Gigging in Nigeria - the hard facts!

Graeme

Haven't posted anything here in ages.

I've just come back from 2 weeks in Lagos, Nigeria working on a TV series called "Don't forget the lyrics" (Sort-of idols meets karaoke).
I've blogged about the experience so if you are interested read about it here:

Rehearsals at bassline, Johannesburg: http://africanabc.blogspot.com/2009/02/band-in-rehearsal.html

Lagos: http://africanabc.blogspot.com/2009/03/two-weeks-in-lagos-nigeria.html

Comments, questions welcome. (as are donations for therapy to recover from trip ?)

andrewjbryson

man... i thought SA was bad...

Those photos!... "Open sewer outside rehearsal rooms" - looks pretty toxic ,

Also that 3 on 1 bike... with the kid.. , but I mean yeah , thats a true 3rd world country.

Must have been a mad experience...

Very nice Pacifica by the way ?

inflames

Hectic,

Was it save for you to even be there?
I know a friend of mine's dad is helping the goverment sort out the power issues.
He normaly have a few guards with him when he goes to Nigeria!

_-L-_

themanthatwalks

andrewjbryson wrote man... i thought SA was bad...

Those photos!... "Open sewer outside rehearsal rooms" - looks pretty toxic ,

Also that 3 on 1 bike... with the kid.. , but I mean yeah , thats a true 3rd world country.

Must have been a mad experience...

Very nice Pacifica by the way ?

You dont have to go far to see this kind of thing. This weekend me and some friends went to build a shack for a grandmother of 3 children and a grandchild all living in a shack in a place called plastic view. This is a "plakkers kamp". They are living in a makeshift flat. That is not wind or water resistant sleeping on the ground. They dont even have shoe's. No running water, No ablutions, no elec.. We built a 3X4meter shack house thing that is bigger than what they lived in.But still small. I think there are over a thousand shacks there. The Poverty is crazy. and its in our back yards. My eyes where opened and now that I have seen I can ignore... My 2 bed town house seems like mansion of unused space and wasted money..

Graeme

The difference is that in SA bad roads, open sewers etc are found in informal settlements. Hopefully the govt is doing something about it. In Lagos the whole city is like that. Open sewers everywhere. Water so toxic you can't even use it to brush your teeth!

And at the same time I saw some of the fanciest cars driving on those messed up streets: From a Rolls Royce to Hummers and many others.

By the way the Pacifica guitar was a Yamaha endorsement. They supplied gear for the gig. It's not a bad guitar, but if they let me keep it the pickups are going!

andrewjbryson

any idea which model is it, mine is the 112 , pretty much the entry level pacifica :-\

Graeme

Its PAC 904. Strat shape. No idea how much its worth. Has pretty good hardware though with locking machine heads. Bridge humbucker & 2 single coils.

themanthatwalks

Graeme wrote The difference is that in SA bad roads, open sewers etc are found in informal settlements. Hopefully the govt is doing something about it. In Lagos the whole city is like that. Open sewers everywhere. Water so toxic you can't even use it to brush your teeth!

And at the same time I saw some of the fanciest cars driving on those messed up streets: From a Rolls Royce to Hummers and many others.

By the way the Pacifica guitar was a Yamaha endorsement. They supplied gear for the gig. It's not a bad guitar, but if they let me keep it the pickups are going!

Did not mean to say our poverty is worse than their poverty. Just meant to say poverty in general is worse than we realize. And the poor to rich ratio is maddening.

Graeme

Part 02 is up:
http://africanabc.blogspot.com/

andrewjbryson

Hahaha , Excellent Graeme!

This is becoming my favourite read!

And Im not much of a reader ?

Wizard

way, way hectic.
those spagetti wires are something.

Graeme

Thanks for the comments.

Something that music schools, teachers & guitar books never tell you is that the music is the easy part.

The real difficult part of being a musician is doing gigs like this, dealing with drunk audience members, trying to get money from sleazy agents/promoters, finding ways to sell your CDs........
Now that's what they should be teaching in music schools! ?

Wizard

If they'd been honest with us at school they would have said:
"those of you who are good at selling will get rich ... cars, houses, investments, whatever"
"the rest of you are going to struggle"
"but you may be happy if you love your art-form"

[deleted]

I understand that if you want to be rich you go for certain jobs. In my opinion if you want to be a musician you must want to lift people's spirits. I've seen some of the bravest people, musicians, who have looked tragedy in the eye and still decided to sing and perform. I think that is one of the greatest feats.

Lethe

Respect dude. Epic blog!