Those were the early days of internet, especially in
Brazil.
Luckily, I was an engineer student in a Federal
University in Curitiba. Internet in Brazil was a privilege of some universities
(mine included), so I had access to the web. And I had e-mail.
It was the early days of 1996 and I was working as a
student researcher in the AI lab of my college. It was boring, and I loved rock´n´roll,
as all smart and bored kids did. Since 1993, after a disastrous attempt to play
an RPG game at a friend´s house, I met the band that would change my life
forever, Bad Religion (@badreligionband). How I met the band is a long and
different story, but since then I became a huge fan and started a punk rock
band thanks to them.
Well, back to the lab and the e-mail access, after
long hours of research, and thanks to the naivety reigning on the early days of
the web, I managed to find out the e-mail of Bad Religion´s manager at the
time, Michele Ceazan (@monsqueeze). So I wrote her.
I can´t remember the content of the e-mail in details,
and unfortunately I was not smart enough to save it, but basically I was
telling Michele that it was a shame that Bad Religion had never played in
Brazil, and that they should do it ASAP once they had a huge fan basis down
here. Her answer was unexpected and cute: “Nobody ever asked us to come down
and play”. Well, I had a mission. As I was already involved on the underground
punk rock scene in Curitiba, I found some names and contacts and sent it to her.
My memory sucks, so I´ll never remember if it was
thanks to the contacts I provided or not, but later that year, two days after
playing in Sao Paulo as one of the bands at a festival called Close Up Planet,
which had the Sex Pistols as headliners (of course I was there), my favorite
band in the world was playing in my home town, less than a mile from home. They
didn´t play in Rio, Belo Horizonte or any other big capitals in Brazil. They
played at Curitiba, and that was everything.
The place was called Aeroanta and Michele asked me to
come by the sound check and meet the guys. Well, no need to tell what it means
to a kid that loves a band, and started a band thanks to them, to meet his
idols. So in the afternoon of December 1st 1996, I was at the
parking lot of Aeroanta, waiting for Michele to call me in.
I brought a demo tape and a terrible homemade T-shirt
of Confusion Oba!, my band at the time. I gave it to Greg Graffin
(@greggraffin) and got a baseball cap of the band in return. I took pictures
with the guys (as you can see), and only Graffin is missing, because of the
unfortunate decision of taking the picture with my now ex-girlfriend (one
should always find a way to take a backup picture alone for every major event
when under 30s). Jay Bentley (@jaybentleys) was the one I spent more time with,
talking about Harley Davidson motorcycles, a shared passion.
Minutes before the soundcheck, both Gregs asked me
which song I would like to hear later that night. I took my chances giving the
guys 3 options, my 3 all-time favorites then, You, Portrait of Authority and I
can´t remember the third. But I do remember they looking at each other and
saying in unison “Portrait”. And so they played it. I was unbelievably
overwhelmed that night. Jumped, danced, sang like a maniac. I remember getting
home, taking my guitar and writing like half a dozen songs. That´s how inspired
I was by my idols.
After
that I´ve seen the guys playing, in all different formations, for more than 10
times. But they never played Portrait of Authority again, at least not on my
watch.
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