HAPPY TO BE HERE DIANE #1 - Introductions and Ruminations

This is “Happy to be Here Diane”.

We’re an indie duo from Brazil writing little songs. This is our newsletter, in which we’re going to each write little thoughts about everything and anything.

This is our first EP, “The Basement Tapes”, available pretty much everywhere. It is cool.

In this first instalment, we’re going to talk about our origins, from both our perspectives, and about our first ever recording back in 2009, also titled “The Basement Tapes”. Everything is cyclical.

Hey guys,

So this is the kickoff post for our little newsletter. And honestly? Don’t expect schedules or polished agendas here. Think old-school blog vibes — the kind we used to read back in the day, messy, personal, and kinda random.

Lately I’ve been into handwriting again. Pen and paper, you know? I used to fight for it all the time against JP, who was more of a “Word doc forever” type. But life got busy, and I gave in to digital. Google Keep in the pocket, quick alt-tab from Instagram, boom. Easy. But that speed kinda burned me out. Everything feels too fast now. So yeah, this newsletter is my way of slowing things down.

And since we’re starting, let’s not pretend it’s 2024. Let’s rewind to 2009. Before the “Basement Tapes” you know, there was another “Basement Tapes” — totally different.

Me and JP go way back to high school, and music was always our thing. We started messing around around the time Arctic Monkeys dropped Humbug. Our first track, “Yellow Bloody Teeth,” was basically inspired by that. We recorded demos straight into the PC mic, using Audacity (the most indie software ever, fight me). Back then we called ourselves “The Shoes” — because every band needed a “The” in the name.

And man… it was bad. Like, really bad. We couldn’t sing, our pentatonics were clumsy, mixing didn’t exist. But we were 14, 15. We didn’t know anything. Still, making that MySpace page and uploading songs felt huge. Like someone stamped us with “official band” status. I miss that internet — when every upload felt like a revolution.

The Shoes was supposed to have a single (“As We Wait”) and an EP (“Ballads For the Lonely”). Supposed to, but never happened. Life got in the way. Honestly, thank God. Two more Basement Tapes from that era would’ve been rough. But it mattered — it set up the duo dynamic that still drives us today. Without that chaos, we wouldn’t be here.

Next post, we’ll talk about the new EP. No rush, no algorithm. Just us, keeping it blog-style.

2009. It was the age of indie rock and I was its loyal servant.

This was part of my most formative years. The eve of my 16 years. One year ago, I had known friends outside of school through the Internet and some would follow me into my life until present day. I was in high school and had changed schools for the first time. I would join my first cover band. I would have my first girlfriend and by the end of the year, this experience would be irrevocably broken. So many new feelings.

I had been learning the guitar for two years at this point. Until then, my interest for music had been sparse. Not non existent, but it was a pretty secondary thing in my life when compared to comic books, novels and video games. It was, of all things, my addiction to generational phenomena hallucination Guitar Hero that sparked a larger interest in music and in learning it. I was, for every purpose, a music poser trying to fake it until I made it.

To learn guitar through classes and playing alone is one thing, but in my case, I consider the true beginning of my education the point in which I entered a band and played alongside others. The bounce back between personalities and instruments. The overlapping complementary arrangements that are greater than the sum of its parts. The chemistry between people’s expression. For my young brain, that’s how the guitar was meant to be played.

Leandro was the drummer for said cover band. He who once was friend of a friend, at this point was a friend in and of itself. Music connected us. Our goddess patron was the same: indie rock. Ignoring the fact he was a Strokes boy and I was an Arctic Monkeys one, in our middle ground we found shared interests.

Leandro was always more into music than I was, and this manifested in him writing his own songs. It was something I had never thought of as a possibility.

Not until he invited me to do so.

I can’t remember whose house it was. It was not either mine or his. But I remember a table between us when he invited me to record songs of our making through a little duo project. Our own little offering to the world of our musical dreams. A four song EP to start. Two songs each. Practical and achievable.

I think it was brainstorming with my girlfriend that she suggested the duo name “The Shoes” (or was this the name of a previous idealized cover band? Hmm, it’s all foggy now), going for a mixture of the classical in the mold of “The Beatles” and something indie cool at the time for the mind of us teenagers like the iconic All Star. It was derivative, and that was part of the appeal to us. It would do. “The Shoes”.

Next came creating the EP. “The Basement Tapes”, it would be called. I never wrote a song. I didn’t know how to sing. I didn’t know where to start. So I started at the beginning, I guess.

I remember writing my first lyrics in the notepad app that came with every Windows PC. It was called “We Were At War”, a trite and clichéd attempt at a fictionalized relationship song comparing the push and pull of personal conflict with the language of war itself. I can’t remember how it was, but I remember trying to write it cold like middle school poetry. 4 sentence versus, no chorus. A disaster.

The first time I wrote the chords to a song was over some lyrics by Leandro. This one I remember well. “The Red Light from the Break Tear Us”. A very short and sweet song to which I wrote chords, a little arrangement on the style of my Sheffield idols and even a little solo. It is, as a whole, embarrassing, adolescent and genuine. A song special and dear to my heart. My true first one.

Where did the name “The Basement Tapes” came from? I’m pretty sure it came from Leandro, but at which context? I can only speculate now, with the memories washed out, that it had something to do with the vintage feeling of finding out old tapes with new undiscovered songs. Or is this just my adult mind filling in the blanks? That’s a hard memory to access.

The cover Leandro got the photo for. Image searching Google for something that felt and looked indie in aesthetic. We settled for the image of a random person, glorious emo/scene hair, a face in profile, no eyes in sight, obscured by said hairdo. Extremely MySpace. Perfect and pure.

Our process was fast and amateur. Supremely lo-fi, not by choice, but by our means and the ceiling of our abilities. No thought given to audio levels, white noise or even song key at some points. Very free, in a way. The final songs were mostly terrible. My attempt at singing was monotone and drawn out. My second song had the exact same chord progression as the first, just in another key. My arrangements on the first song, written by Leandro, were not only dangerously walking the thin line between homage and parody, inspired by the incessant listening of Humbug, but were also off key. Again, a disaster.

But a perfect disaster in what it means to me. My first record. “The Basement Tapes, by The Shoes”, an EP by two teenage boys from the countryside of Brazil who listened to too much bands singing in English. By every practical metric, it was 100% awful. But it was 2009, the age of indie rock, and I was its loyal servant. And this was my offering to my gods. The first of many, I hoped. I still hope, in many ways.

After all, if I am still here, writing hopefully better thought out and recorded songs, it is because of that first EP. Before it, I was a Guitar Hero inspired guitarist that played Anime song covers. After it, I was a songwriter. And I still haven’t given up on it.

(If I manage to convince Leandro, with the next issues of the newsletter I’ll also share those terrible old 2009 songs. Here’s to remembering!)