HOW THIS COOKIE CRUMBLED aka MY DEPARTURE FROM CSS
[Long story short: on the 11/11/11 I “left” my old band CSS. In the begining of 2011 I found out I was sick and I needed treatment. When it was impossible to postpone going back to Brazil to get treated, I left the year long tour I was doing and headed back to São Paulo. A couple of days after I arrived, in the middle of the turmoil of doing medical exams, going to the shrink and shit like that, I received an email from the manager saying they weren’t going to pay my salary since I had abandoned the tour. So this is what I wrote after I realised they weren’t going to pay me what they owed me.]
First of all, this post was originally published in Portuguese in my other blog. I was about to write a book about CSS, how it started, how I was led to leave the band I wrote all songs for. But in the middle of the process it started to haunt me, made me suffer, gave me panic attacks and gastritis. I am still shocked with what those bitches and that terrible evil minded manager did to me, how they conspired to make me leave the band, I am deeply hurt specially with Lovefoxxx, whom I considered one of my best friends.
The original text in Portuguese was a work in progress. I decided to translate it because many non Brazilian fans of the band couldn’t read my Portuguese blog. Please, don’t expect this to be a perfect translation. PARDON MY FRENCH. My English is sort of, hmmm, lame.
SO THIS IS HOW IT ALL STARTED TO FALL APART or I WISH I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT
I wouldn’t be able to gather all the happenings the way they really happened. Also it would be unfair to say these records are the final truth. They are my point of view, a view many times damaged by alcohol and some drugs, by the everyday griefs and regrets, usually thrown down the bottomless well of my oblivion.The events here reported were chosen for its importance on the matter in subject, from the creation of my former band CSS until my forced departure. Sometimes I chose to include emails exchanged for further explanation of the facts but many compromising messages were left aside or edited to prevent further embarrassment. Yes, this band CSS is an ode to embarrassment, in the beginning deliberately, in it’s creation core an important aesthetic artifice. By the end, tragically, such embarrassment outdid its accessory condition to become main protagonist of the whole story.
Going through old emails helped me understand a bit everything that happened during those fateful months before my departure.
Technically this whole confusion started a long time ago, perhaps in 2007 when our “beloved” ex-”manager” Eduardo Ramos was fired (and this ex-”manager” nuisance still goes on as a criminal prosecution here in Brazil done by me and Lovefoxxx, the other girls couldn’t care less about making things right). Since this terrible event a long time ago the band’s relation was never the same again. I can’t recall when it happened, maybe end of summer, beginning of autumn, London was grim and cold as usual, I remember I had just started to smoke again out of stress and every time I sucked on a fag the cold English air froze my lungs and made me cough till it hurt.
Although we always made sure to overrate our friendship and bonding in the several interviews we did at that time, truth was, our not-so-recent friendship was pretty much shaken. We had left São Paulo in July of 2006 without any expectations but enjoying a 2 month long tour with Bonde Do Role and Diplo. When we realized 2007 was about to be over, we had reached a position no other Brazilian “indie” band had ever dreamed of. And how sad, in that position we found ourselves with no money, owing an ocean of taxes, salaries, rentals such as tour buses and equipment… what a nightmare.
It would have been easier to terminate the band on the spot but our agent at that time, Matt Bates from Primary, helped us clean the house and slowly update our accounting affairs. Perhaps he did out of guilt, since it was through him I found out there was something extremely wrong about Eduardo’s mod op. Some random day he came up to our dressing room, kissed me on the cheek (something strangely awkward of a posh Brit to do) and thanked me: “Just got my check of CSS’s comission. I made 90k pounds. I am changing my BMW”. Since he got 10% of our fees, make the maths. Oddly enough, that day, I remember I was starving for I didn’t have enough coins to buy a 3 pound Pret a Manger sandwich.
I suspected something was wrong before that. A couple of weeks before we were touring Europe, a Brazilian music journalist called Lucio Ribeiro was riding the tour bus with us. Edurado wasn’t there, he and Ira (they were dating since our first American tour) had gone to Paris where they rented a flat (which he claimed was paid by the “French Government” since he was doing a phonographic research on French music, wow! I always thought France a very avant-garde country!!). In the middle of the night the bus parked on the roadside, the driver called our tour manager Julian and demanded payment (thousands and thousands of euros) for a previous bus we had used a couple of months ago otherwise he would leave us in the middle of the Autobahn and take all our belongings as payment. Julian freaked out and started collecting money from everybody in the bus and handed to the driver a sack of money as guaranty. That was the last drop. When Matt Bates slipped out the information on the amount of money we had made, I decided to take action.
We were going back to London and as soon as we got there I was going to go to Primary’s and Stage Three’s offices (Stage Three was my publisher and I had been waiting impatiently for a 300 thousand dollars advance that never came and I feared something terrible had happen to this money). I called in the girls to come with me (I surely didn’t invite Iracema) but none of them wanted to pursue on this pilgrimage with me, they wanted to convince me to talk to Eduardo before going there on our own, they didn’t want to compromise. I ended up convincing Luiza Sá to go with me and as we got there I asked about our money. According to Eduardo our money was “stuck there waiting for the taxes to be collected, we cannot touch that money otherwise it would be considered a fraud and since we were all foreigners, the taxes took ages to be sorted”. Truth was our so called money was always given to Eduardo, sometimes it was even advanced to him and several times Primary wired money straight into his Brazilian account. I almost had a heart attack. I got all Primary’s statements and headed over to Stage Three, not before telling Matt Bates that Eduardo was not allowed to receive any money from us. Same story at Stage Three, the 300k dollars advance had been wired to Eduardo’s account on Banco do Brasil in São Paulo. I was freaking out real bad, it was all too surreal to be real, how come?
For us to pay the insane debts left by Eduardo’s “management” and also to make us some money, we did a lot, i mean A LOT of shows, exchanged favors, a lot of sweat involved.
As soon as I got Eduardo out of our lives (and I was the one to say “you are fired”, it was the first resignation I ever performed and how funny, I had to fire someone that was never hired by us, he simply joined the gang without being invited) the band spent some time without management. Matt Bates and the guys from Sub Pop spread the news we needed management and pretty soon candidates started to arrive. Still in 2007 we played a show in Buenos Aires, Argentina and one of them flew there to meet us. Kevin was his name. He worked for the management company that worked with Pink. He was very pleasant, paid us a very nice dinner at Hotel Faena (a cheesy, arrogant design oriented place that those girls instantly loved, plain bullshit). Unfortunately for Kevin, a thousand dollars dinner was not enough to impress them and they also thought he wouldn’t pay enough attention to our band since his company managed Pink, a mainstream gigantic act. Back to London we met Björk’s and Arcade Fire’s manager, Scott Rogers. We were all thrilled and wanted to start working with him straight away. Matt Bates didn’t like it, he said his company was signing all brand new indie bands, it was going to be a bad choice. They had just signed The Black Kids (does anyone remember them? Maybe Matt had a point). He wanted us to go with a British duo that managed Bloc Party, Simon White and Tony Perrin. They formed Coalition Management and we ended up choosing them after Matt claiming he knew something, “SOMETHING” really terrible about Scott Rogers. He scared us with his conspiracy theory (which we never got to know what it was), today I believe he was afraid that if we had chosen Scott Rogers, Primary would be sacked, all Scott Rogers bands worked with CAA.
The first thing Simon and Tony did was letting our sound guy Mr. Mike Bell go. Mike had always been faithful to us, helped us a lot. He started working with us in our first European tour, he was friends with Matt Bates, he used to work for Baby Shambles for years. All the time he worked for us under Eduardo’s management he was NEVER PAID A DIME, I discovered that the day the bus driver wanted to leave us in the middle of the Autobahn. He was drunk in the bus’ lounge and said he already knew Eduardo wasn’t a very good payer since he never received a dime for his work. Being an original British, he apologized for letting us know that, “I know it’s not your fault”. Mike sometimes lent me money for food. And so my heart was shattered the day our new management decided to send Mike home, at least he went home paid. It was right at the ending of our “Christmas Tour”, one of the funniest and well succeeded tours we did in our lives, the highlight was a gig at a sold out Brixton Academy. My very best friend ever, Roberta Hoffmann, who played with me in my first band in the early nineties and had been in my life since my teen years was our stage dancer. We dressed her as a Christmas Tree, Gift, Santa Claus’ Wife… and she did the stupidest dances imaginable. Good times.
IRACEMA HAS LEFT THE BUILDING… JON HARPER COMES IN…THE DONKEY IS BORN
In the beginning of 2008 we had an Australian tour and that was the last time Iracema played with us. She left the band and our nerves were boiling. I never suspected she knew what Eduardo was doing, I always trusted she had been played just like us. But she wanted to leave the band, she wanted to work with fashion as she did before the band started, she wanted to study in Paris. And she did the right thing, she consulted a lawyer to understand her rights and the legal procedure of leaving the band. This lawyer consultation became a terrible misunderstanding, perhaps due to the fact of the language barrier between us and our managers added to the trauma we had just been through with Eduardo. We understood Ira was suing us for the name of the band, which she was not. I was enraged, I started hating Ira and I was really really mean to her, which I am not proud of. I regret that deeply.
I started to play the bass and Coalition got us a drummer, Jon Harper, JonJon. ❤
We needed a new album to continue promoting the band so we came to Brazil to record Donkey. I did it all practically by myself, wrote the songs, the lyrics, produced, played. Carol and Luiza recorded some stuff but I ended up re recording myself since I didn’t like the results they obtained. If it wasn’t the way I wanted I would record it myself, all songs are mine anyway. Ana didn’t record anything on this album, just like on the first one. It would be very unfair saying they didn’t collaborate at all, Luiza Sa wrote the lyrics for Give Up (I had written lyrics for that song, Black Wing, but we decided to use Luiza’s lyrics since mine were about Eduardo Ramos, it had lines like “get a stone and throw it at the black bird” and ended with everybody singing “L+A+W=UNBELIEVABLE” and were a bit too “negative” according to Lovefoxxx”). Lovefoxxx wrote a couple of things, I really like the bits she squeezed into “Air Painter” (I just hate this song’s name, I tried to talk about it but she was very fragile and cried when confronted, she was about to get her first liposuction). If João Marcelo Boscolli (owner of Trama, our brazilian label) hadn’t let us use Trama’s studios we wouldn’t have made it. We were broke, we had a problem with Sub Pop’s contract (another detail from Eduardo’s era) and we had two months to deliver the masters of the new album. I was hysterical with panic attacks, drinking every day. Although I was this fucked up I managed to hold on and write and produce that record in time. A long purging process.
During Donkey’s promotions we were growing further apart. Lovefoxxx was each day more cocooned to the point that we spent 25 days in Japan together (her and me) in november of 2008 and we only met when chance insisted in joining us. Not that I didn’t want to hang out with her (in fact I believed we were on that trip together) but she was completely shut down and didn’t let me get any close, I decided not to force anything. I ended up meeting her by chance three or four times. I would even consider this normal if she didn’t tell something completely different in interviews. Once she said we had the best time ever in Japan when we were there together… weird. Whatever. What we went through in 2007 was probably one of the worst things we had ever been through, I thought the best to do was to give her space.
2008 COMES TO AN END ALMOST LIKE 2007, ONLY MORE BORING/GOODBYE ENGLISH CREW/2009 A SABBATICAL YEAR
Late December of 2008. Donkey’s final tour came to an end, we had toured throughout the whole year. And the year couldn’t end in a worse way with our incompetent managers sacking us. It was too much negligence, they didn’t give a rat’s ass, they got us this tour manager called Marciano that had worked with Pharrel, different universes. This Marciano guy started putting us in 5 stars hotels, business class flights… Moral of the story? In the middle of the last tour of the year I discover that the tour had generated a huge debt, something like 20k euros and the remaining gigs were not covering it. We had to cut our crew, sleep in the bus and we started to arrange DJ set gigs for us to minimize our monetary loss. We were told we should collect the DJ sets fees at the end of the parties otherwise we would only get the money 2 months later. We needed that money for our Christmas, we were totally broken. Again. Guess what happened? Nobody collected the fees and we were going back to London poorer than we left. I was SO ANGRY… Me and Lovefoxxx decided to write an email to Simon and Tony to complain. We were drunk and we changed their names to Seymour and Tommy. We also changed their assistant name, she was Faye. We called her Fionna. We thought it would be fun to write a passive aggressive email with a picture of Chapolim Colorado.
Hi Seymour and Tommy! How are you? How is Fionna doing? Hope she’s doing great!
Hahaha
So, i’m just worried because Matt West said that Seymor said that the djing fees are going to cover up the big hole that this tour generated on our BUTTdgets. This is going be a very unMerry Christmas for CSS! Who’s gonna save us now?
Must we count on Chapolim Colorado or can we count on you guys? We never agreed to give this fees to cover up tour BUTTdget holes. We would like to have this money to spend a nice Christmas, buy ourselves some nice free range/organic Turkey at Waitrose (not Iceland) and after all, that would be the only “bonus” we have been talked about for such a long time. Although we all know that we will have to work more to cover up the debts of this tour. Thank God the shows were all amazing because we are an amazing band, we are beautiful no matter what they say and words can’t bring us down.
What kind of bonus can we get before Christmas to save our holidays? Or we all worked so hard to provide a nice christmas to all our crew but ourselves?
I also would like to point that this was a VERY expensive tour for ourselves personally. Me and Lovefoxx spent SHITLOADS of personal money to stay in Japan in order to FIRST: stay in japan and have fun/rest, SECOND: to save the band some money not having to send us back to london and then to america. We are not complaining, it was wonderful. But we’re sort of short in money. Also, I paid hotel rooms for myself on the days off we had in america, because, SORRY, i’m 35 years old and after 2 years I don’t have emotional structure to hang in the bus. I’m not a teenager anymore and if I had to chose between hanging in the bus or going back to brazil to my old advertising job, I wouldn’t think twice. Things must be smooth. Otherwise, i’m out of it. I don’t have anyone to rely on, I got no family and stuff to ask for favors (and still we’re not allowed to live in UK, no visas for us) and if I sense things are going to fall apart, i’ll be the first to jump outside of the boat.
We all thought that letting Pengui and Martian go would generate SOME profit, if not at least not more debts. We were all really amazed that not playing Toronto instead of creating more debts made us save some money. So whose idea was to take us all the way up to Canada for 5 grand? At this point of our lives… we’re so crushed.
Another thing that really bothered us was that email flagging that the sales of the tour were slow (and sincerely, we couldn’t feel that at all, all shows were really packed), that really really discouraged us in such a way, that just makes us think who’s been thinking about our things. Some psychology would be appreciated at this point.
And last but not least, that lineup order changing at the LA show with Bloc Party and Pretenders. We got an email from Marli saying that Pretenders didn’t want to be the headliner, Bloc Party didn’t want to play after Pretenders so they just threw us there. What really makes us sad is that, you guys being Bloc Party’s managers, you already knew that and didn’t have to lie to us about that. At least the the boring Bloc Party fans were all gone by the time we played so it wasn’t as terrible as the other time we played together. Anyway, it’s all done now. I just hope you have a solution about the so talked about Christmas Bonus for us.
xxx
Adriano and Lovefoxxx.
No need to tell Tony Perrin and his British Aristocracy phlegm didn’t like it a bit and just answered “Speaking personally I think it’s time we called it a day and stopped working together”. Phew. I’ve had enough of those two Brit stooges that only wanted to work with us for they thought our second album was going to be as successful as the first one. They really believed in our hype, more than any of us. I do know that what happened with the first album was pretty much unexplainable, sheer luck. I knew that so deeply that when I was writing Donkey I deliberately went to the opposite direction, I didn’t have psychological condition to emulate and develop the ideas of the first album. I really like Donkey, unfortunately I cannot stand listening to it due to Lovefoxxx vocals. I’d rather listen to the demos with my voice.
2009 was going to be a sabbatical year for us. We did very few shows, Australia, Japan, Portugal, Morocco. The rest of the time I hanged out in London, got me a studio in Hackney Wick where I eventually worked a bit (wrote some stuff featured in La Liberacion like City Girl and Partners in Crime). But i just basically rested, shopped, and the most important thing that happened to me in all those years: started working out. By the end of 2009 I came back to Sao Paulo.
2010, TCB/GOODBYE JON JON/SPREADING MY LEGS TO MY HOMIES
My relationship with my boyfriend came to an end, I had no visa, no more patience so I came back to São Paulo. I had this really nice flat at Tupi Street, huge windows, nice view, lots of light. Two weeks after I arrived my friend Luciana (I had worked with her in two studios before, I work with soundtrack production for advertisement since I was 19) invited me to be her partner in a production company. We always got along really well and being partners made a lot of sense, after all I didn’t know what the future held for CSS and having my financial independence attached to those girls was something that scared me to death. And Luciana found this amazing house in the same street I used to live with Carol from 2004 to 2006 (in a small house where we recorded CSS’ first album) and we started our company, Coletiva. We were really lucky, we been working a lot since then.
And in 2010 CSS found another manager, this time an American one. American and Jew, we thought it would be the end of our problems as if being American and Jew was a guarantee of character and intelligence. Ha. After the last experience with those English managers we didn’t want to work with English people anymore, the girls voted to get Jon out of the band (Carol and Ana thought he wasn’t a good performer {!!!!!!!!! OMG!!!!!!!} and Lovefoxxxx was constantly complaining about Jon’s shyness). I have always been friends with Jon, I didn’t want this to happen but I was minority as usual. Joel Mark, the new manager, got us an American drummer, an American sound guy and then he came to Sao Paulo for us to plan what we were going to do. Still I didn’t feel like recording a third album, not with them. It was such a wearing process having all the responsibility on me, having to perform a miracle in order to make the girls interested in writing and recording an album. I always ended up doing it all by myself and I didn’t want to go through all that again, I have always played with people that enjoyed making music and for me it was a mystery how could they be so disinterested. Eventually I was convinced that we had to record this third album, so OK, let’s do it. And how convenient, innit? Now I had a studio, the amps, the drums, the instruments, I had this amazing house with a pool and we could use my company as much as we want to create and record this album! Wow! Luciana, my partner, embraced the idea. We got a gigantic room upstairs where we set up a rehearsal room with a small PA, drums, amps, we glued some photos on the walls to make it cozier. And all the action of this creation room ended there with the gluing of the photos on the walls. When we gathered we couldn’t start a “band dynamic” after all we were never a real band. I tried hard, gave them space, gave them ideas. When I saw this was going nowhere I started to write my songs again by myself, just like in the previous albums. Lovefoxxx was really distant, more than ever, she stayed most of the time in a room by herself with her computer. She said she was writing, perhaps she was. As usual I would send her my songs and she took days, weeks, sometimes months to tell me what she thought about it. Eventually Ana and Carol stopped going there. Luiza went back to NY, she had spent a couple of months finishing college. During that time she went to the studio a lot, amongst all she was the most proactive.
THE LIBERATION/THROW A STONE TO MY FACE
It was a bumpy road, it took me one year and a half to write and produce La Liberación. I rearranged the songs several times, rewrote lyrics, changed melodies until every drop was squeezed. I produced 24 track, 11 made the record. I’m not completely happy with the result, I like what I did but some of Lovefoxxx’s lyrics and vocals make me want to puke, her vocals are pure melodyne. God knows how I suffered to tune those tracks. And we hit the road, Australia, USA, Japan, Europe. JR, the new drummer was amazing, a sweetheart. Tyler, the sound guy was a magician, we never sounded so good. But still something was different, I don’t know if it was the lack of alcohol in my brains (I had quit drinking, August of 2010) or if it was Lovefoxxx’s ugly clothes (she had some outfits done by a brazilian designer called Fabia Berscek, those were amazing but then Jeremy Scott have her some Adidas clothes, they didn’t fit her well, really bad proportions). I knew something had changed, maybe the expiration date of the band had passed.
Some time before the album was released there was the incident of the video of Hits Me Like A Rock. Things were almost unbearable for me, I had even told Joel Mark that I was leaving the band after the American tour but he made me stay (during the American tour Lovefoxxx had completely excluded me from her social circle, the last show of the tour was on my birthday and she went out to have lunch with Ana and Carol and didn’t even invite me). Hits Me Like A Rock is my favorite track on the album. I wrote it in 2005, it had different lyrics and arrangements. I managed to have Lovefoxxx listening to it, she wrote new lyrics, kept some of my lyrics, I did the OH OH OH OH OH OH OH… It was sort of a group work. I don’t really love the verses of the song, like “take me on your motorcycle, blablabla”. The part that goes “you would melt my brain a million times and have too many bruises from too much kissin and the only pain would be from too much missing” makes me sort of ashamed. What was she thinking? But well, that’s the Lovefoxxx factor. Anyways, I wanted this to be the most beautiful video ever. Unfortunately like everything else in this band, choosing a treatment for a video was a big pain in the ass. We got a dozen of treatments, I read all of them. Even owning more the 60% of the song’s publishing, having played ALL the instruments of the recording, my opinion didn’t matter. Ana Maria had decided that we should shoot this video in Barcelona with this dyke director that had done a couple of short films, whose girlfriend had directed some amazing videos, including one from Justin Timberlake. So the director sent an email, I wasn’t thrilled by her treatment. I didn’t want to make another funny video, I can’t barely watch the video for Move, I find myself pathetic, visibly uncomfortable with that blue lipstick.
THE BLUE LIPSTICK EPISODE
Going back in time now to explain a very important thing that happened in the history of this band and until today is used for blackmailing.
In 2007 we went to Japan for the first time. It was such a teenage frenzy, such excitement prevented me from feeling the jet lag and sleeping. We didn’t have too much time off, our label there arranged interviews throughout the whole day. The last day there was supposed to be a day off but the label decided to schedule a photo shoot for a fashion magazine, it was going to be in the morning so we would still have the afternoon free.
When we got there the shooting was a bit more complicated than we thought, make up, dressing, shooting the photos in front of a green screen and then this graffiti artist would illustrate the background. So I was sitting there, the Japanese beauty artist says to me: “I GIVE YOU SEXY LIPS” and he laughed. I closed my eyes in fear. He had his face half inch from mine, I could feel the heat of his skin and he was rubbing this brush with blue ink on my lips. I just wanted that to finish, I didn’t have the guts to look in the mirror to see what had happened. Then they dressed me, this weird shirt unbuttoned till my nipples, a white coral necklace, some chains. Gel on the hair. They gave me a man purse. And the cherry of the ice cream: some blue sunglasses Bono Vox would certainly use if he was a transvestite. I have never felt so humiliated. When I was going down to the photo shoot room I considered throwing myself outside the window. When the girls saw me they started screaming and laughing and taking photos.
Sexy lips. WTF. When I die I want my lips painted that color so no one comes close to the coffin. And this episode is referred to as “LIPSTICK BLUE” (like that, not blue lipstick).
HOW TO FLUSH TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS/BITCHY IS HAVING A TIZZY
Now back to the Hits Me Like A Rock affair.
According to Ana (and all the other girl sing along) the band “do have a sense of humor” but that doesn’t mean I laugh when I listen to my songs. I understand we as human beings have a particular sense of humor. But is it necessary to print that in video clip of a beautifu song that is not humor oriented? I gave up. That was the first time I ever considered leaving the band. I made up some lame excuse and I didn’t go to Barcelona to shoot this terrible video. I didn’t want to dance and the whole concept of the video was about a choreography as explained by the director’s email:
On 30/05/2011, at 08:57, beatriz sanchis <xxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi everyone!
I’ve been thinking about the concept you mentioned:
Could CSS make the tutorials? Could the tutorials teach how to dance like CSS or like Lovefoxxx? If we do it this way we win that CSS is the Center of the video clip, which is great, but it also has its drawbacks… If CSS teaches the others how to dance like THEM, you have the same thing that you see in so many video-clips: you have the cool people (the idols) and those who would love to feel cool by imitating their idols.
In my proposal I’m talking about something else. I’m talking about a new wave of sharing knowledge, a new way of society (horizontal society), I’m talking about the internet era. The NEW way is to put CSS in the SAME PLACE as everyone else.
I’ve been thinking that maybe, you feel like you need to find a way to give CSS more visibility in the video so, maybe we can re-write the idea while preserving the spirit of the initial proposal.
What about this idea:
The band doesn’t know how to dance, so they start learning on the internet and in the streets, and in doing so, they compose a new dance by mixing different steps from different styles?? This way they are still the leading characters, but, preserving the initial idea.
Let´s discuss!
This was the director’s first contact with the whole band, apparently Ana and her were already discussing things. So, “Let’s discuss!”. Unfortunately there was not too much discussion for everything seemed to be decided. And I was already tired of trying to make people listen to me, funny thing. When I was writing the songs, arranging, rearranging, producing and playing the instruments on the album nobody wanted to discuss anyhting. If I had made an acoustic kuduro record it would have been fine, they would be happy.
The least I expected was a video showing some lame choreography of Hits Me Like A Rock, some silly dance like Macarena or Michel Teló (reckon you might know who this lad is at this point). But when the cuts of the video started to arrive, nothing close to that was depicted. The best commentary that explains my niggle with this video was made by my friend Clarice: “the dancers and extras in the video are looking better than the girls of the band”. I really never understood Lovefoxxx’s outfit on the video, wtf. Let’s watch this crap again:
This is the last cut of the video, probably number 6989 (and it wasn’t made by the director of the video, we had to get all the rough material and hire a proper video clip editor to save this shit). It was a big suffering getting to this “final” edit. First the director shot the dancers dancing to some other song, not Hits Me Like A Rock. Second, the girls are not developing a choreography during the video, they are just there as support acts. Third, Puma gave 10K dollars for the making of this video, they sent 3k pounds in Puma clothes for the dancers to use. Where are these products on the video? And fourth. In the last scene of the video, Luiza Sa was wearing a Sub Pop t-shirt. But our current label (who paid for the rest of this video) is now Co-op.
I asked them about these things, here are the answers.
1 — the dancers are not dancing to our song, that’s the “concept” of the video.
2 — the girls were not dancing cos they were ashamed of dancing and the professional dancers danced so well it didn’t matter!
3 — the shit Puma sent was so ugly, they would destroy the video. And two dancers were using their own Puma stuff, one dancer had a very old beat up trainer (very unrecognizable) and another one was wearing a hat that Puma believes is a fake one.
4 — none of them thought it would be a problem Luiza wear our former label tee. Even though they didn’t even want to listen to our new album before telling us they were not interested in releasing it.
When the director sent her last cut, Joel wrote an email with his considerations. He wasn’t happy with it, neither was I. I replied with the following email:
From: Adriano Cintra <xxxx>
Subject: Re: hits me like a rock video
Date: August 1, 2011 9:01:38 AM GMT-03:00
To: Ana Rezende dos Anjos <xxxxx>
Cc: Joel Mark <xxxx>, Carol Parra <xxxx>, Lovefoxxx Matsushita <xxxx>, Luiza Sá <xxxx>
We have a problem and we should solve it.
To be REALLY honest, I don’t love this video. I think if it wasn’t ours I wouldn’t watch till the end.
There are some things that really bother me. Like the fact people are not dancing to our song.
I see all points that Joel makes here and I think we should have another edit. We are in this business to play ball. I have made one zillion different arrangements for the songs and i don’t see why this Beatriz wouldn’t make another edit doing exactly what she is told to.
I think we should be realistic now. We are not big. We have loads of fans who love us and stuff. But this time my point is to GO TO THE NEXT LEVEL. and this video ain’t taking us there the way it is now.
If Beatrix don’t want to make another cut, we should get all the footage and have some good editor to do this. I don’t know how this works and I can tell she won’t be really pleased. But this is our video and there are TOO many people involved that must be pleased apart from yourselves.
I am not pleased with the video the way it is. I like it but I don’t love it and I was expecting to love it. And it would help me to love it if all the people that believe in us (the record label for instance) were loving the video. But they are not and we must realize they know what they are talking about.
We don’t. I was hoping this time we would learn something from this industry.
I think it’s time we have an efficient video.
I’m with Joel, we should do all we can to squeeze this orange till the last drop.
adriano
Then I get this email from Ana, sending me where I belong.
On Aug 2, 2011, at 1:01, Ana Anjos <xxxxxx> wrote:
And Adriano, I don’t think we were ever in this business to “play ball”. I think we are ourselves and that’s why we are successful and happy with what we do.
If you think the label is the one who knows what’s gonna make us rich, then we might as well have them choosing everything for us. The treatment, the director, the clothes we wear, the places we play, etc…
I’m not saying we shouldn’t listen to what they have to say, but I think we know ourselves better than the Coop people (actually, we don’t really know ANY of them), and we can make our own decisions here.
The arrogance of these lines is nauseating. “I think we are ourselves and that’s why we are successful and happy with what we do”. Well, I would like to ask you a question, Ana Maria. What the fuck do you do? What? What else other than manipulating the making of this shitty video with this flat-footed director? It is mesmerizing how a support act like Ana Maria started acting like a protagonist out of the blue. Not that I consider myself a protagonist, far from that. For me the great protagonist of CSS was and always will be Lovefoxxx.
This whole conversation was pretty funny for me. I just wanted for the first time in our lives take advantage of the fact that perhaps for the last time in our lives the so called “industry” was giving us a last chance and thought we should embark on that. CSS is not a punk band full of dogmas. Also during the production of the album I had talked a lot to Lovefoxxx about how we should do to go to the next level. I didn’t want to play tours that didn’t made us any money, make ugly videos. But the arrogance of the ones who did least took over. And I, who had worked so hard for the making of the album, was put aside. And I’d better be quiet.
THE ICE FETISH/CUSTOM-MADE RIDERS/NO CANS PLEASE
Besides deciding the videos for the band, Ana Maria did really love and cared about her ice. “Where is the ice bucket?”, “Solana (our tour manager that had much more important things to care about than Ana’s ice bucket) I already told you, when we get to the dressing room the ice must be there!”. I didn’t know how to deal with that , it upset me a lot, everyday the same thing, the ice, the ice, the ice, the wine is wrong, the bottle opener. I talked a lot to Solana, I apologized. That made me deeply uncomfortable. Solana was not our maid and sometimes I think she did it on purpose, I’d do worse, I’d pee in the ice bucket. Tour managers have shitloads of things to worry about, visas, payments, transportation, hotels, crew stuff. Once when we were making 30k pounds per show our tour manager used to take care of such whims. Now we were making five, ten thousand dollars per show, sometimes a lot less. It was another page. And there was something else really bothering me. This person that complained so much about stupid things (stupid things that in the end made Solana get fired, of course we had other problems with her but the ice was one of the biggest) didn’t make enough for the band to have the right to complain like that. Everything that Ana plays on the show is pretty much insignificant. Most of the time she is playing along with something that is in the backing track (which I played it all, it’s my performance there) and the things that are not on the backing track could easily be put there. Her equipment represented almot 40% of the whole band’s equipment weight. She had 3 heavy keyboards (in hard cases), one spare keyboard (in hard case), a huge orange amplifier as heavy as a refrigerator (in a hard case, of course and she only played guitar in 4 songs of the set). Two guitars (with hard cases). Why on earth she needed such equipment? Seriously, if she wasn’t there no one would notice.
I started to question this (not her presence but the weight of her gear). Does she really need all those keyboards? She plays with one hand at a time! Let’s change all those keyboards for one USB controller (a much lighter and cheaper keyboard) connected to a laptop! Does she really need that stupid wireless keytar to show up in front of the stage during Reggae All Nite? Our roadie spent more than half of the time he spent to set up the whole stage just to set up her shit. Well, they were not happy when I came up with this. Apparently even though I wrote all the songs in this band, played most of the instruments on the albums, taught them how to play their parts, I didn’t have the right to propose such thing without us exchanging one million emails. I just wanted to be practical. And even though I always knew that if Ana left the band nobody would even notice, I would never propose such thing. But the band had a janitor. And it was Ana Maria.
Instead of finding ways to save us money and time she had other priorities. What she really loved to do besideshaving fits because of her ice and wine, was to make custom-made riders according to the country visited.
After all she is not willing to be drinking any kind of beer of wine. And no cans, please. Everything had to be in the right temperature, properly placed in the ice bucket that should have the ice replaced whenever necessary. Even if the house had a refrigerator, as seen on the riders below.
Begin forwarded message:
From: Zane Smythe <xxx@xxxxx.com>
Date: August 12, 2011 5:59:05 PM GMT+01:00
To: Djamir Filho <xxxxx@xxxxxx.com>
Cc: Adriano Cintra <xxxx@xx.com>, Joel Mark <xx@xx.com>
Subject: Re: Serious stuff (Adri writing from Pengui’s email)
ok for starters i believe penguin is arranging to move the gear to the storage place that he has picked so it is closer to him and more accessible so hopefully that makes things a bit easier. Penguin, is this in motion?
For the backline not being used, i am not sure we will have time to do a proper rehearsal but maybe we can put some things on hold at JOhn Henry’s or something just in case we need it in a pinch? Is there a way to get the amps plugged in and turned on in the next few days just to see? Maybe someone at sound moves plays music enough to just confirm this for us? after messing up the asian shipment i am sure they would be ok to do this if they did have someone there that is capable. Let me know what you think.
As far as the riders are concerned I have attached the latest riders from ana so you can take a look at them. These are brand new for this tour so they are a bit smaller than the previous rider but let me know what you think.
DENMARK RIDER:
CSS hospitality Rider — Denmark
Beer:
24 BOTTLES (NO CANS PLEASE) of:
Starporamen beer
or
Zywiec beer
or
Carlsberg beer2 Bottles of
French Sancerre white Wine
or Spanish Albarinho white WineFOOD STUFFS :
1 x Box of Granola
1 x bag of Pistachio Nuts
2 boxes of Blueberrys
Tangerines or Satsumas
1 Bunch of Bananas
Apples
Grapes
Strawberries
2 x organic chocolate bars
Potato Chips
Whole Wheat Bread
Buffalo Mozzarella
Integral Pitta bread
Smoked Salmon
Turkey Breast
Fair Trade grounded coffeeSOFT DRINKS:
6xGatorade
4 x Diet Red Bull
48 x bottles still water
6 x small bottles Perrier or San Peligrino
Orange juice (not from Concentrate)MISCELLANEOUS:
1x Toaster
1x Kettle
1x Café Tier Coffee Pot
6x Mugs for hot drinks — NO STYROFOAM CUPS
6x Glass Champagne flutes.
24x Plastic cups for cold drinks
1x Corkscrew
1x Bottle opener
10x Complete Silver Cutlery
10x Large and Small Dinner Plates
10x Cereal Bowls
2x Paper Towel Roll
1x Facial Wipes
1x Wet OnesIMPORTANT:
1 x BIG BUCKET/CRATE OF ICE TO BE REFILLED FOR ALL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES (EVEN IF THE VENUE HAS A REFRIGERATOR)
1 X CHAMPAGNE BUCKET
*PLEASE NO PLASTIC OR STYROFOAM CUPSFRENCH RIDER:
CSS hospitality Rider — France
Beer:
24 BOTTLES (NO CANS PLEASE) of:
1664 beer3 Bottles of
French Sancerre white WineFOOD STUFFS :
1 x Box of Granola
1 x bag of Pistachio Nuts
2 boxes of Blueberrys
Tangerines or Satsumas
1 Bunch of Bananas
Apples
Grapes
Strawberries
2 x organic chocolate bars
Potato Chips
Whole Wheat Bread
Buffalo Mozzarella
Integral Pitta bread
Smoked Salmon
Turkey Breast
Fair Trade grounded coffeeSOFT DRINKS:
6xGatorade
4 x Diet Red Bull
48 x bottles still water
6 x small bottles Perrier or San Pellegrino
Orange juice (not from Concentrate)MISCELLANEOUS:
1x Toaster
1x Kettle
1x Café Tier Coffee Pot
6x Mugs for hot drinks — NO STYROFOAM CUPS
6x Glass Champagne flutes.
24x Plastic cups for cold drinks
1x Corkscrew
1x Bottle opener
10x Complete Silver Cutlery
10x Large and Small Dinner Plates
10x Cereal Bowls
2x Paper Towel Roll
1x Facial Wipes
1x Wet OnesIMPORTANT:
1 x BIG BUCKET/CRATE OF ICE TO BE REFILLED FOR ALL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES (EVEN IF THE VENUE HAS A REFRIGERATOR)
1 X CHAMPAGNE BUCKET
*PLEASE NO PLASTIC OR STYROFOAM CUPSGERMAN/AUSTRIA RIDER
CSS hospitality Rider — Germany/Austria
Beer:
24 BOTTLES (NO CANS PLEASE) of:
Flensburger Pilsen beer2 Bottles of
French Sancerre white Wine
or Spanish Albarinho white WineFOOD STUFFS :
1 x Box of Granola
1 x bag of Pistachio Nuts
2 boxes of Blueberrys
Tangerines or Satsumas
1 Bunch of Bananas
Apples
Grapes
Strawberries
2 x organic chocolate bars
Potato Chips
Whole Wheat Bread
Buffalo Mozzarella
Integral Pitta bread
Smoked Salmon
Turkey Breast
Fair Trade grounded coffeeSOFT DRINKS:
6xGatorade
4 x Diet Red Bull
48 x bottles still water
6 x small bottles Perrier or San Peligrino
Orange juice (not from Concentrate)MISCELLANEOUS:
1x Toaster
1x Kettle
1x Café Tier Coffee Pot
6x Mugs for hot drinks — NO STYROFOAM CUPS
6x Glass Champagne flutes.
24x Plastic cups for cold drinks
1x Corkscrew
1x Bottle opener
10x Complete Silver Cutlery
10x Large and Small Dinner Plates
10x Cereal Bowls
2x Paper Towel Roll
1x Facial Wipes
1x Wet OnesIMPORTANT:
1 x BIG BUCKET/CRATE OF ICE TO BE REFILLED FOR ALL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES (EVEN IF THE VENUE HAS A REFRIGERATOR)
1 X CHAMPAGNE BUCKET
*PLEASE NO PLASTIC OR STYROFOAM CUPSHOLLAND RIDER
CSS hospitality Rider — Holland
Beer:
24 BOTTLES (NO CANS PLEASE) of:
Grolsch beer2 Bottles of
French Sancerre white Wine
or Spanish Albarinho white WineFOOD STUFFS :
1 x Box of Granola
1 x bag of Pistachio Nuts
2 boxes of Blueberrys
Tangerines or Satsumas
1 Bunch of Bananas
Apples
Grapes
Strawberries
2 x organic chocolate bars
Potato Chips
Whole Wheat Bread
Buffalo Mozzarella
Integral Pitta bread
Smoked Salmon
Turkey Breast
Fair Trade grounded coffeeSOFT DRINKS:
6xGatorade
4 x Diet Red Bull
48 x bottles still water
6 x small bottles Perrier or San Peligrino
Orange juice (not from Concentrate)MISCELLANEOUS:
1x Toaster
1x Kettle
1x Café Tier Coffee Pot
6x Mugs for hot drinks — NO STYROFOAM CUPS
6x Glass Champagne flutes.
24x Plastic cups for cold drinks
1x Corkscrew
1x Bottle opener
10x Complete Silver Cutlery
10x Large and Small Dinner Plates
10x Cereal Bowls
2x Paper Towel Roll
1x Facial Wipes
1x Wet OnesIMPORTANT:
1 x BIG BUCKET/CRATE OF ICE TO BE REFILLED FOR ALL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES (EVEN IF THE VENUE HAS A REFRIGERATOR)
1 X CHAMPAGNE BUCKET
*PLEASE NO PLASTIC OR STYROFOAM CUPSSPAIN RIDER
CSS hospitality Rider — Spain
Beer:
24 BOTTLES (NO CANS PLEASE) of:
Mahou Beer3 Bottles of
Spanish Albarinho white WineFOOD STUFFS :
1 x Box of Granola
1 x bag of Pistachio Nuts
2 boxes of Blueberrys
Tangerines or Satsumas
1 Bunch of Bananas
Apples
Grapes
Strawberries
2 x organic chocolate bars
Potato Chips
Whole Wheat Bread
Buffalo Mozzarella
Integral Pitta bread
Smoked Salmon
Turkey Breast
Fair Trade grounded coffeeSOFT DRINKS:
6xGatorade
4 x Diet Red Bull
48 x bottles still water
6 x small bottles Perrier or San Peligrino
Orange juice (not from Concentrate)MISCELLANEOUS:
1x Toaster
1x Kettle
1x Café Tier Coffee Pot
6x Mugs for hot drinks — NO STYROFOAM CUPS
6x Glass Champagne flutes.
24x Plastic cups for cold drinks
1x Corkscrew
1x Bottle opener
10x Complete Silver Cutlery
10x Large and Small Dinner Plates
10x Cereal Bowls
2x Paper Towel Roll
1x Facial Wipes
1x Wet OnesIMPORTANT:
1 x BIG BUCKET/CRATE OF ICE TO BE REFILLED FOR ALL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES (EVEN IF THE VENUE HAS A REFRIGERATOR)
1 X CHAMPAGNE BUCKET
*PLEASE NO PLASTIC OR STYROFOAM CUPSUK RIDER
CSS hospitality Rider — UK
Beer:
24 BOTTLES (NO CANS PLEASE) of:
Sarporamen beer
Or
Zywiec beer
Or
Budwar beer
2 Bottles of
French Sancerre white Wine
OR
Spanish Albarinho white WineFOOD STUFFS :
1 x Box of Granola
1 x bag of Pistachio Nuts
2 boxes of Blueberrys
Tangerines or Satsumas
1 Bunch of Bananas
Apples
Grapes
Strawberries
2 x organic chocolate bars
Potato Chips
Whole Wheat Bread
Buffalo Mozzarella
Integral Pitta bread
Smoked Salmon
Turkey Breast
Fair Trade grounded coffeeSOFT DRINKS:
6xGatorade
4 x Diet Red Bull
48 x bottles still water
6 x small bottles Perrier or San Pellegrino
Orange juice (not from Concentrate)MISCELLANEOUS:
1x Toaster
1x Kettle
1x Café Tier Coffee Pot
6x Mugs for hot drinks — NO STYROFOAM CUPS
6x Glass Champagne flutes.
24x Plastic cups for cold drinks
1x Corkscrew
1x Bottle opener
10x Complete Silver Cutlery
10x Large and Small Dinner Plates
10x Cereal Bowls
2x Paper Towel Roll
1x Facial Wipes
1x Wet OnesIMPORTANT:
1 x BIG BUCKET/CRATE OF ICE TO BE REFILLED FOR ALL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES (EVEN IF THE VENUE HAS A REFRIGERATOR)
1 X CHAMPAGNE BUCKET
*PLEASE NO PLASTIC OR STYROFOAM CUPS
If anyone had the nerve to check all these riders must have noticed that the only changing items are the beers and wines. I was never asked if I’d like this or that in these specific riders, apparently this was Ana’s and Carol’s decision. When I found out about these riders I was a bit shocked. I tried to talk about it with Ana and Carol but the two were so aggressive that I got ashamed and decided not to deal with that anymore. I always bought my own stuff at supermarkets (I have a very specific diet). Each one of us allegedly had a role in the band, I was the music provider. According to Ana, each one of us get what is fair, I already made more money than them because I had the publishing deal. When we were playing shows, the rider was paid by the promoter if the tickets sales were not good. Does it make any sense? No, it’s actually hard for me to reproduce what I was told that night. Fact is she was mentioning my publishing fees for the first time. I asked her why she was talking about my publishing earnings and she rephrased. Said that we were not paying for those riders, we were only paying for them if the show was sold out. Wow, so that’s the trick? We were booked to play somewhere in Norway, the show is going to be a flop, we are asking for a super expensive rider for the promoter to be fucked twice? That’s what I call nice strategy, typical of people that never paid their own bills and are always looking for ways to take advantage of situations.
THE ART OF WAR X THE ZEN DOCTRINE OF NO MIND= MEXICAN SOAP OPERA MADE IN PARAGUAY
During the last tour I did with this band my patience was completely gone. There was the fight with the psychotic roadie, my left hand pinky finger started to trigger (rheumatism, old man stuff) and I left the tour by it’s middle to take care of my health. Things were already arranged, I had a doctor’s appointment scheduled several weeks before, everything was sorted. To be honest I was glad I was leaving the boat for a couple of months, I needed some time off from those girls.
I’ve always talked to Joel Mark about my backing tracks on the shows. More than half of the set is played with a backing track which I produced and played. It was always clear that I have never gave those tracks to the band, there is no contract saying that they could use that if I was leaving the band. Since they were playing so many shows, it would be cheaper for them to keep on paying me the band salary (£1500,00) instead of paying me a fee for each show. So here I was, in Sao Paulo, taking care of my mental and physical health when I got this email:
From: Joel Mark <xxx@xxxxx.xx>
Subject: css salary
Date: November 10, 2011 11:13:12 PM GMT-02:00
To: Adriano Cintra <xxxx@xxxxxx.com>
hi adri
we need to talk about your £1500 a month salary from css
the salary comes strictly from profit from shows, and since you are no longer playing the show, it does not make sense that you receive the salary.
since you dont play, the band has to pay someone else to play, so it is more expensive for CSS that dont tour.
as the songwriter, you will still receive PRS income from touring. in fact- can i get your PRS log in info? we need to make sure that all of the CSS shows are properly registered with a set list, so you all receive the income.
i know that you think that since the songs and arrangements are yours that you should still get the salary, but considering how other money is split, it does not make sense.
there are some bands that i work with who split all income evenly, all songwriting, publishing, live income, merch, everything. CSS is not this kind of band.
since you dont share the other income, and i am not suggesting that you do, it doesnt make sense that you also share this touring income.
for example, during coachella you guys did that ASOS interview. you were playing piano during part of the day, and as you might recall we had to license that performance to ASOS. you will be getting $1600 for this. ( $2000 minus the deckstar commission). This is not a huge amount of money, but most bands would just throw it into the band fund. CSS does not do this. there is essentially no band fund with CSS, but a bunch of different income streams where each person is paid for their involvement. Since the pay is for involvement, and that is how CSS is set up financially, you can see that it does not make sense to keep giving you a salary for income that you are not involved in.
if you do the brazilian & columbian dates, it makes sense that you get your share of that income. we dont have a budget for that yet.
is this OK with you? does it make sense?
i am not trying to force this on you, just discuss it.
joel
SHOCK.
Ok, setting things straight. The money in this band was never divided equally for the work in the band was never done that way. I would never share my earning with someone who didn’t deserve it. I do make charity, I donate for hospitals and educational institutions monthly both in UK and Brazil. But sharing money from my work with those girls who do nothing but playing live (and most of the time playing really bad) is something I would never do. We were not even friends anymore! For example, this ASOS fee. We were invited to make a video while we were playing Coachella. But no one told us we were supposed to do a jam session in the video. Since when CSS plays jams? I ended up playing piano by myself, playing and singing guitar by myself while the girls drank, partied and ate. So the soundtrack of the video ended up being me playing the piano. Why on earth I would share the fee for the SOUNDTRACK OF THE VIDEO with them? Have they ever gone DJing and shared their fee with me? Of course not.
Thing is. They are playing shows and even though I am not there personally, my performance is there. My VOICE is there.
Check it out. This show was late December, one month and a half after I left the band. They had been told to stop using my backing tracks but they didn’t. This is utter lack of respect. This is humiliating for me. Not to mention, this is misappropriation of my intellectual property. It is a CRIME. As my lawyer explained Joel Mark, “I just want to remember that they don´t have authorization to use any recording produced by our client as he was not paid for that and has not authorized the band.
Please have in mind that copyright infringement in Brazil is a crime foresaw in the Federal Constitution and Adriano intends to claim his rights on a civil and criminal scope.” Apparently they didn’t give a SHIT.
WHAT THE FUCK? The OH OH OH is my fucking voice! It’s me singing! Also, the synths doing the rhythmic hook is me playing as well! Not paying me for that is a crime, is low, is cheap and shows their lack of education and respect. I had consulted a friend of mine who is a big lawyer here and she said that the law is pretty clear. The performance on those backing tracks is my intellectual property. They cannot get the piano tracks that Mike Garson played on the record and put in on the show without paying HIM. Why are they doing this with my tracks? Joel Mark’s email was so manipulative and petty that it drove me out of my mind. I’ve had enough of all of them.
(just another quick thing. He said the salary of the band was paid with tour profit is a lie. He used advance fees from the labels to pay salaries, advances that should have paid me for the production of the album, also I have lent the band money from my publishing fee to pay salaries too, Joel Mark, go fuck yourself you big piece of turd, you are the least trustworthy person I have ever met in my whole life).
So I sent Joel the following email:
From: Adriano Cintra <xx>
Subject: Re: css salary
Date: November 11, 2011 12:51:57 PM GMT-02:00
To: Joel Mark <xx@xx.com>
Joel.
I don’t THINK i am entitled to this. The LAW says I am. They are FUCKING USING MY BACKING TRACKS WICH I PLAYED. OK?
IF THEY FUCKING USE THE TRUMPET OF THE RECORD, THE MUSICIAN IS ENTITLED TO BE PAID SOMETHING.
MOST OF THE SONGS IN THE SHOW HAVE BACKING TRACKS.
I AM ENTITLED TO THIS.
I AM NEVER PLAYING WITH THOSE CUNTS AGAIN.
I WILL SUE YOU ALL FOR THE SHOWS THEY USED MY TRACKS.
SERIOUSLY.
ARE YOU REALLY GOING THERE???? REALLY?
THIS IS RIDICULOUS!
TELL THEM TO PUT MIKE GARSONS PIANO THERE ON THE SHOW!
WHAT YOU ARE BARGAINING IS SO LOW AND SO UNBELIEVABLY WRONG I CAN’T REALLY BELIEVE YOU HAVE THE GUTS TO PROPOSE THAT TO ME.
I AM DEEPLY DEEPLY DISAPPOINTED AT YOU.
I AM OUT OF THIS BAND. I WILL SUE YOU ALL FOR WHAT IS RIGHT.
I AM NOT ASKING ANYTHING BUT THE RIGHT THING.
ALSO, I AM NOT PLAYING BECAUSE I DON”T WANT TO PLAY. I AM ON MEDICAL LICENSE. I DON”T KNOW ABOUT THE AMERICAN LAWS BUT HERE IN BRASIL THIS IS SERIOUS SHIT.
I AM SO SAD I WISH I WOULD DIE.
I am so sad I wish I would die. I really felt like that when I realized I had no choice but leaving the building. After years and years working for this band I was being manipulated to leave. I had just had one year and a half of sheer torture producing that album for what? For those bitches to have material to carry on their “GIRLS IN A BAND” status? So I sent the bitches an email:
From: Adriano Cintra <xxx@xxx.com>
Subject: Fwd: css salary
Date: November 11, 2011 12:53:33 PM GMT-02:00
To: Carol Parra <xxxx@xxx.com>, Luísa Matsushita <xxxxx@xx.com>, Luiza Sá <xxx@xxx.com>, Ana Rezende <xxx@xxx.com>
THIS IS RIDICULOUS.
I AM ON MEDICAL LISCENCE>
EVERY SHOW YOU USE BACKING TRACKS THAT I PLAYED. I HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE PAID FOR THAT.
IF NOT THE SALARY, AT LEAST ONE FEE FOR SHOW.
EVEN IF I AM NOT THERE, I AM PLAYING.
I AM VERY DISAPPOINTED AT ALL OF YOU. I BET YOU HAVE BEEN DISCUSSING THAT BEHIND MY BACK.
I ALREADY HAVE THREE LAWYERS TO SUE U.
I AM SO SAD I WISH I’D DIE.
DON’T TALK TO ME EVER AGAIN.
Please don’t get me wrong. Don’t laugh. I was have a breakdown. And it could have been worse, let’s be honest. I was polite! And even though I asked them not to talk to me ever again, guess who was the only one to answered my email? The janitor, of course.
From: Ana Rezende dos Anjos <xxxxx@xx.com>
Subject: Re: css salary
Date: November 11, 2011 1:10:25 PM GMT-02:00
To: Adriano Cintra <xxxx@xxxxx.com>
Cc: Carol Parra <xxxxxx@xxxxx.com>, Luísa Matsushita <xxxxx@xxxxx.com>, Luiza Sá <xxxxx@xxxxx.com>
Babes, (actually we call ourselves GAY)
Take it easy.
Let’s talk about it.
These tours we’re making are not getting us any profit e and pretty soon we will have to stop getting these salaries. And these salaries are coming 100% from the income, for example.
We will have to cut the backline tech to have a bass player. (WHAT A FUCKING LIE! HAHAHAHA PLEASE, WHO’S GONNA CARRY YOUR BAGS NOW? )
It’s been real hard to play these shows with this budget.
Well. Instead of decreasing all salaries so we all continued getting it, no. They decided I didn’t need my salary because I had other sources of income. I spoke to Joel on skype short after this and he had the guts to tell me I didn’t need this money because I had my production company in Sao Paulo. The problem was not the money itself, not getting that one thousand and five hundred pounds a month was not going to break me. What bothered was their attitude, their opportunism and lack of respect to my work. This fucking album was recorded throughout one year and a half in my studio, I was going to give a share of my production fee to my partner to pay for it. But the girls also decided that I didn’t deserve what we had agreed and paid me only half for the production. I had offered by Joel Mark HIMSELF to be paid what I was paid when I did Donkey, as seen in the email below:
From: Joel Mark <xxxxxxx>
Subject: splits
Date: May 12, 2011 8:17:41 PM GMT-03:00
To: Adriano Cintra <xxxxxx>
adriano
can you send me the publishing splits for the new album?
what are you thinking for the recording splits for the record as well?
mark howe thinks that the first album recording royalties are split evenly. Iracima is getting 1/6.
also, your producer fee for this record. if you got £20,000 for the other two records, i think it makes sense to do the same for this one.
joel
Apparently Joel being the superb and wise manager he is started a conversation about this fee with the girls without copying me. So the girls tell him they think I shouldn’t get 20k pounds (for the production of 24 tracks in 18 months of HARD WORK, cmon, that’s less than 2k pounds per track, FUCK OFF BITCHES) and he doesn’t tell me. Also he kinda forgot he sent me this email. When he accused me of being prepotent and told me I invented I WANTED to get 20K pounds I sent him this email.
He was quiet for a couple of minutes and then he said:
“see, i said IT MAKES SENSE you get 20K. It’s not that strong”.
Joel, you are a big big JOKE.
So the best I could do was step aside and be thankful I was still getting my publishing fees. Well, it can be my cancer rising speaking but I never thought anything like that would ever happen. Long before all this happened I tried to reach out for Lovefoxxx. (ok, maybe she hates me cause ever other word I write I write GAY).
From: Adriano Cintra <xxxx@xxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: gay whassup? we need to have a VERY ADULT CONVERSATION
Date: August 8, 2011 8:18:05 PM GMT-03:00
To: Lovefoxxx <xxx@xx.xx>
2011/8/9 Adriano Cintra <xxx@xxx.xx>
boo!
hahahaha
whassup gay?
Did Joel talked to you about the video?
What do you think about the things I said?
Gay, I am PRETTY PISSED at Ana. Pretty pissed. I am not going to write it all down here, I don’t HATE HER, nothing like that. Thing is, enough, gay. Gay, I learned something with my company, for something to go well we need to put an effort to it. We need to go there and do the things. Gay, there’s a lot of shit going on in our band, like the complete lack of money we are going through. Gay, I’m going to work it out.
We are going to tour and make PROFIT. We are going to have a beautiful video. We’re going to stop being a DIFFICULT band.
Gay, I don’t know if Joel already told you.
Wait, first of all I want this conversation to be between us. Don’t want no one else to know about it.
Gay, even Tyler is willing to leave. We have become an intolerable band, gay. I don’t want to be unfair. But the strops the lezzies constantly do because of ICE, BOTTLE OPENER, CANNED BEER, MONITOR are way out of proportion. Gay, each tour we do we fire half of the crew. Look, Solana had one million problems, I myself wanted to break her neck a couple of times. But in the end, what happened to her was really bad. She had more important things to take care of instead of the beer, the ice, the opener. I know she fucked up some stuff but still we are way too SPOILED. We can’t be. We don’t have prestige to be spoiled like that. You, being YOURSELF responsible for ALL the attention this band gets is not spoiled like that. You are like me, HUMBLE (as humble can be, since we are fierce drag queens). We let things go.
I cannot stand touring with this DIVA MODE ON. Gay, we are a ROCK BAND.
We are no longer in condition of having the things we had 3 years ago.
Gay, traveling with monitor tech, in ear, five keyboards. .. this is making us lose money. The amount of beer and wine they ask is also making us lose too.
Gay, last week I sent an email to Joel saying I was quitting the band.
Then he came to London and we talked all day.
And I decided to stay.
STAY. Gay, from now on I will know about each pence. I will get involved in EVERYTHING in my reach to administrate this band and make us get some money.
Even if this means:
Not having more in ear monitors.
Getting Ana ONE keyboard.
Having ONE spare amp.
Getting Ana a smaller Fender amp and getting rid of that huge refrigerator sized Orange of hers.
Gay, I sat down with Joel. The greatest freight expenses are Ana’s gear. She plays guitar in four songs. And we carry that giant amp, not one, but two because there is the spare. And she has FOUR keyboards! WTF. The weight of her gear is 1/3 of the whole band’s gear!
Just decreasing this we will cut by half the price of the freight.
And gay… the Korea gig proved we are amazing. We don’t need to have in ears. (WE PLAYED KOREA AND ALL OUR GEAR WAS SENT BACK TO THE WRONG PLACE, WE PLAYED THE SHOW USING BORROWED INSTRUMENTS, NO IN EAR MONITORS). Maybe YOU can have in ears. But only you. I am CUTTING THEIR IN EARS. Summarily. In festivals we can have our own monitor guy. But when we tour clubs we should use the house monitor guy. This will make us spend one fifth less. And this fifth is going to our pockets. We are losing money… but we will make some.
Gay, there is something else.
From now on the decisions will be made according to the creative input. My decision and your decision should count more since we do most of the things. I already told Joel about it. Gay, I don’t want to and I’m not going to fight. From now on Joel will ask you and me about things and we tell Ana, Carol and Luiza what is going on.
I don’t care if they are going to like or not having to play with normal monitors, drinking x or y beer. The rider is going to be decided by us. They don’t like that beer? Go and buy their own, just like I pay for my gyms. That is personal choice. The rider is paid by the band, if we save 200 dollars everyday, in six weeks, do the math.
So, gay. I think it was time such thing happened. Otherwise this band ain’t lasting for too long. We already have the fame of being a DETESTABLE band. Ask Pinguim, Joel, Zane. They told me that. Nobody wants to work for us, gay. Cam, Dutch… nobody. Even Tyler wants to leave. That’s bad… Now Ana Maria ain’t calling the shots anymore.
We need to sit and talk, you, me and Joel. Then we talk to them. O don’t know if Joel already talked to you about that, but sit, breathe and think.This is OUR band, gay. You and I, we do the songs (MORE ME THE YOU, RIGHT BITCH). You are FUCKING LOVEFOXXX BITCH. How come you are not wearing your new outfits on that video? WHAT SHITTY VIDEO IS THAT BITCH?? Wtf!
It’s more than proven we cannot delegate stuff.
Whatever, sit breathe, think. Maybe we should talk on skype.
Gay, let’s run this band so we make some money. Let’s stop LOSING MONEY because of whims. The girls don’t NEED in ears. They really like it. I also like a lot of stuff I can’t have. If YOU, gay, YOU NEED in ears it’s another story. But they don’t need in ears to play rock band! That’s what they do, there’s no improvisation, they play everyday the same shit! If they can’t play that without in ears they should do some classes.
well, gay, it’s hard to talk about it without bitterness, but I am hurt. Enough, I’m tired, I’m going to be really careful not to spoil things. But I think it’s this or the end of the band. And gay, seriously. If we don’t do it now, take command of this ship, this ship is going to sink. Do you you want it to happen?
:(
miss u!
love u.
I was didactic. I was honest. I felt someone had to organize that stuff. I wrote from the bottom of my heart. She answered me she didn’t want to make all the decisions by herself, we did the songs but the show without the other girls wouldn’t exist. She would be extremely “sad” to make all decisions alone. And I wonder why my company in the decisions making was completely ignored by her…
(I took out some parts that had nothing to do with the discussion, personal stuff)
About both of us making decisions. What kind of decisions are we talking about? I get sad and I don’t want to be extreme like that. I have toured a lot by myself (in 2009 when i even had a tour manager with me. I was doing shitloads of stuff, I don’t know if you ever realized that, but I was playing weekends in festivals in 2 and sometimes 3 different countries…) ( I BELIEVE SHE WAS TALKING ABOUT WHEN SHE USED TO DO DJ SETS BY HERSELF). And I wanted to die. What I mean is if there is animosity between us this is not going to be worth it. And they don’t do the music but we play the show together and the show without everybody wouldn’t exist. (WHAT??? HAHAHAHAHA HOW NAIVE) so I don’t want to make decisions about the TOUR without them deciding too. I don’t want such responsability (AH, NOW I SEE) and I don’t want to deal with their bad moods, I will be unfair and if we go there I won’t have the energy necessary to play the shows. I simply can’t. I don’t want to exclude them from the decisions, Dri.
About the video: I hated that first cut and I was clear about it. you said you liked it but then you said you thought it was all wrong. I was sad you didn’t go to the shooting. You’re not part of the video, gay… for a while you said you liked it and you said it was terrible, you said we should play ball but you didn’t even go to the shooting… ask Co-op, ask joel, if they think it’s good for video you’re not being there.
i think it’s terrible that I make more money DJing than playing shows! It’s unbelievable.
let’s not fight, gay!
Well, I tried. But the feminist sisterhood was stronger. She probably knew this was going to be a big problem with Ana Maria. And about the video, she said I said I liked it at first than changed my mind. What happened is that the first cut was so unbelievably terrible that I couldn’t watch it till the end. Instead of picking up a fight, I did the LOCA, “hahaha, i love it!’. Not going to shoot this shitty video was probably my first step out of this band. I had been really tired of fighting with them. Lovefoxxx, you go ask Co-Op if they enjoy having spent 10k dollars with this awful video. Thing is I got tired of playing the LOCA. Curiously it has something to do with me stop drinking. I quit drinking, I started to think It’s so curious that in every interview they make they talk about alcohol until today. Last one I read, the journalist from Folha De Sao Paulo ask them what has changed, perhaps with my resignation of the band.
“Nothing has changed”, says the singer. “Yes, it has”, corrects guitar player Luiza Sá: “We’re drinking much better alcohol. When we lived in Sao Paulo,we drank Bailey’s with vodka. Now we’re drinking good Martini”.
But the quality of the beverages grew up proportionaly to it’s next day effect. “We can’t drink that much anymore. The hang overs are much worse!”, says Carolina Parra.
It seems they still have their nice drinks. Nothing has changed then. We used to talk that we made up this band so we could have free drinks… I wonder if this will ever change someday. Now who is going to write them songs? Who’s going to arrange, tune, copy, paste, melodyne? Mystery. After some time I cooled down my head, talked to some lawyers. Roberta, my best friend ever, was there touring with them selling merch and telling me everything they did and said. Gossip comes, gossip goes, I was curious to know what was this “OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY” they all talked about? Since I kept in touch with Luiza Sa (we were exchanging a lot of emails, we were going to remain friends I thought. Until the day Roberta tells me Luiza said I MADE MORE MONEY THAN I DESERVED AND ROBERTA SHOULD KNOW THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY), I sent her an email asking what was this other side. She never answered.
So I sent another one:
From: Adriano Cintra <xxxxxx@xxx.com>
Subject: LOVE…
Date: November 22, 2011 2:52:49 PM GMT-02:00
To: Luiza Sá <xxxxx@xxxxxx.com>
I am not angry at you, seriously. I am not angry at anyone anymre. As i said and I will say it again, it is really sad this got to this point, very sad. But let’s move on. Did you read what I just wrote you?
where am I wrong? can you show me?
are there any other problems other than the ones I wrote there?
seriously.
don’t be mad at roberta, she is my friend, it’s obvious she would tell me everything that goes on there. She is my FRIEND. you know, unconditional love? It does exist and I do have friends like that.
After five minutes I sent this email Roberta comes frightened on skype cursing at me. But what did she expect? She knows me, I wouldn’t be quiet. And of course, Luiza, who had just written emails saying she loved me to bits, never answered. I sent her a third email.
From: Adriano Cintra <xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: whassup gay??
Date: November 22, 2011 4:40:37 PM GMT-02:00
To: Luiza Sá <xxxxx>
Gay, seriously. Now you’re going to start ignoring me too????
what happened? are you confused?
Did you read what I wrote? seriously. Am i wrong????
Truth is, I sincerely believe I’m not! I need to talk, I want to know what’s going on.
This is really cruel. Don’t do this to me, I am already suffering enough.
Since I never got an answer, I decided to send an email to all of them. Fuck off. I even left spaces for them to complete with their answers. More silence, of course.
From: Adriano Cintra <xxxx@xxx.com>
Subject: so (for Christ sake, read this!)
Date: November 22, 2011 12:23:05 PM GMT-02:00
To: Carol Parra <xxx@xxxx.com>, Luísa Matsushita <xxxx@x.x>, Luiza Sá <x@x.x>, Ana Rezende <x@xx.xxx>
Whassup?
So. Let’s talk?
I would like to know why do you think I make more money than I deserve and why you think I don’t need to be paid for the usage of my backing tracks on your shows. I don’t want to fight, I am not accusing anyone, I just want to listen to YOUR SIDE, this other side you girls talk so much about but still I can’t figure it out.
This is the opportunity for you to express yourselves.
What is going on?
Let’s go.
My backing tracks.
You cannot use Tuco Marconde’s acoustic guitar neither Nahor Gomes trumpet on the backing tracks without paying them. So why do you think you can use my performances on your shows without paying me once I am not on the band anymore? The intellectual property and copyright laws are clear and simple. I would never ask for anything that wasn’t right and fair. I had even arranged before all this shit happened a symbolic firgure with Joel for this tour, once he showed me there was no money. I was fair and rational, I never wanted to destroy the band neither attack any of you. I just want what is fair.
Until today I was never paid for the production of the album. Joel wired me 12k pounds. We had agreed 20K.
The publishing is split fairly. The ones who write, get it. The ones who don’t write, don’t get it. If I make more than you it just shows that I did more than you. This didn’t seem to be a problem when I was there killing myself to do this album. Why is it a problem now? The publishing is proportional to the intellectual property. I CAN’T, it’s not fair to share that with you. I would be disrespecting myself. What amazes me is that you act like I never encouraged you all to write! Ana, I got some lines you wrote on an email and put it in a song so you’d have something on the album!!! It was never a monopoly. I always asked for you girls to participate.
So, if anyone has any GOOD POINT please answer. I am not attacking anyone, I am not cursing nor childish. I just want to listen to what you have to say. I never expected this from any of you. I have never been so sad in my whole life, it’s true, I truly loved you all, I never did anything to harm any of you. I always wanted to help even when I lost hope of patience. I know you must be frustrated and tired but I told you girls these tours were not worthy. I always wanted to spare us from unnecessary stress, this was eventually going to ruin our friendship. Well, I don’t want to offend anyone, I don’t want to harm anyone, so please, act likewise with me.
They never answered, but I’m sure they read it. Roberta told me. Carol went talking to her that I had ego issues, I should make a band with my name. Well, I always thought Carolina had some thinking problems. I never wanted to be on the spotlight, in the gigs I was always in the back of the stage, dressing black. I don’t do interviews, I don’t like taking photos. All I wanted was to be playing shows and making some money, remuneration. It all started the day I got the budgets for the upcoming tours and I noticed none of them was making profit. Not only they were not profitable, they were very likely to make us lose money. I have more important things to do, I have a production company, I have responsibilities, I am almost 40 years old. I don’t need to play shows that will make me lose money to maintain my rock star status, even because I never had one. I been playing in bands since the early nineties, I’ve toured Europe with other bands, I’ve put out records via really cool labels before CSS. CSS is only one detail in my artistic career. I have a clean conscience. Time will make me forget all these stupid things that happened these last years. The good ones I am not going to forget. Although I doubt I will ever forget those detestable bitches that crossed my way.
