Watts vs. Brazil

Don’t ask them how, but WATTS recently did a ten-day tour of Brazil, and What’sup’s very own Callous French dragged along with the band through South America’s biggest country, to document the madness. Here is the first in a three-part epic of sickness.

I could draw worse assignments.

It’s not every loud, clumsy rock band that gets a chance to tour Brazil, and not every aging “journalist” that gets an opportunity to accompany them. So when WATTS invited me along on their conquest of the 3rd world, I scribbled out a quick will and started brushing up on my Spanish.

The Spanish didn’t turn out to be too helpful, as the national language in Brazil is Portuguese. But I was comforted on several occasions by the fact that my signed will was folded neatly on my desk at home. As it turns out, Brazil is in South America, about fifty thousand miles from Bellingham, Washington. And there were definitely a couple of times when I thought I was going to have to use my feet to get home.

The trip was sponsored by the mysterious head of Monstro Discos, Fabricio Nobre, an Estrus fanatic who wanted the Mono Men but settled for WATTS. In addition to re-releasing the band’s 1999 album, booking the tour and arranging for “sponsors” to cover travel expenses, F would serve as an invaluable interpreter/babysitter/drinkingbuddy throughout the tour. We would test him perpetually, starting with not getting off the plane in Goiania.

We’d known it was going be a hellish trip-- almost 30 hours door-to-door including the crippling layovers-- but we hadn’t counted on the Bonehead de la Americana move we would execute in Belo Horizonte, where we accidentally disembarked when we were supposed to have remained on the plane. All six of us. Without ever considering for one moment that we were dangerously separating ourselves from all our checked baggage & guitars, all of which proceeded stoically to Goiania without us.

In retrospect, we should probably have been more intimate with our itinerary, which, upon reexamination later clearly showed that we were to remain on the aircraft. But this revelation came sorrowfully late, and we were left to lie upon the floor of Belo Horizonte International while Nicole, the only English-speaking attendant at the TAM Airlines counter, diligently booked a series of alternate flights and a taxi to take us 50 kilometers across town to the domestic airport, basically a bus station w/ airplanes.

This cabride was to be our first time on non-airport Brazilian soil, and appropriately, the driver spoke no English. This did not deter (King of America) Dave Crider.

“What are they building?” he asked in a raised voice that was already starting to take on the hint of a Latin accent. “What is the name of the cow?”

The cabby would only shrug, making the rest of us very uncomfortable, as there was no spare room in the tiny KIA for shrugging, with 7 of us plus carry-ons. Immediately upon leaving the airport property, the slick asphalt road had dissolved into a leopard print of pits and pots. Our driver sped directly down the middle of the 2-lane road, which wound up-and-down, side-to-side through green fields, the occasional spray-painted cinder block village popping up like images in a shooting gallery.

Now, we needed a half-hour cramped taxi ride at this moment like we needed hepatitis. We were midway through our second day without sleep already, and at least A.Dog, me & fuckin’Braimes.com were reeling pretty good from closing down the flight from Miami the night before.

“There is no more wine,” had said Leona, using most of the English she knew.

“How about a scotch & soda, then?”

“I am sorry,” she’d said, smiling, making her way back to the attendant’s cabin where the rest of the flight crew was sleeping. Christ, everyone else on the flight was sleeping except us three and maybe the pilot. We’d been playing liar’s poker, and Dog had a huge pile of dollar bills on his fold-down tray. We beat the service button like a drum.

“Johnny Walker?”

Eventually they stopped answering the buzzer altogether, and Dog retired to the lavatory to stretch out for the last two hours of the flight. They were happy to be rid of our rummy American asses when the plane mercifully touched down in Sau Paulo at 6 a.m., Brazilian time.  

Customs can be a pressure cooker, but usually only when returning to the States. Lily-white American contraband generally is not of great interest to the balance of the world unless there is money to be made from the confiscation of it. Drug traffic is obviously heavier going north, but if you come swishing through with a box of 45s, priced, they’re going to want their cut. The entourage cleared customs without episode—all except for fuckin’Braimes, who hadn’t even reached customs before dude was screaming at him in Portuguese. There was a form distributed on the flight that was supposed to be filled out and presented prior to customs, and Braimes, in his drunkenness, thought it was an all-star ballot. So he wrote in Daryl Strawberry and returned it to the stewardess, who was probably all-too-happy to dispose of it for him, knowing what showing up to the counter without it would mean. It took 20 minutes for an English-speaking airport employee to be summoned to hold the confused singer’s hand through this first gauntlet and to customs, where he had considerably less trouble.

Dig, we were en-route to a foreign land. Being naïve Americans, we assumed everyone in Brazil would speak English. We could not have been more wrong. The fact is that most Brazilians speak no English. Some speak some, and a few speak English very well. Had we known this, we might have drilled on some Portuguese, but as it turned out, only Chris Watts had bothered to download and rehearse any phrases that seemed useful. “I have broken my glasses,” “my gums are bleeding,” and “what do you have in an egg dish” were a few that he practiced in the airports, rolling his R’s like a Fred Flintstone strike in a pre-historic Brazilian bowling alley.

At first blush, the only sane one in the group appeared to be the enigmatic El Morto. I would find out otherwise very soon. I should have had an idea as to the depths of his depravity when he got in the van in Bellingham with a dufflebag of disposable outfits, individually wrapped & labeled w/ the date he intended to wear them. When he got up in the morning, he simply unwrapped the day’s package and dressed, not looking to the side where yesterday’s clothing was concerned. El Morto would leave a trail of once-worn shirts & shorts strewn across the enormous country of Brazil. By the time he arrived home, he would have only the clothes on his back and ass.

It would be 38 hours before we eventually stopped moving-- eight airports, seven planes, two taxis, and a whole lot of drinking & giggling. I felt as though I had already toured the world on the handlebars of a dirt bike, and we were only just now crouching into the starting blocks.

Next month: tage ov you are panz!   

This is a test Travel post

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