Member Since: 1/9/2004
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Aventura hits Lady Gaga out of the park, but who are they?
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Let's play a game of compare and contrast:
Lady Gaga and the Latin-pop group Aventura both perform in New York this week. But while she is appearing at the 6,000-capacity Radio City Music Hall for four dates starting tonight, Aventura toplines the 19,000-strong Madison Square Garden for an equal number of shows, also beginning *tonight. That puts Aventura on track to sell more than three times the number of tickets La Gaga can.
By that measure, it may seem odd that, of the two, it's she who gets to sit on the couch on popular late-night talk shows, grab top Grammy nominations and eat up pages worth of mainstream media. Meanwhile, Aventura has the profile of quickly rejected contestants on "American Idol."
"We don't mind that she's treated differently," says Anthony (Romeo) Santos, lead singer and writer for Aventura. "We're in a different world."
Specifically, an almost entirely Latino one. If you're not of that ethnicity, you probably think Aventura is the name of a sporty new car from Dodge. If you are, someone in your family, or at least someone you know, likely has pictures of the guys plastered on the wall and several albums' worth of songs on an iPod. You're also in the know that Aventura is the biggest thing to bust out of the Bronx since the Yankees. (In fact, all four grew up mere blocks from the Stadium.)
For 21 weeks, Aventura's most recent CD, "The Last," has sat atop Billboard's Latin Music Chart, *spawning three No. 1 singles while supporting a tour that ranks among the three top-grossing road shows of '09, right behind Miley Cyrus' and Britney Spears'.
Aventura's Garden shows — tonight, tomorrow and Feb. 1 and 2 — will make it the first Latino group ever to snag four dates at the arena in a single run, putting it in a league with the likes of * Madonna and Billy Joel.
Romeo sees a difference, however: "All those artists have a major label and lots of marketing behind them," he says. "But it's even more exciting for us to know that we're accomplishing these things without having that machine."
Instead, Aventura came up on the indie label Premium Latin Music and built its audience from squat in the South Bronx. The four members began as adolescents, back when Romeo started writing songs with his cousin Henry Santos Jeter. Meanwhile, guitarist Lenny Santos (no relation to Romeo or Henry) and his brother Max had their own band. "The brothers said to us, 'We have a singer who pretty much sucks,'?" Romeo explains. "At the same time, me and Henry were writing and singing but didn't have a band. So we started it."
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PART DEUX of the article shall be posted as we celebrate ATRL's first annual AVENTURA day.
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