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