########################################################################## # If Goanet stops reaching you, contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # Want to check the archives? http://www.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others # ##########################################################################
While Remo cleared his throat� By Cecil Pinto Living in Panjim has it's disadvantages, and its perks. One of them is that you suddenly become very popular when there's a major night event to be held in the city. Friends who have not communicated for years suddenly call up, very concerned about your health and family, and then casually ask if they can stay over after Remo's Grand Fiftieth Birthday Concert on the 8th of May. This is how I reunited with my old classmate Rock from Aldona. After the obligatory phone calls he turned up at 6.30 in the evening at my flat on the 8th of May. Alone. We were joined by two more friends, who also had conveniently renewed their friendship with me, Frank and Joy (yes I have a male friend named Joy!) and their respective wives and children. Quite a bunch. After a few pegs of Rum we proceed to the Campal venue, just a five minute walk away. Four slightly high menfolk - three with wives and children in tow. It was 8.30 p.m. and we hoped to be decently late enough but learnt that the show had just started an hour back. Remo had explained that there was a printing mistake in all the newspaper advertisements and posters, which nobody noticed - including him. This from a guy who can detect a wrong note from a mile away! As the Savages belted out some hard rock we asked around about what we had missed. Apparently Remo had made a spirited appeal regarding his newest cause - Goans First! "We must always give the first opportunity to our fellow Goans", his voice had bellowed over the sound system (brought in from Karnataka), as Mike from Bangalore fine-tuned the reverb. My friend Rock had spirited in a 1.5 litre (not 1 litre) PET bottle with a potent mixture of Rum and coke. We had all watched apprehensively as he passed the metal detectors but fortunately there was no major beeping sounds. There was enough explosive substance in that bottle to flatten a three storey building. Of course once Rock was in we all did our bit to help him consume the mixture. I asked a friendly policeman why the metal detectors had been installed at every entrance. He told me it was to count the number of spectators. I wonder what the actual count was? The next day had GoaNow.com reporting a conservative 8,000 while GoaNews.com reported an optimistic 25,000. From stage Remo himself (outdoing Simon & Garfunkel in Central Park, New York) claimed he could see "20,000 people, maybe more". But there were people streaming in and out from all sides so it was a bit difficult to judge. Maybe Remo was seeing double, like my Rum enhanced friend Rock was, by then. Speaking of double, there were two huge projection screens set up on both sides of the stage where one could see close-ups of the action on the stage as well as occasional documentaries on Remo's childhood, adolescence, youth, middle age, old age, past performances and hairstyles. It was educative to see a long haired rebel of the Eighties go full circle and mature into � well � into a long haired rebel in this century. And of course there was the obligatory documentary on The Social Cause Of The Moment - this time it was SARS. Thousands of illiterate, panic stricken individuals had come many miles to know if they had to throw out their 'Made in China' MP3/VCD/CD players. It was very enlightening. In fact I heard a sweet young thing nearby tell her boyfriend. "See, I told you we don't have to wear those stupid surgical masks when�." I couldn't get the end of the sentence because Remo boomed in instructing Mike to cut the whatchamacallit on the left whatchamacallit and something about 'spills' and 'monitors'. This is a distinctive trademark of Remo's. Adjusting the sound mid-song in full view, and hearing, of the audience. Like his famous 'throat clearing' demos. Which I will get to later. The audience was fantastic, spanning all age groups. Some people had even brought their own chairs. There were aunties and uncles and grandfathers and grandmothers and teens and toddlers and middle aged men with paunches. And it looked like, except for us, everybody had a mobile. Including Remo, on the stage itself. He had some conversation with Star News (which was broadcast to the audience) but nobody quite understood what it was all about. In fact a ultrasonic radiographic picture taken by a NASA space satellite shows that there was more electronic radiation from mobiles on 8th of May at Campal, than at Congress House in Panjim every time the Chief Minister goes on a foreign tour. That is something. Typical conversation (1): " Where you maaan? I'm in front of the SARS stall on the right hand side of the stage. No, no! If you are facing the stage dummy. Yes Ok! You saw the set of four big yellow lights? I'm next to that. Where? You're under the same lights? Just behind me? You can see me? Wow? What would we do without mobiles?" Typical converstion (2): "Sis? Hello Sis isn't anyone else at home? Just call me back ok! Just call and speak something. Anything. Doesn't matter what. Why? Incoming is free. That's why! No everybody else I know is at the concert. And outgoing is expensive. So phone me up now. Let everyone hear my polymorphic ring and by bright-as-a-torch-bluescreen. And get totally impressed by how I can talk casually on a mobile for so long! Sixty seconds pulse for the landline? Why does that bother you? Daddy pays the bills at home." As the Valadares sisters displayed their multilingual capacity the Rum starting having effect and we middle-aged men sang along with gusto. Unfortunately we were so far away from the speakers that not only we were not singing on the same pitch (not cricket) we weren't even singing the same songs. We reminisced loudly about the time we were in school (yes school) and used to cycle (yes cycle) all the way from Aldona to Xavier's College in Mapusa for the Annual Fete just to hear Remo belt out his catchy 'Graham Bell' and 'O Panjim'. Some of the twenty-some-things around us looked at us suspiciously. They hadn't realised that Remo had been around so long as to have fans in their early forties. Of course those were the good old days. Simple lyrics.. "Graham Bell, Graham Bell/ You're dead and it's just as well/ Cause if you saw the phones in Goa/ You would jump into the well". How much simpler can you get? Simple clean lyrics that even cretins like us could understand. People in my age group don't buy Remo's music now. For two reasons. 1) We don't quite understand the strange chants he records these days. (2) We have CD writers. By this time the wives were getting bored and the kids were getting restless. My little Fabian was more interested in the bright quarter moon in the sky, than Remo's jokes, and Frank's son Jeff thought it was his duty to run around every group singing " Bob the Builder! Can he fix it! Bob the Builder �" Then came the moment we were all waiting for. The 1.5 litre bottle got over! Should we wait to hear Remo, Bondo, Lala and Abel (minus Abel) of Remo, Bondo, Lala and Abel fame? Remember the moonlight parties? Remember a time before Rave and Trance and Acid music took over completely? Our wives did not know what we were talking about. They never will. Some things are best experienced - not explained. The music started but there was something missing (besides Abel). We discussed and reached a decision right there. We knew what was missing. We needed more Rum!!! So off we went to refill the PET bottle and to drop the wives and kids home, as we should have done in the first place. Rock was the smart guy who had kept his wife and kids at home in Aldona and come alone. Remo's show has to be enjoyed with intoxicated old friends and not with sober wives and cranky kids. By the time we got back Remo held centrestage and was belting out vintage classics like "If I become a millionaire" and it was great to see so many people knew the lyrics and sang along. After every two songs Remo cleared his throat in style "dum dhak chiikka thik rak thak sak vooo la la" and the crowd cheered as he trailed off into "Ocean Queen". I'm sure even Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones can't get away with clearing his throat on mike - on stage. Or maybe this was a symbolic gesture of Remo's regarding SARS, which attacks the respiratory tract first. By this time my friend Rock was Rummed to the gills and was in his element. "We want more! We want more!", he began chanting "M-O-R-E!! M-O-R-E!! R-E-M-O!!" and the people adjacent to us were amazed to know that 'm-o-r-e' is an anagram for 'r-e-m-o'! Rock was quite surprised too! Although he is the guy who brought it to their attention. Remo then sang "Everybody wants to�" his famous song about the fear of AIDS. It went down quite well and was better than this totally made-up fear of SARS. As Remo suggestively voiced "Everbody wants to �.". I looked around for that sweet little thing and her boyfriend. They were nowhere in sight. After all, everybody wants to� Then, while Remo took another break to clear his throat, "Dhak chakalak wooo widdyoup haa rup tup shup �" , Rock started yelling "We want Konkani! We want Konkani!". Everyone nearby joined in the chant. The politically correct chant of course should have been "Amkam Konkani zai!". Anyway we were standing somewhere near the left side speakers. Simultaneously somewhere far away, probably in Verem - for all we could discern in our condition, someone started the Goan Party Anthem "Tambdem Rosa" which was taken up by that side of the crowd. The chants were carried forward and backward by the crowd and met somewhere at mid-pitch (remember the venue was a cricket pitch) and cancelled each other out. Sensing the mood of the audience Remo obliged by singing 'Damulea Lagnak'. But I think he was running short of time. He sung at breakneck speed with the rest of the band trying to keep up. Specially the Jimi Hendrix wannabe. And the sleeveless muscleman drumming on what looked like a totally flat-four burner gas range. This superfast version of 'Damulea Lagnak' sounded quite trendy actually. But nobody could sing along! Just before singing his final song Remo asked everyone to give a big hand to his band the Microfine Papads for playing live. The audience obliged. Remo also took a swipe at all the other musicians, including Michael Jackson for not playing live. But then these days everybody takes a swipe at Micheal Jackson. Rock loudly recollected how fifteen years back Remo used to play at The Haystack, in Arpora, fully backed by a live twentysix member orchestra. Never any sequenced music for Remo. No sir! By this time Rock was in his element, and the refilled PET bottle was nearing its end, like the concert. I was in quite a good mood too. Rock hunched over close to me and whispered conspiratorially. "Tell me," he said, "who has been on stage throughout these last four hours?". "Remo of course!", I replied. "No!", whispered Rock, "Even he stepped off stage many times. Only that guy with the videocamera has been onstage, at centrestage, for the last four hours continuously.". "So what of it?" "Don't you see? This is one big farce. Nobody actually sang or played live. They were all just miming. All the music and backing voices were controlled by this videofilming fellow through his camera, which is not actually a camera but a midi-sequence player. " "And the main vocals?" "All miming. Everybody! Including Remo. That videofilming guy sang all the songs. You don't know what you can do with this modern equipment. He's a one-man-band and everything is controlled through that fake camera. I have read about these things" By this time the music had reached a crescendo and Remo signed off with his signature "Jalwa". We all had a great time. Specially Rock, who didn't remember much the next day. . And we hope Remo will continue to entertain us with his wonderful music, showmanship and songs (particularly the earlier ones). Just keep on rocking Remo, and don't listen to what anyone says. Especially guys like Rock! =======
