We are proud to announce that Marcel Jacob will give us a daily updated news about the Talisman Farewell Tour.

For some time we have been in touch with a Brazilian by the name of Carlos, he runs a store by the name of Animal Records in Sao Paulo, and he’s a huge fan of melodic rock. He’s done a few shows with Jeff before, either with Jeff’s solo thing or a type of show he calls “Hard’n Heavy” where he brings in a band he labels “hard” and one he labels “heavy” and in between a wet bikini contest ! This time no semi or totally nude chicks though, I’m sad to say, even though I tried hard to get our Caipiroscas served by a topless waitress, it was just a regular concert and not the party thing…So, given the premise of Jeff going to do Journey in the future Carlos made the decision to bring us for the “last” show, only to add yet one more in Rio ...

Jeff with Carlos on 2002 JSS' brazilian tour

By the way, we infrequently do a time diversion game called “Reach for the stars”, Carlos I tagged as Vincent D’Onofrio!

It was with very mixed feelings I went to Arlanda July 4^th. It was the second time going all the way out there that day, the first in the morning saying goodbye to Miss Solstråle (not the last!) and I was looking forward to a terribly long journey, just when I’ve recovered from the awful trip to Japan. 12 hours on a plane is murder for the spirit! Going there was stressful because our flight to Zurich was delayed and we had a very short connection time before, so we were running hard to make it. Of course on the way back it was the opposite, Jamie and I had to leave early from Rio to go to SP to wait 6 hours for the flight to Zurich, arriving Zurich after 12 hours we had to wait there 8 ½ hours for our flight to Stockholm…door to door 34 hours.

Ok, Jamie and I arrive in SP early thursday morning. It’s pitch black outside, whereas I’m used to it being bright and sunny already. It’s winter of course, but I thought it was going to be warm anyway…silly me, it was quite crisp. We beat most of the early morning traffic being so early, but we were a little gleeful hearing that Jeff’s and Brian’s flight were delayed and hearing that they would definitely hit traffic at it’s fullest…nothing but the best for Jeff, huh?

We got to the hotel, had ok breakfast, a little rest. Everybody met in the lobby for lunch, going to a more than a decent sushi place, drinking the first caipiroscas of the day, sakeroscas I believe, with kiwi and strawberries, damn tasty. I was a bit concerned about lunch, because the breakfast was steady enough not to warrant a lunch on my behalf, especially knowing there was a churrascaria waiting in the evening! But what the hell, diet is just DIE with a T as Garfield is known to say.

After that we went back to the hotel to regroup and do a pressconference. It was fun as always, we love doing these things, playing off of the people and ourselves. More caipiroscas, except I was very confused by my first one, it was terrible – but after a while I learned it was because the bartender made it with cachaza (or similar spelling), local booze, disgusting! Of course I drank most of it anyway .

Then we left to do an instore at Animal records. It was great fun, I don’t know how many people were there, a couple of hundred? Everybody was in a good mood, despite the tight circumstances with space and the time before the galleria closed. Some of the people spoke good enough English to hang out and chat a while, pretty cool. Funniest moment - one kid about 20 asked if he could kiss my bald head, I said sure, he did, somebody asked how that felt, my response was immediate: “kind of wet, a lot of tongue in that one!” The only complaint I have is that there were no caipiroscas served during the signing.

Then we went to the churrascaria. This is a brazilian steakhouse. You normally go to a buffet to get sallad/veggies/pasta etc, and they serve you grilled meat at the table until you move the sign on the table from “serve” to “DONE!”. It’s good, but very much…one needs to be starving to really enjoy it. The particular place we went to was a little weird, full light, no real ambiance, seemed a little like a russian place…of course, after the caipiroscas and food there was noone interested in seeing SP nightlife, although I do regret not having the energy to do it, since we didn’t get the chance the night after. The reason for that was simple, we were forced to consider the possibility of having to get up early the morning of going to Rio because of a possible strike at the domestic airport.

So, Friday I wake up, have breakfast (a chapter in itself, what with the weird styles of bread and cookies etc), take a long walk. If you haven’t been to Sao Paulo, here’s my impressions: traffic, high buildings, traffic; no upkeep on pavement, buildings or anything, and hence new buildings are next to old ready-to-tear-down ones with no seeming plan; traffic, with very bad air, flying out of SP going to Rio I was disgusted to see the fat smoglayer over the city; they drive with very little if any regard for what I’ve learned are good rules in traffic, yet there are few cars with dents in them, but apparently at least one biker (many of them though!) an hour gets killed. In short – very messy. And high buildings everywhere, it’s like Manhattan times a 1000. Graffiti, weird scribble graffiti, in very weird places, on top of buildings and other places not very easy to access.

We go do soundcheck, and of course it was not the promised 15 minutes to the venue from the hotel, more like 45. But, we were assured it would be, which is why we had to go another 45 minutes back to the hotel to get stage clothes, ear plugs etc.

Jamie, Brian and I went to have dinner at a small bar next to the hotel; it was cool, simple food and caipiroscas. Jeff stayed behind to rehearse a song with the opening act Tempestt, one he did a duet with their singer on their recent album, they did that at the gig later. Tempestt was a cool gang, the singer BJ we’d met at SRF, and now the rest. They rocked. The cover they did of Europe’s “Rock the night” was hilarious to me, because it was so perfectly sounding like Europe back then and very much better than what the original sounds like now (don’t kill me Ms Solstråle ).

We did the show with a minimum of mishaps considering the circumstances; the crowd seemed to enjoy it. We had a private bartender mixing caipiroscas, but the topless waitress was nowhere to be seen (reportedly we had a miss Poison serving drinks at one time during the evening, albeit not without top, but I missed that). Apparently we downed 5 bottles of vodka during the night, I should be dead I suppose (again), sugar and vodka, hello, but I felt fine the next morning and so did everybody else.

After the gig it was an impromptu party, free for whoemever wanted to join in. One guy asked me what “Colour my XTC” was about, for lack of knowledge I replied something like “when you have great sex you see colours” to which he said “hmmm, with my girlfriend I only see in black and white”, to which I (spontaneously and with no malice ) replied “well, perhaps she is not right for you”. He seemed to consider this, and then just turned around and left. “Oh no, did I offend him?” I asked the other people taking part in the conversation. “No, he’s probably looking for a new girlfriend” was the reply!

SP Caipiroska trip