Alright already. Here’s the last of my three-part chronicle of Watts’ tour of Brazil. I was there…
Depending on who you ask, the population of Bellingham is between 65 and 80 thousand. And, again, depending on who you ask (and maybe even what time of day you ask them) the population of Sao Paulo, Brazil is between 15 and 21 million. Call it 17, give or take a few. Million. A few million people.
Flying into Sao Paulo the morning after BigShow in Goiania, hung savagely over and wondering what that weird smell was, we had no idea what to expect. EL, Dog and Dave Crider (King of America) had toured Mexico City with the Mono Men and talked about how a significant perimeter of that city—millions’ worth—was cardboard & tinroof poverty that defied description. Landing in Sao Paulo was like dropping into a monochromatic Lego city that stretched as far as the eye could see—from five thousand feet!
Like Goiania, Sao Paulo is totally indoor/outdoor. There are no doors that swing open & shut. Rather, everyplace has a roll-up garage door, creating a very inviting & open atmosphere. It’s easy to wander through shops & galleries or pull up at a chrome lunch counter in one of any of the thousands of tiled cafes to point dumbly at pasteries, meat pies, fresh fruit juices and, of course, Pinga.
On our first night in Sao Paulo we were enjoying some Pinga at one of these cafés with Fabricio, Marco, Jorge from MQN & Jello, the manager of the Forgotten Boys, when a pair of sideways Brazilian pilots descended upon us to practice their English. The better speaker of the two told me he was no longer a pilot, actually, that he had been fired from his job at a commercial airline for allowing a stewardess to land a plane. When it was disclosed that we were an American rock band with the night off, he insisted that we would play an impromptu show at his friend’s 2,000-seat theatre where there would be an abundance of beautiful women. Fuckin’Braimes.com explained to him that the band was very tired and in need of a night off from beautiful women, but that they might be persuaded to perform for the right price, that being 2,000 royale, half of which would need to be delivered before we would even consider getting off our barstools. On the opposite side of the café they gestured wildly and ranted in Portuguese into their cellphones before leaving, winking & wailing on air guitars, to get the money. Of course they never returned.
The first actual show in Sao Paulo, the next night, would have best been left similarly unplayed. But how could we know?
The day started innocently enough with a relay trip across the vast city. Feet gave way to a city bus and then to the subway—clean, quick & cool—to an area our guides described as “downtown.” Like so many other concepts we were never able to fully comprehend, the idea of downtown in a city like Sao Paulo eluded us. Everywhere we went seemed like “downtown.” This particular downtown was a shopping district, lined with vertical malls specializing in one theme or another. That’s how the commercial areas of Sao Paulo are organized: by ware. One street is nothing but clothing stores, the next only musical equipment, then just textiles.
The Galleria where we were going was like a Gearhead Pacific Place. One level was all punk rock stores, the next all garage, another was all metal. There were actually stores devoted entirely to a single band—a Ramones store, a KISS store (fuckin’Braimes pooped), a Sepultura store. It was Wednesday afternoon, and the place was full of Brazilian hipsters hangin’ out, shopping & smoking or getting tattoos in one of the dozens of ink shops. Weren’t these kids supposed to be in school or something? It was like the headquarters for the Sao Paulo rock ‘n’ roll underground! We spent the afternoon there, smiling & struggling through broken conversations, signing autographs and posing for photos with friendly proprietors. Beer:30 was observed in one of the Galleria cafes and Crider & Braimes finally got tattooed in the early evening, after several rounds of negotiations, and we hopped a cab to the gig.
Something about the Juke Joint didn’t feel quite right from the first minute inside, but I excused the sensation as indigestion and retired to the bar to get comfortable. Someone from Bolivia showed up and we got even more comfortable. And then it happened— the one thing I knew was capable of vaporizing the delicate balance WATTS had been able to achieve thus far. While tuning up before going on, Crider broke a string on his guitar. While the rest of the band waited at their posts, he borrowed something that looked like a guitar, and the band lurched into a nearly-indistinguishable version of ‘Cool American’ during which Crider broke a string on the borrowed guitar. While he was securing a third, the rest of the band limped through ‘Took That Thing,’ but it was clear they were taking on water. I wasn’t surprised to see Braimes spike the mic on the stage and saunter off in the direction of the bar halfway into ‘Starfucker,’ Crider’s guitar honking & hissing. A version of ‘One Shot’ with Chris Watts singing sans amplification, preceded apologies in Portuguese (despuche) before dismounting. The crowd, of course, loved it…
The next show in Sao Paulo, on Friday night at a club called Orbital, made up for the disaster, however. MQN’s drummer had finals in Goiania and had been unable to make the trip, so Dog rehearsed with the band that day and did the show, which was amazing. Thee Butchers followed with an ironic & sentimental set (see unabridged version) before WATTS came on just before 3am. Braimes had taken a 400-mile roundtrip bus journey to the beach that day and his shorts were full of sand. Dude was always about a shot of Pinga away from a compound fracture the entire trip, this night surfing high on the palms of the crowd, smashing the ceiling-mounted lightbulbs with a bottle of Budweiser. Crider jumped off the stage, too, with his guitar on, dragging a borrowed Marshall head with him into the drink. And El Morto laughed and sweat like the very Devil…
Things were winding down. Pulling out of Sao Paulo the next morning, dragging the keys to the city behind the van, I contemplated the events of the previous ten days and wondered how my life as a bank president in a northwestern town could ever be the same. I’d gotten fairly proficient at my new job of being aloof & irresponsible, and my accent was really starting to take form. But goddamn, was I wrung out. I looked around the van and could see that WATTS was feeling the mileage, too. El Morto had mis-calculated his disposable wardrobe and was wearing his last outfit, again; Chris Watts was deep & drooling in a day coma, his eyes only three-quarters shut; someone had drawn a smiley face on the white t-shirt Dog had draped over his head to shut out the sun, making him look like Casper the Nappy Ghost; Braimes had a bruise covering his left elbow & forearm the shape and approximate size of Brazil itself; and Dave Crider, the King of America, slumped in his seat, chin-to-chest, swaying side to side with the rolling of the van as it lumbered toward the last show in Sao Carlos.
Two hundred miles north of Sao Paulo, Sao Carlos was definitely the piece we’d been missing from our Brazilian puzzle. The architecture we’d seen so far had been almost exclusively contemporary, but here was a small town with narrow streets and ancient churches. The place where the show was being held was one of the oldest buildings in Sao Carlos, and had been the home of the city’s founder. It was now owned by the University, which used it as a kind of cultural arts center. Dilapidated, but very sexy, it had twenty-foot ceilings and ornate columns, rich mahogany trim and a marble staircase.
The scene here was very different from the rock clubs in the more cosmopolitan cities. This was a 3rd world college crowd that had no idea whatsoever what to do at a rock concert. It was incredibly packed, and getting to the kitchen to purchase a beer plucked from a cooler was difficult. The local band that played for what seemed like a triple eternity was bad beyond comprehension and I sensed the collective slowing of breathing amongst our entourage.
Dog performed with MQN again, and it was probably that set that turned things around that night, because WATTS was on fire, maybe the best show of the tour. Possibly it was the realization that this was the end of it, that we were going home tomorrow, or maybe it was the absence of the pretensions that characterize rock clubs the world over. Or just maybe it was the fact that the hillbilly college kids of Sao Carlos really did get it after all— but the show was really fun and terrifically-received, and melancholy hung in the stale air afterward as we embraced friends we had never met before and would never meet again.
Admiring the rising sun hours later, I wondered how much of the trip had been real and how much had been hallucination. Deciding that it really didn’t make a fuck’s difference was very liberating. I was there-- of this much I was certain— and I pulled down my blinders and slid to sleep in the brilliant morning light.
--Callous French