Gabriel

I spent the evening in Paradise, close to Mr. Gabriel Rios. Well, it was actually Paradiso, and there were about five metres separating me from the gentleman. But it sounds nice, anyway. It was a strange evening in some ways.

Today is Remembrance Day in the Netherlands, so at 8 p.m. the place got completely silent for two minutes. It was weird, because there was a lot of noise in the hall, and then it was as if the place was frozen in time. Everyone was quiet and stood completely still. Then the noise came back just as before. Paradiso used to be a church, and just for a moment it felt like one again.

When Gabriel Rios came on stage I had a little trouble recognizing him. He wasn't wearing his lovely, woolly, knitted hat.... I was looking forward to seeing the hat. He was stylishly underdressed, apart from his wonderfully colourful shoes. He is very cute, all dark and handsome and very charming. I must confess he did sometimes remind me a little of Mr. Bean though, and he does seem awfully young, which says more about me than about him, I guess. Still, I can think of worse things to look at for a whole evening.


I was about two metres from the stage, and was surrounded by mainly young girls, dancing most of the evening, staring up at this man up on stage. They came in small groups, and sometimes seemed too busy amongst themselves to have a clue about what was going on on stage. And then there are the mobile phones though, and the need to share each text message as it arrives. Rios did manage to catch the eyes though. And he did get the whole hall dancing in the end. A little shake of the hips at just the right moment worked wonders.

He sang some quiet songs, but mainly faster songs that people could dance to. When he started "Broad Daylight" someone in the audience handed him a packet of orange juice, because the track was used in the commercial for that brand of juice. He drank it there and then.

I was reminded of when I first heard Rios' music last year. While I was sailing to Antarctica. One of the crew members really liked "Broad Daylight" and it was on his "favourites" cd, the one that was played after every meal, when the crew were doing the dishes, and at various times in between meals. I was in the cabin next to the galley, and heard the song over and over again, even while I was seasick. Or sometimes in the middle of the night. Hearing it so often didn't necessarily make me a Rios fan at the time, though I did sort of like the song.

I do keep wondering why some people come to concerts. The amount of talking and noise amazes me. You cannot really listen to the music because there always are people talking somewhere near you. Even when Gabriel asked the audience to be quiet just for one song some girls in front of me decided this was a good time to use their phone to take each other's picture and to have a giggle. Apparently these days Dutch audiences are notorious for their habit to just keep talking throughout the concert.

Anyway, I just thought I'd take some pictures of Gabriel instead....