Rock Rendez-Vous

The RRV was considered one of the most important spaces for Rock music in Portugal during the 1980s, and is now remembered as a mythical place for Rock music in Portugal. It was located in the former Universal cinema, at Rua da Beneficência, 175, in Lisbon. The opening took place on December 18, 1980, with a concert by the “Father of Portuguese Rock”, Rui Veloso. It closed in 1983, but soon after, a petition was made to reopen the club, having the intended effect. It closed definitively on July 27, 1990 and was demolished.

The RRV was a center for promoting pop rock and alternative rock music, promoting concerts by many big names in Portuguese music such as Xutos & Pontapés, Go Graal Blues Band, Aqui d’el-Rock, UHF, IODO, Jafumega, GNR , Heróis do Mar, Delfins, Táxi, Radar Kadafi, ZEM, Quinta do Bill, Mler Ife Dada, URB, Ban and More Republica Masónica, TumTá TumTum, Dead Dream Factory among others.

At an international level, it promoted great Anglo-Saxon music bands such as Teardrop Explodes, Killing Joke, Echo & the Bunnymen, The Chameleons, Danse Society, The Raincoats, The Sound or The Lords of the New Church.

In 1984, the RRV promoted the 1st Modern Music Competition, which achieved great success in the Portuguese music circuit and which for years served as a showcase for the most innovative work performed by young Portuguese musicians. It had 6 editions (from 1984 to 1989) and a 7th edition (in 1994), held at Cinema Condes, with the support of RTP.

The main Portuguese rock club was the symbolic place for all the cultural changes that transformed and urbanized Portuguese society. The advent of Portuguese rock, changes in behavior, new fashions and cultural changes can be told from the nights of Rock Rendez Vous.

Just as the trumpets of Jericho knocked down the biblical walls, rock chords burst social barriers in Portugal and marked the advent of a young society in a country that, due to the dictatorship, had not experienced the great cultural and social upheavals of the sixties and seventy.

The documentary about Rock Rendez Vous recovers a set of images, in the possession of individuals and institutions, that will take us on a journey during the decade that the Portuguese rock factory was open. In the succession of these days of music, for 60 minutes the great cultural, social and political changes that Rock Rendez-Vous helped to produce are shown.

Zé Pedro dos Xutos, Rui Pregal da Cunha (Heroes of the Sea), Rui Veloso, Rui Reininho, Xana from Rádio Macau, Adolfo Luxúria Canibal, António Manuel Ribeiro (UHF), Miguel Cadete (director of Blitz), Edgar Pêra, João Peste , Cristina, the wife of António Sérgio, Rui Vasco (photographer), music critics and many others, star in the history of the most celebrated concert hall in the country.