(Buena Vista Social Club)

Eliades Ochoa - Estoy Como Nunca (2002)

Eliades Ochoa appears strolling down the rusted train tracks in his featured segment in Wim Wender's documentary Buena Vista Social Club. While the other musicians are featured in their houses or on Havana's colorful, crumbling, crowded streets, Ochoa rambles alone, in the industrial outskirts where the sugar cane harvest rolls into the capital -- where the work of the countryside laborer meets the industrial center. With his guitar high on his chest and his cowboy hat, Ochoa does not evoke the jazz-age charm of his older bandmates; he's a border musician, a guajiro -- a country boy whose music took him from passing the hat in his native Santiago to the heights of international superstardom. 

Ochoa is often called the Cuban Johnny Cash, and not only because he wears a black suit. His voice isn't the velvet and smoke of his Buena Vista Social Club costars Ibraim Ferrer and Compay Segundo. His range is so versatile that he can hit both high and low registers, with the same kind of rumble, menace, and high-pitched plaint that make Cash the working man's bard. 

With this latest record, Ochoa is, as the title suggests, Better Than Ever. Ochoa was not particularly the star of Buena Vista Social Club -- not as old as ninety-ish Compay Segundo nor as romantically overlooked as Ruben Gonzalez or Ibrahim Ferrer, he has the advantage of not having to live up to his onscreen mythology. Ochoa is a rare thing in the surprisingly diverse Cuban folk music scene: a traditionalist rather than a relic; a subtle innovator rather than a twenty-first century update. 

continues here 
http://www.popmatters.com/music/reviews/o/ochoaeliades-estoy.shtml

...With Estoy Como Nunca, Ochoa has proved that staying close to home -- taking the time to really know it -- takes you farther than the most ambitious of border-crossings. 

--by Margaret Schwartz

ESTOY COMO NUNCA was nominated for the 2003 Latin Grammy Award for Best Traditional Tropical Album.

Personnel:
Eliades Ochoa (vocals, guitar)
Humberto Ochoa (guitar, background vocals)
Eglis Ochoa (clave, maracas, background vocals)
Jose Angel Martinez (double bass, background vocals)
Jorge Marurell (drums, percussion)

Guests:
Raul Malo (Los Lobos) (vocals in track 3)
David Hidalgo (Los Lobos) (guitar in track 1) 
Anibal Avila (trumpet, background vocals)

Files:
01- Estoy como nunca.mp3
02- Arrimate pa'ca.mp3
03- No me preguntes tanto.mp3
04- Siboney.mp3
05- Pena.mp3
06- Con dolor en el alma.mp3
07- El chicharron es pellejo.mp3
08- Ella si va.mp3
09- Mi cafetal.mp3
10- Llora mi nena.mp3
11- Sus ojos se cerraron.mp3
Eliades Ochoa - Estoy Como Nunca [back].jpg
Eliades Ochoa - Estoy Como Nunca [front].jpg
release-notes.nfo

Album cover encoded in each track (Visible in iTunes, Winamp, others)
Format: MP3, CBR 320 Kbit/s, 44100, stereo. encoder LAME 3.97 --preset insane -m s

Enjoy and seed!

Pastafari
Proud Member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster  
http://venganza.org