Watching Wim Wenders’ Buena Vista Social Club film nowadays is rather like watching a rerun of Dad’s Army – with only the vampish Omara Portuondo and the cowboy Eliades Ochao surviving as the Clive Dunn and Ian Lavender of this ageing collective.
This double-CD set captures the gang in their finest two hours at Carnegie Hall in 1998, and is probably a better set than the Grammy winning studio album. The complete recording reveals many (until-now) hidden delights that we can enjoy in toto. They include Ruben Gonzalez’s terrific jazz flourishes on “Siboney” and “Mandinga”, the duelling guitars on “En Cuarto De Tula”, the frenzied vocal duet on “Quizas Quizas” (known to Doris Day fans as “Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps”) and Ry Cooder’s Duane Eddy guitar on the lovely “Silencio”.
JOHN LEWIS
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