Sanchez traditionally performs more concerts in February than he does in all other months combined, and 2004 was no exception. Dancehall venues from Florida to Connecticut book the crooner for all manner of pre-and post Valentine’s specials, and every year Dancehall patrons dutifully turn up with their significant others in assorted red and white outfits to enjoy Sanchez’s unique brand of lover’s rock.

This year, Sanchez didn’t make it to New York until the day after Valentine’s, since Washington DC’s Crossroads Club managed to secure the singer for the big day. And in spite of the fact that he was booked for three New York appearances in the month of February, New Rochelle’s Club Caribe was packed beyond anything that the law or good sense should allow. Simply moving from the entrance of the nightclub to a position where you could see the stage was a 20-minute exercise in frustration. Nerves were frayed as ambitious audience members waded into the crowd, mashing brand new Clarkes, Ballys and Manolo Blahniks as they swam toward the stage. Nothing like an overcrowded club to ruin the romantic tone that Sanchez usually guarantees.

The ugly vibe in the club affected Sanchez himself, who seemed to be in an uncharacteristically foul mood. Early into his performance, the singer stopped the music to berate the sound engineer for everything from the volume of his microphone and monitor to the quality of his background singers’ equipment. When someone finally substituted Sanchez’s cordless mic for an old fashioned plug-in model, Sanchez halted the show again to ask the engineer where the good mic had been hiding and why the hell did he have to perform so long with the crappy one. By show’s end, Sanchez was so pissed that he had to be begged to return onstage for the obligatory encore, which he prefaced with yet another rant against the sound quality.

In between railing against the engineer, Sanchez put on his typically smooth and hit-filled show, exhibiting no ill-effects from the nearly nightly performances that led up to the New York engagement. Dressed in an orange suit with matching bowler hat and bling-bling crucifix pendant, Sanchez hit the stage at about 2:45 a.m. and took the audience through an hour-long tour of some of his biggest hits. With each passing year, Sanchez moves further away from his Vegas lounge singer persona and closer to something resembling an actual artist. In spite of his concerns with microphone quality, the crooner sounded great, and the Caribe audience sang along with Sanchez as he went from smash to smash, all ably backed by his crack Chronic Band. When Sanchez deviated from his lover’s rock roots – as in his odes to Ganja or his chi-chi-man-burning “Frenzy” – the audience was no less enthusiastic.

Later, after an irate Sanchez was coaxed back onstage for an encore set, he focused on his Gospel roots, with convincing, and occasionally moving renditions of many traditional spirituals. Many of the hymns are collected on Sanchez’s religious-themed albums, but they are much more effective in a live setting, with throaty accompaniment from all those rudebwoys who were once freshly scrubbed Sunday Schoolers.
Sanchez was joined onstage to close out the show with his touring partners Richie Stevens and Flourgan, who stuck to the religious theme. Earlier, Stevens – who is arguably a more talented balladeer and songwriter than Sanchez, but is clearly not as well-loved – delivered a solid set of his own mid-level hits that occasionally struck a chord with the audience, but more often was just a pleasant way to pass the time while waiting for Sanchez.

Old-time DJ Flourgan, who is a long-time Sanchez brethren and collaborator, is the designated opening act on the current tour, and he did not disappoint. Looking surprisingly young – given that his heyday was in the mid 1980s – Flour rinsed his own hits like “Big Batty Gal” and “Follow Me Go Dancehall” as well as other 80s classics by the likes of Shabba Ranks and Admiral Bailey. Caribe was hype for his brief performance, which set the stage well for the change of pace that Stevens and Sanchez provided.

A special guest for the New York leg of the tour was veteran singer Frankie Paul, whose career has been irrevocably damaged by rumours of homosexuality. The Caribe audience, by and large, treated Frankie with an ambivalence and benign neglect – which is better than the stoning he received a few months earlier in Jamaica, but well short of what tunes like “Kushungpeng” and “Worries In The Dance” deserve. When Sanchez – who had just blazed a fire under chi-chi men with “Frenzy” – invited his fellow artists onstage to close the show, Paul was not among them, nor was he mentioned by any of the artists who followed him onstage.

When the Caribe crowd flooded out onto the snow-covered sidewalks of New York at 4:00 a.m., they had to have been satisfied with the quality, if not the tone of the performance. Sanchez had been a little too belligerent to set the right type of mood for Valentine’s romance, but he certainly sang his way into the hearts of the thousands who patiently endured the overcrowding for his performance.