From Colonia Penal to Kafka

Continued from Blog 1 - From the Beginning...

...So it was on the 13th August 1985 that Tayo and Paulo got together playing the piano and acoustic guitar that our music venture was born. At first they decided to call the band Colonia Penal after one of Franz Kafka's books but then they settled for the name Kafka itself, who was one of Tayo's favourite writers.

The first song they played together was a cover of Lady Stardust from David Bowie, there is no recording of it but later on as a homage we did record it for the fun of it. Other songs that followed were Procissão and Hora do Recreio although the latter never really made it into one of the band sets. Recently we have payed homage to it, being one of our first songs, by including some of its verses in our song Victoria.

When recruiting new members for the band I, as an accomplished roadie, asked a friend at University who was half-English and had the right looks for being a front man, Brent Hieatt. Brent not only had the right looks (A bit like Orlando Bloom as Legolas in Lord of the Rings but with short hair) but made all the right moves, his presence on stage later on was captivating, he kept the audience glued on him and looked pretty much like the front man from the next band coming out of Factory records.

Me, Sergio and Brent

Tayo recruited an old time friend, old time indeed, apparently their mothers were friends and got pregnant at the same time, they were born a few days apart. Sergio would be our drummer, no previous experience necessary, actually no previous drums necessary, as he learnt and practised on cushions carefully arranged in a drum kit pattern. When he finally got hold of a drum kit he would play so hard he had to change his drum skins very often, as he got used to beating cushions that never made any sound. There are a few stories about this habit of his, the most notorious one when one of our gigs in Cabo Frio, a beach resort in Rio, was cancelled because when the drummer from the band sharing the stage, and their drum kit, with us, saw him playing at the sound check, he refused to lend us his drums, and we were at another town and had not brought ours! Jokes apart, Sergio had a unique style evolved from hours listening to his favourite drummer Neil Peirt from the band Rush. He also instinctively incorporated his own Brazilian beat to it that would become later on our trade mark, perhaps influenced by his love for carnival and his heritage from Bahia, one of the states in Brazil where Carnival comes really alive, not just for four days but for weeks.

With Brent on vocals, Tayo on Guitar, Paulo on Keyboards and Sergio on drums they went on to search for a bass player. Paulo even contemplated a "Doors" approach of a bass played on the keyboards but in the end it was Tayo's obsession with Gang of Four's third record (not their best, but when you are 20 you make good mistakes...) which led us to audition several "Sarah Lee's". One day, tired of explaining what we wanted to one of the candidates, Paulo borrowed the girls' bass guitar and, never having played bass before, went on playing like he was born with the damn thing hanging on his neck. I can still remember how after 30 minutes of playing his fingers were blood-blistered (maybe this explains why he decided to play with a plectrum). It seemed then logical that he would be Kafka's bass player but who would then play keyboards? Well, our songs had a lot of keyboards, so the only available keyboard player around was yours truly. In a day I was promoted from roadie to Gillian Gilbert. I was over the moon but also scared to think of having to gig and face the public with my Asperger's but surprisingly when a motivation is involved you will face your limitations.

We bought our instruments through a kind of Loot/Craigslist newspaper of the time, I remember I had a Casiotone, I think there was a choice of 6 or 8 sounds on it and also pre-set rhythms, we even used one of them as an intro to one of our songs, as a novelty of course.

We gathered at Brent's house in Rio, his garage more precisely, does that make us a garage band? Conveniently, a neighbour had a drum kit which he left at the place, how pre-destined is that? There we rehearsed week after week until a neighbour called Mrs White (Out of Cluedo perhaps) complained to the cops, no doubt about Sergio's "soft" style, and we continued undeterred at a professional rehearsal studio, and so Kafka continued to play...

To be continued...

Pictures: 1 - Tayo Carvalhal, 2 - Tom Hieatt