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This site is dedicated to the memory of Paco de Lucía, Ron Mitchell, Guy Williams, Linda Elvira, Philip John Lee, Craig Eros, Ben Woods, David Serva and Tom Blackshear who went ahead of us.
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Oh man Di meola was so crossed and started in the wrong beat...poor paco had to adjust compas for him that HE started...on his own song. How irritating.
Maybe Al di was searching for the dots again (0:25) ;)
I also like that pseudo intellectual "it has everything" comment from that dude in the background. Its like driving a ferrari with high heels and 20 mph and then your co driver says: it has everything :/
Couple more "fakemenco" guilty pleasures: Gloria Bendita, Chuscales Sahara (instumental version), Los Ninos de Sara Entre dos Something, can't remember, by someone
I know there is already a thread about Kema, but this is some astonishing and vicious guitar work
I think this stuff is easier to digest than a lot flamenco, because the model is very much like pop and light rock music where a soloist plays over a melodic chord progression in straight time
So I was listening to some Ottmart, because I wasn't really familiar with his discography despite seeing him dissed 1431 times or so and to my pleasant surprise I found some of his stuff was pretty decent..not real flamenco by any means, but nice.
I have to say I prefer his cover of Melchor de Marchena's Turkish Night more than any Alegria I've ever heard or most of Siroco
Here's a local guy I really like, Dave Beegle. I like his shows because he plays flamenco, fusion, will switch to a steel string and play Zep and his own stuff. All good stuff. I've seem him go from picado to a flat pick and back in the same song, no doubt that will annoy someone!
I do like the GK's and Liebert. Both responsible for eventually getting me to flamenco. However, I like the GK's live and the one time I saw Liebert live I nearly fell asleep.
I'm thinking that video has to be a parody, but I'm hoping it isn't. I'm thinking there can't possibly be one person in the world who could find that good and yet I'm hoping there is
Mark, good finds! That Benise is crazy, but what needs to be understood is: There's a fine line between parody and a million dollars. It's really perfect, add together a romance novel, movie imagery and sound cues, a guy who kind of looks like and acts like Antonio Banderas in "Desperado", rip off the one of the most romantic melodies ever written, add a little dirt and sweat. It's perfect! Take the Esteban/Ottmar model and add good production values and better looks. The only thing stopping that guy is timing, he's probably too late in the game.
Now I'm going to go play some Baroque music to try to undo the damage of watching those two vids.
I don't know if this guy is really worth a million dollars. If he is then what dos that say when Don Nino Miguel wondered the streets in poverty for two decades?
Back to some fakemenco I actually like....there are some historical flamenco guitar solo pieces that are not really flamenco form based but really nice. Esteban De Sanlucar composed a lot of these (Panaderos, Caracoles, Mantilla de Feria etc). Perhaps things like Escudero's "impetu" which takes a lot from the spanish classical stuff but puts it in a nice compas, but hard to consider that a die hard "buleria"...still fantastic composition. I could listen to entire concerts of those types of pieces. Modern flamenco players keeping that tradition alive somewhat, so long as they are not doing the jazz fusion thing (no more boleros please). RIqueni for one has some nice things like that, Sanlucar, Nuñez, Cañizares.... Paco and others not so much, they stick to flamenco forms.
Back to some fakemenco I actually like....there are some historical flamenco guitar solo pieces that are not really flamenco form based but really nice. Esteban De Sanlucar composed a lot of these (Panaderos, Caracoles, Mantilla de Feria etc). Perhaps things like Escudero's "impetu" which takes a lot from the spanish classical stuff but puts it in a nice compas, but hard to consider that a die hard "buleria"...still fantastic composition. I could listen to entire concerts of those types of pieces. Modern flamenco players keeping that tradition alive somewhat, so long as they are not doing the jazz fusion thing (no more boleros please). RIqueni for one has some nice things like that, Sanlucar, Nuñez, Cañizares.... Paco and others not so much, they stick to flamenco forms.
I'm gonna go right ahead and agree with all of that. In particular Nunez has carried on the EDL and Escudero tradition with some cracking self contained solo pieces.
Probably just a crazy dream but wouldn't it be great if Paco did an album or even a folio of new compositions in this style ? Marrying his current technical textural and (mostly missing from the above composers, extended harmonic vocabulary and use of non standard modulation for colour) with the performance style of the first few albums and the monumental En Vivo concerts. That would be ....something else.
Okay, I was listening to Nino de Pura's album Pozo y Caudal. Some of that is definitely fakemenco. I used to kind of make fun of it, but it's pleasant and exciting if you can get over the commercial production.