Tirso appears

I heard on Disco Fiesta that playing with Pachito y su Kini Kini at their regular Monday matinee at Miramar would also be invitados Tirso Duarte y “su nuevo excenareo”. I felt like crap with the grippa, but thought, if Tirso has a new band, I have to see it: his last two albums were great and the last time I saw him with his own band (in 2002) it was pretty awesome.
Well a lot has changed since then. He’s been singing with NG la Banda for one. For another, he has appeared on a couple of reggaeton songs. I knew it could go either way.
We got there a little later than we expected and were greeted by the muffled sounds of reggaeton emanating from inside - this was not the sound of a DJ playing, as we were soon to discover.
On stage we found Tirso, two raperos; two backing singers; a conguero; a couple of trumpet players, bafflingly hidden in a corner; and a guy with a laptop. Gulp.
The saving grace is that the vocals were mostly sung, not rapped (or shouted); but the music coming from the laptop didn’t not sound; well, live (as you’d expect).
There was a good crowd in - and I assuming they weren’t all there for Pachito, as they greeted Tirso’s songs with applause - actual applause I tell you (and they were Cuban!) and, when he told them to get up and dance, that’s exactly what they did.
Three dancing girls in what looked like underwear appeared and disappeared sporadically (one I recognised as one of the dancers from the Capri).
A couple of reggaeton songs in, the band left the stage and Tirso sat at the piano for a virtuosic, if frenzied, rendition of Autumn Leaves. The band then returned and Tirso announced he was going to sing a song in English. It was the BeeGees How Deep Is Your Love, and it was greeted by groans at my table, but by cheers and a waving of hands at most of the others.
A couple of more reggaeton songs followed, including one that vamped on the “hospital” coro from Michel Maza’s Que hablen los habladores.
The whole experience was bizarre and disappointing, though not entirely unexpected.
The next day I saw him at the Pupy gig. He said: we had hardly rehearsed.
Really? I couldn’t tell.