There’s just something about ten-piece man-bands that combine latin rhythms, reggae beats and horns that do it for me. Cat Empire (Melbourne), Les Hurlements d’Léo (Bordeaux) and Ozomatli (Los Angeles) just make my hips sway, my feet move, my smile ache and my heart sing.
Tonight, I took Doug out the the Mountain Winery in Saratoga and we ate delicious food (crab cakes and seafood salad and crème brûlée with berries) and then we danced and laughed and partied to Ozomatli and drank good Zinfandel and for those moments, all was good in the world and there were no borders and love conquered all. I rang Matt and played him music down the phone (I seem to do this at concerts these days; it makes up for not having my friends there I think…) One of the guys in the band said, “Hey, it’s like some big backyard party North Cali style!” and it was: open air, starlight and hundreds of people on their feet clapping their hands. I think one of the best things was all the kids — in the end, Wil said something about the 5th-grader he’d encountered on one of his forays into the audience and dragged the kid on stage. Experience to remember.
And then we got back onto Benzaiken (the scooter) and rode down the mountain around those curvy roads back home in the starlight.
For those slightly north of us, they’re apparently playing somewhere in Berkeley on Saturday…