I'm a band manager and promoter!!

It all started yesterday morning. I awoke and like any other day I made my way to the Café San Pedro for one of Juan Ma’s excellent coffees. It couldn’t have started off better. As I sipped my coffee Juan Ma tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a small box.

“There you go there’s a present” he said

“Wow thanks” I replied

I cut through the packaging and lo and behold …….

Good morning, good morning

Fantastic Good man Juan Ma

As I was admiring my new toy, in walks Simon. Simon, for those that don’t know, is an English guy, and ex lawyer who has been living out here for 20 years plying his trade not as a lawyer, although he did start with that, but as a Flamenco Dancer and Guitarist. He has toured from London to China and goes by the name of Simon ‘El Rubio’ (Simon Blondie). The Blonde bit refers to his wavy golden locks, but they have now departed consequently I just call him Simon.

We can work it out

Well we got chatting, as one does and after we had had a couple of beers we decided to move onto to a new bar that opened last month.  We had visited it last week where we had discussed how nice the place was. It’s a small bar and is part of an old bodega that has been restored. We had chatted and agreed how it would be an ideal place for him to play. It was just beer talk really but the seed had been sown.

We arrived at ‘El Guitarron’ and sat down and ordered a couple of beers. The first thing was the owner came over and served us. We had obviously spent enough money last time to merit his highness getting off his arse and doing some work. Well we got stuck into more beer and Chicharros…Chicharros are small pieces of pork, freshly roasted, straight out of the oven and are absolutely fantastic and make pork scratchings and crackling taste like cardboard with cheese.

We decided to move onto red wine. It was a local red wine that neither Simon or I had ever seen. Quite uncommon to see a red wine from the region dominated by sherry and white wine. It was mainly Tempranillo grape, the guys who were drinking it on the table to our left , said that it was 40% Tempranillo, yeah right who were they kidding more like 90% consequently it was a little spicy for me. The 2009 was definitely better than the 2010 by the way.

Getting better all the time

After a while and more band talk, I decided to approach the owner of the bar. Not the guy but his wife. Well she was definitely the one that wore the trousers in the place and I soon steered the conversation towards the possibility of having Simon and a singer play in the bar. They were up for it and before you knew it I had agreed a price, and after a couple of Fino sherries, I had managed to get Simon and his singing pal, Gonzalo, a gig this Thursday.

We were over the moon and we decided to celebrate.  I suggested, in true rock star style, we should smash up a hotel room. He decided against that and suggested another beer instead.  

Simon was playing in the afternoon so I went along to a house in the middle of the old part of town where Gonzalo, three other guitarists and two other singers were waiting to have a jam session.

They strummed and sung for about an hour and a half. I sat in the corner leaning back in my chair listening to my potential hareem of musicians. Is hareem the collective noun for Musicians? Or is it a gaggle? Must get that sorted out. I should really know stuff like that I guess.

Here, there and everywhere

Anyway I was really getting into the part of band manager and promoter as I leaned back in my chair with my legs crossed I would nod every now and again with approval. I didn’t have a clue, but they didn’t know that. I decided to join in with a bit of clapping but soon stopped when in the middle of one song everyone who was clapping suddenly stopped and I made that extra clap. I decided that clapping was not the sort of thing a manager/promoter should be doing anyway. So I sat back and had a beer instead.

We finished and Simon and I headed to a little bar just around the corner.

“I recognise this square” I said to Simon. It was the same square that witnessed the beginning and end of my acting career.

There were no cannons, no guns or fallen down palm trees this time, although Simon gave it a good go as he reversed his brand new car straight into a palm tree. “Smack”…the tree shuddered but didn’t come down. I laughed my head off and the locals who were sitting at the bar looked and went Ooooooooo.

After having another go at parking his car, He extracted himself from his jam-jar and clutching his guitar case came and sat down at the bar. By this time it was 1am and we had both run out of cash. The beers were only €1 each and we had €1.80 made up of all sorts of loose change.  Classic.. 

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