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

From the Beginning...

Music was an old tradition in my household. My mother sang on the radio, amateur musical theatre and studied the piano mirroring an older half-sister who was a professional piano player. When her half-sister unfortunately died at a very young age, my grandfather sold their piano and forbid my mother to study music, as he could not bear listen to the instrument that now only brought him painful memories. My mother then brought the love of music to us and when my brother was five she bought us a piano. We both started taking lessons straight away, which we did for over ten years.

At the time I had no idea that apart from fulfilling her dream through us, my mother was buying, in the form of a musical instrument, my recovery from Asperger's and my choice of career for the rest of my life.

I had a mild form of autism called Asperger's Syndrome and the piano lessons promoted inter hemispheric integration of right and left brain, which was paramount in transforming a morbidly shy child into the outgoing sociable person I became. Not wishing to compare myself with such a genius, but Albert Einstein is famously known for his remarkable intelligence, but he could not speak until he was 4 years old and he performed terribly at school until he started piano lessons. There's more to music than just the pleasure of listening or playing it.


My brother Paulo (A.K.A. Squirrel) had an even earlier interest in music and used to pick up a real Brazilian cavaquinho (a type of ukulele) and pretend it was his acoustic guitar copying our Uncle who played and sang at family parties boleros and Spanish songs from his heritage.

Other great influences from our childhood were Samba groups our parents and relatives played at birthday parties and at Christmas time such as Os Originais do Samba or a group of chorinho, a Brazilian style that uses the cavaquinho as a main solo instrument, which  played live several times in our family parties called "Suvaco de Cobra", literally "Snake's Armpit". We also grew up listening to the drumming of "terreiros", Spiritualist centres where the religion of Umbanda, an African religion brought to Brazil by African slaves in the 19th Century is practised. Not questioning their philosophy or religion, the drumming and singing in the meetings were of an eerie beauty and of course growing up in Brazil, specially in Rio de Janeiro, you can't avoid being influenced by Carnival, Samba schools, Samba Poets like Cartola and Bossa Nova, the Brazilian Jazz.

When my brother went to University he met our partner from Loosh, Tayo (A.K.A. Kat Stoopid) and formed what was to become a brother-like relationship based on the common interest in music, football (mainly Flamengo, one of Rio's most famous teams), literature and poetry. Tayo had lyrics he had written many years before at a very young age, surprisingly mature, perhaps all due to the number of books he consumed voraciously, and Paulo had several songs he composed on the acoustic guitar and piano so sharing that material was only a matter of time. Surprisingly enough you would imagine they met each other at an arts or music school, but they were taking engineering, so perhaps the lack of interest in calculus lessons prompted them to spend more and more time making music!

I still remember the first time Tayo came to visit us at our flat in Niteroi, a city facing Rio de Janeiro on the opposite side of Guanabara Bay, I was so fascinated by what they played and the records he brought for us to listen to, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Roxy Music, Brian Eno and a new band from Manchester called New Order, that I immediately declared myself the future band's roadie. When they decided to name their project, the first name that sounded more definite was "Colonia Penal" the Portuguese title for one of Franz Kafka's books, one of Tayo's favourite authors.

And so was born, on the 13th August 1985 (I wonder if it was a Friday?), our first musical venture.

To be continued...

Pictures: 1 - Unknown, 2 - Unknown, 3 and 4 - Simone Taylor