A. Sharpe Life: The Big Show!

On Saturday, Petro y los Hijos de Tío Sam tried to be Latino Pop Rock stars. Sadly though, they were not very well received.

We played in the colegio viejo, which is where the town high school used to be many years back. While the market was being renovated, the vendors set up shop temporarily in that space, and now that the original market has been completed, this big, open courtyard right off the central park has been used weekly for parties and dance club like events.

This weekend counted down the final days of the Fair, and everyone was out ready to party and celebrate. There was a Ferris wheel and regular fair activities at one side of town, there was a ranchera group playing old classics in the park, and there was a disco/club happening in the viejo colegio. Our gig was to play on the DJ’s “break.” (Do DJ’s need breaks?)

Early Saturday afternoon, we tried to do a sound check in the, but after about an hour of tinkering and discovering that most of the inputs of the “snake” were dead, the not-so-helpful sound guy got angry, sat in the corner, and talked on his cell phone. Thirty minutes later he left. We had still not managed to get our microphones nor instruments to play through the main speakers. It looked like it was going to be a quiet show. (By the way, the choice of main speakers were typical Central American, and I thing they were another contributor to our not sounding very good. There were 8 mammoth subwoofers (each one was probably 4’ by 3’) and only 4 normal size speakers. Needless to say, it was not intended for rock band. Also, I think the sound guy only knew how to set up the gear for someone playing music from a CD player. (see picture of the setup)

Now, for our fatal flaws. First, Michael and I took things in our own hands after realizing the sound guy wasn’t coming back and finally got sound to come out of the mains, but I was controlling the mix from on the stage with little to no constructive feedback—so in a sense I was like a deaf person in charge mixing the sound.

Secondly, basically the day of, Pedro decided that his friend Frijol was to help sing the choruses because Pedro was sick. Pedro is not a great singer. Frijol is not a great singer. (both understatements) Pedro and Frijol singing in unison sounds worse than Macy Gray and Kanye West (sans Autotune). Or maybe Kid Rock and Janis Joplin; I don’t know. You get the idea. Below is a photo of our young group beaming with anticipation right before we took the stage in front of a dispassionate crowd. (The steaming, Honduran man meat on the left is Frijol…..or is he on the right?)

Well, we made it through the first set intact but not without noticing that essentially everyone who had been dancing to the DJ’s grooves (i.e. his pushing play on Windows Media Player) stood rigid still during our songs. But the real troubles began when the lukewarm dancers became increasingly agitated when we intruded on their bump and grind party for the second time. By the tail end of our second set, Abby (bless her heart) heard some people already calling for us to leave. With about 4 more songs to go, Pedro (finally reading the crowd) asked, half rhetorically, if they wanted to hear more music, and they responded with silence. I realized then that we had just been effectively “booed” off stage. I know this for several reasons; one of which is that Hondurans ALWAYS chant “otra! otra! otra!” when show nears the end. Taking the hint, Pedro quickly said thanks and wished everyone a good night, and before we could say anything else, the DJ had began pumping large amounts of air through the obscene subwoofers. As I was setting my bass down, I noticed that the dance floor had already completely filled in, and people were back to “business” as usual.

In short, the third reason we were encouraged to stop playing was that they did not want to hear rock music. We crashed they’re steady, quarter-note beat party, and they wanted us to leave.

A visual comparison: Here’s the crowd when we were playing.