superfacilmente

While I sit and wait to get back some important pictures (so I might continue writing what I can about Buenos Aires from miles and miles away) I like to spend quite a bit of my time at the movies. I spent a majority of the new year attending this film or that and one of the big budget films I chanced to see was Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story produced by the venerable Judd Apatow, who makes about two movies a year this point, but can be remembered for the 40 Year Old Virgin, Superbad, Taladega Nights and, perhaps less known for his fantastic tv shows Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. Raunchy Mr. Apatow helped make a raunchy music mockumentary, which was enjoyable, though perhaps less so than his previous pieces. See the trailer below.

However, in a spectacle that seems only possible in New York, Mr. Cox found his way onto the big stage live at the Knitting Factory. Some of the clips are below.

and

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All I can ask is when Spinal Tap will grace a New York stage?

It HAS been a while since I have kept up with La Bomba de Tiempo.

They seem to have been doing some nice things in the warmer weather

In addition, they began and updated a Myspace Account, which I hope everyone will check out. Definitely a good group to go see on a Monday night. And Konex is a fantastically weird space.

While I am certainly not the first person to write about the band La Bomba Del Tiempo I just couldn’t help but commenting on the show I saw last Monday thanks to a porteño friend of mine who had introduced me to Gustavo Cerati, Soda Stereo and the Reggae album “Album Verde” which consists of reggae covers of popular Beatles songs. He said that I would really like the percussion band and I was definitely intrigued enough to go.

The show was at the Centro Cultural Konex, which I have to say first of all is a very nifty little space. You pay at the door and then walk through a courtyard to either the bar (which I didn’t go into) or the venue itslef which looks like a Warehouse District designers dream. Everything was pretty open and so I was happy it wasn’t that cold. There was an opening band that, from what I have read (and correct me if I am wrong) was kind of the “junior” Bomba del Tiempo group in that they used the same hand gestures as the main group which played after.

On the note of hand gestures, I think that apparently this is one of the most unique things about the band. Apparently the founder of the group invented his own form of conducting which consists of various hand gestures that he will either show by sticking his arms out or putting his hands on or behind his forehead. Here is a demo of the group. Talking about the hand gestures in castellano

So the band basically consisted of about 15 or so people, each of whom had anything from a congas to other drums and did the sort of playing that while not Brazilian would make any lover of Maracatu proud (and I am one of those fans. What was really great about the whole thing was how seamlessly everything worked together. About halfway through the show, a bassist was brought on stage to perform and his funky licks worked just as well as the “primal” beats of the percussionists. and I really liked Buenos Aires Spotting’s term for it: an unplugged rave, because the songs were at very least 20 minutes long.

People were dancing Capoeira and they were all dreaded and all rather scraggly in a wonderful college/university/hippie sort of way. In all, I think I will let the music speak for itself.