Tuesday, November 25, 2008

DAY OFF 1 - Mike

We were originally supposed to play a show in a park tonight, but there were terrential downpours there all day the day before and there was some problem with electricity so the gig was cancelled. Gabriella took us all around the city of Sao Paulo instead. We rode the bus and subway, walked around, got breakfast (we had these Brazilian rolls with cheese bake dinto them), went to a huge marketplace that used to be a train station and ate lunch (mortadella sandwiches) and ice cream. We went shoe shopping. We went to a mall, which was huge, and Anne and Gabby girled out and shopped. We then met up with Eduardo (the other half of Debate) at his house and we made pasta dinner and chilled out, DIDNT drink, and just talked about culture, music and whatnot. It was a perfect chill night to regroup and get our bearings.

Pictures of us were popping up on flickr and in RollingStone. Anne is pretty much always the center of attention, and there were some great shots of her screaming. We read a review of the show by some local columninst thats well respected. He kind of flamed the fest a little, but gave us some props for having really avant guard music that people still were able to connect with. He also said something about our music being depressing, which we thought was funny.

check it ...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eugeniovieira/3053436490/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eugeniovieira/3052602699/in/set-72157609718261424/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ulissesbarbosa/sets/72157609989504092/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/carttilagem/3050834368/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/moralis/page2/ (look down the page)

Theres more popping up hour by hour. If you search around for calumet hecla, calumet-hecla, Sp noise fest, Goinia noise fest and whatnot, you should be able to find some more pix. They were shooting video at the Goinia fest, and we'll hopefully be able to get the footage at some point. And we took lots of pix and some video.

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I have to say something about all the doom and gloom we were hearing about Brazil. I have seen absolutely nothing to make me feel unsafe here at all. So far, at least in the areas we have been in, its like any other city. Watch your shit and stay alert. No big deal.

Brazilians are such a racially diverse people that we don't necessarily stand out much as Americans, at least not on looks alone. I've fooled various people after greeting them with a couple portugese phrases, and they assume I'm Brazlian. There are people here from african, european and latin decent, and every possible mix of those three. Its really an amazing thing to see. The atmosphere is completely laid back, no one becomes hostile to us once they find out we are american. It really is a very cool place. Goiania was a tad bit more brotherly. Sao Paulo is much more like the New York of Brazil, but still not the dangerous place we were made to think it is.

-Mike

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