Interview with Brazilian Girls
by John Farris

Sabina Scuebba, vocals;
Didi Gutman, keyboards;
Jesse Murphy, bass;
Aaron Johnston, drums.

This interview was conducted without Jesse Murphy in the Winter of 2005.

JF: So you must've just come off the road.

DG: Yup. Just came off the road.

JF: Where were you?

DG: Baltimore, Virginia, Philly, and we went to Massachusetts and we played in New York too.

JF: Oh yeah? Now, Jon Pareles just called you one of the five best bands in indie rock.

DG: Well, that's because of the CMJ festival, or the CMJ marathon. We played in that.

JF: And he called you, uh, he compared you to Bjork, and who else?

DJ: Who?

SS: Gwen Stefani?

JF: How did you feel about that?

SS: Good. It sounds good. We didn't expect it, too. We didn't know the guy was gonna come around. It was a surprise.

JF: So I know everybody asks you this - but how come your called "Brazilian Girls?"

SS: Nooooo!

DG: That's the answer.

SS: Nooooo!

JF: Okay. So what is the meaning of "Pussy, pussy, pussy, marijuana?"

SS: (laughs)

DG: It's pretty much self - explanatory, I suppose...

JF: I mean, is that meant to be an invitation-provocative - or is it a metaphor for something?

SS: Well the word "pussy" I think has roots in the Celtic language -

JF: I think you mean "cunt."

SS: Whatever. Anyway, it's one of the few words that survived in the transition to English.

JF: What is that?

SS: (Emphasizing) "Pussy, marijuana," is one of the few phrases in Celtic that has been brought into our times. There's not much we know about the Celtic language, so we made the song in dedication to a Celtic population about which we know so little.

JF: Gee - I had no idea. I thought you were trying to be provocative - you know, had the intent of provoking our judiciary.

DG: Well, they have these things in Spanish, they have them in French, in Italian, they have them in German, so we wanted to have them in English so everybody can understand "Pussy, pussy, pussy marijuana."

JF: Wow.

SS: Of course we always want to provoke.

JF: That's wonderful of you. How'd you folks get together?

DG: Here - at NUBLU! We jammed, started playing and if you work with the same unit more than four times in New York City, it's a miracle. (laughter) Same people playing together? (laughter) So after a few times it was like, oh, let's do it again.

JF: Tell me a little about your background, Didi.

DG: Well I was born in Buenos Aires, I grew up there - I started listening to all kinds of music = I was playing with my brother, my cousin, my friends - having bands - always I had bands. I came here to study at Berklee - I went there for three semesters - moved to California, I lived there for six months.

JF: It seems a lot of bands from NUBLU studied at Berklee.

DG: Yeah?

JF: Yeah. Had you met any of them there?

DG: Ahh, no.

JF: That's funny.

DG: I didn't socialize much when I was at Berklee.

JF: So when did you come to N.Y.C. - when did you come here, and when did you come to N.Y.C.?

DG: '94. I was producing records and playing around.

JF: And what about you, Sabina? When did you come to N.Y.?

SS: Five years ago. I came here from France. I had been in Germany for a while, and before that I was in Italy.

JF: What was your musical background in those places?

SS: I sang - you know, changing styles and directions a few times, and probably always will -

JF: I heard you were a movie star. Is that true?

SS: No, I was a soap opera character.

JF: (laughing) What character was that?

SS: (laughs) It was called "Sabina."

DG: No way.

SS: Yes - it was terrible. People would recognize me in the street and say, "Sabina, you were - I can't believe you did this to him." You know? It was fun.

PART 2: INTERVIEW WITH JESSE MURPHY AND AARON JOHNSTON

JF: So Jesse Murphy, tell me a little about yourself - you're from California, and you're about 27 years old? When did you start playing music?

JM: I played in school from the time I was real little. I played flute, I danced, tap-dance, ballet, shit - I was a veritable renaissance child.

JF: A prodigy, huh?

AJ: He was tested at age 10, he was already J.I.V.E. positive.

JF: And what about you, Aaron, when did you start playing?

AJ: Around 13, I was tested J.I.V.E. positive and I went through treatment and I'm still in treatment right now and when I got here in New York, and got to NUBLU -

JF: Where did you come here from?

AJ: By way of Oakland, California, from Kansas, Topeka, Kansas.

JF: So tell me what music influenced you when you were back in Topeka?

AJ: When I was a kid, my Dad had a jukebox he had rebuilt from scratch, it had everything from Sly and Robbie to George Jones, to James Brown, to Elvis Presley, to you know, it was all over the place.

JF: And you got with some pretty good bands, what bands were you with?

AJ: I got to work with a lot of older cats that showed me how to play music.

JF: Like who?

AJ: Well, starting in college, I got to work with my boy Sterling Gray, who was a guitar player. I moved out of Kansas, and I went to the West Coast and I got to meet people from a lot of different countries, I got to meet a lot of Africans, Brazilians, there were some Americans in there too.

JF: So, you both went to Berklee?

AJ: No, neither of us went to Berklee.

JF: So how did you meet Ilhan?

JM: I met Ilhan at after I moved to New York in '92, you know, he used to call me for gigs because of Kenny Wollesen. Kenny Wollesen and I grew up together in Santa Cruz and played there a lot when I was younger, and then when finally Kenny had moved to the East Coast, and I moved to the East Coast, Kenny started playing with Ilhan, and Larry Grenadier and then I kind of got caught into that scene a little bit. We worked jazz gigs around the East Village. Then Ilhan opened up NUBLU and we kinda started playing here, you know, that was the band with Kenny and Ilhan, Love Trio, Wax Poetic, that was already in existance. Those bands started to play here.

AJ: This is kind of one of the first places, for me too, I went to school and I studied all these different styles, and I moved to California, and got to play with the real cats, in an all-African band. I was playing Afro-beat, and in an all-Brazillian band, I played samba. And in a Cuban band I was playing son. NUBLU is definitely one of those key places where I got to come and bring all of that and match it up with everything else everyone else was running. It was not "blues night" on Monday night, or whatever.

JF: You could do whatever wanted?

JM: It's the NUBLU, not the old blue.

JF: How did you get together with Gutman and Scuibba for Brazilian Girls?

AJ: I got together with them here.

JM: I met Didi playing softball in the '90s. But then later, Didi had a steady Sunday thing, and then Aaron and Sabina were in the mix.

AJ: And then Jesse and I, a year previous to that had a group, right around 9/11 we had a group called Airplane Baby, very experimental, but kind of similar in some ways, not as much of a dance thing, but sonically and electronic-wise, we were blending.

JM: Playing with loops, and that kind of thing. Aaron and I had started playing together, we just started doing the Sundays with Didi and nothing really clicked until we started slapping each other. We started slapping each other and then once we started Slap Club, the trust just went through the roof. Because once you slap somebody, the only rule in the Slap Club is, if you slap somebody, they get to slap you back.

JF: You know, I heard about this. I heard you slapped Clark (Gayton). I told Clark, I would have killed that little mother fucker if he slapped me!

JM: That's the thing, once you get over the hump, where you no longer want to kill somebody, you say "oh shit, that's a wake up call!"

AJ: It instantly brings you back to your childhood, too.

JM: Because it makes you listen. And that's the whole point of Slap Club, it came out of the war, because when you get slapped by your close friend, who you actually can't hit, or you don't want to hit him, you never - it's only an intimate thing between friends who you really trust.

AJ: You get closer in touch with your musical egos.

JM: Once Aaron and I did that, we started communicating on the bass and the drums like you wouldn't believe.

JF: You mean you had to slap one another to get started?

JM: That's kind of where it started. Once we breached that physical contact barrier -

JF: Did you draw blood?

JM: No no no, it wasn't like that.

AJ: Check it, don't lose the point. It's about the family, if you ever grew up with brothers or sisters, chances are you got slapped.

JM: Or your Mom and Dad hit you -

AJ: How many great bands out there are family? Maybe not family, but you know, Jacksons, whatever, but started playing together at a younger age, and that's all they did is play with those people for 15 or 20 years, and they developed such a trust with one another.

JM: So we kind of had to kick start ourselves in a way. We had to cheat.

JF: You should have called yourselves Tin Lizzy. Tell me, what were you driving for with Brazilian Girls? What were you going for?

JM: You know, you were there Farris. The deal was, late night, you know, it was to please Sunday late night church. Because everybody came down and took a chance, because they had to work Monday, and everybody ended up getting real loose.

JF: And did you have any idea?

JM: No, I think we all just had a sense that it was really great what Didi was doing, and what Aaron was doing, and what Sabina came up with on top of that was perfect. She sang in different languages, and everybody there was speaking different languages. I was already an anchor at the club anway, so it was a shoo-in. You know, the rhythm section, compM: Spring, 2006.

JF: So where are you on your way to now? I got you on the fly.

JM: To Aaron's first time to Japan.