Punk in Brazil - Early 1980s

Early 1980s

In 1979, Fábio Sampaio, who would become the singer in Olho Seco, started a record shop in downtown São Paulo and named it Punk Rock Discos. This shop would become the main focus and meeting spot for the scene in the years to come, helping unite otherwise isolated gangs, bands and individuals from different parts of the city and therefore, creating a proper movement.

Punk Rock Discos also gave the São Paulo scene a distinctively hardcore musical identity through the records and tapes distributed at the shop. By 1980/81, Sampaio had found international connections and ways to bring records from England through unorthodox methods and have them available shortly after they were released abroad.

However, since most punks couldn't afford imported vinyl, the shop would make mixtapes with what he considered to be the best material and sell the cassettes for cheap. Partially as a reflex of Fabio's personal taste, British bands like Discharge and Disorder as well as Swedish and Finnish hardcore soon became the main reference for São Paulo punks, almost immediately after the records came out in their countries of origin.

Around 1981, punk gigs were already happening often around São Paulo, where there were already dozens of active bands, mostly playing Hardcore Punk and similar styles, most importantly Cólera, Olho Seco and Inocentes. These three bands appeared on the Grito Suburbano compilation LP released in early 1982.

The first punk rock record to come out in Latin America, Grito Suburbano's example was soon followed by the band Lixomania, who put out their own EP in the same year as well as Ratos de Porão, Psykoze and Fogo Cruzado, who took part (with Cólera appearing on vinyl for the second time) in another compilation LP called SUB released roughly one year after Grito Suburbano.

In late 1982, the first big punk festival was organized. Named O Começo do Fim do Mundo ("The Beginning Of The End Of The World") it included most of the more active bands from São Paulo city and the neighboring ABCD Region. A live recording of the show came out on vinyl the following year.

São Paulo also had a thriving post-punk scene in the early 1980s with bands like AgentSS, Mercenárias, Ira!, Voluntários da Pátria, Akira S, Fellini, Smack and others playing often around the city. Despite sharing political and cultural values, the (hardcore) punk and post-punk bands had little else in common at this point, with wide musical and class gaps separating the two scenes. While the self-identified punks were usually teenagers from working class areas who worked as office boys or factory workers, the post-punks were mostly middle class young adults with university educations. Bands from the two scenes rarely, if ever, played together on the same bills. Among other reasons, because very few venues would let hardcore punk bands play.

Meanwhile, the scene in Brasília was also growing. After the first local band Aborto Elétrico began playing gigs in 1980, other groups emerged, such as Blitx 64 and Plebe Rude. However, as the decade went on, most of the Brasília bands drifted towards post-punk and new wave.

Rio de Janeiro also had a productive punk scene in the early 1980s. Started by a gang of skateboarders from the working class Campo Grande district, Rio punk revolved around bands such as Coquetel Molotov, Descarga Suburbana and Eutanásia.

In 1983, inspired by the urgency of the message in the legendary Grito Suburbano album, the very first punk rock band from Porto Alegre was formed, Pupilas Dilatadas. The band stood out for not being entirely influenced by the punk bands of the time and played relatively slow more in tune with bands like PIL or Killing Joke than to hardcore itself. Their sound was an original mix of post-punk, California hardcore and experimental sounds. Also from the same time period, is the band Lixo Urbano. They played traditional punk music inspired by the Sex Pistols and others... These two pioneering punk bands are regarded as the starting seeds of the Punk movement in Porto Alegre.