🇬🇧 Music is life

I love music, since I was a child. As a little girl, I studied ballet, flute and piano. I interrupted the 3 for different reasons. The piano, which I liked, I stopped because I didn't have one at home to practice and it is very frustrating not to evolve between one class and another. The other two must have been my family's choices. I don't remember ever really enjoying ballet or flute. At 14 I took guitar lessons. But I ended up quitting after a while for not being able to make “eyelashes” (I really have no idea about the name of this in english). The second string was always a little loose because my finger made a downward curve in the larger joint and an upward curve in the smaller joint. 👽 And to be more encouraging, the teacher was playing a lot of songs from Legião Urbana and my throat suffered to sing such low tones.

My first CD was Grave Dancers Union, by Soul Asylum. I saw the Runaway Train video on TV and decided that I wanted the album. Before that I had a Skid Row vinyl. When I was in business school I started listening to more Metallica and Iron Maiden and I discovered Angra, Helloween and Apocalyptica, who released their first album doing Metallica covers with cellos at that time. I heard these bands under the influence of my cousin. Over time, I continued to listen to Helloween a lot, and it's been one of my favorite bands ever since. The others over time I listened less, and I got back in touch with Apocalyptica a few weeks ago. I will speak of this in another text.

One of the things I most wanted when I left my hometown, Montes Claros, was to be able to go to international shows. In Brazil they only happened in capitals at that time. It is only a few years ago that some cities in the interior started to receive this type of show (in Montes Claros they still don't happen). I started to live this when I moved to Porto Alegre. Without planning, I ended up living close to Bar Opinião, where all international metal shows took place in the city in 2004 and 2005. And whenever I saw that a foreigner band would play there, if I didn't know, I tried to know something and if I found at least  an interesting song I was going to. 😁 So, I discovered Children of Bodom, Primal Fear and several other bands. I also met Evergrey, who will do a live broadcast on Facebook on next June 27 at 9 PM CET. They opened a Pain of Salvation show at the time.

The first year in the capital of Rio Grande do Sul was full of opportunities to see interesting bands live. I went to countless shows alone because I didn't know anyone who had the same musical taste. Until, at the end of 2004, Nightwish went to play in the city and an old acquaintance of mine with whom I had not had contact in a long time, appeared on Orkut and ended up organizing a fan meeting in the Parque da Redenção before the show, and several people present  they also went to the airport to welcome the band. From then on this group started to meet frequently in the park and also in other shows. That show was part of the band's last tour with Tarja Turunen on vocals.

From the first months in the city, before the Nightwish show, the most striking shows for me were:

• Primal Fear.  Seeing “the healer” performed live was a great experience. It's a song that I still enjoy today.
• Sepultura. An extraordinary show, but it was tense to be able to enjoy the show not being carried away by the crowd. Thanks for the 3 guys in front of me that protected me from that.
• Children of Bodom: I used to think of the keyboard as a lighter piano. Then I heard “War of razors” live.

At this stage, and for some time, I had no interest in the personal lives of artists. Then I started to realize that our personal life is the raw material of our creative work and I also became interested in the history of the bands I like most and in the personal life of their musicians. Personal contact with musicians and individual contact over the internet, in exchanging messages, started to gain more and more importance in 2005 when this started to be part of my life. And the good thing about talking to musicians who already have a solid career is that we have a lot in common in terms of interests and way of seeing the world. And that explains why some songs have a special meaning for me. The bands that I continue to like, the ones that I hear the most nowadays, have songs that inspire me, that make me feel stronger, and the musicians' own attitude is one of growth, evolution. Music often communicates more than I can verbalize. That's why I'm so interested in resuming my studies and going to music school. To get where words are insufficient to express.

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Nycka, the nomad