Lies and Stink at El Gran Combo’s So-Called 40th Anniversary “Concert”
at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts
October 2002

By Javier Antonio Quiñones Ortiz

When I read the news about the genuine 40th Anniversary activities surrounding El Gran Combo in Puerto Rico, such reports were met with glee, pride and satisfaction. The show in Puerto Rico was simply fabulous and they justly deserve that and much more. When I heard they were coming at the end of September, 2002, for an alleged similar activity at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts with “Lefty” Pérez as special guest, I knew the local South Florida audience was going to be taken for a ride. They were.

A "special guest" is not necessarily an opening act. Saying that Pérez was going to be a special guest leads one to believe that he was merely going to pollute the Combo’s presentation, joining them once or twice, with his stereotypical harangues exhorting the public to get excited with his music when they are not. If that is all Lefty, who is long passé from the sole hit of his career, would have done, such misfortune could have been tolerated. Unfortunately, he was the actual opening and leading act of the night in terms of time allotted alongside Tito "The Embarrassment" Puente, Jr.

Lefty was presented by an amazingly mediocre MC called "Chu" Díaz from one of the dismal local Salsa and Merengue radio stations, who is quoted in their website as a person who detests lies and stink. Díaz made a fool of himself lying openly about the fact that said activity was the first time Tropical music was presented at that venue – perhaps he considers a previous concert by The Afro Cuban All Stars as a polka group activity.

Then he went on stinking up the stage with uncalled-for praise for Lefty. I will not sully the memory of the truly important figures Díaz put side by side with Lefty in this written piece. Lefty Pérez hardly deserves even a footnote in the history of Latin Dance music. Saying anything else is mere crap.

Pérez performed a dated and derivative repertoire with a swinging-tight band marred by a screeching couple of back-up singers and Pérez's attempt at singing in English. The known Tito Puente hit "Ran Kan Kan", as performed by Lefty’s group, was the forum for Tito "The Embarrassment" Puente, Jr. If he is a timbale player, I am a Hungarian son of a Swiss Vatican guard.

Puente, Jr. even had the gall of imitating the gestures of his father and had to throw in the towel after just a couple of bars as he is not a musician, nor is he a dancer or a singer. All he has is 50% of his late father’s genes. He is not a figure of note anywhere and only secures occasional opportunities for self-humiliation in South Florida – a notorious Latin music dumping ground.

Most, if not all activities at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts are over by 10:30 p.m., particularly on Sunday evenings. El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico started awfully close to 10:00 p.m. as they were performing somewhere else before this so-called 40th Anniversary concert in Broward County. They performed one set, closing with the tune Timbalero with a mandatory courtesy invitation for Tito "The Embarrassment" Puente, Jr. to come in. The actual timbale player that recorded that tune lives in South Florida and was curiously absent that night.

Lefty’s piano player joined the band off clave on piano and Rafael Ithier had to get him on clave, while Pérez did his best work of the night since he did not sing the body of the tune itself.

El Combo burned, nonetheless, and people were treated to one set of their superb work for the price of admission. If I had paid $60.00 to see El Gran Combo that night, as many did since the place was full, only to see them for one set, I would have been pissed. Kudos to El Combo as they sounded 40 years young, with the recent addition of Richie Bastar, Kako’s son, on bongos.

Shame on the organizers of the activity as El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico was not honored as they deserve.

 

 

 

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