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

1989 - The Year of the Cat

Continued from blog 8 - An Artistic Exile... An Artistic Exile...

... So it was decided, we would continue our artistic endeavours in Britain, we didn't know how, but slowly we came up with a plan. Brent, who had a British Passport would go first, get a job and place to live and arrange for either an artist or student visa so that we could follow. Paulo and I cancelled temporarily our University degree studies, the annoying thing for me was that my intention was to graduate first, but my university immersed in the Country's debt problems had been 9 months on strike and counting and I was not going to wait for it to finish. Tayo would only go when he finished his studies, which would be not long to go and Sergio depended on a further operation on his leg before he could fly to Britain.

One deja vu dilemma came up, the band's name. Oh no, there was no other Kaddish, not that we knew of anyway, but one thought did come to mind, in England, we would face an entirely different society than in Brazil, specially in London, where there's a huge Jewish Community, which could probably create an issue of us using one of their sacred prayers as our band's name and we decided it was not worth the fight since nobody knew us there and we had to build our following from scratch anyway. It was time for a new beginning and a new name. The mourning of Kafka was over, the somber mood was also over, a new decade was upon us and our sound was Brazilian, vibrant. Again it felt a bit as when Kafka died as everything we built in Brazil was being left behind us, it was a new beginning but also the death of Kaddish, in a way. As we were sacrificing our lives with our families, our Country and being with our friends for making our music, we decided to honour the cats that in poor parts of Rio died for the music. Residents of chanty towns would infamously kill stray cats to take their skin and make percussion instruments, so in honour of the samba cats we named our new band from two famous cats, which also marked a connection with another of our passions after music, literature and football, comics - Felix and Fritz. Felix the Cat, a black cat, a symbol of bad luck in Brazil, but of good luck in England, how appropriate! Fritz the Cat, Robert Crumb's ingenious creation, sly, cool, wicked, keeping our connection with the love for the beatnik generation. And so was born Felix Fritz and the Tamborim Orchestra, later abbreviated to Felix Fritz. Note that a tamborim is not a tambourine, it's a completely different instrument as featured with Felix on the picture, it is a small drum played with a long and flexible drumstick played most notoriously at Samba Schools parades during carnival, a very recognizable beat.

Brent left Brazil almost immediately in October 1988, then Paulo and I followed arriving at Heathrow Airport in London in April 1989. I will never forget the sensation of 5 degrees Centigrade on my skin, I had never experienced anything colder than 18 degrees before that day. My first sight was a red double decker bus. Both sight and cold sensation registering in my brain like a faint memory, almost like a dream, my brain numb from 5 hours of interrogation from Immigration officers not happy with two young people coming to live in London without completing their studies and no job to take them back home. Being treated like a criminal to fulfil the dream of making music definitely brought back memories of the time of the Military dictatorship when we lived in fear, when it was a crime to be an artist. It was the first time I was abroad at the age of 22. Brazil is such a big country, Rio de Janeiro's nearest neighbour, Argentina is about as far as London is from Casablanca, in Morocco, making travelling to foreign countries a much less common affair among young people than in Europe.

We lived with Brent for a while until getting a place of our own to receive Sergio. We started looking for a studio to rehearse and for other technicalities while we waited for Tayo to finish his studies without any guarantee he was really embarking in our crazy adventure.

We started booking gigs on the hope Tayo would join us and so he did at the last minute financed by Max who amazingly paid for him to fly to play our first gig in British soil then go back to Brazil finish his last assignments to graduate and fly back to England again, another priceless Max endeavour in our history.

Our first gig at Rock Garden in Convent Garden was surprisingly full, we were amazed how different the night life in London and Rio were, while in Rio we really had to painstakingly build up a following, invite our friends over and over, here we hardly had any friends and the gigs were full of young people who regularly checked out venues for new bands and regulars of the venue itself, who seemed to receive us with great enthusiasm. There was though a pay to play situation where the percentage of the door you got was so low that it all went to pay for the sound system hire, roadies, light guys, sound engineer and in the end you actually had to put money on top of what you made for the expenses.

Felix Fritz music was essentially Kaddish's music, nothing changed much, except for we decided to include more percussion instruments that we all played in turns enhancing the Brazilian effect. We coined the term Brazilian Indie band for the first time on a poster we made for a gig at the Rock Garden, although I am not sure they fully understood at the time what we were trying to do. They had an Indie night on Saturdays and when asked why we were not scheduled to play at that night, the Manager replied it was because we were not an Indie band, when we insisted we were he claimed we were as Indie as Carmen Miranda!

These are the gigs Felix Fritz played, all in London and outskirts:

Rock Garden - Convent Garden - 14/11/89

Rock Garden - Convent Garden - 13/12/89
Afrika Centre - Convent Garden - 14/12/89 - Gig cancelled due to power failure

The King's Head - Fulham - 04/01/90

The Fulham Greyhound - Fulham - 02/02/90

Rock Garden - Convent Garden - 03/02/90

Park Royal Hotel - Park Royal - 14/03/90

Park Royal Hotel - Park Royal - 13/04/90 - Filmed in VHS

The most important gig Felix Fritz played was at the Fulham Greyhound when an A&R from Rough Trade Records Sarah Bolton was watching the gig after being in correspondence with us and after having listened to our demo tape wanted to check out how we sounded live, it looked like 1990 was going to be the year of the cat even though the Chinese called it the year of the serpent, but unknown to us The Park Royal gigs marked the last time we ever stepped on stage...

To be continued...

Pictures: 1 - Simone Taylor, 2 - Luis Carlos, 3 - Paulo Nunes

An Artistic Exile

Continued from blog 5 - Kaddish - The Metamorphosis...


...Towards the end of the winter of 1988 (don't forget our seasons in Brazil are the opposite from the North Hemisphere) after having played a number of gigs, given interviews, appeared in the media and worked hard on establishing ourselves as a real Brazilian Rock band, instead of merely a band who sang Rock in Portuguese, our drummer Sergio was hospitalized with a broken leg after being run over.

The social-economic situation in Brazil at the time was of a similar stagnation. Brazil had had an economic boom from 1968 to 1973 with an artificial growth injected by foreign capital and now was suffering with the huge amount of debt accumulated. This huge debt was imposed back on society in the form of taxes and the escalating cost of living. The 60's and 70's were also marked by lack of freedom of speech for artists, musicians and all sectors, in 1984, as I started University at the tenure age of 16 I went on the streets of Rio asking for "Diretas Ja" or to vote directly for a President instead of having a President automatically elected by a military right wing electoral College. Perhaps our desire to be a truly Brazilian Rock band came from the growing Nationalist feeling of wanting to have our own Country back from years of extreme right wing governments, oppression, torture and terror.

In 1985, even if not directly elected by the public, Brazil had a Non-Military President for the first time in 20 years, who, unfortunately, or as many argue, "on purpose", died only a few months after being elected. His vice-president and successor had our Constitution re-written and in 1988 it erased the atrocities and terror of the Military Dictatorship, if such a thing can be erased from people's memories. A new era of uncensored material invaded the market and Rock bands in particular, saw a boom in the early to mid 80's. Bands like Legião Urbana, Paralamas do Sucesso or RPM sold millions of records and record companies accustomed to such fashion expected no less from the next generation of bands which we were a part of. With the growing recession however, people were buying not only less records but everything else less and less meaning the next generation of signed bands like Hojerizah or Picassos Falsos did not reach the millions mark like its predecessors.

More and more new bands were being signed and dropped like flies by record companies just so that they received fiscal benefits. Their work soon after recording could be seen being given away in charity shops, records without any promotion or marketing, most of them represented the work of amazing artists lost in a sea of economic debt and neglect.

We did not want to see our hard work feature in a bargain bin of a second hand shop. There were less and less venues offering their space for gigs as people were not able to afford going out anymore, more and more young people were resorting to just meeting up at private parties at each other houses on the weekend or going to the beach, free entertainment, instead of paying to see bands, ballets, musical concerts or watching plays. It seemed we had pretty much exhausted our options without ever being able to really enjoy them, born at the wrong place at the wrong time?

I am not sure if it was the wrong place, or we wouldn't be what we are as artists, but I feel very tempted to say the wrong time. In such times when your trees have no fruits you turn to your neighbour's garden whose grass is supposedly greener so we naturally turned our eyes to where we always had had our eyes on: Britain.

Our singer Brent was born in Brazil from British Parents, we had all studied English at English schools, as opposed to American schools, which were more popular among Brazilians, and we mostly enjoyed the work of bands coming from Britain, as at the time we were regulars at clubs and bars owned and frequented by the British community in Brazil, one of them, Crepusculo de Cubatão, allegedly co-owed by Ronald Biggs, where all English bands who played in Brazil wanted to get their after-gig refreshments from, in the hope of meeting up with the legendary figure. Jumping in this wagon I had the chance of having late evening talks with my idols from Echo and the Bunnymen, Simply Red and Siouxsie and the Banshees.

What was at first considered to be a crazy idea started taking shape and as Summer came upon us we had decided that we were to follow the footsteps of Brazilian artists in the 70's, we would also leave the Country although this time not forced but by our own accord, we were not trying to save our lives but our work from oblivion...

To be continued...

Pictures - 1 Murilo Teixeira, 2 - Unknown

MP3's

Come back to this space for links to mp3's from Kafka and Kaddish we are still transferring them from cassette and roll tapes.

Kaddish Interview on TV in 1988

Interview with Kaddish from kat stoopid on Vimeo.

This was a lengthy interview from the 26th August 1988 on TV where we introduce ourselves and mention our intention of mixing Brazilian Rhythms with Rock music as well as commenting some trivia. Note the Presenters hairstyle and clothes very 80's defining, although it would be considered bad taste then as well I suppose, and the simplicity of the set just a few stools, it makes it look like a home production, but I swear it was on TV! Here is a full translation to English, for the curious ones I was then 21, Sergio 22, Paulo 23, Tayo 22 and Brent 23. Enjoy! (My comments in navy blue)

Presenter: Rio Hit Parade launching a new band to you: Kaddish
And then, I’ll start presenting from my right, Sergio
Sergio: Hi
Presenter: Paulo
Paulo: Hello
Presenter: Tayo
Tayo: Me
Presenter: Simone
Simone: Hi
Presenter: And Brent
Brent: Good Evening (so English!)
Presenter: So, How are you? First interview on TV, isn’t it?
Tayo and Brent: Yeah
Brent: Yeah a bit nervous and so on but that is normal
Paulo: We just gone back to playing live now as the venues had been a bit scarce, we are playing a sequence of gigs now and we are taking the chance to promote them here on your space (he didn’t waste time as he was the one responsible for promotion at the time!)
Presenter: Sure, now tell me something; you’ve changed the band's name isn’t it? It was Ex-Kafka and now...
Tayo: No it was Kafka
Presenter: It was Kafka, and then you changed to…
Presenter and Tayo: Kaddish
Presenter: And why this change?
Tayo: There was a band in São Paulo with the same name and they had been using the name longer than us (That is actually not true because I followed up the case we had it for longer and we had it registered but they were signed and we were not), so we had to change it.
Paulo: They were going to record an album too
Tayo: They were actually already recording it
Presenter: Yeah I think I have already interviewed them here in the Program then when they said something about you I said Huh is it the Kafka from São Paulo but no then they were talking about this story.
Tayo: Yeah it’s another band
Presenter: But this name was a coincidence to be the same name?
Tayo: It was, we didn’t even know the people and we had to get in touch with them when we found out, actually there was another one in Brasilia too, I think everybody likes Kafka
Presenter: Laughs. It’s nice that Kaddish is different
Brent: And there is a relation because Kaddish is the name of a mourning prayer, so we
Tayo: (interrupting)There’s a whole story behind it
Brent: Yeah
Tayo: …because we used to love the name Kafka, there was a lot to do with us, with the band and everything, and Kaddish is a prayer in Hebrew, a prayer of passage, when someone dies, so Kafka had died to us, you see,
Brent: So then Kaddish
Tayo: so we put Kaddish, which is also a very beautiful poem from Ginsberg, an American Beatnik poet
Presenter: Cool, Cool this!
Sergio: Also the sound of it was not very different and we didn’t want to loose totally…
Presenter: The way the word sounded
Sergio: Exactly, that’s why Kaddish
Presenter: And how long have you been together for?
Tayo: eh
Sergio: 2 years
Brent: The complete band 2 years but it started before
Paulo: I started it with Tayo, it was more ideas an so on, acoustic guitar, that kind of thing but the full band with drums, rehearsing it has been 2 years
Presenter: What do you play Paulo?
Paulo: I play bass guitar
Presenter: Bass
Paulo: Yeah
Presenter: What about you Sergio?
Sergio: Drums
Presenter: And you Tayo?
Tayo: I play the guitar
Presenter: Simone?
Simone: Keyboards
Brent: Vocals
Presenter: And Simone, what is it like to be a musician among 4 lads?
Simone: Yeah this question always comes about, it’s funny, like, nowadays it happens a lot women playing instruments, even drums, those things, but there is always a, I wouldn’t say prejudice as such, but people think for example that I am going to sing, I arrive at a venue and they prepare the microphone for me so I say no I am not going to sing
Tayo: Lower, they put it (the mic) lower and all (He couldn't miss the opportunity to remark about my height)
Simone: So it’s funny if there’s a girl in the band it’s because she will sing or you know, to play then it’s already…
Tayo: Or that she will shake her hips and play the tambourine
Tayo and Simone: (Laugh)
Presenter: (To Brent) And it’s you, who sing, isn’t it?
Brent: Yeah I sing
Presenter: And are you the ones who write the songs?
Tayo: Yeah the songs are all ours
Brent: All
Presenter: And are you playing gigs now in Rio, how is the agenda for Kaddish?
Paulo: Our Agenda is as follows: Friday, Saturday and Sunday we prepared with some friends a Festival, not a Festival as such, in Niteroi, there at the DCE (Student Union) venue, near Plaza Shopping Mall
Tayo: It’s not a competition or anything
Paulo: Yeah, Friday we play, Saturday Eterno Grito plays, and Sunday Kongo.
Presenter: Right
Brent: At what time the gig?
Paulo and Simone: Nine p.m.
Paulo: Next week…
Presenter: And the venue, what’s the address?
Paulo: Next to Plaza Shopping, by the Ferry
Tayo:At the UFF DCE
Simone: Visconde de Rio Branco Street 625 next to the Ferry
Paulo: And next week we are Wednesday and Thursday at Piteu, Barra, and on the following week we are at the Teatro de Bolso Aurimar Rocha in Leblon
Brent: Aurimar Rocha, opposite Rio Design Centre
Presenter: Right so you are gigging, shaking up the scene
Tayo: Yeah we have to happen
Presenter: Have you got any intention of making a record?
Brent: Yeah we are full of intention to make records, there is enough intention what we don’t have is a contract or anything, we would like a contract with a record company if anybody knows of something can contact us
Presenter: Is it the first band you are all part of?
Sergio: Not mine,
Brent:Yeah he has a history
Sergio:I played at another one but it was more for fun
Tayo (interrupting Sergio): Yeah me too but only for fun never went far
Presenter: And now I want to know Kaddish’s Hit story (They had asked us to think of a funny story that happened to us)
Tayo: That’s a funny one
Sergio: This story is very funny, it happened when we went to play in Cabo Frio (Beach resort in Rio), we played this gig and in the local paper, was published that we had played, well, we had played at a venue called Barão com a Joana (Barão with Joana because it lies on the corner of two streets Barão da Torre and Joana Angelica)
Tayo: Which is a venue in Ipanema
Sergio: So they published that we had played at the Barão Club with the singer Joana (Tacky Brazilian Romantic singer)
Tayo: It was a great success
Brent: A gig with spectacular repercussion
Tayo: In the Barão with the singer Joana
Presenter: O my God these papers Ah?
Tayo: We played at Barão com a Joana they read at Barão with the singer Joana they already imagined, they put down that … they invented a lot of different styles for us like, they imagined in their heads…
Sergio: And this, when we got there, was being shouted by a loudspeaker on those vans that have a loudspeaker on, we arrived in the town and found out we had played with Joana
Tayo: But we didn’t know it
Presenter: You didn’t know it! The news! And now tell me something else, which type of music has most influenced, influences you
Tayo: Can I?
Presenter: Your music?
Tayo: We all listen to different things right? But we have a basic approach which is to make Brazil Rock, we hear a lot Brazil Rock, Brazilian Rock but there is really Rock sang in Portuguese, which is different. What we want to do is Brazilian Rock so we have influences of, we get the rhythm of for example Forro, Samba, Baião, these things and each of us add their own, for example I like King Crimson, something like this, a more schizophrenic guitar
So I put this information on top of it
Presenter: I see
Tayo: Then Brent has his style, Simone hers, so we, the information, goes on for us to make something basic which is Brazilian Rock
Paulo: We start from Brazilian rhythms like Forro, Baião, Carnival music, and write a pop song on top of it.
Presenter: Cool!
Tayo: And with Rock instruments, right, conventional, keyboards, guitar, bass, drums, it’s not that thing, maybe we will throw a percussion in and everything but it’s not that thing, let’s make Brazilian Rock and we play a cavaquinho (Brazilian ukulele), 7-string guitar, no, it’s done with Rock instruments
Brent: The important thing is the fusion between the two
Presenter: There you go, Very Good, for the first interview you’ve done pretty well
Brent: Thank you
Presenter: And good luck in your career and that you come back here to show me the Platinum record, platinum is enough isn’t it?, and now we are going to watch Railway Children with the song Brighter (I loved this song it was actually our choice from a list they gave us what video to play next) and…

Other Interviews:

Radio Sucesso (Cabo Frio) - 11/07/87
Jornal O Globo (National) - 19/09/87
Radio JB AM (Rio de Janeiro) - 24/09/87
Radio Fluminense FM (Niteroi) - 24/12/87
Radio Fluminense FM (Niteroi) - 30/03/88
Radio Liberdade (Belo Horizonte - Minas Gerais) - 27/05/88

Kaddish - The Metamorphosis

Continued from blog 4 - From Kafka to Kaddish...

...Although we were not called Kafka anymore the real Metamorphosis happened when we changed name to Kaddish. We gradually shifted from a dark, somber, teenage angst mid-80's crisis into a colourful rhythmic drum samba festival without loosing the beautiful melancholic guitars and powerful lyrics. We carefully joined our British Indie influences with our Brazilian heritage bringing a fresh face to the Brazilian 80's Rock scene and creating perhaps what was to be the first Brazilian Indie band, style only followed later by several bands in the mid to late 90's. The inspiration came from watching a Gig from Sombras que Surgem a Band from the Rio Suburbs that used funk and soul mixed with the rock approach from the time, Tayo and Brent went to watch their gig and were inspired by the idea, which was already coming through our music anyway, through songs like Botswana but flourished in a more evident way in songs like Umbaneme or Sarabande. For a short period of time we included a sixth member in the Group, Julio, who played percussion, but he only attended rehearsals and didn't make it to any gigs.

In our Gigs we opted for dropping the songs that represented this darker side such as Nada de Novo no Front and Procissão, although the latter was always included in an encore by Max's request, and kept songs like Botswana, Tres Mulheres and Cleopatra Morreu added to the new songs: Rio Sightseeing, second lyrics in English by Brent, Sarabande, Magda K, Umbaneme, Forro da Pafunça, Narjimara's Dance, Lady McBeth, Joly Rodger, Mosaicos e Laminas and a cover version of Eleanor Rigby from The Beatles.

Most of these titles will be recognizable as Loosh songs as they have been recycled into new versions, although some of them sound completely different perhaps for having female vocals to start with. For some of them we took the songs and added English lyrics to or joined two songs together. We even took songs from Kafka times like Procissão and made it into a completely different rhythm and style altogether.

Kaddish shared the stage with many bands of the time, we all became friends and gladly shared our sound equipment with artists who were gifted and produced excellent original music, a very powerful scene. Had we perhaps the technology available nowadays to produce good quality home recordings many of these gems wouldn't have been lost. Most of these artists we still keep contact with, some of them are still making music like us, some others have followed other paths. Saara Saara, Sombras que Surgem, Eterno Grito, Big Trep, Kazbah, Kongo, Black Future and Picassos Falsos. We also loved many other bands of the time such as Felini, Hojerizah, Violeta de Outono and Finis Africa.

As Kaddish we diversified venues to include beach resorts, suburbs, theatres and even opened to a signed band with the help of Adriana Ramos who worked in the music business at the time. We had also great help from Journalists and friends Pedro So and Claudio Menezes, the eternal help from Soter França for our visual work, our roadies Johnny Carlos and Tom Hieatt and apart from the growing following, friends who always followed one and every gig of ours Zaba, Jan, Guru, Pedro, Fred, Gledson, Mura, Cristina and Soter.

In the midst of all the fun and music three accidents tinged our history, a car crash returning from one of our gigs at the Robin Hood Pub, when luckily no one was hurt, one of our best fans damaged her finger in a broken window staying at a Beach resort in-between gigs and our drummer Sergio was run over in the summer of 1988 breaking his femur in several places requiring months and several operations until his full recovery. It was a big shock, Sergio was in a lot of pain and we had no idea if he would be able to recover fully at all. I moved in to his place to help out and our friend Claudio Menezes stepped in during his lunch time too but the accident meant we could not rehearse or gig for months.

We were in a roll of gigs and happenings that such a forceful break allied to a terrible political and economical crisis in the Country, not to mention ongoing strikes, not only in public services but also in our Universities prompted us to an even greater metamorphosis indeed...

...to be continued

The gigs played by Kaddish were:

Maison Disco (Cabo Frio) - 11/07/87 (Gig Cancelled as the other band playing refused to lend us their drum kit)
25's Disco (Duque de Caxias) - 12/07/87

Sociedade Musical Santa Helena (Cabo Frio) - I Vila Fest Music as guest band for a beach

Summer Festival 26/07/87

Robin Hood Pub (Tijuca) - with the bands Kazbah and Saara Saara 30/08/87

Teatro MPB4 DCE da UFF (Niteroi) - De volta ao Presente Project with the band Eterno Grito

19/09/87

Double Dose (Ipanema) - with the band Kazbah 24/09/87

Botanic (Jardim Botanico) - Prisioneiros do Kazbah with the band Kazbah 27/09/87

Mariuzinn (Copacabana) 23/10/87

Mistura Fina (Barra da Tijuca) - 14/11/87 - Gig cancelled due to electrical fault

Embaixada de Venus (Niteroi) - 21/11/87

Embaixada de Venus (Niteroi) - with the band Big Trep 05/12/87

Mariuzinn (Copacabana) - with the band Big Trep 11/12/87

Mariuzinn (Copacabana) - with the band Sombras que Surgem 12/12/87

Circo Voador (Lapa) - with the band Nero, opening for the band Picassos Falsos

19/12/87

Crepusculo de Cubatão (Copacabana) - Xmas Party with the band Big Trep 24/12/87
IBEU Theatre (Tijuca) - 25/03/88

Funk Club (Duque de Caxias) - 30/03/88

Funk Club (Xerem) - 01/04/88
Suburban Dreams (Tijuca) - 26/05/88 - Gig cancelled due to venue closing for security reasons

Robin Hood Pub (Tijuca) - 27/05/88

Crepusculo de Cubatão (Copacabana) - Festa da Infidelidade with the band Kongo 12/06/88

DCE da UFF (Niteroi) - 26/08/88

Piteu Bar (Barra da Tijuca) - 02/09/88

Piteu Bar (Barra da Tijuca) - 03/09/88

Teatro de Bolso Aurimar Rocha (Leblon) - 09/09/88

Teatro de Bolso Aurimar Rocha (Leblon) - 10/09/88

Pictures - 1 and 5 - (In Newspaper cut) Adriana Ramos, 2, 3, 4 and 7 - Murilo Teixeira

From Kafka to Kaddish

Continued from blog 3 - Kafka - The First Time We Went on Stage...

... I then came back from São Paulo empty handed with not only zero bookings but also a dilemma, would we keep the same name and face future problems or change it and loose the identity and public we had acquired?

We got hold of Kafka from São Paulo through their label and found out that actually we were formed earlier and our name was registered, but because their album was already pressed and printed and we were not even signed, we thought it would be really mean to fight with them for the name and we decided to choose another.

We wanted to keep the same visual identity and a name that could be associated with Kafka as well with the same literary connection so Tayo decided for a poem from Allen Ginsberg called Kaddish which is also the mourning prayer in Judaism. Being Kafka a Jew it seemed like a good homage to the band name that was lucky to us.

We have no connection to Judaism ourselves and in Brazil the subject did not have at the time the same weight as it does in Europe or America today so it was quite an innocent choice really, no disrespect meant and we did not have any complaints at the time for using a religious prayer as the name of our band, given we had no connection to the religion or race whatsoever.

Kaddish sound continued in the same line as Kafka's, hugely influenced by English bands of the time, dark, somber, melancholic in its vocals and keyboards, however Paulo gave it a very New Order touch with his bass, Tayo a very melodic one with his guitars and Sergio made it all sound a bit tribal, African or Brazilian which gave us an original touch. We started to incline more and more to the Brazilian side going further away from our rock scene at the time but anticipating as visionaries what was going to be the main style in the Country of mixing Rock and Brazilian beats a good ten to fifteen years later.

We played with the letter K for our visual identity creating a further connection with Kafka. Paulo at the time had given up Engineering and started studying Visual Communication and Arts and came up with this beautiful logo. He also put up together with Soter França this amazing press release copying the style of one of my favourite comic book writers Guido Crepax. Don't forget there were no home computers at the time, all the minute writing was painstakingly achieved through transferring adhesive letters one by one and the K's in the logo had to be "cut and pasted" with scissors and real glue then photocopied to get rid of the lines. The picture on the release is from Conde.

As Kaddish we played even more gigs from 1986 to 1988, continued playing on the radio and were regularly talked about in the press

To be continued...

Kafka - First Time We Went on Stage

Continued from blog 2 - From Colonia Penal to Kafka...

...After rehearsing for over a year in a studio owned by Emir and his Brother (where are they now?) called 202 Studio in the Rio neighbourhood of Rio Comprido, Kafka decided on a set for the first gig, which was the songs Terrorista, co-written by Bariviera, Procissão, Botswana, co-written with the journalist and friend Pedro So, Rosas no Fogo, Nada de Novo no Front, our first song from Colonia Penal times, Primeira Pessoa, that later on became our first song to play on the radio, Efeitos Colaterais, also co-written with Pedro So and Incompetencia. Other Gigs later on also included the songs Guerra, Tres Mulheres, Earth Bugs our first song in English co-written by Brent, Cleopatra Morreu, Parsifal and Ceticismo.

A friend of Tayo and Sergio, Fred Mourão volunteered to be our manager and book gigs. He managed to create a set of Gigs in popular venues that put our name on the map of bands in Rio de Janeiro at the time.

Our Complete set of gigs as Kafka was:

Metropolis Club (Sao Conrado) - 26/10/86

Metropolis Club (Sao Conrado) - 14/11/86
Metropolis Club (Sao Conrado) - 03/12/86

Robin Hood Pub (Tijuca) - 29/01/87
Robin Hood Pub (Tijuca) - 27/03/87 -Filmed in VHS

Barao com a Joana (Ipanema) - Performance Canibal 30/04/87
Barao com a Joana (Ipanema) - Performance Canibal 01/05/87

Barao com a Joana (Ipanema) - Performance Canibal 02/05/87

Madame Sata (Sao Paulo) - Cancelled

Paradiso (Sao Paulo) - Cancelled

Our first gig was at the Metropolis Club in Sao Conrado, in Rio de Janeiro. We have kept the entrance ticket, the price in some obscure currency at a time the Brazilian currency changed almost every year to keep up with an escalating inflation. Sadly the only recordings of the time are in cassette tapes which were quite damaged over time by the Brazilian seaside climate. We are trying to rescue them, if we have any success the audio will be included here although please don't expect a digital quality to it, not to mention the live originals wouldn't have been much clearer either.

Our main groupies were my Parents. Any teenager nowadays would be embarrassed to see their Parents in the front row of their gigs singing all their songs, but not us. Not just us but everyone loved my Parents. Every time there was a gig they gathered all the band, fans, other bands we played with and took home for an elaborate meal or snack, which sometimes included cooking personal requests at let's say 2 o'clock in the morning? My Mom was every one's confident. I would have friends knocking on my door coming in and saying they came to see my Mom, not me. My Dad was the band's main sponsor and believer. He cried every time we played Procissão, his favourite song. While watching our first gig he thought it was an insult that Tayo's guitar was broken and mended with Epoxy glue so for our second gig he made sure he bought him a new one, which turned out to be a gold Gibson Les Paul 1968 also seen played by the likes of Jimmy Page. He also bought our drum kit and relieved me from my Casiotone with a DX7 and a DX100, so cute with its tiny keys. He was not rich, his love for us was rich, still is. I wish we had made it big in the music business so now we could give him back a bit of all he has done for us, not just financially but the belief, which in Master Card fashion, was priceless!

We also invested in our graphic image enlisting the help of our eternal designer Soter França, amazing artist from Niteroi who still helps us with logos, flyers etc not to mention that at the time it was all handmade, no home computers or Photoshop but self adhesive letters and collages. We used these 4 drawings, which were atributed to Kafka, creating quite a strong visual identity and Soter did a magnificent job in Drawing Kafka's face on our massive entrance ticket for the series of gigs at Barão com a Joana.

We went on to play twice more at the Metropolis Club, the third time at a private graduation party with the bands Ultimo Refugio and Inverno Nuclear, where are they now?

After that we joined a Festival at a Club made to look like an English Pub with an imported red telephone booth and other gimmicks called The Robin Hood Pub, although thinking about it now, it looked like anything but an English Pub. For the first time our name appeared at a newspaper when the organizer of the Festival was interviewed and claimed our band was welcomed with expectation. It was a competition and the first prize was the recording of a 7" single (Yes vinyl no Cd's at the time) and a video(VHS), we graduated to a second phase and apparently won the Festival but nobody ever contacted us to do the promised recording or video, nobody knows what happened until today and we vowed never to enter a competition again.


We then went on to launch our own 3 night tour in a very posh, celebrity studded joint called Barão com a Joana (Barão with Joana) as it stood on the corner of the streets Barão da Torre and Joana Angelica at the heart of the famous Ipanema, immortalized by that song and that girl. On the press a massive report which claimed we were playing at the Barão Club with the singer Joana (A famous Brazilian singer at the time), clearly an easy mistake to make!

For 3 days we brushed shoulders with TV Soap Opera Stars, famous musicians and squeezed in a miniature stage to play our set. On the last day we threw in a surprise, a guest appearance from the Canadian Rapper Cruel-T rapping with Brent at a time when such style was in its infancy and a reflex of the eclecticism of the times as our music was from a completely different scene. It was also the first time we made any profit after paying for the P.A. hire and gig expenses which was quickly turned into alcohol at the end of the night.

Apart from the first Rap in Brazilian solo other firsts for us included our first full page article in a music magazine, Roll Magazine, written by Niel Martins, another where is he now? Also the first time our songs were played at a radio station, Primeira Pessoa was played at Transamerica FM, which was a mainstream station, we had no idea they were going to play our demo when Tayo, Sergio, Pedro So and Fred were travelling together listening to the radio on the car and our song started playing out of the blue. Fred claims they had to stop the car or they would crash with the shock. I wonder what passers by would have thought at the time when seeing four lads dancing and jumping inside a car parked on the side road. Primeira Pessoa also played on Fluminense FM from our hometown Niteroi, a station pioneer in unsigned and underground music. We also later on did a live interview for this same station.

With such a successful beginning in our Rio de Janeiro we decided to expand our horizons and play at the neighbour City of São Paulo, well neighbour 6 hours away, Brazil is a big Country. I travelled and stayed with family and successfully booked two gigs until they realized we were from Rio de Janeiro, as unknown to us there was another Kafka in São Paulo, which was already signed to an independent label called Baratos Afins.

To be continued...

Pictures: 1 and 2 - Soter França, 3 - Simone Taylor from video, 4 - Fred Mourão