 There
was a time when things seemed they were
going to happen. This applies to almost
everything, in this case the subject is
Brazilian garage rock. Acidente, "that
band that nobody knows but everyone have
heard of", was founded in 1978 in Rio by
journalism students and came some
prominence in the underground musical
scene of Rio de Janeiro, but later, as
they launched their independent albums,
has been meticulously disinvented by the
media, along with many other bands in
the same situation, so that half a dozen
or twenty minions could occupy
exclusively all available space and
therefore, without competitors, enjoy
all the fame and fortune that brief
affair between the Brazilian audience
and rock had to offer.
There
were two bands with the same name Acidente,
both different in time and style, with
nothing in common except the name and
the producer / keyboardist. The second
Acidente, created in 1989, had a
proposal of being primarily
instrumental, with progressive
influences, and its work is well
documented on CD, such as the fusion
that followed from 2003, with old and
new members keeping alive the flame
through sporadic releases. However, the
original Acidente, the first and only "Old ACA", remained
restricted to old vinyls - until now,
when it's celebrated 30 years of the
group's first LP, "Guerra
Civil".
rock
operas (which were never made public)
under the name Leviathan. The meeting of
Scubi with Raul and Mala in the
Communication School at UFRJ, in 1977,
arose the ephemeral The Merry Compadres
of
Windsor and in the following year,
Acidente finally debuted in a troubled
university festival in noble
grounds, where there were all the
ingredients: cries, turmoil, insults,
vomiting. The Acidente was officially
launched, with its proposal, which has
changed substantially over the years,
just like its members.
The
times that followed were of intense
creativity and Aça became an easy
presence in university hostels and night
rookeries, where his concerts attracted
a small crowd of rockers eager for
something different and authentic, to
raise their spirits into hallucinating
trips and abstracted them for some hours
of the fact that they live a miserable
Third World dictatorship. Acidente used
to make the mind of his musicians and
also of his fans.
 Everything
was going well and a record seemed to be
a natural consequence, however as no
label was interested (for several years,
the national catalog of rock came down
to three or four well known names), the
band's keyboardist pissed off and
decided to produce. The result of
inexperience was the first LP of an
independent rock band from Rio de
Janeiro: "Guerra
Civil", which came out in June
1981. In the photo below, the lineup of
the time: Mala (keyboards, vocals), Guto
(Bass), Scubi (guitar, vocals), Zeca
(drums) and guitarist Fernando Sá
(Samuca), who left the band shortly
after to start his own group. Because
then the public's demand for Brazilian
rock was becoming unstoppable for the
meager investments that were made by
major labels of the music industry, and
new bands began to appear by the dozens
every day.
Acidente
at Lemos Cunha Theatre - 1981
With
their album in hands, the members of
Acidente invested with the extra
function of publishers discovered the
truth: the doors of media, both printed
and electronic, were closed to the
independents. Almost every second or
millimeter was priceless, and all were
already allotted (we wouldn't pay anyway
...). "Guerra
Civil" faced an almost complete
ignorance in the public square was
burned in protest, until a program
("Poeira e Country") of large audience
by a Rio radio (98 FM) became fascinated
by the band song "The Cowboy and the
Debutant" and began to play it every
day, including placing it several times
in the 1st place. This was the summer of
1981 to 1982.
Immediatly
thereafter, arose online in its
experimental phase, Fluminense FM, "A
Maldita" and played the album in its
radio programming several tracks
incessantly. By the time of Carnival "a
Maldita" (the Damned) was the great
novelty among the young rockers of Rio
and Acidente had its chance of gold.
Like
something had to have gone terribly
wrong (or you wouldn't now be reading
the liner notes of a modest independent
album), at that very moment, while
hundreds of neophytes popped up, ACA was
disbanded and so it was for months. To
paraphrase a candidate for governor at
that time, the horse has passed
saddled only once and
Acidente did not rode it.
Acidente
photo
collage
In
this new Land of Rock, Acidente was
restructured and returned to stages with
a modified line up but to find a time
even harder for independents. The
Brazilian pop-rock had become a very
profitable business for some few feudal
lords. When in mid-1983 the band
re-entered the studio to record its 2nd
vinyl, "Fim
do Mundo" (End of the World)
(which would be called "Armed Struggle")
and ended up inadvertently as eponym of
another group), the lineup was already
the usual basic Mala, Zeca, Guto, Scubi.
The effect was as expected: a stone
thrown into a dry lake.
Now, even those who gave rise to indie
had already entered the big dance. Do
what? Life goes on. The CD (at the time,
a single with four songs) "Piolho",
of 1985, confirmed that Acidente had
really been a great idea - but for
others to get along. A few more
musicians passed through the band, which
in a climate of growing discouragement
still made some gigs here and there,
until that in 1987 the hammer was hit:
the time of the Acidente - that Acidente
- "had run its course".
At that point, the "Brazilian Rock"
was already a landscape dramatically
different from the one that
motivated young musicians to form
their bands, and no one could
imagine that one day the rescue of
those insolent recordings would
awaken interest, as is evidenced by
the fact you are with this CD in
hands.
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