Groovin' at the Kava Lounge

Ok I know I'm slow about posting lately.
So sorry.

I wanted to share a few more pictures of me and my "daughters" (ha ha).
So, as I was saying, after a delish Thai dinner we went to my favorite club here in San Diego, the Kava Lounge.
The Kava Lounge is unique - they serve organic beer and wine and yes, kava and other funky, but yummy herby kind of drinks, like Hibiscus Martinis. The girls and I loved their ginger lemonade. Yum. The REALLY cool thing about the Kava Lounge it's a NON-PROFIT club - that's what I love about it. There are no poseurs there, people just go to hang and dance and have a groovy time! It's funny because it was mostly women that night.
I checked ahead of time to see if a good band was playing, and I was PSYCHED to see that Carmen Rizzo and Govinda were performing.
I saw Carmen on Rachel Fuller's show, In the Attic. He produced Rachel's latest cd, Shine. He's been nominated for 2 Grammys and he's worked with Pete Townshend, Coldplay and Alanis Morissette among others. I was really impressed by his brief appearance - there was a certain sparkle there - maybe that's not the right word - he just radiated happiness. So I checked out his music and I really liked it (it's electronica/ambient/loungy). He also has a world beat band called Nyaz which is also very interesting. Anyway, I emailed him and told him that I liked his music and I told him "you should play the Kava Lounge!" Oddly enough, he did!

When we first got there, we watched belly dancers perform (individually) for about 15 minutes. Honestly, it was kind of boring (not to the men I'm sure).
I was commending the tabla player afterwards for not missing a beat and asked him if he got a bit distracted and he said, "no not at all they're my muses!"
(A tabla is an Indian drum - there's one bongo-like drum and one other drum that goes wonka wonk wonk. I'm sure you've seen/heard them many times).

After the belly dancers Carmen and Govinda started to "play" they looked more like djs really - using 2 Apple laptops - but I'm sure it was their own music! They were projecting very cool pictures and graphics on a big screen. Trippy stuff. Govinda accompanied the Apples (!) and sang sometimes and played electric violin. He sang and played beautifully.

Rebecca and Tola and I danced our butts off. It was so much fun. Laura doesn't dance. At all. (I feel a song coming on...Laura doesn't dance. at all. She spent the evening holding up...the wall). KIDDING LAURA. She's such a trooper - just sat and watched us (she did like the music and put Carmen's cd on her "list").

Here are a few pics of the girlz:









From left to right: Rebecca, Tola and Laura

Finally Carmen took a break and I kind of sauntered over and introduced myself and he jumped up and gave me a hug! He remembered me right away. I bought his cds, which he signed of course. We chatted for a little bit. He asked if I was going to the Who's Hollywood Bowl show. I told him that I penciled it in! ha ha
I hope and pray I get tickets...we'll see! He was just an absolute sweetheart really - he thanked me for bringing my friends. Then he gave me another hug and a kiss!

I look severly jet lagged but here we are!






You can check out Carmen's music here!

Govinda is amazing too...