Beto Cuevas rocks The City

Most of you probably know that I went to see Beto Cuevas on Wednesday night, because I couldn't keep my mouth shut about it since I heard he was finally coming down here. So herein lies my rather unorthodox "review" of the show. I tend to go off on a tangent, as in, Ooh, shiny things! or, Ooh, man nipples! If you want to know more about the actual music, read this. Otherwise, I offer you my take on things.

First off: We had never been to The City club, they have no phone number listed, and we weren't sure if there was any parking close by. So for those who want to know for future reference, it's right behind the Pricesmart in Zapote. There are lots of guachis "watching" cars parked on the street, and one parking garage close to the venue. We got there before 8 (show started at 9), and the parking lot was already full. I do not fully trust guachis, especially with Margot, so instead we drove over to San Pedro, parked in a guarded lot there, and took a cab to The City (which is only a few minutes away really). Getting a cab afterwards was a little more difficult than we'd thought it would be, and we ended up waiting for one near Multiplaza Oeste for 20 minutes or so. However, in the future, I'd either get there a little earlier and use the lot near the club, or do the same thing and park in San Pedro again.

Opening "act": You really have to wonder, as I'm sure many in the audience did, who in hell's bells booked this guy. It was one man doing like four karaoke songs and one of his own. Weird. Not good. If any promoters out there are reading this, I have some suggestions for great local bands for next time. When you are paying $60 a ticket, you expect to see at least one decent opening act, and this definitely wasn't it.

The main event: I wore a little black dress over sheer black pants with my strappy beaded black heels. Oh wait, you wanted to hear about Beto? :-) He wore a jacket and black gloves and those The Fly sunglasses, none of which lasted very long in that hot club with no air conditioning. I think the first song was Miedo Escenico, then Are You Sorry, then some other stuff, all of it really great. I cannot believe the man is older than me; he pretty much didn't stop moving the entire 2-hour show, except to remove himself from stage briefly to change clothes and also during one acoustic song. Plus, he's really hot! What can I say. (The women in the audience went crazy, in particular one woman in front of me who kept screaming "Rico!" throughout the evening. I wanted to slap her in the back of the head by the end of the night, believe me.) He did quite a few La Ley songs -- and I really wish I hadn't waited so long to write this review, otherwise I might recall what they all were -- Cielo Market, Aqui, Dia Cero, El Duelo and Mentira were a few of them. He was totally messing with the crowd's head at the start of Mentira (which begins "Mentira, mi vida..."); "Me...da mucho calor aqui, no?" ha ha ha. If you have not yet downloaded from the internet picked up a copy of Beto's new CD, I highly recommend it (of course I do!). (You can hear clips of the songs here.) I am pretty sure he played most, if not all, of those songs. It was a great two hours of music that even esposo reluctantly had to admit he enjoyed. The band was good too; they totally rocked some of the slower songs live. And the bass player had not only my guitar, but a Pastor Oviedo afro Latino to die for. (Digalo así!) Overall it was rockin', and great, and definitely in my top five best live shows ever (that list includes, for reference, Fugazi's last show in San Francisco, Rancid at some little club in Oakland, the Deftones in Sacramento, and Joe Strummer in Portland). It was worth waiting three years for the new CD, and worth me waiting seven years to see Beto live. Well worth it. I'm already looking forward to the next time he makes his way to Costa Rica, which hopefully will not be another three years from now. If he happens to hit your town, go, is all I can say.

The crowd was... interesting, to say the least. You can't bring cameras in, but everyone has a cell phone, and most of them take video, so as soon as Beto walked on stage it was all cell phone cameras straight ahead. Pretty funny. Esposo had warned me about the women in the crowd screaming and going nuts ahead of time. Every time Rico Girl screamed, I rolled my eyes and the guy standing next to me laughed. I guess women are still screaming for Barry Manilow and throwing their underoos on stage at him, so why not Beto Cuevas, who's about a million times better looking? Personally, though, I would never do such a thing. I try to keep it together, even when I am only a few feet away from an exceptionally beautiful human being doing a one-man wet t-shirt contest. So it was not me who screamed when Beto removed his shirt for the last couple of songs (was Dia Cero one of them? I think so) and there were [cue angelic chorus] a lovely set of man nipples directly in front of me. No, no, really, that wasn't me screaming. Wow, is it hot in here, or is it just me? Two words for you: Fucking. Delicious.

Ahem.

Ok, so The City was a great place for a show. It actually reminded me of a club we used to frequent in Santa Cruz called the Catalyst, with one large space and balconies on either side. We got there just before the opening "act" and ended up about 6 people from the front of the stage. It really couldn't have been much better (ok, maybe an actual opening act would have helped). Here is the one half-decent crappy video from all the crappy videos I took with my cell phone, and if I find any more, I'll post them. Though I can't figure out why, considering the many people taking videos with their phones, there aren't more on YouTube. I can't believe they all came out as crappy as mine. See how close we were to the stage? Awesome, right? Warning: You might want to turn down the volume before you play this. Sorry. It's not that great a phone.

It was so quiet in San Jose that we made it all the way from Zapote to Santa Ana in about 15 minutes. We stopped off at Living in Via Lindora for drinks (what's up with the velvet ropes? in Costa Rica? come on now!), and of course esposo knew someone who worked there (actually I knew him also, that never happens!). We had a couple of Grey Goose martinis and esposo, of all people, made a toast to Beto. I added, "...and his nipples!" Definitely the best night out I've ever had in my eight years in Costa Rica!