Playing a Gig in Portugal’s Most Prestigious Dive Bar
July 2nd- The first of many.
After a mosquito-riddled night in the van, stationed in a deserted car-park in Bergau, we went into town for breakfast. On the way, we were obliged, out of necessity and the blinding convenience of an indiscriminate Chinese store (selling all kinds of usefully expendable plastic nik-naks), to buy more gas for the cooker, some double-A batteries for the lamps and a toxic-looking bottle of mosquito repellent for our sanity (luckily, we still had 24 boxes of matches from the Swiss duty-free.)
Afterwards, back in Lagos, we marched straight to Ol’ Bastards to ask about a gig. The boss told us to come back on Monday to play and ‘see how it goes’. She said if we were good, we could have that slot every week.
With this promising outcome, we went to the beach to pass the time until our first show in Portugal later that evening. We briefly discussed our increasingly concerning financial situation — Felipe’s being slightly more severe as he had to make it back to Madrid in a couple of weeks and was depending solely on cash from busking, gigs and other such hustling.
As we squandered our dwindling bullion on beer and measly snacks at an over-priced beach taverna, we got talking to an outgoing family at a neighbouring table. An American woman and her twenty-something daughter were in the midst of a liquid-lunch accompanied by the lavish (and seemingly quite recent) Brazilian husband who bought us cocktails and said they would all come to our gig at Lagos’ most prestigious dive bar. This elating news found expression in a plate of sardines and the last of the calamari they didn’t have room for.
Sufficiently fed and ‘watered’, we got to the venue at around 8 to find an older gentleman on stage playing to an empty bar. The tables outside were quite full and the windows were open, allowing the sound to bleed out into the street but I’m not sure many were taking much heed in this guys’ rusty performance. He was reading every lyric from an ipad and named each song, the artist, and date of release after each rendition.
Eddie said we’d be on after him at around 8:30, so we drank a couple of beers to loosen up. Georgina showed up and ate at the Indian place over the road while we maintained our sustenance of beer and ciggies in the impending minutes before show-time.
When the old guy finished, we got chatting a bit — he was pretty friendly, from Canada and, unsurprisingly, fairly new to the pub-rock game. Shortly thereafter, we started setting up our gear on the postage-stamp stage.
After one last smoke outside, we started playing to a still very sparse clan of patrons — most of whom were dastardly die-hard regulars.
It was a tight squeeze up there and I had no strap for the bass so was perched on a stool while Felipe stood, slightly to the front with the Tanglewood (he had no musical equipment whatsoever so we used my guitars and mics and some cables taken from the pubs ‘mystery box’).
He opened with one of his Argentinian originals and a cover of Manu Chao; I found some bouncy bass lines and the ancient P.A. system actually sounded decently thick. Then we swapped guitars to play some classic American rock in the form of Elvis and The Doors.
Georgina was sat at the table dead-centre, taking videos, cheering and generally being supportive. A group of Argentinian girls whom Felipe had convinced to come were sat in a booth on the other side of the bar, engaged enthusiastically, especially when the singer sang in Spanish (which was practically all the time).
Felipe then stepped down and I played a couple of songs on my own before taking a short break. The bar was filling up a bit now and when we returned to play The Animals and Boulevard of Broken Dreams — which we’d figured out on the beach earlier — we were accosted by another American at the bar. He appreciated the Green Day, enough to return to the stage more than once with shots and song requests. (We later agreed that his girlfriend was undoubtedly hot and an unsuitable match for him).
At some point during the second set (I think it was when I was singing John Lennon, Steve Miller and/or Tom Petty — we also played two Bob Marley songs with Felipe on bass as I had taught him the line for Stir It Up mere hours earlier), in strolled the extrovert family from the beach, as promised. They were considerably more sloshed than before and hooted wildly as they made a bee-line for the bar. The Rich Brazilian husband immediately bought us drinks followed by an unprecedented round of absinthe of all things.
As the night went on, the bar stayed consistently quite busy and a small group was dancing in front of the stage. We mentioned the tip hat that was ceremoniously taken from Felipe’s head and passed around the room. We watched ‘Rich Brazilian Guy’ unflinchingly part with a tenner when it came to him and the guy from NYC, boldly and unregretfully placed a twenty Euro note in. By the time it made it back to us, it was sagging and jangling with coins.
We finished up, after playing for around three hours in total, with the expected mish-mash of Western Rock Classics and Argentinian BosaNova; we repeated a couple of songs from earlier in the set when the bar had been dead. An encore was demanded, and with the nonchalant approval of Eddie, it went ahead until the unexpected happened…
The seemingly shy daughter of the American lady, upon her mother’s insistence, got up to sing and play bass. She practically stole the show while I tried to keep up with the chords on the Tanglewood. She had a hell of a voice, and I later learned, something of an online music career.
After this four-part encore, we said goodnight to our modest, loyal crowd — shook hands, hugged, then took a group photo with everyone and all the bar staff. Eddie was waiting by the till with a cunning look of approval on his face and four crisp twenties gleaming under the bar lamp. “Well done, boys,” he said in his affable Cockney accent before handing over the cash. I guess he was over the moon with his takings for the night — most of which was probably accounted for by the Brazilian guy.
Eddie said we could leave the gear in the back till tomorrow, which allowed for us to go out. With the newly acquired fairy gold (combining with the money from the tip-hat, it wasn’t a bad haul for three and a half hours work), we buzzed into town, feeling like kings. I think we spunked more than half of it on beer and pizza before staggering back to the van some time not long before dawn.
