... Continued from blog 10 A very Rough Trade this music business...
...I he
ar a lot of stories of bands that lost members and then auditioned for new ones to replace them. Although this was never discussed between us, we all always shared this strange silent pact of being an entity, like being one person. When we lost Sergio it was like if this "Person" a.k.a. our music, lost a member and somehow it seemed clear to us that we had to keep walking without him but not replace him. We did replace Sergio by a Japanese chap full of buttons and an AC Plug, he was obedient, never went to Greece without our consent (sorry Sergio had to have a dig but we still love you), nor to Japan for that matter, mind you he wasn't as talented but did his job and evolved with us as technology did.
Another obvious conclusion was that unfortunately Felix Fritz music died with it, at least with the limitations which drum machines offered at the time, there was no way we could make the same type of music we did before. Paulo then had a fantastic idea. At the time we were really enjoying the California Soul of the late 60's Love and Arthur Lee, also Nicky Drake from England and Paulo had an eternal question: " If all bands have at least one acoustic track that is absolutely amazing why don't they make all tracks like that?" I think the nearest a band has done in that respect was Led Zeppelin's 3rd Album, almost an entire album with acoustic tracks but why a Rock band couldn't just do the songs that we loved and not just one or two tracks, unless of course it was a folk band, but that's not exactly the same thing. So he came up with the opposite approach to Felix Fritz, if Felix Fritz made Brazilian music mixed with Rock using Rock instruments we were going to now make Rock music using acoustic Brazilian instruments typical of samba and other Brazilian rhythms and so we did using Viola Caipira, a 10 string guitar, Cavaquinho, a Brazilian ukulele and bandolim, a Brazilian mandolin, among others.
Now how to call this new born child? As a joke to Virgin Record's answer to hiring us, we called it Dancyn' Days out of one of Led Zeppelin's songs, which is not a dance track at all.
Dancyn' Days songs couldn't be more different than Felix Fritz, Using a drum machine, no keyboards and loads of acoustic string instruments we sounded very different indeed. This band marks the beginning of my career as a do it all person, first a roadie, then keyboard player and now Ba
ss player of all things, unlike Paulo I had never studied the guitar and had to get a crash course on Bass, the enormous folk acoustic bass as you can see in the picture was bigger than me and my fingers were sore. I don't think I would be able to play anything else rather than our songs painstakingly memorized, I was having panic attacks to think I would have to gig one day playing bass. Would I ever be able to get used to it, and yet they never thought of replacing me, amazing, that's what we were like.
Amongst Dancyn' Days songs there were Rough, Song for a Married Girl, Up in Smoke, Islands, the only song I've ever written or started from scratch on the bass, Dreams and Lies and Victoria.
With Dancyn' Days we started using false names that were more English sounding, except Brent who didn't need it but actually started being called by his nickname "Play". Our Press releases were also getting better thanks to the advent of early Mac Home computers, for which Brent was an avid user.
...I he
ar a lot of stories of bands that lost members and then auditioned for new ones to replace them. Although this was never discussed between us, we all always shared this strange silent pact of being an entity, like being one person. When we lost Sergio it was like if this "Person" a.k.a. our music, lost a member and somehow it seemed clear to us that we had to keep walking without him but not replace him. We did replace Sergio by a Japanese chap full of buttons and an AC Plug, he was obedient, never went to Greece without our consent (sorry Sergio had to have a dig but we still love you), nor to Japan for that matter, mind you he wasn't as talented but did his job and evolved with us as technology did.Another obvious conclusion was that unfortunately Felix Fritz music died with it, at least with the limitations which drum machines offered at the time, there was no way we could make the same type of music we did before. Paulo then had a fantastic idea. At the time we were really enjoying the California Soul of the late 60's Love and Arthur Lee, also Nicky Drake from England and Paulo had an eternal question: " If all bands have at least one acoustic track that is absolutely amazing why don't they make all tracks like that?" I think the nearest a band has done in that respect was Led Zeppelin's 3rd Album, almost an entire album with acoustic tracks but why a Rock band couldn't just do the songs that we loved and not just one or two tracks, unless of course it was a folk band, but that's not exactly the same thing. So he came up with the opposite approach to Felix Fritz, if Felix Fritz made Brazilian music mixed with Rock using Rock instruments we were going to now make Rock music using acoustic Brazilian instruments typical of samba and other Brazilian rhythms and so we did using Viola Caipira, a 10 string guitar, Cavaquinho, a Brazilian ukulele and bandolim, a Brazilian mandolin, among others.
Now how to call this new born child? As a joke to Virgin Record's answer to hiring us, we called it Dancyn' Days out of one of Led Zeppelin's songs, which is not a dance track at all.
Dancyn' Days songs couldn't be more different than Felix Fritz, Using a drum machine, no keyboards and loads of acoustic string instruments we sounded very different indeed. This band marks the beginning of my career as a do it all person, first a roadie, then keyboard player and now Ba
ss player of all things, unlike Paulo I had never studied the guitar and had to get a crash course on Bass, the enormous folk acoustic bass as you can see in the picture was bigger than me and my fingers were sore. I don't think I would be able to play anything else rather than our songs painstakingly memorized, I was having panic attacks to think I would have to gig one day playing bass. Would I ever be able to get used to it, and yet they never thought of replacing me, amazing, that's what we were like.Amongst Dancyn' Days songs there were Rough, Song for a Married Girl, Up in Smoke, Islands, the only song I've ever written or started from scratch on the bass, Dreams and Lies and Victoria.
With Dancyn' Days we started using false names that were more English sounding, except Brent who didn't need it but actually started being called by his nickname "Play". Our Press releases were also getting better thanks to the advent of early Mac Home computers, for which Brent was an avid user.
We had great fun as Dancyn' Days but we never got to play any gigs or do any sort of promotion except sending demos to record companies as our archenemy, The British Immigration, was about to strike again, this time on all of us, except Brent who was British, thanks to our elected new President in Brazil Mr Collor...
...To be continued
Pictures: 1 - Brent Hieatt, 2,3 and 4 - Unknown
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