Chapter One: In which an Englishman with three left feet learns to salsa dance: part 2

During the interlude I am taught by CR's wife how not to dance. Basically everything I have been doing since birth is wrong. My hips do not move correctly and it needs to be fixed. I concurred with her opinion, especially now that I have had a chance to reminisce on my clubbing days and how I was infinitely more successful with the ladies when leaning near motionless at a bar.

I thank her for the advice and promise to work on this.

At this point, MH is leaning over the balcony to look at cleavage. I will point out that like me, he is married and every time he finds something worth investigating he looks to me, laughs with a very mischievous grin, lifts his shoulders and taps his wedding ring. We follow the same code: We window shop but always buy the same pizza. We like our own pizzas.


Samba music plays. I like it. I can vaguely tell it's Brazilian and ask if it is sung in Portuguese. It is but they can't tell me what it is about properly. Instead I am told it's not about what is said, but what your hips can do with the beat. In my case that's not a whole lot.

The song finishes and our camel toe sporting friend returns with her two shambling dancers. They have all changed. She is now in a blue dress and we are thankful for it. She lip syncs a couple more songs badly, turning the mic back on between the songs to talk with the crowd and gets a guy to come up and sing a song with her. She actually sings this time. I preferred the miming.

All finished she leaves and all three hundred people below disappear to the bar. As I am treated to another beer CR is crapped on by a pigeon in the rafters. I shit you not (pun heavily intended). He repairs to the bathroom to clean up and the real band, Xtreme, get on stage and start tuning up.

Lesson four: Musically I am a total geek. I have been to more gigs back home than I remember. From the world's biggest acts filling up an arena like Metallica to the lowliest three pieces set up in the corner of a pub like Spunky Birthday.


They are a large ensemble with three guitarists, one acoustic rhythm, one acoustic lead and an electric lead. There is a bass player four percussionists (various bongos, hand drums, a kick drum and metal scrapey thing which I will guess to be the Dominican equivalent of the English wash board (as seen in the Ozark Mountain Dare Devils' song Chicken Train) and a traditional drummer. They also have a keyboard player (Does that count as a percussion instrument these days?) on top of the two singers who are still somewhere in the back, probably being serviced by something with dark, dark eyes, a badly designed short, tight dress, high heels and long black hair.

They kick off with an instrumental piece that is most likely the bastard offspring of a session spent getting high and listening to Led Zeppelin. There are good bluesy undertones, a thick sound that makes you want to listen to Black Dog and it's wrapped up in a burrito. That may sound slightly racist but the Hispanic influence of it overwhelms everything. Perfectly.


Lesson five: Good music is good music no matter what it sounds like.  Most everyone I know hate Tin Machine. Those everyones suck as human beings, but they would probably say these guys suck, too. I know for a fact KP would love these guys.


This is going to be amazing I think to myself, as I am often prone to do. MH starts dancing by himself - very well. CR and his wife are cutting a rug... in fact their niece and I are about the only people not dancing. I'm watching the guitarists jam and the percussionists... well, I've never seen anything like that so I'll have to come up with a new word for the experience. The singers get on stage and the crowd goes wild. CR's wife and niece are waving and screaming. CR, MH and I shrug a little and try and talk above the noise but I can't make much of it out.


They start singing and it doesn't quite fit with the music for me, but all of the ladies are lapping it up. One girl runs on stage and clings to one of the singers for dear life as security try and peel her away. The singers are not helping security at all. I am amused, this is only the first song they have partaken in. 


This, as it turns out, is just another day on the job for them and for the next hour they encourage wave after wave... after wave of tight bottoms in tighter dresses to come up and grab their junk and make obscene suggestions about back stage antics after the show. Patently I am working in the wrong industry.


More to come...