And it all finishes on Ash Wednesday

Happy Carnival everyone

Islands. Music by Loosh + Hieatt. Lyrics by Kat Stoopid

The 13 Most Unlucky Moments in our History in no particular order

1 – We did an awful lot of work to promote a 3 day gig for 6 new bands at the UFF Student Union in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro, and the day we played it rained cats and dogs, the streets were flooded and 3 people showed up for the gig. Still it was great to share the stage with our friends from Eterno Grito.

2 – When leaving the Robin Hood Pub, in Rio de Janeiro, after a gig, under loads of rain, the road was slippery and the guys crashed their car. They had to wait for hours for help and ended up having to walk miles soaking wet but thankfully no one was seriously hurt!

3 – After three successful gigs at the Rock Garden in London Paulo decided to go see the Manager to request a weekend date. The Manager answered he was sorry but the weekend was for Indie music only. Paulo said that we were Indie to which the Manager replied: "Yeah right, you and Carmen Miranda!"

4 – We decided to have a drink after our rehearsal in Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro. When we came back we found someone had broken into our car. We could actually see the thieves as they run away carrying our keyboards. All the sounds I used for the songs were programmed by myself so none of the songs sounded the same again.

5 – We went on stage at a piano bar in Rio and there were 2 people for an audience, not counting the waiters of course. Tayo was drunk and insisted on playing the piano. Paulo just wanted the set to end. Incredibly enough one of the two people we had never seen before. Years later this person bumped into Brent in the street and mentioned he really enjoyed the gig!

6 – After finishing the sound check for a gig in Rio, Paulo popped out for a drink and found Herbert Viana in the queue at the venue ticket box set. He was a famous Brazilian front man to a Brazilian band called Paralamas do Sucesso who were also embarking in the same Brazilian rock style we were at the time and it would be a great promotion for us if a more famous musician enjoyed our work. Paulo spent the whole night looking for him amongst the faces in the public but he didn't think he was in.

7 – We got on stage at a funk club in the suburbs of Rio. The place was packed but the crowd was motionless as soon as we started playing, as they realised we did not play “reggaeton”. I think out of a full club there were two people clapping at the end with the rest of the crowd eyeing them in anger, I feared for my life honestly!

8 - Sergio got run over and broke his femur in 3 different places requiring several operations in 1988.

9 - Rough Trade Records got interested in our work just before it went bankrupt in 1991.

10 - We actually won a competition of best band at the Robin Hood Pub and a recording but the prize was never given out.

11 - We got a review from a demo section on NME Magazine with a really grumpy cow whose only purpose was to put down unsigned bands in the best way she could. Thankfully some links to our tracks were also published along with the review and we got some fans who decided not to trust her and listened to the tracks.

12 - While returning from a rehearsal in Rio Paulo and I got stuck in a tunnel during a shoot out between Police and robbers. The longest few minutes of my life. When they were gone we got up from the bottom of the car where we had been ducking down and checked out for any blood, thank God all still tucked in carefully into our veins!

13 - We are still unsigned, but many people say they appreciate our music, now this bit is up to you to change, forward this blog to your friends and spread our songs, our music is our life, we would love to see it grow and see it loved.

There's no luck, there's no chance everything turns out the way it was meant to be

I think the Mill fans the creator when he throws his dice every night after midnight

Happy 25th Anniversary!!!

It's today!! Friday the 13th August 2010 our 25th anniversary.

To celebrate we are launching this podcast with 7 lucky songs each one of them a remake Loosh style for the 7 different stages of our career. We are not going to charge you to download our tracks but would you consider donating $1, that's it, just one American Dollar to the Autism Treatment Center of America - Home of the Son-Rise Program?

I have myself been running a Son-Rise Program for my autistic son for the last five years with amazing results. If you donate for our songs, as a present for us, just one dollar and invite all your friends to do the same we could together help the Autism Treatment Center of America to donate scholarships for more families like mine.

Make Friday the 13th a lucky day for autism:

http://www.autismtreatmentcenter.org/document.php?documentid=52&sectionid=7

"The Autism Treatment Center of America™ is the worldwide teaching center for The Son-Rise Program® , a powerful, effective and totally unique treatment for children and adults challenged by Autism, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), Asperger's Syndrome , and other developmental difficulties. Our team of committed teachers combines Autism strategies, support and education that combines over 100 years of “real life” experience working with children using The Son-Rise Program®. Over the last 27 years we have worked with more than 22,000 parents and professionals from around the world teaching them a system of treatment and education. We do not put limits on the possibilities for your child. We can help you to bring your child as far across the bridge from Autism to recovery as possible. For some, this means complete recovery. For others, this means improvements in their child's development, human connection, communication, skill acquisition and quality of life far beyond what most would have ever predicted."Autism Treatment Center of America
2080 S. Undermountain Road Sheffield MA
01257413-2292100

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1 - Dreams and Lies is a Loosh song
2 - Seedless Grapes in the Morning is an original recording by Seven Miles High
3 - Victoria She Was is a remake Forro (North Eastern Brazilian) style representing Dancyn Days
4 - King's Road to Rio is a remake of Rio Sightseeing representing Felix Fritz
5 - Tres Mulheres is sang in Portuguese and is representing Kaddish
6 - Mess is a remake of Cleopatra Morreu and is representing Kafka
7 - Procissao is sang in Portuguese and is representing Colonia Penal

Thank you so much for celebrating our anniversary by listening to our tracks and helping a great cause. Enjoy the tracks!

Luz Taylor

Picture Albums - England

If you have any pictures to add message me here please.

Felix Fritz

Dancyn Days

Zen Arcade/Secen Miles High

Loosh

Videos

Tayo A.K.A. Kat Stoopid is the author of the Four videos we've made.

Dreams and Lies is a montage of some very old obscure version of The Wizard of Oz which coincidentally fits if not metaphorically, literally to what the lyrics say

Dreams and Lies


Loosh (Luz) MySpace Music Videos

Bath Houses features a very snowy home video and some clever drawing montages emphasizing my favourite part of the lyrics: The Holy Spirit, Whole in Spirit, Spirit with the hole, I'm just the hole.


Bath Houses


Loosh (Luz) MySpace Music Videos
Maria Del Mar was a video created to celebrate Iemanja's Day on the 2nd of February, it talks about Iemanja the Goddess of the Sea who is part of Afro-Brazilian religions and of Brazilian Folklore.

And finally Quarta Feira de Cinzas which means Ash Wednesday, originally made in Portuguese, was launched on Ash Wednesday, the last day of Carnival in Rio, 2010 displaying real Carnival scenes when Tayo and his family and friends paraded with one of the Samba schools in Rio and also the sinking of a ship, which for those thinking, why, it is because of a play with words in Portuguese in the chorus: "So sobrou voce" means "you were the only one left" while "sosobrou" means "sank".



We intend to launch more videos, follow us on Facebook or one of the links on the right hand side of this blog and we will keep you updated with any new releases.

Something I've Lost

Our second album was called Something I've Lost and it features 3 women on the sleeve perhaps as a reference to the song "Tres Mulheres" which in Portuguese means "Three Women"

Track List:

1. Eerie - Originally called Spirit of the Rattlesnake, it possibly talks about Tayo's connection with Brazilian Indians in his distant family, a very fine example of Brazilian Indie music

2. The Girl from Sacramento - Written after Tayo's trip to Japan and the realization that our Portuguese version of "isn't it?" or "né?" is exactly the same in Japanese. A fine Bossa Nova in homage of the people who love Brazilian music like any other.

3. Procissão - Written in Portuguese, one of our first songs from Colonia Penal times, although the vocal melody from Brent Hieatt was kept almost intact with some minor changes, the song under Loosh was completely changed from a dark post punk rendition to a great Samba Indie version

4. Springtime - Springtime was originally written in Portuguese with the title "March of the flowers" and was cleverly translated into English

5. Bath Houses - A beautiful acoustic song it features my favourite lyrics: "The Holy Spirit, whole in spirit, spirit with the hole, I'm just the hole.

6. Song for a Married Girl - Speculation has it that Tayo has written this one to his Mother but no one will ever know, he doesn't discuss the meaning of his lyrics, when I sing them I give them the meaning it has to me. Although sang in English it features some chorus vocals in Portuguese.

7. Maria Del Mar - It talks about the weird fact that I hated having my hair cut (probably an autistic sensory issue I wasn't aware of) and actually got physically ill when I did it. It's a Homage to the Goddess of the sea Iemanja to whom Brazilians offer flowers on New Years Day. She supposedly gives voice to female singers. It features an extract of a popular song to Iemanja sang in rituals of Afro-Brazilian religions.

8. Tomorrow - Sounds almost a bit Spanish I wonder if it is a homage to Paulo's Spanish Citizenship and love for the Country.

9. The Head that bangs the Drums - One of my favourite songs it has many vocal layers in English and Portuguese and a very onomatopoeic chorus I invented which actually makes sense "O paradeiro do pandeiro, o paradeiro do pandeiro do Para" sounds like scatting when sang but it means where's the tamborine from Para? (A State in Brazil), well I said it made sense not that it was meaningful, but it sounds good.

10. Tres Mulheres - From Kafka times, it is sang in Portuguese, it features a very uptempo jazzy piano and rhythm.

11. August - The month of our anniversary also a month of loss for Tayo, a beautiful slow samba.

12. Emptyness - One of the songs from the titles I gave to Tayo to write about, a beautiful acoustic rendition from Seven Miles High times.

Loosh is an unsigned band
All our work is only available as download
This album is available for download by request
If you are a publisher or label and would like to publish our songs please contact Simone Taylor

msttaylor@virginmedia.com

First Station

The first album we recorded as Loosh was called First Station after the name given by Cartola, one of Tayo's favourite Brazilian composers, to the Samba school he was the Patron for, Mangueira. He called the Samba School First Station (Estação Primeira de Mangueira) because Mangueira was situated at the first stop from the train taken at Central do Brasil, famous for the Film with the same name.

List of tracks:

1. Magda K - The meaning of the title only Tayo knows. It was originally written by Kaddish and completely changed in its new arrangement. It resembles a patchwork quilt with its mixture of lyrics in English, Portuguese and nonsense scatting in a trip-hop style with dreamy keyboards. It was once called Fox and Hounds but as I mentioned earlier Tayo prefers that the title of the song does not appear on the lyrics.

2 - Dreams and Lies - Originally from Dancyn' Days, the vocal melody of the new version was changed so much that we really attribute it to Loosh. It's my favourite song in a California Soul/Bossa Nova style beginning with the sampled sound of our beautiful sea and seagulls. It was the first song to get a video made for it.

3 - Joker of Hearts - The title was translated from Portuguese "Coringa de Copas" which rendered its short introduction in Portuguese as a homage when I mix the word Copas with Copacabana. It was conceived as a Brazilian Disco track with the dance floor in mind. It marks the first time I made the vocal melody instead of Paulo.

4 - Kings Road to Rio - It's a mash-up from the song originally from Kaddish called Rio Sightseeing and the lyrics from Kings Road never recorded before. It features the sample of Cartola's voice stating he was born in Rio de Janeiro. It has a reggae feel to it or what is called in Brazil Samba -Reggae. I added an extra English/Portuguese part to it that resembles a lot of the homage music made for Rio de Janeiro by foreign artists in the 70's and 80's.

5 - Sleepiness Inside - One of the songs written at the time I gave titles for Tayo to write lyrics from, during Zen Arcade/Seven Miles High times it has a Northeastern folk tone to it played in a 10-string guitar aided by a squeezebox sound.

6 - Mess - It features the song and schizophrenic guitars from Cleopatra Morreu, a song from Kaddish times, a samba rhythm, Brazilian percussion but lyrics and melody from another song never recorded before. It also features a very Morrisey type of singing chorus and the chorus in Portuguese from Cleopatra Morreu in Vocoder style, perhaps the title makes sense but just like a teenager bedroom it is a mess that does make sense to its owner.

7 - Umba Neme - Originally from Kaddish it features a Berimbau, instrument from the Martial Art Capoeira and the African like sounds typical from the state of Bahia and words in Yoruba. It's one of the most nonsense lyrics we have, featuring words mainly for its sonority. "Neme" is a word created by our circle of friends in the 80's which is a contraction of "Não é mesmo?" which works as the English slang "innit?"

8 - Islands - Originally written by Dancyn' Days is the only song I have ever written from scratch on the bass, with Loosh it was incorporated into a Samba School "Batucada".

9 - The Right Time - Also from Seven Miles High it wasn't changed much from its original acoustic guitar voice and percussion format, a beautiful acoustic song.

10 - Again - Another one from Seven Miles High Times, it had a beautiful "Cuica" incorporated in its 60's dreamy layers of guitars and keyboards.

11 - Construction - A mix of samba and contemporary trip-hop and dance music, an instrumental featuring again Cartola stating he was born in Rio de Janeiro and more extracts of his interview.

12 - Victoria She was - From Dancyn' Days, originally almost a punk rendition, under Loosh a true homage to North Eastern music or Forro mixed with schizophrenic guitars. One of the songs that most exemplify our aim as Kaddish/Felix Fritz/Loosh of being a true Brazilian Indie Band.

Loosh is an unsigned band

All our work is only available as download

This album is available for download by request

If you are a publisher or label and would like to publish our songs please contact Simone Taylor

msttaylor@virginmedia.com

Camera, Loosh, Action

Continued from blog 18 - Going back to our roots...

Loosh, the English pronunciation of Luz, which means light in Portuguese, also our surname, well, Paulo and mine, is our current musical venture. Loosh still carries the same core proposition as Kaddish did, the one Tayo mentioned in his interview - We make Brazilian Rock, not rock sang in Portuguese.

Loosh differs from Kaddish however in a great number of aspects, we are older (some say too old :oP), more mature and have been exposed to different styles of both Brazilian and Indie Music that we hadn't been at Kaddish times. Although Tayo's lyrics were surprisingly mature for a teenager in Colonia Penal Times it was really while leaving in Europe that he developed into a writing machine, writing in English with the same power as in his native Portuguese. Between Paulo and Tayo they have so many songs/lyrics it could fill enough singles that lined up would circle the globe.

At first, when Tayo started to write in English, he invented that his lyrics were donated to us by a Welsh Poet who wished to stay anonymous, which we nicknamed James Eliot. Surprisingly, since no one knew Tayo was writing the lyrics we never received any criticism of any "mistakes" or misspellings. It's amazing how people will find nothing to criticize about when they are not looking for mistakes. We also noticed when we just presented people our music amongst other people's music nobody noticed any difference in relation to my voice, but tell them I am Brazilian and they will instantly look for an accent to comment on. If Goldfrapp's singer were foreign everybody would criticize the way she doesn't pronounce words very well or how the lyrics are unintelligible, the same goes for Liz Frazer who would be accused of making up words because she forgot the lyrics, or something of the sort, but since they are British it's all artistic and beautiful. For some reason I do not know, maybe I was English in another reincarnation and have some left over nationalist pride in my subconscious, who knows, but if you want to infuriate me, tell me my accent is strong, I think I would get less cross if you said I sang out of tune!

Although we've written many songs under the Loosh title we also decided to revisit songs from our career since Colonia Penal times, rescuing them from obscurity and giving them new clothing. Some of them assumed a completely new format such as the song Procissão, while some others were mashed up together like Rio Sightseeing and King's Road to become From King's Road to Rio and we also made up a few cover versions all following our must be rule for cover making:
There's no point in making a cover exactly the same as the original. We always made sure we put our stamp on a song, in some cases, as the cover of Welcome to the Machine from Pink Floyd, our stamp is a freak Brazilian voiced beat box for drums, sounds crazy but sounds good.


Welcome to the Machine (Pink Floyd cover) by Loosh

Other covers include Bed of Nails from Husker Du, Leave Me Alone from New Order in Bossa Nova style, Lady Stardust from David Bowie and That's the Way from Led Zeppelin in Forro style.

We went back to our Brazilian Roots because since I listened to a lot of Brazilian Jazz at home because of my DJ Husband I couldn't help singing in that style, but it so happens that at the moment he is really into Folk, California Soul artists like Alzo, Alicia May or modern ones like Jonathan Jeremiah and Jon Allan so you never know we might just become Seven Miles High again!

It has been a great journey to write, almost every day in 19 days what took 25 years of my life. I hope you have laughed, cried and enjoyed our story, but stay put as for the next 6 blogs until our anniversary on Friday the 13th August we will discuss all the songs from our first and second albums, our new songs, our videos, there will be a photo gallery and finally an anniversary surprise. Thank you for listening, we apologize for any inconvenience caused (I've learnt to say this at the end of every statement since living in Britain), we can guarantee no animals were harmed during the production of this blog, although the squirrel in the garden did go nuts a couple of days without nuts, and this blog does contain Brazil nuts.

...To be continued in real life, real time

Pictures: 1 - Nuria Sanchez, 2 - Unknown, 3 - Katia Haider, 4 - Simone Taylor

Going Back to our Roots

Continued from Blog 17 - Virtually Speaking...

... The Year 2000, a New Year, Decade, Century, Millennium, when washing my feet at Copacabana Beach at midnight Kissing my Husband and worrying about Y2K, that never really happened, I never anticipated so many changes the decade would bring, 9-11, Barack Obama, my son, who was diagnosed autistic at 3 years old, still so many wars and more recession.

Some great change was about to hit our music too. While I was with Paulo rehearsing we wrote many songs but when back home I would listen to a lot of Brazilian Jazz from my DJ Husband whose music choice was influencing me without my knowledge. More and more we started to notice my singing sounded more like Bebel Gilberto than Natalie Merchant, more and more people would comment on the sites we had our music on, about my "Bossa Nova Style of singing". Without noticing we started to slip into our Felix Fritz roots again.

When that natural inclination of being Brazilian came through our work we decided to leave Seven Miles High aside as an alternate work for the boys, perhaps they could look for another singer for it and invest in working on what I did best, singing Bossa Nova style on top of a Brazilian Indie mixture such as in Felix Fritz times but a bit more sophisticated with a tinge of jazzy chords not to mention technology now permitted us programming perfectly sampled sounds of drums and percussion.

And so was born LUZ, we chose our surname, Paulo and mine, because it means light in Portuguese, we are known by it and we liked the sound of it and although it excluded Tayo, by this time we were almost like siblings anyway he didn't mind.

We kept it that way for a while until non-Brazilians started giving all sorts of pronunciation to the name and we decided to give them a hand and spell it as it is pronounced in English LOOSH. As you've probably guessed there is at least another one out there that we know of, in California I think, and yes they have more hits on myspace than we do. Can somebody go visit that site and raise those hits for us, this is getting annoying. No we are not going to change name again, we've changed more times than Madonna changes clothes in her gigs, perhaps not that many, but enough is enough. Let's race it and see who gets famous first, no don't count the myspace page, that's not fair! I think even my Husband has more hits on myspace than us, does anyone visit that damn page?

Now the journey really starts for we've seen the light...

...to be continued

Pictures: 1 - Croydon Advertiser, 2 - Soter França, 3 - Paulo Nunes