Just picture this: Luís Moutinho was a musician who played in dance bands for seventeen years! He reached the end of 1980 and said, “enough is enough,” tired of the music world.
But since the passion never really dies, he decided to record a few original tracks during the band’s last rehearsals. The cassette tape ended up in the hands of Luís Filipe Barros, on the famous “Rock em Stock” program on Rádio Comercial. And wouldn’t you know it, one of the songs even aired on the radio? It was a glimpse, but the adventure seemed to have ended there.
That is, until one day, Luís Moutinho found out about a different contest. Luís Pereira de Sousa, on another program on Rádio Comercial, was asking for a Portuguese lyric version of an English Boys song, which was about people with physical disabilities. The idea was noble: the rights would revert to UNICEF.
Luís didn’t just settle for the lyrics. He risked a full recording! He delivered the cassette to the head of the Gira record label at Rádio Comercial, who then passed it on to the host. The result? The host was so impressed with the track “Anda Daí” that… he closed the contest right then and there! The prize was supposed to be recording a single with the winning lyrics, but, ironically, it never came to fruition.
The reason was a total surprise. The cassette didn’t only contain “Anda Daí”; it also had the home/garage recordings of Luís’s former band, featuring the tracks “Rockolagem” and “A Pastilha.”
The outcome: instead of a contest prize, he was given two days in the studio to record all three tracks! That’s how the idea for his new band, Banda Desenhada, was born.
Despite everything, the band eventually broke up, and the record was released only in the musician’s name and, to top it off, in a mono version. Why? Because the Gira label failed to pay the producer, Moreno Pinto, for the recording session.
That’s just how things rolled back during the days of the famous Boom of Portuguese Rock. It was crazy, but it’s a story of pure persistence!
