by Marina Watson Pelaez
LISBON, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- The stage is set in the middle of the Coliseu dos Recreos Theater's hall and is decorated with roses and skulls.
Portuguese actor David Almeida announced the opening of the show amid roars of laughter being amused by him.
A knife sharpener with a Harmonica and bicycle then enters the stage to further announce their arrival and Dead Combo kick off with a song that portrays their crisis-ridden country "Povo que cais descalco."
The Portuguese band, which mixes a variety of influences including fado, western music and rock'n'roll, presented their new CD on Thursday, A Bunch of Meninos, which became the No.1 best seller in Portugal this week.
Dead Combo was formed in 2002, when Pedro Goncalves, 43, met To Trips, 48, at a concert and they both walked up to Bairro Alto, a famous, raucous central district in Lisbon, and To Trips invited Goncalves to record music together.
Soon after, they collaborated in a film by Portuguese film-maker Edgar Pera, Guitar With People Inside -- a fado-western movie included in a tribute to Carlos Paredes, a legendary Portuguese guitar player, which tells the story of unemployed cowboys who came to Lisbon, and where rules were defined by guns.
To Trips, who is fairly private about his identity and real name -- never got rid of his black hat since then on, and Pedro Goncalves didn't have a character, so he became the gangster, and since then never forgets his dark sun glasses, suit and tie.
They named the group Dead Combo because the idea was to have a group that didn't really exist. "He (To Trips) would play with different people, but they kept changing. It was a dead group," said Pedro Goncalves, on the phone, the day after the concert. "After we started making music together, we decided to keep that name."
Pedro Goncalves and To Trips grew up in the outskirts of Lisbon, but used to spend a lot of time in Bairro Alto, and rehearsed in a bar called Galeria Ze dos Bois, where they became close with the cleaner, Dona Emilia, a song they named after her and dedicated to her last night. "Dona Emilia is a good friend of ours," said Pedro Goncalves.
The old neighborhood where they started playing is always present in their performances. "Bairro alto is our second home," he added. "Well, at least it was. It isn't any more."
Today Dead Combo are big sellers and play at prestigious venues around the country and abroad. The band is now getting ready to tour the United States, Canada, Russia and France next year.
"It's a fantastic feeling," said Goncalves. "We never used to have the right conditions for a show. Now we finally have the conditions we always wanted."
The band began to become well known internationally in 2012 after the American chef Anthony Bourdain invited them to one of his Reservation shows dedicated to Lisbon. Shortly after, three of the Dead Combo's albums on iTunes were among the top most played tracks in the states.
"It feels very strange to be here," said Pedro Goncalves at the end of the performance on Thursday. "But it feels good."
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