Ketamina is a band from Sao Paulo, Brazil, which blends, among other styles, punk from the 77, oi! and Celtic punk. I knew the band in 2008 when I found in MySpace that they were sharing free their first album, “Pode vir me internar”. Recently they have released a new EP, “Whisky You’re the Devil”. The following interview has been made by e-mail:
Hi Fábio, thanks for answering our questions.
First of all, you have already shared the stage with punk and Oi! bands such as The Toy Dolls, The Vibrators, Cockney Rejects, 999 or The Lurkers. What have you learnt from them?
With those bands we’ve learnt to go crazy hah, hah, hah,
I can’t explain the feelings when we shared the stage with Lurkers. They were the craziest band with whom we have ever shared the dressing-room. Arturo, Dave Kemp and Nellie are very amazing people, we drunk and laughed a lot in their tour here in Brazil. The memories are the best possible ones.
We played with Toy Dolls in 2006, we were too young and that was fantastic for us: we were sharing the stage with a band that we have always listened to and have always enjoyed! Drinking with Olga was a dream that came true. He is very funny all the time, that guy rocks!
The most important thing that we learned was to set long life to the Punk Rock. We are from different generations, us and them. I looked at them playing and thought “Fuck! I can keep on playing easily Punk Rock for 30 years! These guys are fucking cool!
By the way, we have seen that you played a tribute to the Toy Dolls gig in Brazil. Toy Dolls are maybe an under-rated band, but they are excellent musicians and play songs whose lyrics are very funny. They are one of my favorite bands too. Do you play often some of their songs in your gigs?
Sure, of course we play Toy Dolls! We are Toy Dolls hardcore fans! A funny fact is that we have never rehearsed “Dig that Groove”, but we play it in every concert! Ha-ha.
They were very excellent people when we played together in 2006. Ketamina was always influenced by Toy Dolls. Most of our songs have choruses that are influenced by them; the funny side in our concerts is all their fault ha-hah.
When I was a teenager I listened a lot to the Toy Dolls. Olga is a fucking creative man. They are one of my favorite bands and I hope to share a concert with them again, someday, in Brazil or in any other place in the world.
If you could choose, which will be the bands with which you would like to share the stage? (punk, Oi! or Celtic punk bands from all over the World)
We would like to share the stage with any other band from any other place in the world, providing that the band is an underground band. We have no preferences for bands, if we have gig, we are ready to play.
I would like very much to share the stage with The Pogues someday , not only for the band, that is wonderful, but specially for Spider Stacy who has supported us very much. He is always writing us and praising us; we are really glad with that, and of course, we would like to play with them too, to get drunk together and to see Shane’s smile ha-ha.
It would also be a dream to share the stage with bands such as:
The Macc Lads, Agitators, Sham 69, Blanks 77, Dropkick Murphys, Street Dogs, Cock Sparrer…
You are from Brazil, which is not really a country with strong Celtic traditions. How did you discover the Irish Punk or Celtic Punk? Which are the bands of this genre that have had some influences on the Ketamina sound?
I discovered it looking for different things to listen to. I have always listened to country and old rock n’ roll, and then I discovered the Irish Punk and the Traditional Punk I thought “Man, this is incredible, very good”. I started listening to The Pogues and Dropkick Murphys, so they are among the bands that have influenced us in this genre, together with the Dubliners, the Clancy Brothers, the Skels ,the Tossers, The Irish Rovers, the Popes and the Street Dogs, that are great. I have always been a Mike Colgan’s fan!
Can you tell us if there is any other band playing this kind of music in Brazil? We know Maltz (but we don’t know if they are still active), Terra Celta (Celtic rock) and Tuatha De Dannan (Celtic metal). More bands?
There is an awesome band named “Os Contribuintes” ( “The Taxpayers”), which is a side project of Mauro, the former bass player of another excellent Brazilian band, The Blind Pigs. This band was more Punk Rock, but “Os Contribuintes” perform a very well done Irish Punk. This is the link to their MySpace page:
www.myspace.com/oscontribuintes
We’ll have to check them, thanks for the lead.
We have noticed that all your discography (demos, album, single) is available free on the Internet. You are sharing your music with your fans on LastFm and on MySpace. What would you say to those bands which are against sharing their music free on the Internet? Do you think that it has been a positive experience for Ketamina?
Yeah, very positive! Music is culture, music is art. Art and culture must flow without any frontier, and the internet is exactly this, art and culture without barriers. I don’t know what to say to the bands that are against it, but for Ketamina it has always worked. We are an independent band, our CDs can’t arrive in other states and other countries; the easiest way for us do that is making them available free in the net. It’s better to have a thousand downloads than just a hundred copies sold.
I feel that the best thing would be to go everywhere and listen to someone singing one of our songs.
The last track on “Pode Vir me Internar”, “Uma Noite em Dublin” has two hidden tracks, a punk number and an acoustic cover (“Fields of Athenry”). First of all, which is the title of the punk song? Secondly, why did you decide to play an acoustic rendition of “Fields of Athenry”, a song that has already been covered by Neck, Greenland Whalefishers and Dropkick Murphys? Have you heard all of those covers?
The song is named “Quero ser” ( “ I Wanna Be”…), This song can be found in our first demo, “Até o fim!” , and we decided to include it as a bonus track in the CD.
“Fields of Athenry” is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever listened to, we really love it, and we have a punk version of it. However, I decided to perform it just in the acoustic guitar because it fits very well all the rhythms I’ve listened.
Regarding the covers, I’ve listened to all of them, some are better than the others, but my favorite one is the Dropkick Murphys rendition.
Your discography has followed a remarkable evolution. “Pode Vir Me Internar” had 16 tracks. 25% of the album (tracks 2, 7, 15 and 16) were Celtic Punk songs and 75% of the album were punk and Oi! Songs. Your brand new single is a 100% Celtic punk recording. What can we expect from the second album? More Celtic punk than punk?
I don’t think so. Maybe the idea for the single was to make it 100% Irish. It's what we like and we wanted to release something like this to show this side of us. The second album should come with the same feeling of the first one. It will have a nice mix of Punk, Oi! and Irish Punk, let’s say with the same approach that the Street Dogs works. They do a fucking blend of all the ingredients that they listen to, and this is exactly what we do, we blend in just one album all the music we like to listen to.
Regarding your set list, we would like to know if you play Irish traditional songs in your shows (Dubliners songs or songs that The Pogues made popular)
We play “Dice Riley”, “Fields of Athenry” and now with the single, “Whisky you’re the Devil” is in our set list too. All the songs are our own version.
On “Pode Vir me Internar” Joby and Skeeter were guests and the core of the band was Fábio, Flávio and Víctor. Now on the single and on the new pictures on MySpace you are four. Can we say that Joby is now a full member of the band?
Yeah, Joby is definitively in the band. During the “Pode vir me internar” recording sessions only Skeeter was there playing Tin Whistle in “Bob Está de Volta” (“Bob is Back”…), Joby didn’t join us at the recording, but got into the band during the releasing concert of “Pode vir me internar”, since that day he became the youngest member in the Beergang! Hah, hah.
Where did Joby learn to play the bagpipes? By the way, which kind of bagpipes does he play?
(Joby) I play the Great Highland Bagpipes (GHB), which is a Scottish bagpipes, but there are still more kind o' pipes in Scotland.
I dunno why, but when I heard the pipes for the first time, they took my attention, and somehow they touched me! It was in some cartoon, and then in some movies, but I had never seen them in front of me before! Time passed and one mate o' mine, Thiago Scavazini, started to learn the pipes here in Sao Paulo.
And I was listening a lot o' Dropkick Murphys stuff at that time. So me and Thiago began to play covers of 'em, in a band we had! Then I began to listen to some traditional Scottish tunes, and asked Thiago to teach me; he gave me the contact of the same instructor that he had. That was my initiation on pipes, it was almost 3 years ago I think, so I have a lot to learn yet.
Today , apart from playing with Ketamina, I play in a traditional pipe band called St. Andrew Society Of São Paulo Pipes & Drums (SASPD)
http://saspd.blogspot.com/
We guess that you have played mainly in Sao Paulo and its region. Have you also toured other Brazilian towns or even Uruguay or Argentina?
We have already played in other Brazilian states and in other towns in the São Paulo State. The reception is warm here! People drink, have a lot of fun in total tranquility… The gigs are always better, and we always drink with the people before and after the show, which leaves us worn out, ha-ha
Unfortunately, we have never travelled out of Brazil.
We know that you would like to fly across the ocean and play in Europe. The Brazilian audience is really passionate and enjoys the music, as you have already said. What do you expect from the European audience?
The expectations are the best possible ones! European people are very receptive, we have some contacts over there, and everybody is asking us to go there soon, ha-ha.
That’s exactly what we want too, we are waiting for more contacts in order to play in many places as possible. Whoever wants to contact Ketamina for a future show in a European tour, please send an email to contatoketamina@gmail.com.
Which European countries would you like to tour?
In every possible country! We have contacts in Belgium, Ireland, England, Spain, Germany… But we really want to play everywhere in Europe.
I think that the audiences in Italy, Portugal and Spain would understand easily our lyrics, ha-ha.
You have mentioned that you have already had some contacts with other European bands through the Internet. Which are the European Celtic punk bands with whom you would like to share the stage?
Yeah, I have talked with some bands. There are some very good bands with whom we would like to share the stage, Celtic punk and punk bands too, such as Agitators, FunBug, Pogues, and many other bands we don’t know yet.
I have a close contact with Bart, from Agitators (Belgium); Spider Stacy from The Pogues is a fantastic person, Funbug from England too. They are more in the Toy Dolls style, a very good band! I have also talked with the Lurkers guys… we are always keeping in touch with Europe.
Who are the Drunken Lads? A side-project? Do you intend to record an album or is it only a live band?
Drunken Lads is a side project of me, Victor and Joby. Me and Joby in the acoustic guitars and Victor in a drum box. We play versions of folk and Irish traditional music that we enjoy. It is a different project, totally acoustic. Drunken Lads are a little bit frozen because of Ketamina engagements and the little time we have, but at the beginning our idea was to play in pubs for Guinness and fish and chips as payment, ha-ha.
Regarding a future recording, we wish to rehearse some songs and record’em. When all will be a little bit calmer, we will be back to this project, cause our real priority is Ketamina.
Saint Patrick’s Day is coming. Are you going to play a special show?
Yeah, we are gonna play a St. Patrick concert in a place in Sao Paulo named CB. It’s very nice there and they have some good beers. We’ll play a nice set list featuring a lot of folk punk numbers for the crowd.
This concert is a Ketamina partnership with, CB and Ataque Frontal. The São Paulo people will be welcome there next March, 17. LET’S GO!
Finally two “stupid” questions:
Brahma, Heineken or Guinness?
Guinness is a passion of mine, but Heineken works sometimes...
Which teams will play the next World Cup final in South Africa this Summer and who will be the champion?
There are 32 teams, among them the strong England, Spain, France, Argentina, Portugal, Ivory Coast…
I would like Brazil to win the World cup 2014, which will be held here in Brazil… It would be fucking great for us that the Brazilian team wins the world cup at home!
But when the South Africa’s Cup is over, I want to shout “Hexa Champion!” hah, hah, hah.
Thanx, Kinksmarkham, my dear friend for the interview and for the support.
Thanks again to Fábio and Joby for answering these questions. And , why not, we expect to find in the next album a “Nellie the Elephant” cover featuring Joby’s pipes or even “The Ashbrooke Launderette” with that “Keel Row” tune at the end.
www.myspace.com/ketamina77
A German version of this interview can be found here (thanks to Jessy for the translation):
www.celtic-rock.de/archives/5557
.
.
.
Hi Fábio, thanks for answering our questions.
First of all, you have already shared the stage with punk and Oi! bands such as The Toy Dolls, The Vibrators, Cockney Rejects, 999 or The Lurkers. What have you learnt from them?
With those bands we’ve learnt to go crazy hah, hah, hah,
I can’t explain the feelings when we shared the stage with Lurkers. They were the craziest band with whom we have ever shared the dressing-room. Arturo, Dave Kemp and Nellie are very amazing people, we drunk and laughed a lot in their tour here in Brazil. The memories are the best possible ones.
We played with Toy Dolls in 2006, we were too young and that was fantastic for us: we were sharing the stage with a band that we have always listened to and have always enjoyed! Drinking with Olga was a dream that came true. He is very funny all the time, that guy rocks!
The most important thing that we learned was to set long life to the Punk Rock. We are from different generations, us and them. I looked at them playing and thought “Fuck! I can keep on playing easily Punk Rock for 30 years! These guys are fucking cool!
By the way, we have seen that you played a tribute to the Toy Dolls gig in Brazil. Toy Dolls are maybe an under-rated band, but they are excellent musicians and play songs whose lyrics are very funny. They are one of my favorite bands too. Do you play often some of their songs in your gigs?
Sure, of course we play Toy Dolls! We are Toy Dolls hardcore fans! A funny fact is that we have never rehearsed “Dig that Groove”, but we play it in every concert! Ha-ha.
They were very excellent people when we played together in 2006. Ketamina was always influenced by Toy Dolls. Most of our songs have choruses that are influenced by them; the funny side in our concerts is all their fault ha-hah.
When I was a teenager I listened a lot to the Toy Dolls. Olga is a fucking creative man. They are one of my favorite bands and I hope to share a concert with them again, someday, in Brazil or in any other place in the world.
If you could choose, which will be the bands with which you would like to share the stage? (punk, Oi! or Celtic punk bands from all over the World)
We would like to share the stage with any other band from any other place in the world, providing that the band is an underground band. We have no preferences for bands, if we have gig, we are ready to play.
I would like very much to share the stage with The Pogues someday , not only for the band, that is wonderful, but specially for Spider Stacy who has supported us very much. He is always writing us and praising us; we are really glad with that, and of course, we would like to play with them too, to get drunk together and to see Shane’s smile ha-ha.
It would also be a dream to share the stage with bands such as:
The Macc Lads, Agitators, Sham 69, Blanks 77, Dropkick Murphys, Street Dogs, Cock Sparrer…
You are from Brazil, which is not really a country with strong Celtic traditions. How did you discover the Irish Punk or Celtic Punk? Which are the bands of this genre that have had some influences on the Ketamina sound?
I discovered it looking for different things to listen to. I have always listened to country and old rock n’ roll, and then I discovered the Irish Punk and the Traditional Punk I thought “Man, this is incredible, very good”. I started listening to The Pogues and Dropkick Murphys, so they are among the bands that have influenced us in this genre, together with the Dubliners, the Clancy Brothers, the Skels ,the Tossers, The Irish Rovers, the Popes and the Street Dogs, that are great. I have always been a Mike Colgan’s fan!
Can you tell us if there is any other band playing this kind of music in Brazil? We know Maltz (but we don’t know if they are still active), Terra Celta (Celtic rock) and Tuatha De Dannan (Celtic metal). More bands?
There is an awesome band named “Os Contribuintes” ( “The Taxpayers”), which is a side project of Mauro, the former bass player of another excellent Brazilian band, The Blind Pigs. This band was more Punk Rock, but “Os Contribuintes” perform a very well done Irish Punk. This is the link to their MySpace page:
www.myspace.com/oscontribuintes
We’ll have to check them, thanks for the lead.
We have noticed that all your discography (demos, album, single) is available free on the Internet. You are sharing your music with your fans on LastFm and on MySpace. What would you say to those bands which are against sharing their music free on the Internet? Do you think that it has been a positive experience for Ketamina?
Yeah, very positive! Music is culture, music is art. Art and culture must flow without any frontier, and the internet is exactly this, art and culture without barriers. I don’t know what to say to the bands that are against it, but for Ketamina it has always worked. We are an independent band, our CDs can’t arrive in other states and other countries; the easiest way for us do that is making them available free in the net. It’s better to have a thousand downloads than just a hundred copies sold.
I feel that the best thing would be to go everywhere and listen to someone singing one of our songs.
The last track on “Pode Vir me Internar”, “Uma Noite em Dublin” has two hidden tracks, a punk number and an acoustic cover (“Fields of Athenry”). First of all, which is the title of the punk song? Secondly, why did you decide to play an acoustic rendition of “Fields of Athenry”, a song that has already been covered by Neck, Greenland Whalefishers and Dropkick Murphys? Have you heard all of those covers?
The song is named “Quero ser” ( “ I Wanna Be”…), This song can be found in our first demo, “Até o fim!” , and we decided to include it as a bonus track in the CD.
“Fields of Athenry” is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever listened to, we really love it, and we have a punk version of it. However, I decided to perform it just in the acoustic guitar because it fits very well all the rhythms I’ve listened.
Regarding the covers, I’ve listened to all of them, some are better than the others, but my favorite one is the Dropkick Murphys rendition.
Your discography has followed a remarkable evolution. “Pode Vir Me Internar” had 16 tracks. 25% of the album (tracks 2, 7, 15 and 16) were Celtic Punk songs and 75% of the album were punk and Oi! Songs. Your brand new single is a 100% Celtic punk recording. What can we expect from the second album? More Celtic punk than punk?
I don’t think so. Maybe the idea for the single was to make it 100% Irish. It's what we like and we wanted to release something like this to show this side of us. The second album should come with the same feeling of the first one. It will have a nice mix of Punk, Oi! and Irish Punk, let’s say with the same approach that the Street Dogs works. They do a fucking blend of all the ingredients that they listen to, and this is exactly what we do, we blend in just one album all the music we like to listen to.
Regarding your set list, we would like to know if you play Irish traditional songs in your shows (Dubliners songs or songs that The Pogues made popular)
We play “Dice Riley”, “Fields of Athenry” and now with the single, “Whisky you’re the Devil” is in our set list too. All the songs are our own version.
On “Pode Vir me Internar” Joby and Skeeter were guests and the core of the band was Fábio, Flávio and Víctor. Now on the single and on the new pictures on MySpace you are four. Can we say that Joby is now a full member of the band?
Yeah, Joby is definitively in the band. During the “Pode vir me internar” recording sessions only Skeeter was there playing Tin Whistle in “Bob Está de Volta” (“Bob is Back”…), Joby didn’t join us at the recording, but got into the band during the releasing concert of “Pode vir me internar”, since that day he became the youngest member in the Beergang! Hah, hah.
Where did Joby learn to play the bagpipes? By the way, which kind of bagpipes does he play?
(Joby) I play the Great Highland Bagpipes (GHB), which is a Scottish bagpipes, but there are still more kind o' pipes in Scotland.
I dunno why, but when I heard the pipes for the first time, they took my attention, and somehow they touched me! It was in some cartoon, and then in some movies, but I had never seen them in front of me before! Time passed and one mate o' mine, Thiago Scavazini, started to learn the pipes here in Sao Paulo.
And I was listening a lot o' Dropkick Murphys stuff at that time. So me and Thiago began to play covers of 'em, in a band we had! Then I began to listen to some traditional Scottish tunes, and asked Thiago to teach me; he gave me the contact of the same instructor that he had. That was my initiation on pipes, it was almost 3 years ago I think, so I have a lot to learn yet.
Today , apart from playing with Ketamina, I play in a traditional pipe band called St. Andrew Society Of São Paulo Pipes & Drums (SASPD)
http://saspd.blogspot.com/
We guess that you have played mainly in Sao Paulo and its region. Have you also toured other Brazilian towns or even Uruguay or Argentina?
We have already played in other Brazilian states and in other towns in the São Paulo State. The reception is warm here! People drink, have a lot of fun in total tranquility… The gigs are always better, and we always drink with the people before and after the show, which leaves us worn out, ha-ha
Unfortunately, we have never travelled out of Brazil.
We know that you would like to fly across the ocean and play in Europe. The Brazilian audience is really passionate and enjoys the music, as you have already said. What do you expect from the European audience?
The expectations are the best possible ones! European people are very receptive, we have some contacts over there, and everybody is asking us to go there soon, ha-ha.
That’s exactly what we want too, we are waiting for more contacts in order to play in many places as possible. Whoever wants to contact Ketamina for a future show in a European tour, please send an email to contatoketamina@gmail.com.
Which European countries would you like to tour?
In every possible country! We have contacts in Belgium, Ireland, England, Spain, Germany… But we really want to play everywhere in Europe.
I think that the audiences in Italy, Portugal and Spain would understand easily our lyrics, ha-ha.
You have mentioned that you have already had some contacts with other European bands through the Internet. Which are the European Celtic punk bands with whom you would like to share the stage?
Yeah, I have talked with some bands. There are some very good bands with whom we would like to share the stage, Celtic punk and punk bands too, such as Agitators, FunBug, Pogues, and many other bands we don’t know yet.
I have a close contact with Bart, from Agitators (Belgium); Spider Stacy from The Pogues is a fantastic person, Funbug from England too. They are more in the Toy Dolls style, a very good band! I have also talked with the Lurkers guys… we are always keeping in touch with Europe.
Who are the Drunken Lads? A side-project? Do you intend to record an album or is it only a live band?
Drunken Lads is a side project of me, Victor and Joby. Me and Joby in the acoustic guitars and Victor in a drum box. We play versions of folk and Irish traditional music that we enjoy. It is a different project, totally acoustic. Drunken Lads are a little bit frozen because of Ketamina engagements and the little time we have, but at the beginning our idea was to play in pubs for Guinness and fish and chips as payment, ha-ha.
Regarding a future recording, we wish to rehearse some songs and record’em. When all will be a little bit calmer, we will be back to this project, cause our real priority is Ketamina.
Saint Patrick’s Day is coming. Are you going to play a special show?
Yeah, we are gonna play a St. Patrick concert in a place in Sao Paulo named CB. It’s very nice there and they have some good beers. We’ll play a nice set list featuring a lot of folk punk numbers for the crowd.
This concert is a Ketamina partnership with, CB and Ataque Frontal. The São Paulo people will be welcome there next March, 17. LET’S GO!
Finally two “stupid” questions:
Brahma, Heineken or Guinness?
Guinness is a passion of mine, but Heineken works sometimes...
Which teams will play the next World Cup final in South Africa this Summer and who will be the champion?
There are 32 teams, among them the strong England, Spain, France, Argentina, Portugal, Ivory Coast…
I would like Brazil to win the World cup 2014, which will be held here in Brazil… It would be fucking great for us that the Brazilian team wins the world cup at home!
But when the South Africa’s Cup is over, I want to shout “Hexa Champion!” hah, hah, hah.
Thanx, Kinksmarkham, my dear friend for the interview and for the support.
Thanks again to Fábio and Joby for answering these questions. And , why not, we expect to find in the next album a “Nellie the Elephant” cover featuring Joby’s pipes or even “The Ashbrooke Launderette” with that “Keel Row” tune at the end.
www.myspace.com/ketamina77
A German version of this interview can be found here (thanks to Jessy for the translation):
www.celtic-rock.de/archives/5557
.
.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment