And yet another residual Miguel gig…
This one was for a lakefront party at Jackfish Lake (40 min. west of the city) and seems to be a fundraiser of sorts for the residents surrounding the lake. It was a nice party, complete with great food, a ski jumping show, houseboat contests and a fireworks display when night fell - but I’ll have to take the residents word on this as we left just before it got dark. We did some of the old Miguel Neri classics along with Marco’s cuban stuff - and we had a bonus conga player with us who was visiting from his home country of Mexico, called Edgar.
He’s a good conga player, and I found out he’s in the band Panteon Rococo. They’re going to Europe later this summer, and they do a ska/reggae thing …lots of players too - and it looks like fun. And it’s gotta be fun though, cause when the band gets big you typically find the ’shares’ getting smaller. It’s just the math of a paycheck, that’s all. Finance in music is not geared to the individual as much as it is to the band as a group …so when you have a club paying a flat fee for entertainment, obviously a small band (that does the same job) will get paid more per person than a larger band will. That’s why it’s so hard for larger bands to play as much as smaller groups …it’s just economics.
As I was about to mention, playing in a big band is fun. Musically it’s more of a challenge to get everything happening correctly, but when it does - the larger group takes on a life of its own. That’s my experience though. The dynamics are just different from the smaller. It’s not a ‘better or worse’ thing …it’s just different.
And different is kinda fun sometimes 
(L-R) Miguel, Edgar, Marco, John and Victor.
