Phuza Thursday, unplugged

I really didn't see this one coming. Going to an unplugged, quiet gig at a hotel with a strange name, on a week night, with Mum Friend from 6pm to 8pm. Easy stuff. Tame evening. Early night.

Yeah right. I should have known better.

I judge how my evening is going to go by how they start. My evening at the Arno Carstens and Albert Frost Unplugged gig started with me arriving at the Sky Bar at the Grand Daddy Hotel and seeing a giant Olmeca tequila banner. Nice! It was my first time there and they had my stamp of approval. Five minutes later I am fighting with my Savanna. I managed to choose the biggest slice of lemon in the dish and squirted it into my eye whilst trying to wedge it down the bottleneck. That resulted in cursing and much eye-rubbing. During all of this, the lemon decided to play ball and slip into the bottle. Actually it dived into the bottle. There was Savanna everywhere. On the bar, on me and possibly on the people next to me. I don't know, I was too busy trying to get the lemon juice (and a small piece of lemon I am sure) out of my eye without smudging my eyeliner and looking like a panda. Great start huh! It was definitely going to be a good evening.

On to find Mum Friend who was busy BBM'ing on her Crackberry. The one night she gets to go out for two hours on the town, there is drama on the homefront. Turns out hubby was having fun with their almost-two year old daughter who had poo'd in the bath and... wait for it .. had been diagnosed as having lice that day by the creche. Yup, you better believe it! I felt I needed to be useful and empathetic. I ran off to get us tequila's immediately.

Back at the bar I start chatting to a very friendly young man who was wearing a jersey with The Grand Daddy logo emblazoned on it.

Me: Oh, so you work here then?
Friendly young man: Er, yes I do. I run the place.
Me: Oh really! Ooops. OK. Well nice to meet you, I am Tequila Tart.
FYM: Ah, Tequila Tart! I'm Sergio the General Manager. Let's have a tequila.

What followed was a whole lot of free tequila's and a good few free drinks too. Sergio rocked and me and Mum Friend rocked out. Cheers to that!

As for the gig? It was bloody fantastic. Take two highly talented musicians (OK, one super-talented one and one good-looking one with a good amount of talent), stick them together on a stage, give them acoustic guitars and an enthusiastic audience to jam for and you are in for a great evening. It was awesome! I couldn't believe that they don't rehearse this stuff. Just a look here, a wink there and it sounded like they played together all the time. They strummed their guitars, sang, laughed, stomped their feet, winked at eachother and even managed to cause a small power failure. The crowd sang along, clapped, cheered and drank lots of beer. My personal favourites were Little, Blue Eyes, Genie and that famous song from the ad, Another Universe. Inbetween all that, I was running around taking pics with a semi-functional camera, bumping into old friends from Zim and ordering drinks at the bar. Mum Friend BBM'd, drank beer, reminisced about gigs in the old days (as mum's do) and informed me about the different types of lice shampoo for two-year olds. Certainly not a dull evening by anyone's standards. Nor tame. Nor quiet. Gig ended at 8pm. We did not.

We went straight to the bar where Mum Friend dished out advice on the music industry to the youngsters while I forced Albert into having a tequila with me whilst shouting "It's on the house, ask Sergio, he rocks!" Arno gave me a hug (sympathy for the hangover I was going to have the next day?) and Sergio promised to let me stay overnight in one of the Airstream trailers (I am sending him a link to this blog). Basically I drank a lot of ciders and tequila and made a lot of noise. Pretty much what I do every time I go out.

I got home at midnight with a wad of Olmeca Black Scratch n Win cards (all saying "try again" - which I did, clearly) and an Olmeca wristband. What a great gig! Even the tequila was unplugged.

Friday started with 3 panados and a toasted sandwich.

Rocking times..