Paco at his best

Watch it first.


It was late. We'd been drinking. I was with my muso, tabla playing mate. I mention that because he knows what he's doing.

We were surfing flamenco on YouTube and clicked on this. And for about 30 seconds, we couldn't figure out what was going on. We started with 'Oh, Paco is so great' to 'wow, this out there' to 'this sounds wrong'. Then we got it. It took us that long. And then we pissed ourselves for 5 minutes. It's done so well. As I said we were drunk, and it was late. So we spent the next hour watching all the other shreds. Clapton is great.

By the way, this, if course, is how I think I sound on those bad days.

Siguriyas

I've been away. But not from my guitar. Now I'm on to Siguiriyas. I love it. I'd sum it up as: strong, driven, beautiful, bittersweet.
The count is like soleares but starts in a different place. You begin with the 2 beats then go to 3s.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 rest.

But I actually count it to 5, which for some bizarre and unfathomable reasons I can do easily with this but not with soleares or bularias.
1 and 2 and 3 and-a four-and-a five. Pause. One...

Equally strangely: counting this way to 5 rather than 12 makes me feel uber flamenco.

Here is someone doing it better than me. (Although I'm not bad at it, so feeling good about my playing. Watch our compadres.)