London:
On our way to London...Waiting in NY for the musicians, Pedro, Miranda, Guagua, Pablo and
Edgar. Cachete flew on Virgin air and we were on British air. Emo, Willie Alvarez and Nicky
were missing...We waited until 10 minutes before takeoff and boarded the plane. Edgar, our
road manager stayed behind for the missing three. Nicky showed up as the doors were
closing, in an drunk. No sign of Emo or Willie. There were 3 flights to London every hour after
ours.....the flight was packed and we finally landed at Heathrow and were met by our
promoters.
There were 3 cars, a van for the musicians, and a truck for the bags and equipment. It took
several hours to get to our hotel...which was near the venue where we were to play. The
rooms were the cozy just like bathroom, with nooooooooair or air conditioning. The best part
of this hotel was the breakfast…half the band was in this place and the rest in the hotel next
door which was slightly better, but not much. So with no sleep I went out to dinner on a boat
that was docked on the Themes that served Spanish food and had 2 discos on the lower
levels with a full view of London bridge and big Ben. I ate a Zarzuela de Mariscos with a bottle
of white wine joined by Fajardo, Miranda, Cachete, Junior and our promoter...after dinner we
went to the disco and watched all these young Hispanic students, mostly from Colombia and
Ecuador try to dance salsa.....they are learning.
Then I went to a salsa club to firm up Joe DeJesus, an ex-Barretto trombone player, who will
play Willie Alvarez's parts and to secure timbales and congas. LP did not take care of
business as they promised and never called the distributors here in England… I went to bed at
1:30 am.
Saturday 20th of June...I awoke at 8am...ate a great English breakfast and took a walk
around the neighborhood....woke up all the musicians because the road manager was still
asleep...Emo Luciano due in at 9am in Heathrow airport on Virgin Airlines...Someone went to
pick him up...Should take him 3 hrs to find us…Our bus picked us all up to change to our 4
star hotel for this one was 1 star... We are 18 people including Joe DeJesus the trombonist we
got to play Willie’s part. We checked into the new hotel and I was assigned the most wonderful
suite with a full kitchen including a clothes washer and dryer, stove, fridge, and all the goodies
you could want.. It had a living room with great large screen tv and fax machines a foyer and a
great bedroom with large screen TV, king size bed and all the goodies... Too bad I did not have
a chance to sleep in it. Off we went to sound check at 3:30pm. It took us almost an hour to get
to Alexandra Palace. The cricket stadium was in full operation, with thousands of people
going in and out and traffic up the wazooo on a one lane street. We arrived and of course the
sound crew was not ready and we hung an hour till they found us music stands, we checked
sound till it sounded well and then fine tuned the system for Ismael Miranda. Ismael was
having problems with the size of the ceiling for it was a huge round ceiling creating mucho
echo...especially with not too many people there. We arrived back at the hotel, where I did 3
interviews through dinner for the British press and Latino salsa magazines…at 10:15pm we
left for the show. We decided to play two sets and close the show at 2am. There were
approximately 1600 salsa fans mostly from Colombia, students and fanatic fans. Gilberto
Santa Rosa was also in London at the same time...he played at the same club for three nights
drawing 65 people on Thursday, 127 Friday and 145 on Saturday…that promoter probably
LOST $65,000. For the weekend...Our show went well. We even went till 2:35am and left the
people wanting more...back to the hotel...met my friend Steven Knitson and family and rapped
till 5am packed my bags and boarded our bus for the airport.
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sam@salsaweb.com
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Sam Rodriguez