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We just got back to SP last night from our mini tour through the northern part of Sao Paulo.  Very little sleep, lots of Skol, some great shows, lots of great people.  So last we wrote was after Sao Carlo, which was a wild night.  The guys we were staying with took us by the local college radio station in the morning where they all work.  It was incredible, the entire station is run on Linux with open source software and they play all genres of music, mostly local bands.  They are trying to build up the station and are a huge part of supporting local msuic, Jason and Anne had alot of fun talking with them as they were also involved with their local college radio back in Michigan.  We saw alot of people there from the show the night before, so it was a good way to refresh on names and faces.  Sao Carlo was a beautiful place.

We headed next to Araraquara to play at a place called Caibar.  We first headed over to the venue.  We had some time to kill so I juggled, Dan ran laps, Sergio smoked crack out of his phone, and Jason and Anne napped.  We found out we were the only band playing that night, met Junior who was the booker, and unloaded our stuff.  We then went and checked into one of the creepier hotels I've ever been in (they had postd signs that warned of scorpians), and we all more or less passed out for a while as we were still pretty beat up from the night before.  We woke up about 30 minutes before we were supposed to go on and when we got to the club we were sort of still asleep and kind of sour.  The stage there had big yellow X's on it where someone had fallen through it a couple nights before.  We were told to please not step there.  Lots of technical difficulties here, as has been the case mostly everywhere.  But that shit is our forte.

We played a more spacey set which matched our mood.  It was a big place, but there were only about 50-60 people there.  Apparently we were way too loud and it appeared that everyone left, but what really happened is that most people just hung out towards the back of the club in the lounge area.  We thought it might have been a dud but once again, we were approached by a bunch of people afterwards telling us how much they loved it.  We signed some cds, hung out for a while, then went to Habibs (some sort of Brazilian-Middle Eastern fast food joint) for some burgers and pizza.  Bad move, most of us felt like shit the next morning.  Also, when we woke up in the hotel the next morning most f us were covered with bugs.  We got the funk out.

OK, we headed to Ribeira Preto next, which translates to "Black Stream",  The place was grimy.  We headed to the hotel we were supposed to stay at, which looked to be worse than th one the night before so we said "Awwww hell nah".  They told us there was a nicer version of the same hotel down the street and we should check that one out.  When we got there, there was yellow police tape across the entrance, no bullshit.  So we found a much nicer hotel and checked in.

Jason tried to find the pool but found out it was some kind of practical joke for gringoes.  Thre was no pool.  We napped again, but this time it was nice.  We headed over to the venue, LIVER ROCK POWER.  The owner was the man, he appeared to be extremely drunk, but we later found out he was mostly just Irie.  There was a 14 year old gil there waiting for us.  She wasn't old enough to see the show, but she just came down to get our autographs and take pictures with us.  It was our teeniebopper moment.

We ended up going on, again, at like 2 AM.  The place was dead empty when we started (the two opening bands were ... interesting), but it filled up decently by the time we were done with our first song.  We played really well, people seemed to like it lot.  We were planning to play without Dan actually because he was too busy making out with a young Brazilian chick on a pool table upstairs and we didn't want to cblock, know what I'm sayin?  But bros before caminhoes (portugese for truck), so he came down and played.  Also, apparently some american hating jealous dude was there and tried to fight Dan before getting kicked out by the owner because he was trying to flirt with the girl as well.  We later found the guy outside waiting to jump Dan as we were leaving.  Sergio, Jason, the owner and I had to cross our arms and form a human wall as Dan snuck past us into the van with his hunny.  We dropped her off down the street, dan said goodbye with body language since she didn't speak a word of english, and we headed back to the hotel.  We ate some kickin crossaints.  I also learned that they show some pretty awful shit on cigarette packs in Brazil.  I won't mention specifics but it made me naseous.

Sooo, then off to Kingston (Limeira).  Gotta go, I'll hopefully write aboutlast night later.  It was incredible though.