This story definitely fits under the Namba Gear Tribal Drums (miscellaneous) category. For this episode of “Travels From A Musician’s Point of View”, I was attending the Frankfurt Musik Messe (Music Fair) with a business associate. After a couple of days at the trade show, and having tired of the traditional German food (pork; not that there is anything wrong with that), we decided to try and find an Indian restaurant for our dinner.
We went to the taxi stand and were fortunate to find that our driver spoke a little English. We told him that we wanted to find a really good Indian restaurant and he assured us that he knew the best place in Frankfurt, the food was fantastic, and that he even took his family to this restaurant. Great, off we went.
As we entered the packed Indian restaurant, the smell of the curries and spices convinced us that we had indeed found The Promised Land. Traditional Indian decorations and the soft sound of tabla drums and sitar music completed the ambiance. The owner of the restaurant, complete with turban, came over to our table to take our order.
Maybe because our hair was a little longer (my associate’s hair was in a ponytail), or the Dave Matthews Band t-shirt I was wearing under my leather jacket, the owner asked if we were musicians. We told him that we were in town for the Musik Messe and were certainly in the music business. That was all it took.
Do You Like AC/DC?
Excitedly, the restaurant owner asked if we liked AC/DC. We both replied sure, they are a great rock band. Now the owner launched into an excited and animated description of the AC/DC concert in Munich that he had recently attended; how hard AC/DC rocked; how great their show was; etc. We tried to bring him back to the menu and our order of food, but now that he knew he had found some “fellow believers”, he dismissed our attempts and just said that he would serve us the special for a big discount. OK, that sounded good.
The owner left and was gone about 3 minutes when we noticed that the sitar music had been turned off. 30 seconds later… Highway to Hell blasted through the speakers at what had to be close to the maximum volume. The owner appeared from the kitchen in time to do a head-banger’s impersonation of a lead guitar player. I’m certain that our mouths dropped open, as this was just an amazing sight. We watched in dismay as we witnessed an Indian head-banger’s turban wildly bouncing to the beat as he thrashed his air guitar. The restaurant cleared of it’s customers almost immediately and within 10 minutes of AC/DC’s musical debut, along with the entertainment of the bouncing head-banger’s turban, we were literally the only customers left in the place.
We made great friends with the restaurant owner, who seemed oblivious to the fact that he had just run off all of his regular customers. And yes, we listened to AC/DC for our dinner music (although at a lower volume) and the food was indeed fantastic.
Got a good musician’s travel story? Feel free to share…
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