Back to work

I just wanted to thank everybody who prayed for our Dad, he is back home after 5 weeks in hospital and emotional of all the support everybody showed from all around the world.

We are now back to working on some new songs, Horses, the first song we record with my own lyrics, which I wrote when I read "Bury my heart at wounded knee" many years ago and brings back the Indian theme. It also counts with the collaboration of Pity Gomes singing as a backing vocal a sacred chant to evoke light from a Brazilian Ayuaska shamanic ritual.

We are also working on a cover from a very cult obscure 60's/70's artist that I love, that I hope you will enjoy, as well as a song for autism charity with lyrics I wrote based on the Option Process, the philosophy behind the Son-Rise Program, the Program I have been homeschooling my autistic son for the last 5 years with great success.

Watch this space!

For more info on the Son-Rise Program visit http://www.son-rise.org

For Max

Max, as we call my Dad, has always believed in us. He not only bought all our instruments, he went to all the gigs he could go to, he listens to our music, he loves our music.
Max came from a very poor background, he lost his Mom at 6 years old and was abandoned by his Father at the age of 11 to fend for himself. His first job was to sell bananas in the streets of Duque de Caxias, our home town in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro. He was helped by a mechanic who felt sorry for him, for even though he was 11 he looked like he was about 7 or 8 because of malnutrition. The guy let him stay at his Garage and so he learnt everything about cars, one of his biggest passions, after Flamengo, one of the biggest Brazilian Football teams. He played football very well and it was playing alongside my uncle that he met my Mum at the tender age of 16, she was only 13. At first she didn't want anything to do with him as she wanted to be an artist and a singer but as persistant as he was he kept saying he was one day going to marry her until she fell for his Italian looking charm. My Dad was always a fighter, he was determined to give my Brother and I everything he never had as a child and so he did, not just to us but to all our friends. Everybody who knows him knows his joy is to give, for nothing in return.

Friends who shared the stage with us know we would always gather at our place for eating and drinking at any time of day or night. He famously bought a bakery display of sweets with 20 containers which decorated our kitchen and was always full. All friends loved to come in and just open the containers satisfying a hidden childhood dream in everyone, eating as many as you wanted.

After working for nearly 50 years he retired and enjoyed some time off with us in Europe when he received a letter from the Brazilian Government that his pension would be cut because there was fraud in the department that issued it. He has been fighting for the last three years to prove his innocence and have his deserved pension back and in the meantime to survive he sells with my Mum sugar cane juice and pastries at a street market, they work really hard and do not have much but never lost their giving personality, they find joy in giving.

I don't believe my Dad ever thought or desired that we were commercially successful, I think in his mind he would provide for us forever, that's what he would have wanted, he is ashamed of taking anything from us but I am absolutely certain he would love for our music to be recognized, to be listened to, for every body's music to be listened to. You could always see him with tears in his eyes when he saw some story of musicians or artists who never made it in life but suddenly got a later break or something of the sort. Perhaps his own story would have made him sensitive to the hardships of life.

As Max is recovering in hospital we would like to play a song we made for him called Sugar Cane, just like he is, so sweet!

Sugar Cane (Willesden Green) by Loosh

Come back to us safe and sound Max, we love you!

Paulo, Simone and Tayo (sign your name below) Your children on children's day

The 7 luckiest moments in our history in no particular order

After the 13 unluckiest moments now the 7 luckiest ones, not that we had more unlucky ones but just to keep in with the tradition of the numbers, after all we love the number 7!

1 - It has to be to start with the day Tayo came to visit us in our flat in Niteroi and the whole musical adventure started

2 - Our first Gig, seeing all the familiar and unfamiliar faces watching us, listening to our songs and applauding our work, a very unforgettable feeling

3 - When our song "Primeira Pessoa" was played for the first time in a mainstream radio from Rio without our knowledge and caught unexpected on the car radio

4 - The rehearsal when the boys had the idea of making a mixture of Brazilian and Indie, the style that still remains with us today

5 - Our Gig at "Circo Voador" in Rio opening for a signed bigger band, Picassos Falsos, which counted with 1.500 people. Our songs were very well received

6 - Our Gig at the Fulham Greyhound in London, a really cult place at the time, also a great reception

7 - Rough Trade Records, one of our favourites having an interest in us, even if their financial difficulties at the time didn't allow for us to be signed, it was the recognition that we were good (and weird) enough for them that was priceless

The 13 Most Unlucky Moments in our History in no particular order

1 – We did an awful lot of work to promote a 3 day gig for 6 new bands at the UFF Student Union in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro, and the day we played it rained cats and dogs, the streets were flooded and 3 people showed up for the gig. Still it was great to share the stage with our friends from Eterno Grito.

2 – When leaving the Robin Hood Pub, in Rio de Janeiro, after a gig, under loads of rain, the road was slippery and the guys crashed their car. They had to wait for hours for help and ended up having to walk miles soaking wet but thankfully no one was seriously hurt!

3 – After three successful gigs at the Rock Garden in London Paulo decided to go see the Manager to request a weekend date. The Manager answered he was sorry but the weekend was for Indie music only. Paulo said that we were Indie to which the Manager replied: "Yeah right, you and Carmen Miranda!"

4 – We decided to have a drink after our rehearsal in Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro. When we came back we found someone had broken into our car. We could actually see the thieves as they run away carrying our keyboards. All the sounds I used for the songs were programmed by myself so none of the songs sounded the same again.

5 – We went on stage at a piano bar in Rio and there were 2 people for an audience, not counting the waiters of course. Tayo was drunk and insisted on playing the piano. Paulo just wanted the set to end. Incredibly enough one of the two people we had never seen before. Years later this person bumped into Brent in the street and mentioned he really enjoyed the gig!

6 – After finishing the sound check for a gig in Rio, Paulo popped out for a drink and found Herbert Viana in the queue at the venue ticket box set. He was a famous Brazilian front man to a Brazilian band called Paralamas do Sucesso who were also embarking in the same Brazilian rock style we were at the time and it would be a great promotion for us if a more famous musician enjoyed our work. Paulo spent the whole night looking for him amongst the faces in the public but he didn't think he was in.

7 – We got on stage at a funk club in the suburbs of Rio. The place was packed but the crowd was motionless as soon as we started playing, as they realised we did not play “reggaeton”. I think out of a full club there were two people clapping at the end with the rest of the crowd eyeing them in anger, I feared for my life honestly!

8 - Sergio got run over and broke his femur in 3 different places requiring several operations in 1988.

9 - Rough Trade Records got interested in our work just before it went bankrupt in 1991.

10 - We actually won a competition of best band at the Robin Hood Pub and a recording but the prize was never given out.

11 - We got a review from a demo section on NME Magazine with a really grumpy cow whose only purpose was to put down unsigned bands in the best way she could. Thankfully some links to our tracks were also published along with the review and we got some fans who decided not to trust her and listened to the tracks.

12 - While returning from a rehearsal in Rio Paulo and I got stuck in a tunnel during a shoot out between Police and robbers. The longest few minutes of my life. When they were gone we got up from the bottom of the car where we had been ducking down and checked out for any blood, thank God all still tucked in carefully into our veins!

13 - We are still unsigned, but many people say they appreciate our music, now this bit is up to you to change, forward this blog to your friends and spread our songs, our music is our life, we would love to see it grow and see it loved.

There's no luck, there's no chance everything turns out the way it was meant to be

I think the Mill fans the creator when he throws his dice every night after midnight

Happy 25th Anniversary!!!

It's today!! Friday the 13th August 2010 our 25th anniversary.

To celebrate we are launching this podcast with 7 lucky songs each one of them a remake Loosh style for the 7 different stages of our career. We are not going to charge you to download our tracks but would you consider donating $1, that's it, just one American Dollar to the Autism Treatment Center of America - Home of the Son-Rise Program?

I have myself been running a Son-Rise Program for my autistic son for the last five years with amazing results. If you donate for our songs, as a present for us, just one dollar and invite all your friends to do the same we could together help the Autism Treatment Center of America to donate scholarships for more families like mine.

Make Friday the 13th a lucky day for autism:

http://www.autismtreatmentcenter.org/document.php?documentid=52&sectionid=7

"The Autism Treatment Center of America™ is the worldwide teaching center for The Son-Rise Program® , a powerful, effective and totally unique treatment for children and adults challenged by Autism, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), Asperger's Syndrome , and other developmental difficulties. Our team of committed teachers combines Autism strategies, support and education that combines over 100 years of “real life” experience working with children using The Son-Rise Program®. Over the last 27 years we have worked with more than 22,000 parents and professionals from around the world teaching them a system of treatment and education. We do not put limits on the possibilities for your child. We can help you to bring your child as far across the bridge from Autism to recovery as possible. For some, this means complete recovery. For others, this means improvements in their child's development, human connection, communication, skill acquisition and quality of life far beyond what most would have ever predicted."Autism Treatment Center of America
2080 S. Undermountain Road Sheffield MA
01257413-2292100

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1 - Dreams and Lies is a Loosh song
2 - Seedless Grapes in the Morning is an original recording by Seven Miles High
3 - Victoria She Was is a remake Forro (North Eastern Brazilian) style representing Dancyn Days
4 - King's Road to Rio is a remake of Rio Sightseeing representing Felix Fritz
5 - Tres Mulheres is sang in Portuguese and is representing Kaddish
6 - Mess is a remake of Cleopatra Morreu and is representing Kafka
7 - Procissao is sang in Portuguese and is representing Colonia Penal

Thank you so much for celebrating our anniversary by listening to our tracks and helping a great cause. Enjoy the tracks!

Luz Taylor

Picture Albums - England

If you have any pictures to add message me here please.

Felix Fritz

Dancyn Days

Zen Arcade/Secen Miles High

Loosh

Picture albums - Brazil

These are all the pictures that we could find if you have any pictures to share from the time please let me know through a comment on this blog.

From the beginning

Colonia Penal and Kafka

Kaddish

Redskins/Zen Arcade

Videos

Tayo A.K.A. Kat Stoopid is the author of the Four videos we've made.

Dreams and Lies is a montage of some very old obscure version of The Wizard of Oz which coincidentally fits if not metaphorically, literally to what the lyrics say

Dreams and Lies


Loosh (Luz) MySpace Music Videos

Bath Houses features a very snowy home video and some clever drawing montages emphasizing my favourite part of the lyrics: The Holy Spirit, Whole in Spirit, Spirit with the hole, I'm just the hole.


Bath Houses


Loosh (Luz) MySpace Music Videos
Maria Del Mar was a video created to celebrate Iemanja's Day on the 2nd of February, it talks about Iemanja the Goddess of the Sea who is part of Afro-Brazilian religions and of Brazilian Folklore.

And finally Quarta Feira de Cinzas which means Ash Wednesday, originally made in Portuguese, was launched on Ash Wednesday, the last day of Carnival in Rio, 2010 displaying real Carnival scenes when Tayo and his family and friends paraded with one of the Samba schools in Rio and also the sinking of a ship, which for those thinking, why, it is because of a play with words in Portuguese in the chorus: "So sobrou voce" means "you were the only one left" while "sosobrou" means "sank".



We intend to launch more videos, follow us on Facebook or one of the links on the right hand side of this blog and we will keep you updated with any new releases.

Something I've Lost

Our second album was called Something I've Lost and it features 3 women on the sleeve perhaps as a reference to the song "Tres Mulheres" which in Portuguese means "Three Women"

Track List:

1. Eerie - Originally called Spirit of the Rattlesnake, it possibly talks about Tayo's connection with Brazilian Indians in his distant family, a very fine example of Brazilian Indie music

2. The Girl from Sacramento - Written after Tayo's trip to Japan and the realization that our Portuguese version of "isn't it?" or "né?" is exactly the same in Japanese. A fine Bossa Nova in homage of the people who love Brazilian music like any other.

3. Procissão - Written in Portuguese, one of our first songs from Colonia Penal times, although the vocal melody from Brent Hieatt was kept almost intact with some minor changes, the song under Loosh was completely changed from a dark post punk rendition to a great Samba Indie version

4. Springtime - Springtime was originally written in Portuguese with the title "March of the flowers" and was cleverly translated into English

5. Bath Houses - A beautiful acoustic song it features my favourite lyrics: "The Holy Spirit, whole in spirit, spirit with the hole, I'm just the hole.

6. Song for a Married Girl - Speculation has it that Tayo has written this one to his Mother but no one will ever know, he doesn't discuss the meaning of his lyrics, when I sing them I give them the meaning it has to me. Although sang in English it features some chorus vocals in Portuguese.

7. Maria Del Mar - It talks about the weird fact that I hated having my hair cut (probably an autistic sensory issue I wasn't aware of) and actually got physically ill when I did it. It's a Homage to the Goddess of the sea Iemanja to whom Brazilians offer flowers on New Years Day. She supposedly gives voice to female singers. It features an extract of a popular song to Iemanja sang in rituals of Afro-Brazilian religions.

8. Tomorrow - Sounds almost a bit Spanish I wonder if it is a homage to Paulo's Spanish Citizenship and love for the Country.

9. The Head that bangs the Drums - One of my favourite songs it has many vocal layers in English and Portuguese and a very onomatopoeic chorus I invented which actually makes sense "O paradeiro do pandeiro, o paradeiro do pandeiro do Para" sounds like scatting when sang but it means where's the tamborine from Para? (A State in Brazil), well I said it made sense not that it was meaningful, but it sounds good.

10. Tres Mulheres - From Kafka times, it is sang in Portuguese, it features a very uptempo jazzy piano and rhythm.

11. August - The month of our anniversary also a month of loss for Tayo, a beautiful slow samba.

12. Emptyness - One of the songs from the titles I gave to Tayo to write about, a beautiful acoustic rendition from Seven Miles High times.

Loosh is an unsigned band
All our work is only available as download
This album is available for download by request
If you are a publisher or label and would like to publish our songs please contact Simone Taylor

msttaylor@virginmedia.com

First Station

The first album we recorded as Loosh was called First Station after the name given by Cartola, one of Tayo's favourite Brazilian composers, to the Samba school he was the Patron for, Mangueira. He called the Samba School First Station (Estação Primeira de Mangueira) because Mangueira was situated at the first stop from the train taken at Central do Brasil, famous for the Film with the same name.

List of tracks:

1. Magda K - The meaning of the title only Tayo knows. It was originally written by Kaddish and completely changed in its new arrangement. It resembles a patchwork quilt with its mixture of lyrics in English, Portuguese and nonsense scatting in a trip-hop style with dreamy keyboards. It was once called Fox and Hounds but as I mentioned earlier Tayo prefers that the title of the song does not appear on the lyrics.

2 - Dreams and Lies - Originally from Dancyn' Days, the vocal melody of the new version was changed so much that we really attribute it to Loosh. It's my favourite song in a California Soul/Bossa Nova style beginning with the sampled sound of our beautiful sea and seagulls. It was the first song to get a video made for it.

3 - Joker of Hearts - The title was translated from Portuguese "Coringa de Copas" which rendered its short introduction in Portuguese as a homage when I mix the word Copas with Copacabana. It was conceived as a Brazilian Disco track with the dance floor in mind. It marks the first time I made the vocal melody instead of Paulo.

4 - Kings Road to Rio - It's a mash-up from the song originally from Kaddish called Rio Sightseeing and the lyrics from Kings Road never recorded before. It features the sample of Cartola's voice stating he was born in Rio de Janeiro. It has a reggae feel to it or what is called in Brazil Samba -Reggae. I added an extra English/Portuguese part to it that resembles a lot of the homage music made for Rio de Janeiro by foreign artists in the 70's and 80's.

5 - Sleepiness Inside - One of the songs written at the time I gave titles for Tayo to write lyrics from, during Zen Arcade/Seven Miles High times it has a Northeastern folk tone to it played in a 10-string guitar aided by a squeezebox sound.

6 - Mess - It features the song and schizophrenic guitars from Cleopatra Morreu, a song from Kaddish times, a samba rhythm, Brazilian percussion but lyrics and melody from another song never recorded before. It also features a very Morrisey type of singing chorus and the chorus in Portuguese from Cleopatra Morreu in Vocoder style, perhaps the title makes sense but just like a teenager bedroom it is a mess that does make sense to its owner.

7 - Umba Neme - Originally from Kaddish it features a Berimbau, instrument from the Martial Art Capoeira and the African like sounds typical from the state of Bahia and words in Yoruba. It's one of the most nonsense lyrics we have, featuring words mainly for its sonority. "Neme" is a word created by our circle of friends in the 80's which is a contraction of "Não é mesmo?" which works as the English slang "innit?"

8 - Islands - Originally written by Dancyn' Days is the only song I have ever written from scratch on the bass, with Loosh it was incorporated into a Samba School "Batucada".

9 - The Right Time - Also from Seven Miles High it wasn't changed much from its original acoustic guitar voice and percussion format, a beautiful acoustic song.

10 - Again - Another one from Seven Miles High Times, it had a beautiful "Cuica" incorporated in its 60's dreamy layers of guitars and keyboards.

11 - Construction - A mix of samba and contemporary trip-hop and dance music, an instrumental featuring again Cartola stating he was born in Rio de Janeiro and more extracts of his interview.

12 - Victoria She was - From Dancyn' Days, originally almost a punk rendition, under Loosh a true homage to North Eastern music or Forro mixed with schizophrenic guitars. One of the songs that most exemplify our aim as Kaddish/Felix Fritz/Loosh of being a true Brazilian Indie Band.

Loosh is an unsigned band

All our work is only available as download

This album is available for download by request

If you are a publisher or label and would like to publish our songs please contact Simone Taylor

msttaylor@virginmedia.com

Camera, Loosh, Action

Continued from blog 18 - Going back to our roots...

Loosh, the English pronunciation of Luz, which means light in Portuguese, also our surname, well, Paulo and mine, is our current musical venture. Loosh still carries the same core proposition as Kaddish did, the one Tayo mentioned in his interview - We make Brazilian Rock, not rock sang in Portuguese.

Loosh differs from Kaddish however in a great number of aspects, we are older (some say too old :oP), more mature and have been exposed to different styles of both Brazilian and Indie Music that we hadn't been at Kaddish times. Although Tayo's lyrics were surprisingly mature for a teenager in Colonia Penal Times it was really while leaving in Europe that he developed into a writing machine, writing in English with the same power as in his native Portuguese. Between Paulo and Tayo they have so many songs/lyrics it could fill enough singles that lined up would circle the globe.

At first, when Tayo started to write in English, he invented that his lyrics were donated to us by a Welsh Poet who wished to stay anonymous, which we nicknamed James Eliot. Surprisingly, since no one knew Tayo was writing the lyrics we never received any criticism of any "mistakes" or misspellings. It's amazing how people will find nothing to criticize about when they are not looking for mistakes. We also noticed when we just presented people our music amongst other people's music nobody noticed any difference in relation to my voice, but tell them I am Brazilian and they will instantly look for an accent to comment on. If Goldfrapp's singer were foreign everybody would criticize the way she doesn't pronounce words very well or how the lyrics are unintelligible, the same goes for Liz Frazer who would be accused of making up words because she forgot the lyrics, or something of the sort, but since they are British it's all artistic and beautiful. For some reason I do not know, maybe I was English in another reincarnation and have some left over nationalist pride in my subconscious, who knows, but if you want to infuriate me, tell me my accent is strong, I think I would get less cross if you said I sang out of tune!

Although we've written many songs under the Loosh title we also decided to revisit songs from our career since Colonia Penal times, rescuing them from obscurity and giving them new clothing. Some of them assumed a completely new format such as the song Procissão, while some others were mashed up together like Rio Sightseeing and King's Road to become From King's Road to Rio and we also made up a few cover versions all following our must be rule for cover making:
There's no point in making a cover exactly the same as the original. We always made sure we put our stamp on a song, in some cases, as the cover of Welcome to the Machine from Pink Floyd, our stamp is a freak Brazilian voiced beat box for drums, sounds crazy but sounds good.


Welcome to the Machine (Pink Floyd cover) by Loosh

Other covers include Bed of Nails from Husker Du, Leave Me Alone from New Order in Bossa Nova style, Lady Stardust from David Bowie and That's the Way from Led Zeppelin in Forro style.

We went back to our Brazilian Roots because since I listened to a lot of Brazilian Jazz at home because of my DJ Husband I couldn't help singing in that style, but it so happens that at the moment he is really into Folk, California Soul artists like Alzo, Alicia May or modern ones like Jonathan Jeremiah and Jon Allan so you never know we might just become Seven Miles High again!

It has been a great journey to write, almost every day in 19 days what took 25 years of my life. I hope you have laughed, cried and enjoyed our story, but stay put as for the next 6 blogs until our anniversary on Friday the 13th August we will discuss all the songs from our first and second albums, our new songs, our videos, there will be a photo gallery and finally an anniversary surprise. Thank you for listening, we apologize for any inconvenience caused (I've learnt to say this at the end of every statement since living in Britain), we can guarantee no animals were harmed during the production of this blog, although the squirrel in the garden did go nuts a couple of days without nuts, and this blog does contain Brazil nuts.

...To be continued in real life, real time

Pictures: 1 - Nuria Sanchez, 2 - Unknown, 3 - Katia Haider, 4 - Simone Taylor

Going Back to our Roots

Continued from Blog 17 - Virtually Speaking...

... The Year 2000, a New Year, Decade, Century, Millennium, when washing my feet at Copacabana Beach at midnight Kissing my Husband and worrying about Y2K, that never really happened, I never anticipated so many changes the decade would bring, 9-11, Barack Obama, my son, who was diagnosed autistic at 3 years old, still so many wars and more recession.

Some great change was about to hit our music too. While I was with Paulo rehearsing we wrote many songs but when back home I would listen to a lot of Brazilian Jazz from my DJ Husband whose music choice was influencing me without my knowledge. More and more we started to notice my singing sounded more like Bebel Gilberto than Natalie Merchant, more and more people would comment on the sites we had our music on, about my "Bossa Nova Style of singing". Without noticing we started to slip into our Felix Fritz roots again.

When that natural inclination of being Brazilian came through our work we decided to leave Seven Miles High aside as an alternate work for the boys, perhaps they could look for another singer for it and invest in working on what I did best, singing Bossa Nova style on top of a Brazilian Indie mixture such as in Felix Fritz times but a bit more sophisticated with a tinge of jazzy chords not to mention technology now permitted us programming perfectly sampled sounds of drums and percussion.

And so was born LUZ, we chose our surname, Paulo and mine, because it means light in Portuguese, we are known by it and we liked the sound of it and although it excluded Tayo, by this time we were almost like siblings anyway he didn't mind.

We kept it that way for a while until non-Brazilians started giving all sorts of pronunciation to the name and we decided to give them a hand and spell it as it is pronounced in English LOOSH. As you've probably guessed there is at least another one out there that we know of, in California I think, and yes they have more hits on myspace than we do. Can somebody go visit that site and raise those hits for us, this is getting annoying. No we are not going to change name again, we've changed more times than Madonna changes clothes in her gigs, perhaps not that many, but enough is enough. Let's race it and see who gets famous first, no don't count the myspace page, that's not fair! I think even my Husband has more hits on myspace than us, does anyone visit that damn page?

Now the journey really starts for we've seen the light...

...to be continued

Pictures: 1 - Croydon Advertiser, 2 - Soter França, 3 - Paulo Nunes

Virtually Speaking...

Continued from blog 16 - 7 and 7 is...

... Now as 7 Miles High playing gigs had become a thing of the past, being our last gig one of the Park Royal ones back in 1990, almost a decade before and still with the 5 member formation. As a singer I had never stepped on stage. We are not exactly against gigs but I think the world should rethink music formats and mediums. If you take acting for example, Cinema, Theatre and Television are completely different mediums. I happen to like the three of them but they are generally accepted by everyone individually in their own right. Some stories will be better portrayed in the Cinema while others will have the Theatre as their best vehicle. There's music that only sounds good recorded. I absolutely love New Order, but they definitely don't sound as good live. I think The Stone Roses are one of the best bands ever to grace the face of the Earth but Ian Brown did sing completely out of tune in a gig Tayo watched. People expect all bands to play live, but if you have a studio work, layers upon layers of music played by the same person all you are going to get on stage is recorded music with the singer singing on top, which is not the same as a live band. Why can't people accept that a band exists just as a studio work? In the digital era where people date online, shop online do everything online, why do bands need to play live to exist? This is the question we asked ourselves as for us it was not just a matter of personal preference but inability to live in the same country. so in 1999 at the dawn of the new Millennium we totally embraced the world phenomenon called the Internet.



We were already on many sites it had been a long time thanks to Tayo early use of computers and computer programming. Sites did not have easy access to bands, if you wanted to have a page on a site you had to write it in html and not everybody could do it. In 1999 I bought my first home computer and started creating a community for Seven Miles High in several sites mainly on the site, not so popular nowadays, mp3.com



It was on mp3.com that I met fellow band The Plain Healers from New Jersey which has amazing songwriting and lyrics. We found a great parallel with our stories and recently Tayo even played as a guest in one of their gigs playing sitar of all things.

During our Internet years we generated loads of traffic to our pages and sites and won popularity contests such as the Burbs soundroom. It was gratifying to be able to be listened to in several parts of the world and have messages being sent to us from Canada, United States, Japan or China, Countries we would never be able to reach in our unsigned situation. Now we could just record our songs and put them online and people all over the world could listen to them.


What at first was a novelty then became Record Companies and musicians nightmare as now no one pays for listening to music anymore. What helped us also now limits our ability to earn a living as a musician, a tricky question that the world is trying to answer inventing different formats and ways of preventing people from pirating tracks but so far it seems music is free to the world to listen to.

This format remains with us today as only after a few years Paulo and I were together in England our famous recession hit again and he got transferred to Madrid so now we are still in three different countries, at first myself in England, Paulo in Spain and Tayo in Sweden but Tayo got transferred to America and has been there for the last 2 years. Even though we wouldn't change format there was still one more change up our sleeve, we decided to go back to our roots...

...To be continued

Seven Miles High Logo by Soter França

7 and 7 is

Continued from blog 15 - One of Us is in the Wrong Place...

...There was always the number 7 story. One of those stories that you don't want to cling to, half of you not wanting to sound like a superstitious fool and half of you in fear of a disappointment so what you do is you entirely believe in it! Isn't that always the case? Tell me what you have to lose? If you end up with nothing you will be no worse than what you had to start with, it's the Dr. Pepper principle of blind faith, what's the worst that could happen? Although if you do ask that question you will find that there's always a "worse" so you better be grateful for what you have now.

In my native Brazil you don't need to go to a seance or consult a fortune-teller to know about your future, your own friends, anybody, will volunteer information you haven't even asked. The Spiritualist faith or philosophy is the second faith in the country after Christianism and it takes all forms from Kardecism, the ones who simply study and follow the studies of Allan Kardec, a French philosopher who communicated with spirits, the many forms of African religions, brought to Brazil by African slaves in the 19th Century, such as Candomble and Umbanda and even the Shamanism of Brazilian Indians. One could say Brazilians are very superstitious, but in my opinion Brazilians just have a lot of faith, which I think comes from that feeling of what the heck, what have I got to lose? Poverty has this freedom, when you have nothing, you have nothing to lose so you might as well believe in the impossible.

I have had many things said about my future. I don't happen to believe in a set future, I think you make your own future, there's free will, but I think there's a plan. We mere mortals have a plan for everything, for building a house, my to do list for today, now if I am going to do everything in that list, that's another question, that's when my free will comes in, but there's a list. So I believe in a list for our lives and that some people have the power to hack into that list and reveal some items of it for you. Everything that was volunteered about my future came true, although it is always volunteered in a riddle form so you only come to think of it when it actually happens. One of the most remarkable predictions was about my husband. I used to date a Welsh man when I first lived in England, we split up, or in his words, we had never actually dated as such, (men!) just before I returned to Brazil in 1992. While I was still here I was told this message "Don't cry, go back home because your English man is going to knock on your door". Although my ex-never-been-boyfriend was Welsh, I thought well, spirits can't be that specific geographically so I thought they were talking about him. He did go and visit me in Brazil in January 1994 but it was a total disaster, but in August that same year my English Husband did knock on my door, I met him inside my house, amazing. Another incredible prediction was that I was told I would have a son that spoke in a very distinctive incomprehensible way, which I thought referred to the fact that my son would be foreign, English, but in fact my son is 8 years old and he can't speak yet for he is severely autistic. What he says is in fact distinctive and incomprehensible, not only to Brazilians, but to anyone. I won't list every prediction that went right in my life but the one that has never come true, the number 7 story. I was told that we would be successful in our music venture after the number 7. Now what does that mean? 7 years? When we have 7 members? 7 records? After 7 World Wars? Whatever it was it seemed we were in it for the long haul!

When I was debating the name Zen Arcade this story came to my mind and I thought, ok we have been waiting for a long time anyway so why not give destiny a hand and name our band something with the number 7? We had also received a really sympathetic answer back from an independent label who seemed to have enjoyed our work, but couldn't afford hiring anyone at that moment. Among many compliments they did suggest that having your band named after someone Else's record or song is quite misleading. I thought that was my cue to intensify my demands to change our name and since naming after another band's song or album was not in I suggested 7 Miles High, after the Byrds' song 8 Miles High, which also sort of fit with our record of being an "almost" band, always "almost" there but not quite.

The name was catchy and people seemed to like it, but guess what, there was another, perhaps the reason behind calling themselves 7 Miles High wasn't as Paranormal as ours, but still there they were, but this time we just ignored them!

After our disappointing deal with Flat Records in 1997 we decided we should really try to be together as although technology was evolving and we were more and more able to make tracks nobody believed were home made or that we were in different places, at times it started to really feel as if our band didn't exist. I started to influence my English boyfriend, who I lived with in Holland, to move to Britain where Paulo was. Even though Tayo was in Sweden, if at least we were together we could do a bit more. Tayo was always proficient with computers but Paulo and I always struggled and we thought we could do more live. I got married in 1998 but still had to wait until 1999 to get my visa and move back to London where I live until today.

During this period when Paulo and I lived less than a mile from each other we rediscovered the joy of playing together and I discovered the joy of making music, as so far I would only sing what I was told to do as Paulo would write the music and voice melody to Tayo's lyrics, but this time I took the challenge of fitting Tayo's lyrics into Paulo's songs and I really enjoyed doing so.

We've written many beautiful songs at this time following a funny method, I would think of song titles, send them to Tayo then he would write lyrics for those titles. Sometimes what I would have thought a title meant was completely different from what he came up with. We have recently as a challenge done just the other way round when I got to write my first set of lyrics to titles he volunteered to me for his solo work Xingu.

It was also at this time that a revolution took hold of the world and we were one of the first bands to jump on it, The World Wide Web...

To be continued...

Pictures: 1 - Soter França, 2 and 3 - Paulo Nunes

One of Us is in the Wrong Place

Continued from blog 14 - Phoenix from the Flames...

...Flat Records' "Bargain" turned out to be quite a lot of money at the time, we just hoped it was going to be good value for money. To be fair, giving our geographic situation we didn't get a chance to practice together and Tayo stuck at work in Sweden only managed to get some quick holidays to go record in England with us at the last minute and couldn't practice anything either. We were taking ages to perfect our own creation during recordings and Richard Coppen didn't receive us with the most enthusiasm either. Our lack of chemistry or more like explosive junior lab kit relationship with Richard and his assistant meant the demo we recorded was in no way better than the one we recorded in Brazil at KKO studio, the production was very poor, pardon the pum, flat really, and we were treated quite badly by Richard's sarcastic assistant at an old studio at the back of Richard's own house in Reigate. The Photo session turned out to be a "squeeze the three of you there in front of that rubbish bin in my backyard" business, ignoring any aperture or speed, and the marketing plan turned out to be an outdated brochure typed out with general tips on how to be a successful band, which was not personalized or specific to our band, but clearly a template they used for all suckers who parted with their money like we did. To be honest we couldn't really tell if that was the norm or if they hated us so much that they couldn't be bothered to make an effort. The results, a demo in the inaccessible format of a break-your-back-trying-to-carry-it 2 inch roll tape we still have today, but never bothered passing on to any other format, because the price to do it wouldn't be worth the horrible results they achieved, so different from the demo from KKO Studio, whose recordings we are still proud to show today. We never really saw much of the photos or kept any copies of them, and finally the marketing brochure has become recycling paper at some stage or another in one of my house moves. The only memories we have from that time are the letters between us and Flat Records and some pictures of the recording sessions we took ourselves.

Even though we first contacted Flat Records as Redskin, even before we managed to start our Programme, in 1996, Tayo found out searching the Internet that there was not only another but several bands called Redskin around the World. You see many bands around with quite common names, like Oasis or The Monkeys, but in our case it seemed that whatever we thought of, there would be another band with the same name. Perhaps we were just not aware of that before but now with the advent of computers we would find that out very easily just searching through the main search engine at the time, Alta Vista, still around these days but not so used anymore. It seems that in the unlikely event of us deciding to name our band Burnt Pizza at the Edge of the Cliff of Sorrows, we would certainly find another, perhaps even two bands with the same name, and obviously with more hits on Myspace than us.

The boys then quite selfishly decided to change name again to Zen Arcade, one of the albums of their adored Husker Du, for which I never really shared such a passion, although I did enjoy some of the more acoustic inclined tracks. I thought the name was a bit biased, it didn't say much about me at all and there was the number 7 story after all...

To be continued...

Homeward Bound

Continued from blog 12 - Three is a Crowd...

... I landed back in Brazil in July 1992 trying to pick up my life where I had left it 2 years and 3 months earlier, not easy. Our following had moved on, the rock scene seemed to be dead and everybody was listening to traditional Samba in the big cities and in the countryside to Brazilian Country music.

Paulo had already discussed it at length with Tayo and they were to continue making music, without Brent. Tayo would carry on writing the lyrics, Paulo writing the songs and they would at home build up their songs exchanging CDs through the post. In the meantime, Paulo who was now married to an European Partner would attempt to go back to England and Tayo would attempt to go back to the UK transferred by Erickson. How I would be able to go back to the UK I had no idea.

Paulo declared that their intention was for us to be a studio group just making recordings to post on this new exciting media, the Internet, which everybody was adhering to, we could be a band even being apart and show our music even without being signed and because Tayo was always on the front line of IT we would be one of the first bands on it as not many knew how to do all the programming or would be able to design a web page like he did.

Finally he also declared that his intention was for me to sing as Tayo and himself couldn't sing to save their lives. Well, again the wild card, but surprisingly I enjoyed it even more than playing keyboards and certainly much more than playing bass.

I set out to look for singing lessons and first of all went to Rio to see a famous vocal coach to the stars, who was quite expensive and I had to travel really far to get there. She was very rude and kept attacking me on the stomach telling me to keep the muscles tight and breath properly. She didn't let me improvise or give a rock tinge to the songs, she was quite radical and finally dismissed me saying I would never be able to sing as I was monotone like people like Rain Main, not knowing she was comparing me with another person in the autistic spectrum like myself. I then moved on to a teacher in Niteroi where I lived, thinking if I was going to be insulted let it be without having to travel and risk my life being robbed and shot in a bus to Rio. My teacher was nicer than the previous one but again didn't allow for much of a Rock feel to the songs, he just didn't get it, so I started looking for people who actually sang in bands who were teaching and that's when I found Kakao Figueiredo in his KKO studio, walking distance from our flat, years of experience on stage with a Progressive band, recordings and everything. He was amazing, he really believed in me and focused not only in my physical ability to sing (breathing, sustaining notes etc) but also on interpreting the songs. I still remember the little songs he invented from the top of his head to get me to practice certain sounds and notes, I'll never forget one in particular entitled "I'm rowing to find my love" LOL

Our music continued to be in the same form of Dancyn' Days but sounded now quite different with female vocals, many people compared it to the band 10.000 Maniacs. We did however, unlike Dancyn' Days, on this new format write loads of songs as Paulo is a very prolific songwriter, I was the one always struggling to keep up with his genius.

As for a name, we didn't want to keep the same Dancyn' Days as we were not in England anymore and Brent was not with us, we wanted a fresh name and Paulo came up with an old favourite subject and fascination since his childhood "American Indians". As a child, although Western Movies always depicted Indians as the bad guys, when he played cowboys and Indians with the hundred of toys he had, including an Apache Fort he could get inside, it was the Indians who always won. My Mum also reports that he had several Indian imaginary friends as a child and seldom introduced them to her using their proper Indian names and claimed he was himself the grandson of Sitting Bull.

We have also used as our image some pictures the boys found from Indians that had the same feel the Kafka drawings had, A Sioux Eagle and another called the Wheeled Twins.

And so it was that our new formation of 3, actually at the beginning 4 as our former Roadie Johnny Carlos was going to join us playing bass but it didn't happen in the end, two here, one there, was baptised as Redskin...

... To be continued...

Pictures: 1 - Nuria Sanchez, 2 and 3 - (In Press Release) Murilo Teixeira, 4 - Unknown

Three is a Crowd

Continued from blog 11 - And All she Wanted Was to Dance...

..In 1990 while we reinvented ourselves in England translating our songs and writing new ones in English on the hope we could still grab the interest of Rough Trade Records, back home in Brazil the country was also reinventing itself electing its first directed elected civilian President in 29 years, Fernando Collor de Mello who defeated in an election by some controversial 35 million votes our current President Luis Inacio da Silva. Collor had got popular by promising to fight what he called Marajas or Maharajahs comparing high salaried civil servants to the former princes of India who received a stipend from the government as compensation for relinquishing their lands. He however only governed for two years when he had to resign for avoiding being impeached accused by his own Brother of being a "Maraja" himself.

Yet those two years were enough to destroy many people's lives. People like us who were living abroad financed by savings coming from Brazil had a major blow. As an attempt to control the escalating hyperinflation, Collor froze all private bank accounts with obviously no warning, and people were only allowed to withdraw 20% from their bank accounts for at least the next 18 months . There were many suicides recorded, people losing homes, business, it was one of the most outrageous dictatorial measures ever imposed by a government that was supposed to be the real democratic one substituting a Military Dictatorship. For us, it meant we had the savings that supported my Brother Paulo and I in one bank account and could not afford staying in England and pursuing our dream here anymore.

Paulo returned first, I stayed for a further 6 months tying up lose ends in London, Tayo had come later than us and while here had studied further and was now one of the pioneers in the use of computer technology in his field of telecommunications engineering. He landed a contract with Erickson in Sweden so he actually ended up going there instead of going back to Brazil and Brent went on to study music production. He went back to Brazil some time after Paulo too.

Fortunately I stayed a bit longer with Tayo to witness, by chance, the best gig I have ever watched in my life, my Idol Arthur Lee playing with a band of young lads from Liverpool called Shack with the bass player from another band called Rain , Martyn Campbell. Apart from having the chance to witness live songs like Alone again or and A House is not a Motel I got to know this scene of British music from Liverpool that I still enjoy today including other artists like Steve Roberts and the more known The Lightening Seeds , thanks to two comedians and three Lions on a shirt.

In the middle of 1992 Paulo was back in Brazil, now married to his Spanish girlfriend who followed him back there, I returned in July, Tayo was off to Sweden and Brent remained in England for a while before returning to Brazil too. In anybodies' standard and sane mind this meant we were pretty much finished, the dream was over, acabou, Kaput, but didn't I say the Cat had nine lives?

To understand why we even considered carrying on one needs to understand a bit of the Brazilian frame of mind. When you are from a so-called third world country you are used to economic crisis, never ending inflation, not being able to do what you want when you want it, not forgetting we actually belonged to a not wealthy, but comfortable middle class, which here in England would still be considered a working class, but we were not part of a really poor class, for which you could have added to that list hunger, poverty, sub-human living conditions, yet we have lived watching these sub-human living conditions in our doorstep, we all have lost friends to gun violence and have had our own lives threatened too. In Rio you can for example go sit down for a romantic drink at a bar at Copacabana beach and instantly a 5 year old will say "hey Auntie can I have a bite of your snack? I haven't had anything to eat today". It breaks anybody's heart. If you buy them a sandwich, 50 other kids will come to your table straight after, asking for one too.

In short, even if you are not poor you know poverty, you know difficulty but you also learn resilience, you learn to fight and to be strong, you learn hope and faith. Faith can take many forms in Brazil, religion, philosophies, cults, superstition, music and arts or simply some blind knowledge from God or who knows where from, that you should be doing something because that is what you are supposed to be doing here, that is the meaning of your life and no stupid President, lack of money or even being in the same place was going to stop us doing it, and so this time without Brent (Maybe as half a foreigner he didn't share our Brazilian craziness?) what was 5 became 4 now became 3, we just had to make sure it was a crowd big enough for people to listen to...

...To be continued

Pictures: 1 - Murilo Teixeira, 2 - Brent Hieatt, 3 - Paulo Nunes

A Very Rough Trade this Music Business

Continued from blog 9 - 1989 The year of the Cat...

...An eternal paradox in our society is how to market arts. It is implanted in our subconscious somewhere that it is important to our lives, more and more research is being done into the therapeutic qualities of art and music in particular. It is an important part in my autistic son's therapy for helping him understand basic concepts of communication and social cues that makes us humans different from all other species. Music is maths coming alive, it can rewire your brain, it can alter your biochemistry, it can lock up memories, feelings and smells in it just to be released whenever you listen to it. The question is how do you price such a product, service, commodity? How do you market it, how do you format it or how do you even identify what is being sold? How do you bottle it?

These questions are very much alive today in the time where the bottle has been broken and music is floating in the World Wide Web feeding people's lives while the farmers have gone poor of means and recognition.

Back in 1990 however, this storm was still brewing under our feet (That's right not over our heads, that's where heaven is) and the general public would never have guessed the online revolution that would hit us. It was a time when you recorded a demo tape in a studio, made cassette tape copies of it and posted them, yes, put a stamp on the envelope, went to your local post office and sent it to all record companies that you thought matched your style, since nothing around matched our style, our selection was pretty much sending to those we liked their cast or that the name perhaps sounded good. Many of these letters came back as wrongly addressed, since it wasn't as easy as searching key words on Google, you bought books, directories, that most of the time were many years old and people move. Many came back with an unopened pack saying they didn't listen to demos, some with a standard letter wishing us luck but they weren't hiring anybody at that moment, only a couple had real handwritten comments which could tell you they had really listened to the music, one of these letters really filled us with hope as it was from one of our favourite labels in the way they marketed bands and respected their artistic content: Rough Trade Records.

We sent them more songs and had an even more favourable response and Sarah came to see us at the Fulham Greyhound Gig. It was a very successful gig, it was full, people were enjoying the music, dancing to it, great applause at the end, but we heard nothing from Sarah, we pursued it and after a while we received the dreadful note that she really liked our material and really enjoyed seeing us live at the Greyhound, but unfortunately they couldn't use our material at that moment. We didn't understand it at the time because Record Companies were not known to soften anybody's blow, they either didn't listen to you or listened and didn't like it, which they made sure they explained why, feedback was always very specific of what they thought didn't work for them, in our case it was most of the lyrics being in Portuguese. We were convinced that was the case with Sarah even though she didn't state any reason for our dismissal, and we set out to change our lyrics, translate some of them or write new songs in English, we knew it would take a while but we were willing to try. What we didn't know was that Rough Trade was on the verge of going bankrupt as indeed it did in 1991.

One funny adventure came up when Tayo and Paulo went to spend the day in Manchester and visit Factory Records, another favourite. They insisted in seeing someone, in leaving a demo tape but were barred at the entrance, when walking back disillusioned they heard a deep voice calling them: "Hey were you the Brazilian Boys?" It was Donald Johnson, the drummer from A Certain Ratio who heard about them trying to get in the building and went running to get them. They wanted to include some Brazilian percussion in one of their tracks for their latest record and wondered if the boys could help them to play them so that they could sample them in an old fashioned AKAI, and so next minute Paulo and Tayo were inside Factory Records studio recording with A Certain Ratio playing Agogo and reco-reco or something of the sort. The boys were over the moon, A Certain Ratio was an old favourite as they, like us, liked to mix in different rhythms to their overall Indie style, although we have never heard again what happened to that recording.
Other disappointing ventures with other companies followed, including Virgin Records, a major company. Tayo in a crazy absurd coincidence, one of those worth of featuring in the book Celestine Prophecy, got to know well the brother from one of Virgin's A&Rs who grew to admire our work, he showed his Brother our work first hand but his Brother claimed the company was only hiring dance music acts at that time.
We grew tired of investing so much getting nothing in return, a feeling we are all accustomed to, no matter what your trade or age, but when you are miles away from home without your loved ones that pressure can be unbearable for some. We had a new set of gigs booked to try out our new mostly English repertoire when our drummer Sergio decided he needed some Holidays which would be with his Brazilian girlfriend in Greece. We insisted he shouldn't go abroad as we had gigs booked and Immigration officers didn't really like foreign residents coming in and out of the Country when their visas were about to have to be renewed, they always thought you were trying to cheat as a new entry and in a pre-computer era that meant hours of interrogation when you were bound to say something they thought was suspicious.
Sergio went to Greece anyway, his Holidays, his rest time, was the most stressful time in our lives, all our work was at stake, all that we built in London was at stake. He came back, bringing with him a letter that said he had 48 hours to gather his belongings and leave the Country. We gathered at the flat he shared with Tayo at the time, he tried to make a farewell party out of the affair but we were angry, very angry, we knew it was the end of Felix, of Fritz. We only existed as a mix of Indie and Brazilian rhythms and Sergio was the Brazilian rhythm bit, crucial. As sadness is said to inspire art we have written many songs about the feeling we had on that day, my favourite one "Premonitions". Sergio went back to Brazil and tried to come back to England twice more spending all his savings but he was denied entry 3 times. Farewell Felix...

But don't they say cats have nine lives?...
...To be continued
Pictures: 1, 2 and 3 - Murilo Teixeira