On the Road to Find Out

This is the story of a recent case in Bahia, Brazil involving a love rival, a contract killer and a bottle of ketchup. Carlos Roberto de Jesús, a convicted felon, was given a decent pay-off in order to take care of “Lupita”, the love rival of Maria whom Maria wanted rid in order to be with her man.

The only problem was Carlos was a little bit fond of Lupita, who he’d had a bit of a relationship with too, so instead of pulling off the killing as planned he decided to tell Lupita what he had been asked to do, and together they decided to stage the murder.

So Carlos had Lupita lie on the floor with bandaged eyes and hands tied behind her back and then he smeared her with ketchup.

Unfortunately for Carlos he didn’t get to keep the reward of 575 US dollars as he was spotted hanging around with Lupita in the town where Maria also lived! Maria went to the police claiming Carlos had stolen the 575 from her, forgetting about the mobile phone pictures, which somehow resulted in all three of them going to jail, Maria for planning a murder and Carlos and Lupita for extortion.

Okay, I realised that maybe I’ve been neglecting this blog a bit because I could be posting a lot more things here. I’m constantly finding out about new music and hearing great bits of information about South American football, and I just had never thought about posting it here. Well, all that is now to change!

I really want to paste a clip of Os Novos Baianos performing Brasil Pandeiro:

This band and specifically the album which this song comes from, Acabou Chorare, have become my favourite thing about Brazilian music. It seems ridiculous that I had never heard of this band before. They seem to have somehow been missed off the radar in England, with all the press going to Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Os Mutantes. Well, I have to say I have been listening religiously to all of these guys, as well as Jorge Ben Jor, Milton Nascimento, Gal Costa, Maria Bethania, Ney Matogrosso, Chico Buarque and the rest, and none of them have produced an album quite as good as Acabou Chorare.

I met a Brazilian in Buenos Aires who told me a little about their story. Apparently they all lived together in a hippie commune in Bahia and had been working on putting out some rock music, when Joao Gilberto came to see them. He had heard that their guitarist was pretty shit hot. Anyway, story goes that he told them to give up the rock music and instead stick to Bossa Nova, and I’m pretty sure that was the moment when the template of all Brazilian popular music was born. There is a beautiful mix in their music between the bossa nova melodies allied with some real rock riffs, as well as the three very different voices that share vocal duties throughout. They’re also quite willing to add in some samba beats when necessary, and I think all of this is on show in Brasil Pandeiro. Trying to watch that video clip without smiling is a near impossibility!

For the past 6 weeks I had been growing a beard for absolutely no reason. If there was a reason it was laziness. But maybe there was more to it than that. I began to look for the answers. I eventually found some sheer wisdom from the great Graham Taylor himself (at the time he was discussing the increasing beardage of Roy Keane):

“I do think there is a psychological thing about people who grow beards for no reason.”

“People may laugh at this and say it is absolutely silly, but he changed his personality when that beard was grown. My wife will tell you the truth. When I saw the beard I told her there were problems. I do think there is a psychological problem when people grow beards for no reason. I can’t believe they do it.”

Not one to fly against the logic of Taylor´s thought, it was clear I had to do something about it. This was how bad it had got:

Psychological trauma can be seen all over that face. I can´t believe I let it get so bad. I decided the best way to take off the beard was to do it in stages, trying to imitate as many football managers as I could in the process. As it was I completely failed, my Bic was not up to the job and Souness´s hair was just to radiant. I had visions of a Rafa Benitez goatee, Sam Allardyce with Hitler moustache, the hi-tec visions of Gavin Peacock perched on my chin. Instead, I ended up with these:

Dave Navarro – Has a famous footballer ever had a beard like this? I´m not too sure, maybe it´s a bit too rock.

As much as I want to fight it, maybe there is a touch of Phil Brown in this moustache. Come to think of it, after Phil Brown grew that moustache, the Hull team did seem to completely capitulate last season. I think Taylor might have been on to something.

Chris Kamara

And there you have it. Next on the list is Socrates. I think this may take some serious work. Or maybe I should try what this guy did – Jon Dyer’s blog