Many of these streets have shops and businesses open during the day I guess, but at night time there is no friendly, lit up shop window displays, all is shuttered and locked up tight. That can make the streets look very desolate in the evening and there was no exception to the one we had just pulled into. Nonetheless out in the dark on a street corner there is a vibrant little bar full of people enjoying a meal out and a drink. Customers were arriving as others left so it was a popular little place and I liked the vibe very much.
Now Demente want's to treat me to the second best meal in Brazil when he asks, "are you hungry Steve?" I reply "not too hungry but it would be a good idea for me to have a light bite".
What do I get.....?
Piranha Soup, a light bite indeed!
There is a lot of Piranha in Brazil so they make a soup of them and it is very tasty indeed. It was in-fact (for me) a very tasty and unusual meal, just what I needed. But I couldn't get those beady eyes of those angry/deadly little fish out of my mind, they look eternally hacked off.
We have the usual difficult traversing of the big city but it isn't too long to drive to this one. I have a general feeling of insecurity whenever I turn up at a new venue, especially when the concert has already started. Arriving later in the evening is very good in one way though, because it saves hanging around in a hot gig just waiting to take the stage. On this occasion it was very lucky we were not there earlier.
Here is the ignorant little me story of arriving at the club.
I don't like the look of the place from the outside, the building is crumbling but it appears to have a newish elaborate metal walkway from the entrance, across the car park into the club. It's almost like it
Anyway once in, I do not like the look of the stage, the PA, or the guitar amplifier I am to use. I have never heard of the make before and the band I see using the amp, do not get much of a decent sound out of it.
However, there is something very magnificent about its crumbling glory on the inside and I begin the usual acclimatisation to a new club. I am greeted very warmly when I walk in and everyone is making sure I get a beer as soon as possible. The owner greets me and tells me there was some trouble earlier but it is all over now, also that it is his birthday that very evening and that his nickname is feio which is Portuguese for ugly. Hhhmmm, strangely he didn't look ugly at all, in fact he was quite good looking. All these other weird and wonderful facts buried the news in my mind of the earlier trouble and I relaxed, leaning on the bar drinking a beer and thinking about my new surroundings.
Then a thin Brazilian who could speak no English decides to speak non-stop to me and even taps my arm every time I try to look away. The first thing he does is to take my hand and start lightly caressing the underside of it with his fingers. As he looked a bit Indian I thought maybe he had some sort of shaman powers to heal the Dupuytren’s contracture in my hand. I give it two minutes and then decided he was a weirdo and withdrew it. His response was to make a 'V' sign in his hand, place the tips of the two fingers on his closed eyelids and then point the two fingers at me as though there were now eyes on the end. This is too weird, I gotta move.
Demente wanders over and says very honestly, "This is a shit venue isn't it?" I agree, but with some surprise as he booked the gig (maybe he did it though someone else and had not been to this place before). Anyway, I complain that there is very little light on the stage and that the amp is some weird make but he assures me it is a copy of a fender amp and should have a similar sound. He wanders off again. There is a reasonable audience in the room but they are spread out over a large area, some play pool on several tables at the back, there is a sort of side room that you can see from the bar with people in it and some are hanging around just outside to take in the slightly cooler air. I notice in the corner of my eye some people leaving and it irritates me, you're leaving before seeing the Brazilian Neurotics? You have got to be mad!
That was actually the moment the gig was saved for us.
This is Demente's story of our arrival at the venue.
We go in and he sees that there is a very bad element in the club and a poisonous atmosphere, everyone is anxious, he talks to the manager and learns that there was a fight outside earlier between two rival gangs and one of the gangs came back with guns. At this point, Demente realises that we are all potentially in harms way. He tells the manager that this is not good, some bad elements are still in the club and that gang warfare complete with guns could break out at any minute. He tells him he is responsible for the safety of all the people he has brought with him. He tells him that he can keep the money, we are going to blow the gig and get the hell out of there. Demente goes to Isabela and tells her to pack up the merchandise and put it back in the car and he was getting ready to move the guitars back into our transport.
Then, the bad elements leave, fearing the return of their rivals tooled up with firepower and it is then that we decide to stay. Phew.....
I was later chatting to our drummer David whilst we waited to go on and he said, "we are going to have to create some special magic to make this gig work". "Yeah", I reply, "we are going to need some special magic indeed".
Eventually, it is our turn to take the stage and I find that I can just about work in the light that we have got and that the amp sounds fine, much better in fact than for the person who owns it, who played earlier. We are now ready, and I do the opening staccato notes to Wake Up, wondering how all this was going to go. Then...
BANG!
Not the bang of a gun but the bang of a band exploding into life. We can hear each other fine, an audience has thrown themselves down the front and are mouthing all the words. The band is hot and the room is boiling. From where I am, it looks like the' bug bar' under the Mexican hat in Pixar's 'A Bugs Life'' and I can clearly see that we have a good audience, responding well, and people in the back are grooving to the music too as they play pool. Fine!
We are really enjoying ourselves now, to such an extent that when we get to 'Living With Unemployment' there is a bit near the end that David has never been completely clear on what we should be doing. We have had no time to do a run through, so we do it live, I hammer out a constant power chord then let it ring, I then shout to David, "when I start hitting this cord again just do normal crescendo drumming" (whatever that means), I start, he does. Great, again, there is another power chord I have left to ring when I notice David's spare sticks fall in front of the drums. I pick them up hand them to him, all while the chord is still ringing and then I shout, "you now bring us back in as you usually do".
David does exactly that and we moved through the whole of the middle section of 'Living With Employment' correctly and without missing a beat. At this point we realise that we had come up with the magic we so desperately needed and that this had now turned into a great gig.
We and the audience were blown away.
Later I was found having the time of my life with people, chatting, laughing drinking beer and more Cachaça. There was also a very lovely Brazilian woman who couldn't speak much English who kept hugging me and shouting "we love you". Then she told me very earnestly, "The book is on the table" to which I reply (somewhat puzzled but refusing to be fazed), "oh, good", then she said " The book is on the table, do you understand?" and I say "Yes the book is on the table, that's where I like it to be". "No" she says, "do you understand, the book is on the table". Well, I went through that many times with her, without any enlightenment suddenly making an appearance, but it was some bizarre fun. Later I look it up on Google and find it is the first part of an English lesson that all Brazilians studying our language tackle first, and has now become legendary for being used as a way for people who cannot speak much English to say "welcome, we love to have you here". So that's solved then. I continued soaking up the love until I had to be pulled out because the others needed to get home.
Which is just as well as I had overdone it a bit and instead of traveling in Demente's car I felt like I was traveling in a coal mine truck (as in Spielberg's Indiana Jones) which was threatening to come off the rails at any moment. It didn't though.
That was a great gig, now we all needed rest for the next one, and boy, would we need that rest!
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