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