LIVE IN CUBA DVD
AUDIOSLAVE is the only American band to play the island nation of Cuba.
Pretty cool eh? It’s well known that Fidel Castro loves baseball, but
who knew he loved to get down into the pit at rock shows and hurl his
body around with reckless abandon. And since his other favorite band,
METALLICA, sucks sweaty goat cock for a decade now. And he’s none too
pleased about their efforts to dismantle Napster and file sharing
(Fidel’s words…. Not mine.), it’s no surprise he accepted Audioslave's
offer to have a cultural exchange.
Ok that’s not totally how it happened, but Audioslave did go to Cuba
and they did bring true rock music to this misunderstood and extremely
isolated country, and they documented their trip.
The live performance was good, but not great. The band was fine.
Guitarist Tom Morello was his usual genius self and Chris Cornell’s
voice was strong, yet raw. The problem was with the crowd. It was
obvious they didn’t know a lot of the songs from the first album. And
since
Out of Exile
hadn’t even been released at the time, they didn’t know those songs
either. (However they did cheer loudly when the band broke into RAGE
AGAINST THE MACHINE classics, an instrumental of “Bulls On Parade,”
“Sleep Down In the Fire,” and the SOUNDGARDEN standard, “Outshined”)
Though there was kind applause, it did take away from the intensity of
the band’s playing.
The half hour documentary “Out of Exile” chronicled Audioslave's
arrival, press conference and travels to areas I’m pretty sure were
hand-picked by the Cuban government. The highlight of this section of
the DVD was seeing the brilliance of two students at the national
school of music playing an amazing piano and bass jazz piece.
