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Vine Street Rumba Band at Phat Cats in Venice
- John Patten, 05/18/02 jpatten@veniceflorida.com

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Related: Vine Street Rumba Band super-charges Venice 
              - Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 04/19/02

Backstage at Phat Cats is a tiny open area between the store-room and the customer bathroom. The Vine Street Rumba Band, a seven-piece Latin jazz orchestra, are all sweating from the first set. All are in their late thirties to late forties, except for bassist Pedro Arevalo: in his mid-twenties, he is the young pup of the group.

Arevalo is getting a lecture on jazz history from percussionist Hernando Bueno (both shown at right). Bueno has just finished talking about Freddie Hubbard and animatedly moves on to discuss Ron Carter. Excitedly waving his arms, Bueno finally concludes the impromptu classroom lesson with "...that's how Carter was able to do some of the things he did later on in his life, because he stopped and took the time to go back and learn the roots of jazz. You have got to go back and learn the roots or you'll never understand anything about jazz."

Arevalo smiles and nods politely. The rest of the band sip their drinks and barely avoid snickering. They've apparently heard this same speech many times before.

Back on stage for their second set, the band opens with a cover of Freddie Hubbard's 'Red Clay.' There are standout moments all through the piece. Keith Green, on trumpet, and trombonist Dave Holmes hold the piece together, often sounding more like 4 or 6 horns instead of the two-piece horn section that they really are. Arevalo and Bueno both have solos in the piece, both using their time to wow the not-quite packed house on a Friday night. Bueno is a mad scientist, prowling and rumbling through a vast collection of percussion instruments, attacking each with the fervor of Viktor Frankenstein shouting, 'It's alive!' In spite of Bueno's prowess, it is Arevalo who steals the spotlight in this piece with a fluidly pounding bass solo heavily reminiscent of Jaco Pastorius.

Cover versions are a bar band's bread and butter. The Vine Street Rumba Band are no exception. But their covers are anything but replications of previously recorded arrangements. 'On Broadway' is given a cursory working in its opening, the obligatory nod to George Benson's famous arrangement. Then all hell breaks loose into a precise cacophony of Latin/salsa/rumba/????. I truly have no idea what they are doing in this piece, it is stylistically all over the map. It's noisy, fast, furious and incredibly beautiful for several minutes until, with an abrupt lurch, it returns to the familiar bass riff of George Benson's arrangement (oh yeah, I remember, they were doing 'On Broadway').

Trumpeter Keith Green explains part of my confusion during the band's second break. "There's all kinds of Latin music, and it's all unique. There's Cuban, Mexican, Venezuelan, Chilean and on and on. Folks who know this music can tell you the difference right off. Then, using jazz, we're mixing all of this in, everything we can, and fusing it into something new, something we haven't heard before."

"I live right here in Venice. I used to do all the music arrangements for the circus," Green continues. "We threw out all the old circus music styles and went for something different then. This would have been the 1970's into the mid-80's. I was using music from U2, Motley Crue, Aerosmith, things like that, and reworking it into what was then modern circus music. Now circus music has all gone on from there, it's become its own thing. You'll hear jazz, new age and rock all mixed together."

Green moves on to the more recent past. "So I get an invite to hear and possibly join these guys. I really am not interested in joining a Latin jazz band. I love jazz, but Latin jazz sounds too constricting. So I go to see them and they blow me away. All the rules are broken. I gotta play with these guys."

Everything Vine Street does is given a near-total rewrite.  Covers of Dizzy Gillespie's 'One Night In Tunisia' and 'Manteca' are given near-total transformations. It took me several minutes to recognize 'One Night In Tunisia,' as the notes of the main refrain are right there, but they're bunched up a hell of a lot differently than any version I've ever heard Diz record. That one alone bent my mind.

Their version of 'Oye Como Va' digs back into the roots of the song originally written by Tito Puente in 1963, and brings it into modern Latin jazz while almost totally bypassing Carlos Santana's famous recording.

The band's history is as impressive as their music. Arevalo and Green both came out of the Berkeley Conservatory of Music, albeit a generation apart. Bueno came out of Julliard. "I didn't go to school," Dave Holmes announces. He didn't have to: he cut his teeth playing on the road with k.d. lang and Dr. Hook and The Medicine Show. Locally, Holmes has played with Dan Electro, and he is currently also a member of the band Dem Tings. 

Back on stage for the third set, Vine Street whips through a tasty cha-cha number that gets the crowd dancing before settling into a cover of Leon Russell's 'This Masquerade.' It's a slower number, serene, quieter and quite beautiful. In spite of that, Russell himself might not recognize it as his composition if he walked in during the middle.

The Vine Street Rumba Band are: Hernando Bueno, percussion; Alex Ross, keyboards; Keith Green, trumpet and trombone; Dave Holmes, trombone; Pedro Arevalo, bass; Ken Snow, guitar and percussion; Paul Cartwright, drums.

Phat Cats -- 121 Venice Avenue West in downtown Venice, features live jazz nightly.