Joined:
January 2009
Posts: 379
Location: Alagoas, Brazil | Not surprisingly, it was a rainy day in São Paulo. Between October and March, the rainy season strikes hard, and all the daily activities are regulated and restricted by the rain. Traffic, work, fun, every daily activity has to rely on the alleatory rain permission to proceed.
I was shopping for assorted things: some electronic parts, strings, picks, new cables, books, maybe even a guitar.
Being the biggest city in South America, one of the biggest cities of the world, São Paulo has anything you may need. I needed strings for my various guitars, new music books, a new hard disk for an old computer, and all those things that the 21st century made essential to modern life.
I´ve been playing the guitar since I found an old nylon stringed guitar in the roof. It had been there for ten or more years, was warped, out of tune, out of hope. But I changed the strings, tuned it and started to learn. I learned the chords, I learned songs, I started to dig into the mysteries of guitar playing. I noticed that in many albuns (those long plays are not even produced anymore!) they would split musicians between the guitar players, bass players, drummers, percussionists. Sometimes you could see an Ovation Guitar player between them. I remember asking around, but nobody was able to clarify what kind of guitar was an Ovation. Judging from the quality of the records, it was some guitar that only the most skilled were able to play.
One day I came across an article in a magazine explaining that Ovations were the most advanced guitars available. That they were made of fiber, rounded to get a better sound, and that top-of-line was the Adamas series. From this time on, I started to see, once and again, some Ovation players in the most expensive shows, easily distinguished with their rounded guitars, plugged in.
In my life I´ve been many things: photographer, engineer, bank clerk. I´ve went through college twice. I´ve become a cop, an old cop who´s sole purpose in life is make through everiday and get home safe and sound.
In this particular day, the rain hit the city hard. I was stuck in the music shop, after purchasing strings, picks, a music book, a guitar cable. The rain prevented me of leaving the shop. There I was, surrounded by guitars, basses, pianos, drums, and I had to wait for the rain to pass. I had at least an hour of waiting.
I asked the vendor if they had any Ovations available. He did a fast search on the computer and said that they even had an Adamas there. I said that an Adamas was nice, but was way above my budget.
He said that it was raining anyway, nobody would come in from the rain, and that I could play the Adamas.
I played, and was immediately hooked. It sounded great, played great, was so light that it felt part of me. It was also expensive. Very expensive. I couldn´t afford it. Obviously, I had some money, saved for a rainy day.
But then, it was a rainy day. It was an Adamas. I had it in my hands, and I could not afford loosing it. I have it now, right now, in my hands. On the last days it became part of me, as it probably should have been from the beginning. Thanks to a rainy day in a rainy city. |
A rainy day in São Paulo
