Monalia's World

Mark got a call on his cell phone from a British bloke who is an acquaintance of a friend. The guy’s name is Clive and he claims to be an out of work musician living nearby, in Gracia. Our friend Lee gave him our number, told him to call us because maybe we could distribute his music. He seemed harmless enough so Mark and I agreed to go meet him at Plaça del Sol, 2 blocks from our place. I was expecting him to be tall, skinny and with black hair. I had no basis for this. The guy was meant to recognize us, Mark being tall and wearing a hat.

We walked to Plaça del Sol and waited a few minutes when an unassuming older man approached. He looked like Anthony Hopkins in a slightly down and out role, wearing a non-descript wrinkly shirt and pants. He looked to be in his 60’s but might actually be in his late 50’s; its hard to tell when a man has a balding grey head. He was nice enough but a bit pathetic looking, like someone who’s been beaten by life. We went to his favorite nearby bar for a drink to see if we had anything in common.

Clive’s been living in Spain for about 20 years and has been working odd jobs in that time. He says he left England because he was getting in debt. He moved to Spain to start a new life, got married, has been working in different businesses, creating music for the fun of it. “I’m a music inventor. I can’t read or write music but I ‘invent’ it’ as I play.”

I say diplomatically, “We sell music for composers who’s music fills a market we don’t already have covered. Do you have a recording we can listen to?”

“No, I don’t have anything on tape or CD, but I have recordings that could “easily be mixed by someone”.

We said “we don’t do that.”

“I could bring over my 4 track recorder and drum machine to show you what I do”.

“No, we need a CD or a tape”

“I don’t have any of that fancy technical stuff to make a CD, I’m not sure how to mix the music but I’m sure someone who knew what they were doing could do a good job.”

Mark says “We only sell music that’s ready to go. We don’t mix or separate into loops. We expect our composers to do that.,”

“Huh?” he says. Clearly he was expecting we’d want him to bring his boom box over, play us all his tunes, we was hoping we’d pick a few and want to magically release them through our site.
We told him to check out our website, that he’d understand better what we want if he did some leg work and listened to what we are selling already. He replied that he has a computer and he has ADSL at home, but he doesn’t know how to use any of it.

What do you say to someone like this? Clearly all we have in common is living in Gracia, nothing else. it turns out he hardly even knows Lee, who gave him our number.

I felt for the old fellow, sitting there pitching his music to us – I suppose every musician hopes someone with a record company will some day discover them. The funny thing in this scenario is that our company, Partners In Rhyme, is in the position to make something happen for anyone with a viable “camera ready” product. Lots of composers approach us by sending CDs to us in the mail, which we listen to and some of which we see market potential for and negotiate the standard 50/50 deal, which is a solid industry standard. But never has anyone approached us wanting to bring their box over to play their tunes for us to audition. Clive is already a fond memory for me. Who knows, maybe he writes the most brilliant and original music we’ve ever heard… but even so if a composer doesn’t hand us a camera ready product, we certainly don’t have time to create *their* product. Even more, if a composer doesn’t have it together enough to simply play his music to the people he is trying to pitch it to then he is definitely a lost cause, no matter how empathetic we might be towards him from having been in his same position quite a few times ourselves in the not so distant past.

For a while we were eating at only very authentic Catalan restaurants. One called Su Casa is very interesting. From the front it looks like just another local cervesa y tapas joint but once you walk through to the back it opens up into a large cafeteria style restaurant. There is a kitchen with one cook and there is usually only the one waiter who is a bit beyond his expiration date as he has trouble with the larger trays of dishes and the occasional accident with a hot bowl of soup. The menu is very Catalan, we know what most of the dishes on it are now and once you know one Catalan menu you pretty much know them all. We were both on a mission to understand the menu. I would bring a tiny pocket dictionary and we would look up what words we could. Mark made it a point to try only the dishes that he had no idea what he was ordering. It worked for a while. He found some great dishes; stews, lentil beans, casseroles. I didn’t have as much luck. I once ordered the plate of ‘verduras’ (which literally means green and is supposed to be vegetables) and got a big plate of boiled potatoes, cabbage and beans, nothing green. The same meal I got my “verduras” Mark tried something called Pies de Cerdo y Caracoles. He thought it would be a stew with pieces of meat in it but what he got of course was ‘Feet of Pig and Snails’. The feet were basically just pig fat and tough skin, they were covered with empty snail shells just to make it a little more tantalizing I guess. He did his best, ate what he could, but when he turned his plate and saw a fully formed toe with what looked like a fingernail on it he had to stop. For some reason the image of eating his dog’s severed paw kept popping into his head and he lost his appetite. He sucked on a snail shell but nothing much happened. He has since learned to avoid this dish, although some locals have told us they just love it.

MASSIVE FIREWORKS BANG


Monday night we went roaming the streets of Barcelona with some friends visiting from New Zealand. St Joan Day 2008. This holiday is one of the biggest in Barcelona. Everyone is on the streets armed with fireworks and explosives, there are no rules or regulations, it is complete anarchy; there are old ladies throwing M80’s at little kids with a look of glee in their eye. There are home made bottle rockets filling the skies.

FIREWORKS AND MUSIC WITH CROWD SOUNDS:

MASSIVE FIREWORK BANG WITH CHEERING

There are huge bonfires in the streets, people are throwing pieces of furniture, old books and more fireworks directly into the bonfires.

The streets are lined with tables and all of the neighbors are out drinking and eating, bands are stationed at the end of most streets and people are dancing to live music until early in the morning.

According to tradition you have to swim in the ocean after midnight, So we all headed for the beach. When we got there we could not believe our eyes and ears. The beach was filled with what seemed to be every person who lives in or is visiting Barcelona. There were tents and bonfires, people carrying torches, lots of music. Looking down the coast we could see miles and miles of people partying; chutes of fire and smoke, sparks, bangs, coming from the crowds. It looked like something out of a Peter Jackson film, with an almost medieval cast to it. The sound of the surf pounding to shore made it distinctly Barcelona.

When we found our spot on the beach we took of our clothes and ran into the water which was warm and inviting. It as an absolutely amazing night and I will never forget it.
Barcelona certainly knows how to party! Unlike in USA or New Zealand, where such an event would be contained to a few hours, this party (complete with fireworks) goes on until 10 am the next day, when the beach control comes around and chases everyone off the beach to clean it.