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
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