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"General Antonio de Spinola is going to do an important announcement to the country".
"Amalia didn't even had the time to get dress nor to wash".
"Not even to stray".
"In fact, Tonicha's dress was absolutely stunning".
"People fought against the power of choosing and deciding that was taken from them for fifty years".
Good evening and welcome to "Meio Metro de Pedra",
the weekly broadcast that tells you stories a bunch of boys and girls drawn for the Rock of our fine land.
Today, with a broadcast dedicated to Rock'n'Roll, let's start off with a genre's pioneer:
A gentleman who goes by the name of Daniel Bacelar.
‚ The phone rang and my mother said: "Look, there's a guy called Pozal Domingues of Valentim de Carvalho who wants to talk to yo
I, honestly, never thought of it again.
And he said: "You won!" - "I won what?"
"You won as a singer, and Conchas won as a duo" - "And now what?"
"Now, you're going to record an album".
In Post-War Europe, American movies premiered with a six months delay.
For example, when Joaquim Costa used to talk about "Rock, Rock, Rock" and all that fifties Rock'n'Roll movies,
he really saw them in '55.
I'm from the Rock'n'Roll phase, a movie called "Blackboard Jungle" was a huge success in Cinema Capitolio.
It was a movie starring Glenn Ford, which takes place at an American college,
with Teddy Boys and all that... social problems.
The movie theme was "Rock Around the Clock".
The first time a Rock'n'Roll movie was shown here in Sintra, there were more policemen that audience.
I can guarantee you, the audience could fill three times the Sintra's Cinema.
So, Joaquim Costa and all the other kids really saw those movies in their time.
There was really something going on, but the labels didn't bet on it,
because there's an attempt to a folklorization of the Portuguese music.
Yes, there were labels in the fifties in Portugal who edited vinyl records,
but they only edited Fado, Folklore.
They all obeyed to a certain style of music that was not Rock'n'Roll.
They were very influenced by Italian songs, and Cha-Cha-Cha.
So, when they were asked to make the arrangements for Rock'n'Roll music,
something always used to fail. The solos, the guitar riffs, all that failed.
I'm sure Rock'n'Roll developed first in the Portuguese ex-Colonies rather than here.
That's for true, due the closeness to South Africa.
That's why Victor Gomes was crowned "King of Rock'n'Roll" in '57.
I used to hang with my buddies, the Teddy Boys, at the bars by the pier of Lourenço Marques.
They hang at the bars for drinking, for getting girls, you know.
So we hung there too... with the Jukeboxes ... putting the coins ... and listening to Rock ... the Rock'n'Roll back then.
Bill Haley and His Comets, Elvis, Little Richard.
Not the Cliff, but the Little Richard.
The country was really small.
If we focus it on Lisbon, Oporto and Coimbra,
the rest of the country ... - Was a yard!
It really was a yard.
Most people had a 4th grade education level.
The population basically lived in a rural environment.
Under statistics, in the beginning of the sixties,
there were sold only about 8000 record players.
Pozal Domingues of Valentim de Carvalho tried to make an answer to what was being done in Europe,
by doing that E.P. "Caloiros da Cançao".
The first truly rock'n'roll recordings didn't even began in that split E.P.,
but with Daniel Bacelar's third E.P.
Songs like "Mr. Train". - Yes, that's Rock'n'Roll.
It's not that it characterized something.
Ok, it was the first E.P. in Portugal of what it can be called as Rock. Nothing much.
Let's not going to say: "Oh, what a great thing!". Not by any chance.
Even Jose Cid... He did only but covers.
That's an imposture. A band who features an accordion, a double bass,
a piano, and an acoustic guitar. I honestly doubt it was Rock'n'Roll. Period.
For me, either you like it or not, the first serious rock'n'roller was Joaquim Costa.
Who can be claimed to have a wild approach to Rock'n'Roll was Joaquim Costa.
At least, we don't know no one else. If there are recordings of other artists or bands, they're all unknown.
In '63, when I came back from the Overseas War ... I first got from Mozambique to Angola, than from Angola to here,
I didn't see much genuine rock'n'roll.
There were radio shows like "23ª Hora" on Radio Renascença, or the "Em Orbita" on Radio Clube.
They've played good quality Anglo-American music.
There was a radio show in Radio Renascença by Joao Martins, called "23ª Hora",
where the bands used to go to record, in Rua Capelo.
So Moreno Pinto was the one who did the recordings. In his little tiny booth,
he did all the recordings for the bands.
He was a remarkable fellow, a fantastic technician.
He could work wonders with his Ampex, the sound-recorders of the time.
We used to record on four-track recorders. The day we recorded on an eight-track was nearly a national holiday.
I started to record in Spain, at Belter, with a 32-track recorder straight away.
All of us were pretty amateurs. The High-School students, College kids and so on,
were all a bunch of penniless guys.
So there was no money for buying amps, guitars, drums and all that.
So Gouveia Machado provided all the instruments
with some incredible partial payments.
Back then, musicians didn't have any money,
so if we came up to the dear Gouveia Machado,
and explained: "Mister Gouveia Machado, we would like to buy this and that, but we don't have any money".
He would say right away: "There's no problem. You can pay in installments."
It happened to every musician.
That man has dedicated himself to the young musicians. He was truly a wonderful guy.
He was the manufacturer's agent of the best brands.
Fenders, Gretsch, Premiere drum-kits, and all of that.
There's an interview with the guys of Casa Gouveia Machado on a Plateia Magazine.
and it's been said they sold instruments to about 3000 bands.
So, Gouveia Machado started to dig deeper and import American guitars.
There were a lot of Eko guitars. Basically every band played with a different kind of Eko model.
I had one that cost about 1000$, and later when I grew up I bought another with three pick-ups that cost me 3170$.
In '65, one Eko guitar cost the modest sum of 3800$,
compared to a Fender, that cost 10.500$
Ekos were like Fenders of the poor.
Ekos were very important for musicians, because of their accessible price,
and a relative quality.
Casa Gouveia Machado had an mind-blowing importance in the bands' development and emergence in Portugal,
due to the leasing issue.
Gouveia Machado started to "sail on the non-sailed seas",
and in fact, all the good music that came out, was thanks to Antonio Gouveia Machado.
We've just listen to the first Portuguese rock'n'roll gentlemen, who explained how it began.
Right now, we'll try to understand how the Ye-Ye and Twist styles emerge.
One day, somebody told me: "Why don't you go to Monumental Theater, because the owner runs everything around here".
"Go talk to him, and he might give you a chance,"
"because you sing the rock'n'roll, and you're used to South Africa music. Go talk to him". And so I did.
Vasco Morgado gave everything he had,
for presenting amazing shows in Portugal, with great international artists.
Vasco is a full-time businessman,
he didn't care if it was Revista's kind of theater, Ballad, or Portuguese Pop. Everything would fit on the same bag.
So Rock'n'Roll was part of that too. - He saw that it could be a money source.
He realized he could fill up the venues like Monumental Theater by doing Twist contests.
Every Saturday, people would paid for the tickets, but the groups played for free, because it was a contest.
Then, after a few shows, someone was crowned as "King of Twist".
It was a brand new thing for the emerging bands, and all the contests.
In fact, he had an extremely importance for the development of the rock music in Portugal.
I've said: "Mister Vasco Morgado, let me tell that someday,
it will be you who...". I pointed my finger at him. "It will be you who'll knock on my door".
And it happened, three weeks later when I sang at the Capitolio Theater.
He would fly on the stage, with his leather jacket.
Back then, Gatos Negros were already an outstanding group,
with their black jackets and their skinny pants.
Twist became the cutting-edge rhythm. Everyone was a staggering twist dancers.
Ye-Ye appeared later along with the Twist, and the French groups, known as Ye-Ye bands.
That's when the British Invasion started too, and bands like Searchers,
the Beatles, and all of them.
I was considered to be a Portuguese pop singer. The Ye-Ye was a new term in our musical dialect.
ƒ "There's not a Ye-Ye Fashion. We call Ye-Ye to every way of dressing that goes against standard patterns, in a revolutionary te
I remember the resemblance, when I had my Beatle boots and use to say:
"That Elvis Presley thing isn't cool, it's a towny thing".
By '64/'65, the Beatles were such a phenomenon,
that everybody wanted to be like them. "BEATLES YES, IF THEY CUT THEIR HAIR"
The Feminine National Movement arranged the "Ye-Ye Contest"
for raising funds. I don't know what was their subsisting method.
I'm not talking about hundreds, but thousands of bands from all over the country, who came to Lisbon for the contests.
The audience came from everywhere.
North, South ... - Yes, they even did tours.
All that crowd. It was insane.
So in every point of the country, like in Algarve, Alentejo, etc. started to emerge bands.
It was crazy.
There are stories about all the rounds of the twist contests being completely sold out.
And with hundreds of people at the door, because there were no more tickets.
Basically, every group played there.
From the Sheiks, who were very well known, to the Babulas who were just starting.
‚ If you look at the pictures of the Monumental Theater back then, you can see people on the top of their chairs and the balconi
Incredible, it's an era that most people now don't even believe it existed.
And then, bands appeared and became famous like Sheiks, Ekos, Chinchilas and Guitarras de Fogo.
A whole bunch of them. They came with the flow.
We didn't had any chance of winning that round.
We were overcome by, in my opinion, the best band of the time, which was the Sheiks.
I remember one round that was great.
We brought ten of our girlfriends to the show. Ten!
Everyone had a letter at the front and at the back of their shirts: CHINCHILAS!
ƒ And they've yelled so loud, that I've just read it on the papers: "A huge mess at the Monumental with the Chinchilas' performa
They really did a big thing. We couldn't hear nothing we were playing.
Such a screaming.
There was a band called Ekos, which was an extraordinary Portuguese Beat group.
I remember seeing Ekos a couple of times, who sang in Portuguese.
I really liked their guitar player, Junior.
Ekos were an 100% Portuguese band.
Musically, they were a Beat band, but Portuguese Beat. Portuguese Beat, Garage, Psych.
The other bands could be English, or American.
Os Steamers, Conjunto Hi-Fi or Nuno Filipe they all could came from the United States or England.
Sheiks also played a lot. They were a big influence to many bands.
They were a very correct and pretty band. In fact, they were good.
We always got along: Jets, Sheiks, Ekos, Guitarras de Fogo.
We didn't compete. We were like brothers.
Jets were a result of a reunion of the Vampiros do Diabo,
who were a band formed by me and Mario Augusto, with the lead-guitar Julio Leitao Gomes,
and the notable Beethoven, Joao Vidal Abreu.
Even in '67/'68, the best examples of psychedelia in Portugal were
Jets and the Paulo de Carvalho's projects, like Banda 4 and Fluido.
Me and Mario Augusto created the rhythm section of the Jets,
which was unique.
We broke the standards of bad popular music and all that bunch.
They were my favorite group. I really liked the Jets. I really admired them.
Jets: psychedelic, fraternal, sympathetic.
A band where Beethoven, the poor, who was the best musician of the sixties,
ruled among the rich and posh boys.
Beethoven used to do a perfect symbiosis between the Classic and Pop-Rock.
The past was yesterday, the future was a while ago, the Jets are tomorrow.
Our E.P. cover is “a la” Andy Warhol. Today is priceless.
It was very psychedelic, with a lot a drawings, very colorful.
I remember it very well.
We even did ads with backward letters. For example, "Jets" but with inverse characters,
which, at the time, was a hell to explain to the typographers of Diario Popular.
"But backwards is the way we put it in the printer!" - "Yes, put it right so it comes out backwards".
Their record was the first psychedelic cover made in Portugal.
With a design, an approach to Psychedelia.
The first and one of the few.
When we finished the shows, the two English waiter-girls who worked in Ferragude, Chamine,
came to saw our rehearsals, and then came to live with us.
He was a very extroverted drummer,
very motivated.
One day, Lisa told me:
"Tonight, why don't you play like the bands in London?"
"There are psychedelic and avant-garde bands in London ..."
"...where the drummers play with..."
"with pajamas, and girl's baby dolls".
She said: "Play with mine".
So, it was great. On Saturdays, I've started to playing drums
with the English-girl baby doll.
And it was very satisfying.
The Portuguese psychedelic era, well... it was only a groovy thing,
because it appeared a year later here.
While John Lennon was doing LSD, we didn't even know what it was.
We probably thought it was Alcacels or something like that.
We were a lot younger. I am five or six years younger than the Beatles.
That made the difference.
When the Beatles were 21 or 22, I was 15 or 16 years old.
Acid appeared a year later.
Some musicians went that way. I didn't do acids, nor blow, just pot.
There was also the Spanish Fly to mix with alcohol.
I didn't drink, never did. But some of the older kids drank.
It was a thing that appeared on the Portuguese ex-Colonies,
then was brought to Portugal in the late sixties.
We didn't have access to all types of information, including to drugs.
We've heard about it, but very briefly.
We've used to do eight-day cruises to Las Palmas, Tenerife, and Casablanca,
and that's where we've learn to smoke haxixe, the true, the good, the better, and the cheap.
We've talked with the guys from the band Inflexos, and they've told us
when the Quinteto Academico arrived at Lourenço Marques, they were full of amphetamines and all that crap.
And they were really surprised: "Oh, but do you have it too in Portugal?" Something like that.
Of course, the psychedelia is not only about the drugs, there were other things too, like the clothing.
Back then, the Beatles' Sargent Peppers was a huge thing,
and so their jackets with the military look.
Objectivo was a band that I also considered to be psychedelic.
And of course, later the Quarteto.
Things got to a new level with Quarteto 1111.
The Steamers' lyrical content used to mess with a lot of people.
The Steamers are the ultimate example of that Rock'n'Roll, Garage, a kind of a Punk attitude.
Probably, they were the first Alternative or Punk band in Portugal.
All the records that weren't good,
and the records that were good but bother the Regime, were broken at a radio-show.
And so it was, our record was broken on the air,
but the fact is: it sold out.
Their way of thinking was really an punk attitude. - And the places they've played....
Where did they used to played? - At ***-houses.
All were brothels.
We've played at Boite Caco and Tosco, and a couple of other places too.
You see photos of the venues, everything was scrapped, with copied posters on the walls.
At the Caco, we had on top of the Vox Continental organ
an orange cloth with "FREEDOM" written on blue letters.
We didn't even know what that meant, because we were non-political,
but we wrote "FREEDOM" there because we couldn't agree with the country´s situation,
so we use the cloth.
It was an unusual thing at the time, and they were really serious about their underground attitude.
One night, two PIDE officers got in.
They turn up to me, because I was the organ player.
"Excuse me, you either remove the cloth, or you're all under arrested".
We had to be very careful, because the censorship was always alert to the lyrics.
We had to sent the lyrics to the Civil Government, so it could be approved,
and we used to send it with changes on the chorus, or on all the lyrics.
We sang in english, precisely,
because the censorship agents of Salazar and Marcelo Caetano,
were so stupid.
I have no doubt that they weren't intelligent people,
for letting all of that skip.
No, I don't believe they were.
They were stubborn persons.
If they picked on a person or a text, they would never let it pass.
There was a general problem to all musicians:
The military service was approaching.
Imagine a boy or a "Mancebo", as they used to call us at the time.
Mancebo, a boy who was called to military service.
Yes, like you used to be.
He was called ... when he was 21 years old,
and he was an important member of a band.
Of course, if he leaves, the band had to break up.
It was really hard to make up for that lost,
because there were not so many available musicians.
- Our life at 18/19 years old ... - We just thought on the military service.
- ... was totally depending on the military service. There was no life projects besides that.
How could a band exist like that? In a month one member had to go, then another.
They were probably kept separated for 4 or 5 years.
Who's the next to go? The singer. Who's next? The drummer.
That's a thing that happened to everybody.
We had to change the way we look.
We had long hair, then they cut it very short.
And, of course,
for example, one went to Oporto, the other went to Algarve for the service.
Of course the bands had to end.
Not to mention, when we had to go to the Overseas War.
And that's why we've disbanded due that thing called Overseas War.
I believe that bands really dissolved.
For example, I remember Fernando Tordo who played in Sheiks, becoming a solo-singer.
Just like Carlos Mendes or Paulo de Carvalho.
As a matter of fact, after the 25th of April, everything that
was sang in English, was associated with Imperialism.
After a leap to the African continent, we skip to the end of the 70s decade.
Time when rock discovers a new strength.
In Portugal, comparing to the 60s, not much rock was edited in the 70s.
I believe it had to do with the Portuguese political songs.
and the place they've occupied.
Here in Portugal, it's always the same thing: all the cronies pulling their socks to their friends, and then ...
So, that's what I believe happened to rock. And the more heavy and underground it was, the worst.
Right?
The sound we've brought up was so completely different,
that everybody would join and came to see. It was a brand new and different thing.
It wasn't close to nothing or just slightly different. No, it was truly different.
Aqui D'el Rock was a street band, a really street band.
They were not a middle class band, or something like that, but a truly band from the streets.
The conjunction of powerful music with the message, made us sound like a terrorist or a militant band.
A super marginal band. Aqui D'el Rock was truly Punk-Rock.
From the lyrics to the way they've played.
"Rip your shirt up. Nag everybody. Drink until you fall. Drink until you fall".
Our attitude on stage was completely different from the rest of the bands.
The media and the reporters hated us. They wrote: "Those guys are horrible, a bunch of teasers and freaks".
Good for us.
Aqui D'el Rock was brilliant.
A great sound. A great terrible sound.
By the microcosmos of Lisbon, and surroundings,
there were hinge bands of that Punk-Rock.
There are two bands who represented two sides of the movement.
One is Faiscas, and the other one is Aqui D'el Rock.
Faiscas is a total different subject.
A middle class band from Avenida de Roma. With the Punk look and so.
Trying to look crazy and rebel.
Even musically, from what I've been told,
and from what I've read, because they've never been edited,
they played fast Rockabilly. It was a Rockabilly played with speed,
with a Punk-Rock heaviness.
Even musically, Aqui D'el Rock was different. It was more of a ...
kind of pseudo-hard rock. Very primitive.
Our aesthetics were more influenced by the American Punk,
and not much by that Arty-Punk of the Design and Fine Arts Schools.
That was the first Punk Wave in the 70s, which wasn't very clear,
and didn't get much attention.
It lasted until '81 or '82,
and most of the bands didn't even called themselves "Punk".
In a certain way, it was the Portuguese answer to what was going on with the British Punk,
and on all over Europe.
Just like the Punk outside, it happened to be a reaction to the music establishment.
I believe a little feedback happened here in Portugal, that wasn't Punk, but was kind of a New-Wave,
which was called "Portuguese Rock", right?
It had something to do with it, because we weren't used to that kind of music.
Later, emerged strictly in Lisbon the Minas & Armadilhas,
Xutos & Pontapes,
and extending a little, UHF too, in Almada.
Then a bunch of bands emerged, that had a short term life,
I recall, for example, Sidecar and bands like that.
At a second Not-So-Punk wave in sound terms,
but still part of the movement, Corpo Diplomatico.
For me, this is the hinge of Punk. The real Punk in Portugal.
Elvis died in '77.
I mean no harm to the gentleman, but it was a blessing,
because, for two months they've aired on the radio,
on Antena 4, which was the one I used to listen,
the songs Elvis was influenced by and the songs he had covered.
So I've listened to Big Mama Thornton and Big Joe Turner, Jump Blues stuff.
Songs that I've always listened thru Elvis, and didn't had a clue that were covers.
We were seeking for the Rock roots.
Even all the apparel from the Punk movement was way inspired by the 50s´ clothing.
All the elements were digged from the 50s, but in the end was a whole chaos.
I remember anyone who wanted a pair of All-Stars, had to ask a friend.
At the time, when somebody went outside, we would ask him to bring records or a pair of All-Stars, or a Ramones t-shirt,
or whatever.
Because we didn't have it in here.
There were a lot of freaks too. The post-25th of April left many hippies in the country,
and I believe that helped a lot of different people to appear.
We started because we hated everything else.
We hated Rui Veloso and his mustache, and all of that discussing freaks,
neo-hippies. We hated all of that, you know?
We were the exact opposite to all of them.
That kind of pre-historical “Deolindism”, you know?
Which now, seems like there's a revival of it.
Some kind of Portuguese-Posh-Towny, a conjunction I don't really get.
At the time that was the major flow.
Banda do Casaco, and things like that.
"Today there's clams, tomorrow we don't know". And why should I give a damn?
For us it was like "I don't give a damn if there are clams or not".
We had other things in our heads, that wasn't exactly the cultural freak paragon
of our rectangle.
In '82/'83, the golden-egged chicken reached its end.
The labels stopped
with the recording and editing of new artists related to Rock,
who sang in Portuguese.
Basically, their last releases had a strong commercial point, in a Rock disguise.
As a matter of fact, the title of Rui Veloso first album gives the meaning
to the commercial villain of that portuguese sang Rock,
which is "Ar de Rock (The Look of Rock)". So, everything that had a look of Rock
was marketable by the labels, but all the real Rock wasn't.
I'm 43 years old now,
and until the 80s, I always thought that there were no Rock bands before that.
I really thought it, because until then, the media brainwashed people about Rui Veloso being "The Father of Portuguese Rock".
I think it was also the strength against it,
that helped people to be different, and wanting something different too.
I've always wanted my guitar to sound old, and very organic.
Sound of tubes, not of transistors.
A stout sound, and not a processed sound.
In the 80s, not only but also in Portugal nothing sounded like that.
Yes, the electronic drums. What a curse.
Imagine drums with little Japanese guys inside.
Of course it couldn't go right. No harm to the Japanese people!
There were some problems related to technical matters, but we could make it up.
And how!
At one point, at least for me, Punk began to lose meaning.
I realized that Rock'n'Roll was behind all this.
When you start to dig deeper in music, you realize things that
influenced you in Punk-Rock. In this case, Rock'n'Roll,
that primary rock'n'roll from the beginning of the 50s, and as a consequence you'll find Jazz who also influenced Rock'n'Roll.
With the Emilio (& a Tribo do Rum), Jazz had a really strong importance.
We realized the only way to get a good drummer, was getting one from the Jazz schools.
So that's what it happened.
In the 80s, for someone to record an album,
especially for independent bands,
it wasn't easy. That's why I believe Ama Romanta and Joao Peste were really important.
If we only depended on the major labels, we wouldn't have a story to tell.
There would be a lot to tell, that's a fact. We can't deny their inheritance.
But there's a very interesting history that was given to us by the years,
and basically since the 80s, when we had a start of independent editing in Portugal.
So Ama Romanta created the means, and covered the blanks
for all of that underground and marginal bands who existed in Portugal.
It appeared at the right time, and it had a view and a direction of art
which were extremely liberal.
It eventually made the way for a lot of artists to sign with other labels.
I remember Mler Ife Dada, who were one of the first bands of Ama Romanta,
but also Mao Morta, who sign to BMG a couple of years later.
It was a label which, on one hand edited a single of the Caes Vadios,
a so-called Punk band, an example of Punk at the time,
and on the other hand, it edited Toze Ferreira and Nuno Canavarro,
who moved around the electronics and the experimentalism.
If someone told us that was possible being on a band without having a manager or a label,
we would believe it. And it was possible.
We survived a bunch of years with no label besides Ama Romanta, which was kind of a co-op, and had its time.
But later, we lived with no label, and we sold around 700/1000 tapes.
Caes Vadios had an influence of Garage, stronger than ours.
Basically, all of us were connected, we all were listening to the same bands.
There wasn't a big difference between us. The point was digging old bands who'd never been on the mainstream,
and at the time were influencing an entire generation.
For me, Caes Vadios was an important band.
The first line-up, with two guitars and no bass. - Yes, the first line-up.
Because it was a band who looked like Cramps,
which was new in Portugal, but it wasn't exactly like The Cramps. It was a little more Punk.
The truly underground spirit that was developing, which created the roots,
and somehow works as a model to the underground spirit of today,
came from that core of bands who developed also on the edge,
and somehow centralized itself,
or had its ignition burst at the Rock Rendez Vous.
Rock Rendez Vous was built from nothing to present pop music.
or popular music, if you want to, with a big prevalence of rock music.
It had a short existence. Only ten years.
And it appeared at the right moment, when we had a national scene going on,
an excitement about the Portuguese electrical music, which until then didn't catch attention.
It allowed the bands, who were starting at the time, to improve their connection with their audience,
being the audience an expert crowd.
It became a platform of what was going on,
basically, with Rock made in Portugal.
It was very important to the bands of Lisbon, much more than to us.
When we played there, we already had played live like ten times. We played in every hole we can find.
We had no problems with it.
But for the bands of Lisbon, no. Their first gig was there.
Outside Lisbon, people who liked Rock, and made music
related to rock, felt like an orphan and isolated.
It marked an era. Totally. An era where all that bands emerged,
an era when there were more bands than today, I believe.
I remember the so called Braga's scene.
There was even a very interesting figurative image about it, which was named by themselves,
and became a compilation: A Sombra de Deus (By the Shadows of God).
The fact that the city of Braga could create an underground scene,
was because Braga always was a closed, religious and baroque city in a way.
Was kind of an allergic reaction by some city's children to it's own structure.
Of course, Mao Morta were the leaders of that counterculture that used to exist in Braga.
There was an entire generation that emerged in the 80s, who reflected themselves in these new bands,
being them mainstream or more underground,
which was a generation who was also in the media. On the radios, on the newspapers, and on the TV.
The media information we had was basically the newspaper "Blitz".
It was the same type of information as the British information, but they have adapted it to our little rectangle.
I remember the start of the newspapper "Blitz".
There were also big changes in the journal "Sete".
Later, the journal "LP" appeared.
The newspapers started to publish attachments related to the young cultures.
Not to mention that time where all the pirate radios emerged.
It was an amazing time. There was freedom to do whatever we wanted,
and specially freedom for some people to make way for the Rock scene.
There were independent radio-shows. Shows that reflected the tastes of the hosts,
and the hosts's needs to promote their tastes, and to play wasn't being played on the radios.
Finally, in a decentralized country, we travel from Braga to Coimbra,
a city full of reaction and counterculture.
Coimbra always was a city very connected to its Universities.
and the majority of events at the time, were very academic related.
So that caused a dissatisfaction for a lot a people.
Sometimes, there's an advantage for those outside the movement,
because you can create your own musical and artistically scene.
Coimbra has that advantage.
There's a lot of empty garages, a lot of unemployed people, and a lot of beautiful girls who came here to study.
There's a whole appealing background behind it.
There's always been a missing bond between people and that University atmosphere.
At least, some people.
It ended up creating a certain counterculture and a rebel spirit that led people
to make the music they wanted to hear, because there wasn't that much to do.
We listened to a lot of Punk-Rock.
There wasn't that much of worship to the 60s, like we had a couple of years later,
in '98/'99, when we discovered the Nuggets compilation box, and all that American Garage bands.
But the major influences for us, were the most popular bands at the time,
The Kinks, The Who, and The Stones, and The Small Faces, perhaps.
The kings and fathers of the whole scene in Coimbra, were the Tedio Boys.
There were bands around before. - The E'Mas Foice.
Exactly, who gave us the first taste of madness of that city,
surrounded by bars.
There were places like the mythical Moçambique cafe, where everybody got together, brainstormed and formed bands,
and discussed all the music affairs.
E'mas Foice and the Tedio Boys were the genesis of most of the bands formed in Coimbra in the 90s.
Of course, they weren't the genesis of Belle Chase Hotel or other meaningful bands in Coimbra.
But in terms of the major Coimbra's rock music, it started off with E'Mas Foice and Tedio Boys.
In the beginning of the Tedio Boys, it was clear their reaction to the University,
and to the city's system.
That's why they could perform at the most unusual places.
Tedio Boys shows were extremely important.
They were probably the band of Coimbra with more fans, in the true meaning of the word "fan".
In Coimbra, Belle Chase Hotel or Wraygunn are bands with more national influence,
but in the way of fans following them everywhere, it was more clear with the Tedio Boys.
I, personally, started my interests over Punk with Tedio Boys, who were a band I really liked to see live.
Then, from the Tedio Boys, it emerged a huge musical scene where we find bands like
The Parkinsons, The Legendary Tigerman, Bunnyranch, Wraygunn,
and so many bands we know today.
A good thing about playing at the Johnny Guitar was the amount of people who, at the time, came to see Tedio Boys.
We've created, since the beginning, a large group of fans in Lisbon,
so we've always played good shows at the Johnny Guitar.
In the 90s, all kinds of genres were played at the Johnny Guitar,
and all kinds of bands, like Heavy-Metal, Trash-Metal, Pop, Rock, Punk.
In the 90s, Lisbon had became the capital of the Trash-Metal and ... - Grunge.
A thing that we didn't have in Coimbra.
We only had two or three metalheads. No, only one: Metallic Joe!
Everybody said that Johnny Guitar was the new Rock Rendez Vous. Rock Rendez Vous was closed,
and Johnny opened its doors, so it was an alternative.
It presented a lot of Punk, Metal, Hardcore shows, and other things too.
There were a lot a venues everywhere. Up in Oporto, there was Luis Armastrondo, Aniki Bobo,
at Meia-Cave there were good shows also, in LaLaLa.
Then, the Ritz Club was a blast,
from Rock'n'Roll to Hardcore shows, all the mini-festivals.
They kept the musical movement around,
because doing cool things was their goal, instead of just making money.
All of this scenes weren't made by hundreds of people, but with a small group of persons.
It's very interesting to find how the music can have that kind of power.
Back then, it was more a thing about the lack of ways to register and record.
There wasn't medium nor big sized studios.
„ I believe "tenderness" is a good expression to define Elsa Pires' and Luis Futre's work with their labels Bee Keeper And Milks
The relationship that independent labels can have with their artists.
That careful fondness, like a particular work,
like they were craftsmen of their own editions. That homemade business.
That idea that, in fact, a label is not a tower with twenty floors,
but a room with 5 or 10 squared meters, and everything happens at my desk.
There was a team spirit between all those bands,
personified by Elsa and Luis from Bee Keeper.
I was working at the Youth Week, and there were amazing bands playing.
I'm talking about really good bands, so me and Elsa thought: "What are we gonna do about all this?"
We wanted to make an album. The idea of proving people we could make an album without money.
So we've made the album without money. We've asked Darin Pappas to take the photo of the robot, and he did it for free.
We printed the cover on a really cheap printer.
And to edit the album? We went looking for sponsors.
I mostly remember kids from Castelo Branco, Caldas da Rainha, and also Lisbon and south-side,
who got together on Bee Keeper, with the idea of American College-Rock,
and bands like Pavement.
I believe being independent is about the music you play, the label who edits it, and on what surrounds you.
Is about the friends you have, the shows you play, and on the relationship you have with the fans,
on the interviews and ideas you express, on the acts you do.
That's what independent movement is about.
A girl doing all by herself. Actually, the first Los Santeros' tape was recorded to send to Elsa, under that thought:
You're in room, you start a band, and she will edit it.
Nobody else wanted to wait for the major labels.
By the way, most bands from my generation didn't trust major labels.
We knew they just wanted to follow trends, exploit bands and boss all the bands.
Like "Look, this is good, but do it like that"; "Go this way"; "No, not like that".
We didn't want that.
Lux Records has an important role on promoting those bands which are discovered all over the country.
All the vinyl editions we did, were always hand-numbered by me.
I always saw Portugal as a little yard.
If you look closer, you have two bands here and there. You start talking about Barreiro's movement, Coimbra's movement,
and Barcelos' movement and whatever, when you should be talking about a national movement.
It's all about the perseverance of having that kinds of bands,
creating a scene, a movement, union between bands. That's something we're missing these days.
I felt that way when I had Everground, Kiute Loss, and in the beginning of Les Baton Rouge.
Les Baton Rouge appeared after the Coimbra's movement.
It was interesting because they had a lot of resemblances with Tedio Boys,
but with a female singer.
People always told me: "You took it very seriously", "You had too much ambition".
I didn't had too much ambition, I had defined goals and things to do.
She is a person who knows what she wants, and always fought for it.
And outside the box of the "Portuguese Rock". That's why they're successful.
They did a lot in the United States, and played a lot.
We did 15 shows in a row. Here that's impossible.
Most of the times on that 15 shows, we drove for 20 hours from one show to another.
I didn't eat, I didn't sleep. People had no idea. Not everybody is willing to do that kind of sacrifice.
That girl really had "the balls" to do it.
Taking that kind of chances for so long. Being on the road "with the devil". Troubled.
People keep forgetting about Les Baton Rouge. It's a shame. -They've been outside the country for so long.
It's the typical Portuguese nit-picking way of thought about non-appreciation.
I was in New York recording the Baton Rouge's "My Body - The Pistol" album, with Tim Kerr on the production.
And someone of the media couldn't believe there was a Portuguese band recording with Tim Kerr.
So they've phoned the studio and asked if Tim Kerr was really there.
The Parkinsons are my most primitive project ever, in musical terms.
When we left Portugal everybody probably thought with that kind of music, we would be there for two months and quit.
But no, sometimes the simple, intense and loving things work,
and Parkinsons had all of that.
They had the energy of the Stooges, and kind of the Punk attitude of the Sex Pistols.
The Parkinsons had to do with London, and not with the portuguese phenomenon. The Parkinsons are London.
It had to do with our lives in London, the factory jobs we've had,
and the troubles we've had.
At the time, everybody was talking about them: "A Portuguese Punk-Rock band who's gaining credits in London's underground"
At the time, in London, there was nothing going on, and they've had the need for a band like this.
We felt the seeking of a band like ours. - It's a periodical thing.
Of course, later, a bunch of bands came out. But at the time, everything was dead.
The Brit-Pop hangover, and all that phase. - The Nineties hangover.
They've, by their way, contributed to Punk´s history, the same way years later I've tried to.
The funny thing is: with Tedio Boys, not even after ten years, we could made it on the Blitz cover.
And in 30 seconds, The Parkinsons were on the Blitz cover, and played at a sold out Paradise Garage with 17 euros tickets.
That's the power of information. You give 17 euros to see a Portuguese band who's in London.
If they were here, they would probably be ignored by all, would probably play for 40 people like the rest of us.
they wouldn't be understood.
Like they've had all that buzz in London, because the English already forgot what Punk is.
The bad thing about English and Portuguese press is there's no competition.
In Portugal, there's only one magazine and it used to be a newspaper, Blitz.
Like there's no competition, they can write whatever they want. They can create or destroy any band.
A journalist leads crowds. As much as he doesn't want it,
a lot of people buy a certain album because a journalist gives it a good review.
If he gives it a bad review, the album sucks.
When you interview a band, you have to know about them, what's their background.
You have to know what they did, what they are doing, and what will they do.
It seems like they're afraid that the reader or listener yawns of ennui about something more deeper.
In physical maters, 15 years ago, there was the journal Blitz,
there were musical attachments with the Publico and Diario de Noticias journals.
Hurray for that magazines who lived for a couple of years, like Underworld and Mondo Bizarre. Forget the rest.
Blitz ... was interesting when it came out in '84, so as in '85/'86/'87.
A recent example, the Ipsilon, which is a reference attachment when it comes to arts and music,
doesn't even create anymore a list of the top year's best Portuguese albums.
The television model impose its own rules. The instantaneous and the brief is the nowadays role model.
I think there isn't much of coherency going on. I can find it a lot in the journals.
The same guy who reports that Tiguana Bibles are amazing, the next day writes about Deolinda's being the greatest band.
*** Deolinda, the shittiest band around.
Besides some local radios like Radio Universidade de Coimbra, and radio Antena 3,
the given support to Portuguese music is basically nil.
The radios could be much more important if weren't ruled by
the labels, or the guys who produce the festivals and rule labels or promoters.
Therefore, the radios become ways of self-promoting.
There's something much better these days, the Municipal Auditoriums. That's a great victory.
It's a chance for bands to play in towns they never thought of, like Portalegre, or Bragança.
There are new venues in Portugal.
Namely, Theaters and Auditoriums recovered to present a lot of events.
But I would like to see a circuit of medium-size rock venues.
A circuit between bands, between venues in Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra and interior cities too.
If you think about it, to do a show in Oporto, you need to put it all in a van,
with the price of renting, gasoline, tolls,
and I mean the renting of the van on a Friday to be delivered on the Mondays, because that's they're policy,
we're talking about 500 or 600 euros.
And the venue's owner asks if you wanna play for 150 euros.
You understand he can't give you more than that, but it restrains you.
And sometimes the club, when the show ends, sends everybody away with Techno music or so.
I believe music today in Portugal, is on the hands of those who don´t appreciated it.
People who like easy-money, who take their Economy courses,
and potatoes, carrots, rock and pop it's the same thing to them.
The major labels were responsible for the non-growing of the Portuguese rock music.
And still are.
Groovie Records is growing a lot. It re-edits and promotes bands.
It has re-issued that acetate from Joaquim Costa. Finally, somebody wrote some music history, right?
One thing is what the label edits, the other is the concept behind it and the idea of community we want to share.
We always refer the music, when talking about the musicians,
but the radio-producer Antonio Sergio was, in fact, as musician as the real musicians.
Julio Isidro was also a really important person. We don't have persons like him today.
In the Portuguese music scene, he was a person who launched a lot of bands on T.V.
There was nobody who aired Punk or trash bands at prime time on T.V.
Henrique Amaro is one of the major marketers of portuguese music.
No doubt the Barreiro Rocks festival is the most important musical event in Portugal.
No chance.
We've decided to call label to a logo, and call festival to the show where the three label bands perform.
Is the only festival that brings good bands to Portugal, with free wheeling and a good audience.
Quarteira Rock Fest has grown in the last two years with a resemblance to Barreiro Rocks.
Rock'n'Roll is about youthfulness. The day my legs are broken,
and my beard is bigger than Pedro Chau's, there's no point on keep going.
I really like to see kids, probably influenced by their older brothers, parents, or friends,
who hit on Rock from the heart.
It´s a scene full of ***. Rock'n'Roll in Portugal is really full of ***.
Too bad, but there's no fathers here.
It's a fact our country needs complicity. Music everywhere needs the media complicity.
Sometimes Portugal has that problem: everybody profits from the artists success,
but nobody wants to be accomplice of their growth.
That's it for today. Another broadcast of "Meio Metro de Pedra" will be back soon,
on a stage, on a radio or in a garage near you.
Good night.