GipsyKings.net

U.S. TOUR 2004

Westbury, New York - July 25


The Philly show began at 8 PM, I knew the Radio City show began at 8 PM because I had the tickets, but the Westbury tickets were at the Will Call window, so I thought the show began at 8. Wrong. It began at 7!! I suspected I'd screwed up when there wasn't any traffic as we approached the theater.

We got into the theater, with a printout of the e-mail confirmation I had received when I purchased the tickets, gave it to a security person since all the ticket windows were closed, and after about 5 minutes he came out and told me that I had been scammed, that the company I had bought the tickets from was not an authorized dealer, and that they only sold tickets through TicketMaster!! Well, this was quite a mystery to me, since I had gone to the Westbury Music Fair web site to purchase the tickets in the first place. HOWEVER, he then told me they felt sorry that I had been scammed, and presented me with 2 complementary passes!!! Oh happy day!!!

By the time we actually got into the theater Canut was singing Djobi Djoba, which was the end of the first set.

As I've said before, I really like this venue: a revolving stage is at the middle of the theater, there are about 30 circular rows of seats that rise up from the level that the stage is at so there's not a bad seat in the house, and the sound system is excellent. Plus, they don't seem to care if you take pictures! So I got bunches of them. They're on the web site.

The second set was great, the band was loose and into performing. I'm telling you, when you see the band members smiling and laughing at each other, you know they're having a good time. The encore was Todos Ole, with a kind of statement-and-reply interaction between Patchai and Nicolas. I think someone mentioned this before, and they weren't sure which song it was. This was followed by Caminando por la Calle by Nicholas, accompanied by Xavier on bass, and other voices.

As I said before, considering what could have happened, I was very happy with the way the night went. And Radio City was yet to come!