Ry Cooder
Live in San Francisco

THE REVIEW

The proverbial scene of the crime is visited not only by the murderer, but also by Ry Cooder.

In this case, the scene of the crime is the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, where Ry held two concerts on December 14 and 15, 1976, which composed «Show Time», his only live album released until 2013.

In 2013, «Live» was released, also recorded at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco and also over two days, on August 31 and September 1, 2011.

On this occasion, Ry is accompanied by the Corridos Famosos, two of whom, accordionist Flaco Jimenez and vocalist Terry Evans, were also present in 1976; the other members are Ry's son, Joachim, on drums, and his wife Juliette Commagere, on vocals; Arnold MacCuller, also on vocals; and Robert Francis, on bass.

As if that wasn't enough, there's also the Banda Juvenil, a ten-piece brass band in the New Orleans style, except they are Mexican. Nonetheless, they are essential to merging two of Ry's great passions, the sounds of New Orleans and Tex-Mex.

That thirty-five years have passed between the two events is evident from the images. Ry sports a pair of large glasses with thick lenses, his hair decidedly thinning and all white; even more striking is Flaco, in such bad shape that it prompted some to pen an advance obituary; both spend the evenings seated on chairs, and the rest of the group follows suit. It feels like being at a senior citizens' club, waiting for a classic game of briscola.

But it's never the case, because Ry hasn't lost a gram of his talented passion, and the same goes for Flaco; on the contrary, after these evenings, Flaco returns to recording new music, and many will have to put away their obituaries, thank God.

That these are special evenings is immediately apparent from the first moment Ry's fingers graze the strings of the guitar, and "Crazy 'Bout An Automobile" begins, now one of "his" classics, originally included in «Borderline». In the original version, it is a standard electric blues, which Ry divinely transforms into a blazing Tex-Mex, with an all-slide and bottleneck solo to be passed down to posterity; and then the Banda Juvenil immediately makes itself heard.

And if, in "Crazy 'Bout An Automobile", the Banda makes itself heard, in the subsequent "Why Don't You Try Me", it explodes definitively and powerfully supports a Ry who is already in top gear; this too is a track recorded for «Borderline», a splendid album Ry released in 1980 and which, perhaps, once and for all defines the Tex-Mex sound.

It's a great party, you can tell. But the party doesn't involve only the musicians on stage because the audience takes just a nanosecond to let themselves be swept away, becoming an essential protagonist of two unforgettable evenings.

An impressive one-two punch, the kind that knocks you out, if we were in a boxing ring. But this is a concert hall, and Ry still has an ocean of energy to impart.

The third blow is the definitive one because Ry starts "Boomer's Story", for me his most beautiful interpretation in his entire career, and I always hope to be proven wrong and that sooner or later Ry will return to the celestial heights reached in the Seventies and Eighties.

At this point, I am already exhausted, and every time I listen to this live, I find myself asking how it is possible to reach the conclusion.

It is possible, it is possible, because at the end of "Lord Tell Me Why", Ry takes the microphone and spends heartfelt minutes and words to talk about the beautiful past times and how important it is, on those evenings, to have his lifelong friend by his side.

«Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the stage, as best as you can, Flaco Jimenez». And the excitement is so great that the concert hall almost comes down.

Here, I may be as out of commission as I like, but that crazy accordion that leads us into furious dances with the splendid «Do-Re-Mi» and then «School Is Out» prevents me from standing still and spins me into a whirlwind that is a hurricane of emotions.

Here the first part of the concert closes magnificently with festive notes.

The second, in some ways, is even more beautiful. Because it is the slowest, most meditated, and heartfelt.

There are no words – or at least I can't find them – to describe the wonder that follows «School Is Out» and until the end.

Ry, the Corridos Famosos and the Banda Juvenil play «The Dark End Of The Street» and «Volver Volver», the only songs recorded at the concert in 1976, but here even more beautiful and heartfelt, and Juliette Commagere's voice in «Volver Volver» tears out my heart and takes it with her as a token of unconditional love, and I let it happen gladly; «Vigilante Man», again Woody Guthrie, and Ry takes a moment for himself and pays tribute to Woody with an intensity unheard of; ending with «Goodnight Irene», a piece I have adored since I first heard it listening to «Chicken Skin Music».

And if there is a place I would have liked to be, it is the Great Music Hall in San Francisco, the nights of August 31 and September 1, 2011, in front of those seventeen artists who tune the sweetest serenade to Irene and to all those who have the sentiments to understand.

Immense album.