feel for the room, we started to move around to individual tables and take requests as usual. So it turned out to be a very successful evening.
The 2010 Guest Book is a hit, too. People spend as much time reading it as signing it. We have put some scanned entries up on the website for you.
December 2nd '09
Whitney Moore and Hopalong:
On Sunday night San Miguel was full of people. The moon was full, and Frances and I took a walk up to town to see what was going on; we ended up at Mama Mia's where bassist Hopalong has had the Sunday night slot for years with a variety of different musical accomplices. We knew he was playing with singer Whitney Moore, whom we had listened to about a year and a half ago with her former band Mama Sol.Mama Sol was a fun band; Whitney had picked up some young sidemen on the beach somewhere and gotten them into reasonably professional shape, and had a lively, reggae/latin let's-party sort of show that played for a while at D'Vino in the Fabrica La Aurora. Even though it was pretty clear that the band generally had more energy than know-how, we enjoyed them very much and noticed that they brought in a large, young crowd. They had generated a bunch of decent original material and we had high hopes for them, but later we heard that they had parted ways and that the bassist and guitarist had headed off for South America.
Any lingering disappointment we had had over the demise of Mama Sol was quickly chased away within the first few minutes of hearing Whitney and Hop together, since it was immediately clear that she is a much more sophisticated musician than Mama Sol had allowed her room for. The high points were two duets, voice and bass alone, on "Angel Eyes" and "Autumn Leaves". Whitney can not only carry a tune but do beautiful scatting accompanied only by a wandering chromatic bass line two and three octaves below her voice.
A lot of the show consisted of familiar mexican tunes. Whitney plays a little guitar, but Hop plays a lot of guitar when he's not playing bass, and his accompaniments are harmonically inventive and fresh. Whitney doesn't try to be a diva, just a beautiful musician using her voice as an instrument. A lot of singers put their energy into emoting and radiating sexual energy in the expected manner; Whitney is a musician and this is refreshing for us.
Last night (Tuesday) we saw them at the Santa Ana Theater - a CD release concert on a very off night, because they can't give up their paying weekend gigs! Whitney's voice was a little ragged at first - she's been ill and working anyway (we know that routine) but by half-way through the show the magic had taken over. Telling point: the small audience (25 people or so) was mostly local musicians. Yes, we bought the CD.