Los Enanitos Verdes rock the Fillmore

After Wednesday night’s Enanitos Verdes show La Cumbiambera could die happy for three reasons:

Reason 1: The show opened with “Houdini 2”—one of my favorite songs—the haunting experimental tune from Pescado Original that is about a Houdini impersonator who fails to escape his chains and drowns in the bottom of a river. The recorded version also features Orishas rapper Yotuel. I never thought I’d hear this song live.

Reason 2: Felipe Staiti finally brought his son Juan Pablo to Northern California. Juan Pablo has accompanied the band in certain L.A. shows (he lives and studies guitar there) and has played with his dad in some Mendoza shows, but this time Juan Pablo assumed his position as the Tour ‘08 rhythm guitarist. He is a beautiful and talented young man, and besides, what’s more enjoyable than a good family act?

Reason 3: I shared a microphone with Felipe Staiti.

La Cumbiambera singing “Luz de Dia” (photos & video compliments of La Pachuquita)

I won’t go on here about how Felipe is one of the best guitar players on the planet, but I will say that experiencing one his solos live has all the breathtaking emotion and climatic qualities of good sex, but since music lives somewhere both inside and outside of the body, a Felipe solo is a thousand times more intense. Case in point, this solo from the jazz lounge version of Amores Lejanos. At some point (which doesn’t come through well on the video), Felipe made his SG ‘72 sound just like a sax. He once blogged on MySpace that this guitar “es cada vez más un piano...” I can understand why.



But Felipe, of course, is only one third of the band. Felipe, Marciano, and Daniel have been actively making music together for the past three decades, and it shows both in their musicianship and in their on-stage chemistry. At various points in the show, Marciano put Felipe to the challenge by improvising melodies on the mic and then stepping back for Felipe to replicate them on his instrument. Of course Felipe hit the exact notes every time.

The truly amazing thing, though, is that Los Enanitos continue to have successful tours. They come to the U.S. at least once a year, and every show I go to—whether in L.A. or Sunnyvale or Sacramento—is packed. This year they didn’t even have new material, but it didn’t matter. They combined some classics with some lesser known tracks from Pescado Original (their 2006 album) and threw in a resurrection—the 1992 ballad “Amigos,” which Felipe and Marciano performed as a duet. Add to that a bit of improv and Felipe’s constantly changing guitar solos and what you get is a band that, even after nearly thirty years, offers its fans an original show every time.