The Formative Years – Brazilian Punk
I have always been intrigued by the culture of faraway countries and getting into punk as a prepubescent delinquent in the cold war era long before the advent of the internet has allowed me to communicate with people around the world, learn about their lives / cultural contexts and share our passion for rebellion and the common denominator that formed the ethos of punk rock no matter where you roamed.
It was in the early 1990s that a pen pal from Sao Paulo sent a tape that would inoculate me with a deep appreciation for Brazilian punk.
I vividly remember being exposed for the first time to Restos de Nada, Olho Seco, Cólera and the fantastic Ratos de Porão, which I not too long after managed to meet as part of one of their European tours.
The fact that most of the early Brazilian bands sang in Portuguese inspired me as it added not just an exotic appeal but an idiosyncratic trademark that made it unique as linguistically, the prosody of the language with its six dynamic tone patterns affecting the phrasing makes it a very powerful medium to convey your anger.
I started ordering records directly from the bands in Brazil and learned more about the origins of the movement.
To this day an original tape compiled by Fabio of Olho Seco remains one of my favourite things in my collection and given his preferences and the bands he compiled on his mixtapes, it is not further wondrous that bands like Discharge and other UK bands became a major reference for the Brazilian scene – in the same way they were a major source of inspiration for the founding of Vegas later on.
When I started to collaborate with Ogirdor Zul to write songs for Vegas, it felt like things had come full circle as we almost instantaneously established a common understanding of where we wanted to take things sonically and the boundaries we wanted to push.
With our most recent album about to be released in Brazil, I could not be more excited and hope to be able to play there sooner than later.
