Dislocados pays homage to Michael Jackson with Billie Jean!

So, the single is out! Like I said, we were coming out with a BIG song for us, and it's finally here! We've pre-released our new single which is a pure hard salsa interpretation of Michael Jackson's classic, Billie Jean. The song is coming out officially on June 25, 2010, the one-year anniversary of MJ's death, but you can catch it on youtube here!:

The song was a lot of work and effort from our side, mostly from Ilya, who did the awesome hard salsa arrangement. But, it's always hard when you're doing a cover, especially such a FAMOUS one, because everyone is going to have their own opinion. For us, the most important thing was to maintain the main singable parts of the song so people could enjoy singing along in the club, make the beat very salsa-groovy, but still do it the Dislocados way, meaning that I wasn't trying to be too much like Michael on the vocals, and the band does its hard salsa thing.

I hope you all enjoy it, we're really pleased. Special thanks to Sasha Sadovets from Na Hati Records for doing such a great job with the sound post-production.

And, no, we haven't abandoned our old style and now are going to be doing just danceable salsa covers. But, we like to see what we can do when we experiment a bit. Be assured that on the next album you'll have the whole spectrum from this kind of stuff to intense jazzy hardcore jams!

Ironic experience with Jimmy Bosch

So, it's Bosch T-9 and I'm getting closer and closer to *****ing my pants. ;) In all seriousness, we're quite excited. In fact, before anything crazy happens, I tend to get very calm, and that's kind of where I'm at now.

In fact, I was so much the "calm before the storm" that when I called JB yesterday to finalize the last plans, I was trying to not be hyper and I think I put him to sleep... haha.

But there was one ridiculous part of the conversation. Jimmy, as the great man that he is, wanted to let me know that people already know about us. Now, the more times I tell the story, the more it could be like the fishing story, where you keep exaggerating the size of the fish you caught, but I'm pretty sure this is how it went:

JB: "By the way, did you know that you guys are well known?"

KP: "Really, what do you mean?"

JB: "When I was in Cali, Colombia, I said that I was going to Ukraine and people were asking me if I was going to play with Dislocados. So, they know you down there. They even have your music."

Now, when I was re-telling this to Ilya, the irony suddenly dawned on me. JIMMY BOSCH was telling ME, Karolina, that DISLOCADOS is well known.

Jimmy Bosch.

It reminded me of this Seinfeld scene (minus the anger and the dumping, but my enthusiasm for the irony was pretty much similar to Elaine's here):

Gotta love JB. I'll try to keep up with the blog a bit more if I can for the days leading up to the concert cuz I think it'll be interesting to keep track of this ridiculous experience. I already told my facebook friends, the next stop for me is dancing on Mars in my underwear.

More Sweden

Hey, so I wanted to put up just a couple more pictures and tell you one important thing we forgot.

First, here's a picture of the whole band with Ibi and Marina from the Salsa Akademien. This was taken right before we went to the airport to go back to our "real lives". Only Valik wasn't there, we almost left without him. Still wondering what he was doing...

But, the other great thing is that the first night that we arrived, Chris and the other lovely organizers got us into a concert of Orquesta Aragon (pictured here)! It was really amazing. They were celebrating their SEVENTIETH anniversary as a band. Isn't that insane? This is where you know it's at, when there are a bunch of older guys still singing and playing together, with as much passion as always, with incredible technique, and the audience is going nuts for them!

Here is the bassist from Aragon with our bassist, and the singer with one of our singers. Ilya and I had to leave early, but the rest of the band stayed and chatted with them, and I hear they were awesome, very friendly, very interesting and interested, and a pleasure to meet. Thanks, Aragon, for a great night!!!