“She started crying, I started crying too and we stopped the song”
In Grigoris Arnautoglou’s show, “The 2Night Show”, the guest was Nikos Makropouloson the evening of Wednesday, February 7. The beloved singer talked about the bottle lamps he makes, his professional life and his relationship with Vasilis Karrasas well as for trap music. At the same time, he also referred to his first steps, which many called him snobbish and aloof.
“I had said to do an exhibition with the lamps but with work I put it aside. I also have an eshop, everything is ready but “locked”. I have made over 300 lamps! The bottles, the more you walk in and look for them, the more impressed you are with how many beautiful bottles there are. Especially the highlighters are very impressive. I used to say that I made my hobby my profession and I am happy. But now I’m happy! Each bottle can take from one hour to ten hours. At one point we had said that we would do an exhibition, but everything happened and it didn’t happen!
Songs of joy don’t sell, only of sadness. The night was difficult and tragic during the years of the corona virus. There have been people who have quit a job they have been doing for over 20 years and changed jobs. I lost two musicians. They become sellers, storekeepers! For us, our work is like the seasonal ones. If you consider that we work twice a week, that’s 104 appearances in all 12 months. It is difficult to make a living with such a short period of time. I was working 7 days a week in Thessaloniki, I didn’t know if it was Monday or Saturday. The world after the closure of the corona virus came out, opened up, changed. All the shops are open, but it’s two days a week.”
“I was shy and this shame I had was a restraint that they said I was a snob, aloof, cold. I was shy, I hesitated to say, not knowing you, for example “Hello, Grigori”. I don’t know if I did right or wrong but that’s my character. I was packed! The first shop I went to was in Kifissia and I was very busy, overwhelmed. And now I continue to be restrained, you can see it on stage. They were telling me to break the waist but it was not possible!
“Closing a circle, it closes a generation and an age that will not return this kind of hearing. It doesn’t upset you because you say that after the last one has left, the first of the new generation has to take its turn. I have a kid who grew up with rap, I never understood what he was listening to but I respected him. Until rap there was concern, in trap things have changed a bit. It saddens me that the new generations are raised with drugs, robberies, guns as role models. Becoming a gangster and criminal to make money? Is this the way? It makes me sad. They had something to say in rap. Trap has gone to another level, I’m not criticizing it, but I’m sad.”
“The relationship with him Vasilis Karras she is known, we have worked together. We had a relationship of love, appreciation and respect. He took me two months before he passed away and he says “Chicken, I want you to do me a favor. Sing a song and put your soul into it.” She started crying, I started crying too and we stopped the song. The other day I sent him the song, he calls me and tells me “Thank you for putting your soul into it”. We hung up because we were both crying. It was the last time we spoke because after a few weeks he left.
It wasn’t just his wish, he told me verbatim “It’s a song I didn’t get to sing and I want you to sing it.” I was blown away by this phone. I haven’t even touched it. I was waiting for 40 days of Santa to close and I respected that. What I said in the shop and it was his 40th birthday, I closed with a song of his because that’s how I want him to remember us, with a smile. Because Basil always had a smile on his face. What I remember most is when we were in Australia and then he had a twisted leg and we were moving him around in a wheelchair. We go to a restaurant to eat and he eats two ducks. The next day he got up by himself, he didn’t know English and went to Chinese to eat duck by himself. And he takes the Chinese woman in his arms, shows her the duck and says “papapa, two”.
