*This is a touching tribute to the indomitable spirit of something of something-or-other, but whether it's Brazil, London, or both, I dunno.
*Worth it just to discover the missing link between Gilberto Gil and Hawkwind.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jul/15/gilberto-gil-caetano-veloso-london
"It's August 1970 and there are 600,000 people in a field in the Isle of Wight watching the biggest music festival that has ever been held. They will, over the course of the five-day event, witness performances from the Who, the Doors, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, and the last show by Jimi Hendrix.
"But headlining the second day are two anonymous Brazilians, joined by a troupe of naked dancers draped in red plastic. The pair start chanting in Portuguese, accompanied by African drums and jazz flute. Then they plug in their guitars and play a crazed set mixing psychedelic rock, funk and samba.
"The two men are Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso. It will be some time before they are filling arenas around the world or, in Gil's case, serving as a minister in the Brazilian government. (((And if you think Gil and Veloso's scene was heavy, you oughta check out the 70s bio of this mainstream Brazilian presidential candidate:)))
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilma_Rousseff
"In early 1969, the Minas Gerais branch of COLINA was limited to a dozen militants, with little money and few weapons. Its activities had boiled down to four bank robberies, some stolen cars and two bombings, with no casualties. On January 14, however, after the arrest of some militants during a bank robbery, the rest of them gathered to debate what they would do in order to release them from jail. At dawn, the police invaded the group's house and the militants responded by using a machine gun, which killed two policemen and wounded another.
"Dilma and Galeno then began to sleep each night on a different location, since their apartment was visited by one of the leaders of the organization that had been arrested. They had to go back to their home hidden in order to destroy the organization's documents. On March 1969, the apartment was invaded by the police..."
(((But, uhm, back to the groovy musicians instead of the armed economics student.)))
"In the summer of 1970 they are merely exotic fixtures on London's underground scene, jamming with Hawkwind and hanging out in art galleries, hippy communes and music festivals.
"I was astonished to discover how big these guys were," says Nik Turner from Hawkwind. "They seemed so humble, so generous, so eager to jam with anyone."
"Only two years earlier, Veloso and Gil had been two of Brazil's biggest pop stars, leading lights in the slyly subversive Brazilian psychedelic rock scene Tropicália. That was until the military dictatorship decided they were a threat. In December 1968 they were arrested in São Paulo. They had their heads shaved, spent two months in prison and a further four months under house arrest.
"The military wanted us to leave the country," says Veloso. "They let us play a concert to raise money for a plane ticket." As the rest of the world watched the moon landings on 21 July 1969, Veloso and Gil were preparing to leave Brazil. They wouldn't return for another three years. (((Only in Brazil are you allowed to jam in order to earn money for your own exile.)))
"Our manager went to Europe ahead of us to check where we would live," says Gil. "Lisbon and Madrid were out of the question as Portugal and Spain were under a heavy dictatorship. Paris had a boring musical ambience. London was the best place for a musician to be."
"Gil and Veloso, their manager, and their respective wives, ended up living in a house at 16 Redesdale Street, Chelsea, London, a place visiting Brazilian friends would call "the Sixteen Chapel". Together they frequented museums, art galleries and football matches, and learned to love Monty Python's Flying Circus – Veloso says its surrealism influenced some of his more experimental music.
"Veloso was depressed and homesick throughout his first year in London, while Gil was rather more upbeat. "We arrived the week the Beatles released Abbey Road, we saw the Rolling Stones at the Roundhouse, we jammed with great musicians, we met great people, we heard reggae for the first time," he says. "The fact you could walk up to a policeman and ask directions – in Brazil that just doesn't happen!"
"While in prison Gil had adopted a macrobiotic diet and started meditating and investigating eastern mysticism. He arrived on a London hippy scene that shared his new interests, and quickly struck up relationships with many of the capital's key countercultural figures, including the anarchic journalist and singer Mick Farren, and Turner and Thomas Crimble of Hawkwind.
"Through Crimble, Gil got involved with a group of well-to-do bohemians who were setting up what would become the first proper Glastonbury festival...."
