Monday

Tonight we saw Los Aterciopelados* at the State Theater* here in Falls Church. The theater, a converted cinema, regularly promotes cool international Latin bands. Los Aterciopelados (which means something like "the Velvety Ones") is a premier Colombian band popular well beyond the confines of home: Sunshine became a fan while in Venezuela during her Fulbright scholarship. They've been nominated for several Grammys. It's not particularly difficult to locate their albums in US record stores; something Sunshine did after repatriating in 2001. I became a fan in Sunshine's mother's car. We'd borrowed that Echo for a road trip we feared more than a match for Sunshine's old flesh-colored Toyota truck. That first Aterciopelados CD* immediately stuck in the dashboard player where it languished as our sole driving music for the next four years (Sunshine, of course, bought that car). I grew to love that Aterciopelados CD over those years. We discovered they were playing the District area before we moved here and pre-ordered tickets. We didn't realize the venue was walking-distance from our unit until yesterday. Tonight was a blast. The opening band was good,* and Los Aterciopelados were exceptional, blending Latin traditions so evenly into smoothie rock that it comes out the other side as something new. You can listen to some here. Their front woman, Andrea Echeverri, sings with a cadenced cool sometimes similar to the rocky trip-hop of Luscious Jackson or Cibo Matto, and sometimes something entirely eerier. Here's a testimonial: during this hard Kentucky January, while the Echo was parked in consistent fifteen-degree freezes, that CD finally ejected one morning when we jumped-started the car. We immediately loaded it onto our iPods before putting it back, where it's re-stuck in our CD player still. That's what we listened to returning from the show tonight. [Cavin]