Thursday 17th
November 2005
VOICES OF LATIN ROCK PARTY (2)
San Francisco USA

Our very own Jim "Jimbo" McCarthy’s book "Voices of Lating Rock" was launched at an amazing party at the famous Bimbo’s Club in San Francisco on 17 November 2004, where members of the original Santana band, plus many other legendary artists performed. And they loved it so much that they decided to make it an annual event!! So, come November 17 2005, Jim was once again back in Bimbo’s Club to bring us a report and pictures of this year’s fantastic Voices of Latin Rock Party (2)! Check out his report.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr Bernie Gonzalez III in tandem with VOLK Entertainment : oversaw a second successful party at Bimbo’s, Columbus Avenue in San Francisco in November 2004. The debut Voices Of Latin Rock (held in November 2004) book launch party re-united the original members of Santana , along with sets from Los Moscosos , Malo, The Mission Drum Circle and other guest appearances.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This year the line-up was different with more honours being given to Latino based notaries. The show opened with Samba de Coracoa, with their up-tempo favella style Brazilian flavoured drums and their beautiful lady dancers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next up was The Salvador Santana Band, a meld of hip-hop, funky jazz and contemporary turntablism, they played a deep half hour set and to the audience’s immense delight, Salvador was joined onstage by his father: none other than Carlos Santana !! Carlos laid down some red-hot guitar licks for the encore of Salvador ‘s’ set.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First to be honoured were noted percussionists Mr Pete Escovedo (many releases on Concord Jazz etc-a veteran of the timbales), Mr Gregg Errico (Sly & The Family Stone’s original drummer), Mr Victor Pantoja (conga player with Count Basie, Willie Bobo, Cal Tjader etc), also joining them was Mr Mike Carabello (original Santana conguero ). They all received Award notifications from the Mayor of San Francisco.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mike Carabello on congas: squeezed in a ten-minute performance, where, accompanied by two flamenco dancers and guitarists, they played an intense Flamenco-Latin piece to an appreciative audience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Following closely was The Vernon Black All-Star Band . Vernon has musically directed Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston and The Spice Girls USA tours?? Tonight, Vernon was leading a slamming band that included the mighty Karl Perazzo (timbales) and Raul Rekow (congas) from Santana on percussion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They kicked some serious ass, as Vernon put the band Through Sly Stone’s "I Want To Take You Higher", a breathtaking version of "Another Star" by Stevie Wonder followed, with hot vocals by Lydia Pense and Fred Ross . To heat up the temperature further, the legendary Booker T (of Booker T & The MG’s fame) sat in on organ to play " Hip Hug Her" and "Green Onions". This was any soul lover’s dream . Needless to say, the audience went loco!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marcos Reyes , the percussionista from War, sat in with the house band to back up the also legendary El Chicano , from East Los Angeles . They did a rousing three-song segment that had the audience cheering; "Viva Tirado", "Tell Her She’s Lovely"’ and "Brown Eyed Girl", with their close harmonies and Latin-soulful playing, Jerry Salas, Bobby Espinosa and Fred Sanchez , and guitarist Ray Carrion ensured further heights of excitement on the night!! Next to be honoured and rightfully so, the beautiful seventy-five year old Dolores Huerta , who came onstage to a crowd chant of "Si Si Puede!!! Si Si Puede!!" Dolores Huerta is famous for setting up the Farmworkers Union with Cesar Chavez, to ensure righteous working conditions for the emerging Latino immigration in the USA . A really beautiful person and a USA landmark, Dolores was awarded an honour for her impact in the American Civil Rights field.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jorge Santana and Abel Sanchez , followed with an incredibly intense version of "Song for Cesar", Jorge’s guitar work with Gabriel Manzo , nearly took the roof of Bimbo’s. Whew!! Too hot to trot!!

It just left Malo, to close the event and close they did!! Malo never fail to seriously push a crowd to the maximum!! Recently signed to EMI-Latin; Malo duly opened the show with their new release "Ritmo Reggaeton", The band fronted this night by leader Arcelio Garcia, Octaviano Cueto and Martin Cantu took hold and never gave up. Onstage for one and a half hours, Malo just roared through their hits, "Café" "Oye Mama", "Pana" and of course Latin-lovers anthem, "Suavecito". Malo were the final crown to an exciting evening.

I believe this type of non-profit event is really special, not just for charity but also to explore and feature the diversity and flavours of contemporary Latino and urban music!

 

You can contact Jim at: jim@macasso.com

 

Read about Jim’s further adventure’s in down-town San Francisco….

Against this background other fascinating stuff happened during my visit. I was fortunate enough to do more publicity for the Voices Of Latin Rock book during my stay. I also had the honour of being asked to write the re-issue liner notes for Santana 3 (or Santana’s Third Album). Gregg Rolie; Santana’s original keyboardist and vocalist on the first three platinum selling albums loved the "Voices" book and offered me the writing job. As it’s my favourite Santana recording, it was a real gift to be able to contribute in writing, to a superb piece of modern USA recorded history.

Liaising with Sony-BMG/Legacy in New York , I realised how little these music corporations, knew about their recorded history and artistes.

The Rolling Stones were playing in the SBS Stadium about a mile from Potrero Hill, where I was staying, and as Mick Jagger and the boys launched into "Start Me Up" and others, I was digging the (free for me anyway) concert and getting on with writing the sleeve notes for the Santana assignment. I also interviewed Mike Shrieve that day (Santana’s original drummer) for the Santana liners, who, co-incidentally had worked with the Stones in the 1980′s on their Tattoo You recording and Jagger’s solo album.

Many other interesting things happened mostly in the last week. I did 2 radio interviews in San Francisco . The first for KISS FM ‘ was for a forthcoming " Voices Of Latino Rock " 1 hour radio show, in which Ron Sansoe and I were to be featured.

The second radio piece was for KPOO FM with, in the Hispanic Mission District in San Francisco , there I spoke of my early love of Latin Rock, growing up in England and trying to search out this music as a kid and further on as an art student. She played some cool cuts from Los Moscosos ("I’m Your Puppet") and Santana with Ozomatli with "One of These Days", and "Aye Aye" from the Shaman CD.

That week I also had the pleasure of doing a talk at The College of San Mateo , where Rudy Ramirez, is holding a Voices Of Latin Rock course for interested students. I spoke for about 20 minutes to about 100 people on the book its characters and my view of the music.

This was followed by a tasty, musically illustrated lecture by Rudy, in which Chepito Areas joined the band for a timbales drum-off with Roberto Quintana on the Santana tune Soul Sacrifice. Other tunes relevant to the Latin Rock history were played and explained. It was a warm and special night.

Lastly, Jorge Santana Band played at an old mansion in the City and amid large whole-wall-size (real) Rembrandts etc, Jorge and his band roared thru his Latino version of the USA National Anthem plus a set of other crowd pleasers. I attended both these last two gigs with a Mission friend, Armando Martinez, an old-school homeboy from the Funky Folsom neighbourhood.