Seu Jorge

Last night Jon and I headed out to the Lula Lounge to see Seu Jorge in concert.

The Lula Lounge has one of the oddest decors that I have seen in all my concert going. The venue was well lit throughout the whole concert, and the pastel walls made the room feel warm and comfortable; a nice change from the black everything in most places. It's a restaurant at it's core and if you're willing to pay for an expensive dinner, you can have a seat for the concert. The problem, last night would have been that after having spent $75 for a meal and concert, there would have been three dozen people standing in front of you.

I didn't have a seat, but I didn't see anything either. The stage is not very elevated and though I'm not too short, it did seem that everyone in front of me was over 6 foot 2. I saw a lot of very disappointed people who heard the music and only saw the backs of the men standing in front of them.

Seu Jorge is most well known (certainly to Anglos like me) for his performance in Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Though singing David Bowie tunes in Portuguese (he's actually just making up lyrics (paragraph four), and not translating them) from the sounds of it, Jorge doesn't know much about Bowie, and doesn't care to. His set lacked any Bowie songs, which, in many ways, pleased me.

I took a dance class way back when and we learned Jive, Foxtrot, and the Cha Cha before I realized how uncomfortable it made me. Sadly, I don't know the Salsa, and Seu Jorge's music is Salsa-pop. The crowd knew what was up. There were people dancing and others jumping up on stage. There were people singing, clapping in rhythm and shouting out requests. It wasn't a typical Toronto show where people stand around with their arms crossed with a "pfft, this is cool" look on their face.

So despite not understanding a word of the language, not being familiar with the genre, and not being able to dance, it was still a very good show. It wasn't the best show of my life, but with the invention of the VCR I was able to see something new and still fill my Thursday-night-TV addiction.