Anniversary

Today is the 6 month anniversary of Casa Murilo.

We have gone from having 0 songs, no gigs and no name to 13 songs, 8 gigs done, 3094 myspace views and 3789 listens. The eagle eyed amongst you will note that´s a marvellous 1149 unique views on our myspace in the last month. Oh yes. Things are moving so fast we couldn´t even offer a slightly larger bag of name brand insant mashed potato mix (just add water!) to the 3000th viewer. Our apologies. The prize for our 4000th viewer will undoubtedly make up for it.

The big step up to full band, recording the EP and gigs galore is coming over the next few Summer months. We´re meeting with some lovely musicians over the next week to get a little help, including the excellent Oslo Indie peeps Bård Watn and Simen Herning of My Little Pony.

We´re still hard at work, as ever. We´ve been writing some really excellent songs, recieved several more fantastic "Tales From The Stable", been offered some exciting gigs, edited the now infamous "St Hanshaugen In The Snow" video, helped build Dan and Linda´s wardrobe and chest of drawers, and generally living, eating and breathing this, our wonderful songs and band. The sun is shining brightly in Oslo and the world is well.

We also are now on twitter. Finger. Pulse. http://twitter.com/casamurilo

Tales From The Stable - Part 2

"Amongst the mud portraits, scribbled maps and unfinished poems in my moleskin there are some scraps of what could pass as a diary. I have included them here for your viewing pleasure and to give you a little background on the early days of Casa Murilo, or Dr Chocolate and the Salvadors as they were back then. It’s been an interesting ride..."

December 2007.

We had arrived. At least we thought we had arrived. We were about to climb into what appeared to be a home-made pick-up truck. I think it once was a car. And a small car at that. Now, thanks to some rural jeitinho, she has a wooden platform on the back with some tin sides half nailed, half welded on. The driver laughed at the mention of a seatbelt and, with guitars braced between legs, fedoras pulled down firmly and knuckles white we bump off down the dusty track like contestants on some kind of TV game show version of Buckaroo.

It’s noisy, it’s dusty and everyone is squinting and shouting. As we crest a particularly militant bump I lurch to my right and as I strain to see what suddenly created this space I see the side of the truck dragging along the floor and my dear friend Jobbo dangling precariously by Dan’s guitar strap just above it. It´s like the closing scene of Bond movie. His feet are thrashing about like a man who has just been hung, and how nearly he was just drawn and quartered. He is pulled back into the truck and everyone exchanges those relieved looks and puffs a bit. Jobbo lights a trembling cigarette.

For dinner this evening we went to one of the two restaurants in the village. The first option was a lady’s front room, and, not having enough chairs for us all, we went to the pizza place instead. The menu is a single, laminated piece of A4 with main courses on one side and dessert on the other. For main course there is a pizza. Dessert is exactly the same pizza with banana on it. Not a great deal of choice but what they do, they do well. We are particularly fond of the local honey and Cachaça mixture that sits in plastic bottles on every table. Alcoholic sugar, mmmmmmmm.

Jobbo is sat on his bed, he has one eye closed and is peering into the top of a whiskey bottle. “Teacher’s, Teacher’s what will you teach me today?” It is 9am. It would be fair to say he has not dealt with near death too well so far. It is Christmas Day and we are going hiking. Not to take Jobbo´s mind off things but because that is what one does when in a National Park in the North East of Brazil. Especially when at the foot of the Misty Mountain Trail...

Tales From The Stable - Part 1

Things are progressing rapidly here at Casa Murilo HQ. Spring is here in all its finery and we are gigging at house parties, rehearsing with an (almost) full band and making all the necessary plans to record our debut EP and get to where we need to be. We had a triumphant gig on Saturday night and are pushing on.

In the meantime, we asked our very dearest friend, one Ross Holmes, to furnish our blog with a few pen strokes and tell of his recollections of those heady days in Brazil that you hear of in our songs. The first instalment is included below.

For those who have been asking about the videos we have up on youtube, one is up on our myspace already and we have a few more that we like which we´ll be ready to share with the world soon enough.

Enjoy. Kos dere.

"Amongst the mud portraits, scribbled maps and unfinished poems in my moleskin there are some scraps of what could pass as a diary. I have included them here for your viewing pleasure and to give you a little background on the early days of Casa Murilo, or Dr Chocolate and the Salvadors as they were back then. It’s been an interesting ride..."

December 2007.

“So we’re off to the Jungle for xmas. And yes, the Jungle is massive. It’s 10pm, 32 degrees and we are the only people in the bus station sweating. We are also the only people playing an impromptu gig with 2 acoustic guitars and an ensemble of water-bottle percussion to 12 of our closest friends and lovers. Two rum bottles are circling and our cigarette smoke hangs ominously in the still, tropical air, only disturbed by our laughter and clapping. We are quite the attraction in Salvador’s Rodoviaria.

"I think Dan and Chris are making sweet musical love. Dan is leading a Johnny Cash mega-mix and Chris has predicted and followed perfectly while staring deep into Dan’s eyes, occasionally giggling and flicking his hair out of his eyes. Maybe I’ll get to be the page boy.

"We’re on the bus. All the other passengers are getting out blankets and settling in for the night. We’ve just finished a progressively rowdy version of ‘Fairytale of New York’ in full Shane McGowan accents. I thought Dan was going to start spitting to complete the impression. Fortunately Joe’s Thai sleeping pills seem to have kicked in and Dan is now hunched over his guitar dribbling, the impression complete.

"Ooof. My watch indicates that we are 8 hours into a 6 hour bus ride. We are stationary and the driver is nowhere to be seen. You have to love rural Bahia.

"Just came back from a reconnoiter. There’s a few men at the front of the bus, occasionally looking at the engine offering their diagnoses. One of them is a habitual tyre kicker. I milled about on the edges with my hat pulled low quietly smoking my fag and if my Portuguese isn’t failing me it seems we have run out of petrol."