Very Be Careful
Seven years and a thousand shows later, Very Be Careful rise from the ashes of the latest booty-shakin’ firestorm with a raised glass in honor of the fuel that fed the fire, LOVE. Their last album, ñACAS, soothes any itch those seven years might have excited, and joins the catalog of the rootsest vallenato rhythms that VBC not only plays, but lives.
From the Colombian Caribbean land of fishers and farmers, lovers and assassins, where accordion narrated tales spill from shops, homes, bars, and beauty salons, VBC has imported a vintage sound and an urgent agenda – DANCE, DANCE, DANCE!!! And, like it or not, punker or sonidero, new-ager or new-waver, b-boy or cowboy, sober, drunk, or saved, few can elude the rump rousing radar of a VBC parranda.
They have dazzled bills as opposite as Joe Strummer and Carlos Vives, Murphy’s Law and Antibalas, Kronos Quartet and Grupo Niche, at venues as diverse as N.Y.’s Copacabana and Berkeley’s Gilman St. Warehouse, L.A.’s HOBs and N.Y.’s SOBs, Central Park Summerstage, SXSW, and Japan’s Fujirock Festival, East L.A.’s Self Help Graphics and Harlem’s Carlito’s Gallery, getting solid airplay on commercial sonidero stations like California’s Cumbia Caliente and El Sonido while being played on all the local “alternative” stations - KXLU, KCRW, KSPC, KPFK, WKCR, WFMU - as well as internet radio in Japan and Australia and a few club hits in Argentina and Mexico; when it comes to adaptability and pertinence, the VBC are champs, and vallenato music can break the barriers of “cool” and raze the stakes of “hip”
Along with Pinto Record’s 1998 El Niño (produced by Money Mark), De Volada Records’1999 CD EP Cheap Chillin, Downtown Pijao’s 2001 CD The Rose, 2002 CD/2LP El Grizz, and the 2003 film The Tooth (which stars the band), comes the newest in vallenato flavor and the oldest in human tradition, ñACAS.











