Improv's

Drummer Leonardo Monteiro, having worked with a large assortment of bands, most of them more commercially inclined, rounds up a cast of friends to join RAME in a post New Years bash. Among these friends is Kamal Kassim (Goodnight Varsóvia & Acabou La Tequila), Moreno Veloso (son of Caetano Veloso), Cláudio Antunes (Black Future & GRMJ), Danny Roland (Metrô) e Thiago Queiroz, a young 20-year-old saxophonist from a quirky jazz quartet called Ofo.

The event occurred on January 3 of 1996, at a studio in Santa Theresa, the artistic quarter of the city of Rio de Janeiro. The idea is for the gang to just play with no specific theme, rather than agree on a theme and improvise around it, as would normally be done. Just a night of truly free improvisations, absent of predefined directions, that people spontaneously began referring to as Free's. What occurred was an enormous quantity of experimentation, with outside objects being used alongside with more traditional instruments.

Music was being created in an apparently anarchic environment. So we saw Thiago play a fire extinguisher with drumsticks and then placing an empty beer bottle in the mouth of his tenor sax and making vibrating sax sounds. Kassim, originally a bass player, would take turns playing on bass, guitar and drums. Than hook up a CD player with a delay pedal and get some real interesting sounds out of that. RAME having played together for so long manages to conduct and interact with the newcomers, keeping the game going. This true musical laboratory is conceived as fun for all and opens a new door for the band, opening up what once was a closed hermetic musical format.

So no surprise when the the get-together was repeated a few times, with a certain variation in the cast of guests. By April, RAME feels secure enough to take this game to a live audience. So a series of shows were booked at the Empório, in Ipanema, all played with a repertoire based on pure improvisations or Free's as they are to be known. Only two tunes had any work done before hand, and still, not with all the cast. Among the friends invited that showed up were afore mentioned Thiago, Danny and Cláudio, plus, the lovely Andréa Monteiro, Leo's sister and ex- bandmate from Tao e Qual.

The public were just as astonished and amazed by the dificulty of the task set forth by these talented musicians, as they were pleased and entertained by the humour and aparent simplicity in which they achieved there goal. A rare moment in art rock where one can enjoy music of the moment, composed at the moment it's being executed and heard. After it's over, it's gone, it's history; no musician ever being able to repeat the various incidental nuances that make up the composition as a whole. You can't get more real than that out of a happening. At the end of the series, saxophone player Thiago Queiroz is invited to enter the band as a permanent member. On the floor, among the public, are coincidentally two future members, DJ Schilds and Julio Flores.