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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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Cagigal’s magical gold-plated special
By Jeff Prince
Some guys are so predictable you can set your watch by them. For instance, go to Los Alamos Café most any afternoon around 2 and you’ll find Frank Cagigal sitting at the lunch counter, wearing jeans, T-shirt, and tennis shoes, watching Hawaii Five-0 reruns, and giving everyone a hard time -- the owners, the cooks, other customers, and especially the waitress, Norma. I’ve been a regular customer at Los Alamos for 20 years and have seen Cagigal’s butt planted at that lunch counter a million times. One of his typical verbal jousts with Norma goes something like this:
“Norma, quit talking on the phone so loud.”
“I’m taking an order, Frank!”
“I’m trying to watch Hawaii Five-O.”
“I’m trying to work.”
“Can’t you do it any quieter?”
“Can’t you leave me alone?”
“Why did you put rice and beans on my plate?”
“You ordered rice and beans.”
Cagigal is what you’d call a Regular customer with a capital R – he also sits at the counter for coffee and a light breakfast most mornings.
While I’ve always thought he was a friendly, low-key kind of guy, I never knew much about Cagigal and only discovered recently that he is a professional musician. You wouldn’t know. He doesn’t wear snakeskin boots or aviator sunglasses. He looks like Joe Everyman in a gimme cap, not a jet-setting artist. But, at the age of 58, he’s achieved a milestone most other musicians only dream about.
The other day, he casually brought into the restaurant a piece of hardware – a freaking Grammy, for chrissakes. Cagigal has been playing keyboards for Little Joe and La Familia for eight years, and recorded piano tracks on Little Joe’s most recent album, “Before The Next Teardrop Falls,” which won album of the year in the Tejano category. Cagigal flew to California in February for the Grammy ceremony and got to rub shoulders with Joe Walsh, Yoko Ono, Snoop Dog, and other musicians, and enjoyed a brief conversation with actress Tia Carrere, most famous for her Wayne’s World roles but also a Grammy-nominated singer. Their verbal exchange wasn’t exactly memorable – “Aren’t you Tia Carrere?” “Yes.” “I enjoy your work.” “Thank you.” Cagigal was focused mainly on “not staring at her with my tongue hanging out.”
Although the ceremony was three months ago, his trophy just arrived in the mail this past week. He’s modest by nature but he couldn’t resist showing it off a little to his buddies at his favorite restaurant. And now the regular guy who eats regular meals at the little North Side diner can lay claim to being one of a tiny percentage of special human beings who can say, “I won a Grammy.”
Even Norma was impressed.
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