NYR #35: Enjoy the awesome jazz concerts at Café Central

Madrid is a city of cafes. Madrileñans love their coffee and their beer, and they partake of these two beverages at a bar/cafe. Cafe Central is one of those awesome stereotypical Madrileñan cafes, but from 10-midnight every night, it transforms into a wonderful music venue, and 10-15€ gets you a seat to some top quality jazz performances.

Yesterday, because I'd been having kind of a rough week, a friend suggested that we go listen to the jazz at Cafe Central and cross another item off my list. And this band (a trio of a double-bass, piano and drums) was fantastic. They started off with an instrumental piece, and then introduced the female singer who would accompany them for the rest of the set.

And although I generally think of jazz as a purely American phenomenon, this group played several Spanish songs--from Mexico and the Caribbean--and they were delightful.

After about 5 songs, the leader of the group (seen below resting on his bass), told the audience: we're going to take a 10 or 15 minute break, so we'll be back in about half an hour. It's the Spanish thing to do.

I was starving, so we ducked out at this moment, but I will so very willingly go back, because the atmosphere is tons of fun and the music was so very amazing.

Katy Perry + Being Mooned by a Random Spanish Dude

Last night was the EMA's (The European Music Awards, for those who pay absolutely no attention to either the pop culture scene or the outside-of-the-USA scene).

The EMA's were in Madrid. Ergo, there was a ginormous outdoor concert (FREE!) at the Puerta de Alcalá.

This is it on a normal day.

This requires quadrupling the security forces in the streets, shutting down several major thoroughfares, and all around transforming a beautifully classical space in Madrid into a modern concert venue for 1 million+ people.

Being a concert in Spain, it didn't get started until about an hour or so after we all thought it would, but that was ok! It gave me time to actually get there!

Once I got there, I still had to wait for a good long while before the concert started and the crowd was getting pretty restless. So when the concert emcee came on and promised the crowd that the band would be on soon, things started to look a little promising.

Of course, my failure at Spanish colloquialisms means that I missed the part where the emcee said that if the musical group 30 Seconds from Mars wasn't on ready by the time he finished his bit, he would pants himself.

They weren't ready.

And he stuck to his word.

And that is how a crowd of a million+ people got scarred for life at the EMAs.

(I do not have a picture of this. In fact, I barely have a mental image because I shut my eyes as soon as I figured out what was going on.)

In other news, after 30 Seconds from Mars played, it was KATY PERRY TIME!!!!!

That little white speck in the lower left corner...THAT'S HER!

She puts on quite a show, but I'm not gonna lie, I kind of thought she looked like Cher in her getup: a sparkly nude/red unitard with super high red heels and a spony.

You can kind of see the getup here. A little. I think.

She sang: "Hot and Cold", a remix of "I Kissed a Girl", "Firework", Teenage Dream", "Peacock" and ended with "California Gurls". The crowd wasn't a huge fan of the "I kissed a girl" remix, since it started off kind of slow and unrecognizable, and "Firework" also started off a little iffy, since it's a new song. I don't think that anyone here was really familiar with the words yet, since it probably hasn't had much playing time. But we all recognized how great of a song it was at the end, when they literally shot fireworks from the stage.

FIYAAAAH!!!!!

And ending with California Gurls was perhaps one of the best decisions ever made in the history of the world.

There definitely is something to this "living in a major international city" thing, isn't there?

My current favorite song

About every 3 months, I have a new favorite song.  I'll play it over and over again until most people are sick of it, and then I keep playing it, because I like it just that much.

For instance, freshman year of college, my favorite song was "Escapar" by Enrique Iglesias.  (Note that it's the Spanish version, not the English version: "Escape")  To this day it is still one of the most played songs in my iTunes, and I haven't really listened to it much since then.  Also to this day, if I hear the English version of the song playing, I will start singing along...in Spanish...  So that should give you some idea of what we're dealing with here.

But my current favorite song is this one:  In My Head by Jason Derulo.  I might have listened to it on repeat this past weekend.  And several times during the week.  And then just now as I was writing this post.