Wow. That was some trip. Last week started with me stretched out on a dentist’s chair with my mouth full of needles and knives and ended up with me sitting in a big-city style nightclub. In the time since my first visit some 18 years ago Costa Rica has changed in some amazing ways. The capital, San José, has gone from a sleepy little city to a thoroughly modern place replete with high-dollar shopping malls, fancy restaurants, and a downtown largely given over to pedestrians. The good thing about the new development is most of it is in areas not frequented by tourists. The main beneficiaries of the modernization are the Costa Ricans. While I might miss the sleepy, manaña ambiance that once existed I really can’t begrudge them for wanting to have all the stuff that we have in North America. Except for one thing.

Music.

When I travel I really enjoy getting into the local scene – food, activities, music. This past week in Costa Rica was no exception but no matter where I turned the only music I heard was that which is kindly called “Adult Rock”. It is basically music from the 1960s, 70’s, and 80’s repackaged with modern commercials and played for the benefit of aging Baby-Boomers desperately trying to cling to their youth. In San Jose I heard this music in restaurants, taxis and hotels – it was on the buses. Costa Ricans are very fond of it. The radio stations that play it are all Spanish except for the music. 

 At the aforementioned nightclub my friend and I were the only two gringos present. Except that she’s from Australia and technically doesn’t qualify. I’m not even sure if there is a semi-derogatory term in Spanish for people from down-under. If there is I haven’t learned it. But you get my drift. So there we sat in a very modern nightclub – three levels, mirrored bars at either side, tables, chairs, fancy lighting – right next to a stage littered with instruments. There must have been at least nine guitars. The band members walk onto the stage and get set to play. But they’re just milling about doing nothing much at all. There’s a very faint sound from the guitar – he’s tuning up, I assume – but otherwise nothing at all. The guitar gets a bit louder and it suddenly hits me. That’s Pink Floyd. The guitar player was knocking out “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” from Pink Floyd’s album “Wish You Were Here”. This is weird. The rest of the band came in when it was their turn and put out a cover that was spot-on. Very weird indeed. 

For those of you who didn’t spend your younger days ensconced in a darkened room wearing your liquid-cushion Koss headphones and the volume up at 10 some background may be in order. Way back when it was appropriate for rock bands to devote most of the “side” of an “album” to one or two songs. Depending on the artists’ blood concentration of certain exotic alkaloids you would get different musical results. For fairly low concentrations you could get something like the modest “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin weighing in at about eight minutes. Higher blood levels would get you songs like “Tarkus” from the album of the same name by Emerson, Lake and Palmer. It was over 20 minutes long and took up the whole of the first side. If the blood chemistry pegged the needle and resulted in a write-up in The Lancet you’d get something like “Shine on You Crazy Diamond”. This song is over 25 minutes long and is split into two parts just to fit on the vinyl. Part one is the first song on the album and part two is the last. Because guitar players seem largely immune to the effects of recreational pharmaceuticals they get to do most of the work. In this case it seems that 12 of part-one’s 13 minutes are the guitar player fooling around waiting for the rest of the band to get past the rush and remember where their fingers are. The song is a rock classic. The Costa Rican band was amazingly talented and absolutely nailed the song. Even better, they only played part-one. They went on to cover other songs by Pink Floyd, the previously referenced Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, and – if you can believe it – Lynrd Skynrd. There were others. It is a surreal experience to be in the mountains of Central America listening to a live performance of “Sweet Home Alabama” by a group who has to read the words off of a cheat-sheet.

But they played no “local” music. No salsa, no merengue, no calypso, no ska, reggaeton, nor cumbia. Just the slow moving effluent of the cultural river pouring out from its headwaters in the US and UK. I suppose I should be grateful though. If that stream was flowing just a little faster I would have been listening to Disco. That is a possibility too painful to even think about.

All of which begs the question: Just what was I doing in a nightclub?

No, no, no. You may unroll your eyeballs and wipe that conspiratorial grin off your faces. It’s just that I really never went to nightclubs before. This time it turned out that I was in the club in order to find something to write about. Sure, I thought I was getting a chance to escape from the confines of Las Cumbres – the surgical retreat where I was staying – but it turned out to be more than that. My night on the town became the story I needed to write about it. I’m not sure how this happens but lately it’s been happening a lot.

Which is a good thing. I mean look at it this way. If the things that are happening to me are the same things that are happening to you then there’s really not much incentive for you to read anything I write. You already know it. There’s just so much narrative to be scraped off a trip to the supermarket or Walmart. My inspirational well would be left bone-dry in very short order. No inspiration equals no story equals no readers equals no writer. This would be very bad from my own selfish point-of-view as a wannabe writer. Because, for me just starting out, no story equals no practice and no readers equals nobody to practice upon. And, boy, do I need the practice. 

I’m sure you would agree.