Boiúna Über Alles or How I Met Sodapop
(translated from the original statement by Beto Pleura)
It was in 1995, I think. Or was it 1996? I had a friend who lived in Boiúna and you must be wondering where Boiúna is. It’s on the B side of Taquara, which is the B side of Jacarepaguá, which is the B side of Barra, which is the B side of Rio de Janeiro. In other words, far away as fuck!
When I went there to do some college work, I would only come back three days later. One of those days, he insisted that we go to a party at a friend’s house, in the same condominium. We got there and, from the terrace of the house, the friends of my friend’s friend greeted us by throwing water and making Soviet Cuisine jokes. I don’t know what was in the legal and illegal drugs in that place, but I’ve never seen so many euphoric people on the terrace of a house, including in the pool.
It wasn’t a costume party, but there were people in costumes. It wasn’t a family party, but there were family. A skinny guy dressed as a devil (his sister’s red swimsuit over his mother’s red gym pants, trident, horns and a pointy tail) was taking a beer bath while dancing with a goth chick with a noose around her neck to the sound of California Über Alles by the Dead Kennedys. It was a kind of sociocultural syncretism that I don’t know if was admirable or scary.
Much later, when a third of the guests, guests of the guests and thoroughbred gatecrashers had already left and another third lay unconscious somewhere, the music stopped, to the protest of the resisters and the relief of the neighbors. Someone announced that the show was about to start. Two guys picked up guitars and recruited another to take over a Cassio keyboard set up on the table of drinks and snacks, among quarters and limes and bottles of tequila. Two more brought some percussion instruments clearly intended for Samba, which made me think I was about to hear Paulinho da viola sung by a long-haired grunge guy.
They put some microphones on some amplifiers and exchanged insults about the right way to adjust positions and volumes. They started playing, not Samba, but an alternative rock beat that sounded like the most exotic thing I’ve ever heard, supported by a nylon-string guitar like the ones used to play bossa nova and another black one with metal strings that seemed to be the most expensive item in the neighborhood. You add in the Samba bass drum and the skinny devil’s drumming with the keyboard doubling as bass and the result sounded like a hashish wave, especially since I was really high on hashish.
That’s when, out of nowhere, the hottest woman at the party, who I’d been staring at all night without the courage to get close to, simply dragged an armchair, sat down in the middle of the guys, grabbed a microphone and started singing like an angel. Her voice reverberated in the space between the White Stone mountains, or at least that’s what I imagined because her mic was connected to a reverb pedal at full blast and each word sung by that creature’s hoarse voice from the party stamped my neurons with a memory that will go with me to the beyond.
“Me ignora, mas sei, me adora. Diz que não, mas não vai embora. Me diz então, se é sim ou não.”
I stood there, with the most idiotic expression in the world, listening to the four or five songs they played half-improvised and I started to have something I’d never had before: a favorite band. Later they told me that there was no band, they were “just some songs we play” and that, no, they weren’t recorded and they didn’t have any plans to record it. In fact, the band didn’t even have a name. Some people were already calling it Sodapop, just kidding, because of some inside joke that the guy with the expensive guitar clearly didn’t find funny. I only saw Sodapop play one other show, at The Place, about two years later, but that is another story. And I got a cassette tape with some demos, a copy of a copy, but for me it was a treasure that would never let me forget the songs. I heard a few things about the band later, that it had several lineups, that none of the original members are in the band today, that the girl now lives in New Zealand, has kids and owns a sushi restaurant. But the best news I got was last year, when my friend sent me a magical link that gave me access to new and carefully crafted recordings of some of the songs I had heard and others I had never heard. The experience of hearing Sodapop as I had always imagined, man, after so many years. That is priceless. There were days when I thought Sodapop had never existed, except in my imagination, but now I know that my favorite band doesn’t just exist. It is eternal.
PS: The next morning, I realized that some strange guests had stolen half of the CDs I had brought to the party, including the Dead Kennedys one.
