What I like to think of as the Crystal set has got a swinging thing going at the Chalet, which recently started live music for dancing in its upstairs Alpine Room. The action isn’t necessarily confined to Crystalers (Chrystalipolitans? Crystalites? Crystallines?), of course, but the Chalet. at N. 36th Av. and the Beltline, is situated in that suburb so I am willing to extend spiritual citizenship to all the swingers I saw kicking up their heels Friday night. Providing said rhythms was an organization called the La Bombas, four local and imported musicians who have been making the Latin scene elsewhere around town for a year or so.
I would like to say at the outset that I am not very large in the Latin American dance department, and I view with sullen mistrust the relentless succession of new styles and steps, like this bossa nova thing. However, I must also say that, as music, it can be very stimulating stuff to listen to and even to get out and dance your own maimed two-step version of. Reading over that last sentence, you might even call it music to dangle a preposition by.
Working every Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the La Bombas comprise Bill Gordon on bass (the head man), Tony Caire, who plays a most seductive guitar, Eddy Barbosa on a kind of drums I understood to be called timbales, and Howard White on the conga drums. For such seemingly limited instrumentation, they produce surprisingly full sounds. My own fete dansante was preceded by dinner downstairs in the Chalet’s very good restaurant. Our party sampled Shrimp deJonghe. shish kabob, lobster Thermidor and a sirloin steak. each of which was well-prepared and reasonable.
-Don Morrisson
Minneapolis Evening Star-March 9th, 1963
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