Went to the Alfonso Maya concert at the Mission Cultural Center in San Francisco on Friday. The show started with a biting comment from the presenter about the center’s rates making it difficult for community projects to do events (ouch!). I guess times are tough for everyone involved.
Alfredo Gómez opened the night with a full band and was followed by Alfonso Maya with a guitar. Hmm, even though Alfredo sounded great, an opening act should not have more musicians than the headliner. It just makes it more difficult for him to engage the crowd.
Other than that, the show was great, and most of the people there already knew his music and were thrilled to hear their favorite songs. Mad props to “Calvin” at the violin — he was off the hook and on point on his improvisation.
Heard that major changes are coming to La Peña del Sur, a project that has been around for more than 15 years! If it involves good singer-songwriter music, keeping the wine and empanadas, adding more web presence (actually, any web presence would help) and mixing it up with new sounds and aesthetics, we’ll be thrilled to see LPS stay strong for an extra 15 years!
Earlier this month, La Bohemia’s team went to Ana Tijoux’s shows on Friday, Feb. 18, at the Elbo Room in SF and Saturday, Feb. 19, at the New Parish in Oakland. From the Elbo show we can say that Yung Mars sounded great. We were so hyped to see Anita that we found her performance lacking energy, especially after Yung Mars, who did a great job on the mic.
The biggest disappointment of the second show was the cancellation of Los Rakas. Been waiting to see them for a while. Yung Mars stepped in again, without his full band, and did an awesome job. Funky-C made everyone forget that Los Rakas cancelled.
Look out for this band, they’re going to do great in the Bay. Great to see Anita’s energy was back and her fan base continues to grow every day. Both shows packed.