I’ve been told to write a blog. Why? I’m not quite sure about that yet, but I’ve been told that since I’ve always led an “out of the ordinary” life, I may eventually have hoards of avid readers filling up the concert halls which often prove difficult to fill despite my “out of the ordinary” musical skills and “artistic excellence”. I’m a musician, I play Double Bass, go on and google me. Of course the thought has crossed my mind that being so “out of the ordinary” might not be such an easy pitch, but the fact remains that I just don’t think I am so “out of the ordinary” anyway. In the ‘80s some enthusiastic travel guide journalist labeled me as “the exotic american musician who runs a Jazz bar in Búzios”. I certainly don’t consider myself to be exotic either, although living in Búzios could have been considered such, in those days a sleepy seaside village a few hours from Rio de Janeiro.

My name, Bruce Henri, was given to me exactly 60 years ago in New York. The family name Leitman, was attached pro forma at the same time, but on the Brazilian music scene where I have hummed, strummed, pulled, picked, and plucked for the past 45 years, I am known by my given names. I’ve been around, travelled around, lived around and slept around more places and people than I can possibly remember, but I’m sure some details will gradually slip back into my conscience if I just keep up writing, if I really get into this blog thing....

I didn’t leave home, but home left me at the age of 17, everyone just sort of trickled away to different parts of the globe untill I found myself sitting in an empty apartment in Copacabana, Tet Offensive having just changed the dynamics of the war in Viet Nam, and Uncle Sam’s draft officers itching to stamp and ship me off, classified as prime beef “in absentia” without their ever having laid eyes on me. I could have been a psychopath or a paraplegic for all they knew, but I guess that’s just the way they ran things, innocent until proven guilty, but it struck me as stupid anyway, and I wasn’t going to take part of it, so I stayed in Rio de Janeiro. I didn’t really feel any obligation to the USA at the time, certainly not to the point of risking death or permanent disability fighting a war, a lack of conviction certainly strengthened by the fact that I was dragged off to live in Europe at the age of 8 and not been back in ten years anyway... Those ten became 17 in the blink of an eye...

I’m now writing from the lounge at Madrid’s Barajas airport (Spain), on my way to Lisbon, Portugal. I’ve been on the road in Europe for a month now, stage manager for “Rock in Rio”, a biennial mega Rock and Roll event which, in spite of the name, happens not in Brazil, but on this other side of the equator and Atlantic. Next year it will be held in Rio de Janeiro and rumour has it that Poland will also be contemplated in 2011. Lights, sound, and technical coordenation for big shows like this are jobs I hugely enjoy and so I regularly accept work, in spite of the fact that neither music nor art are necessarily primordial factors in the shows themselves. Fact is, I don’t even watch half of the acts on stage, although I take the opportunity to observe people and situations closely, developing my own anthropological theories. Backstage is a great place for voyeurism. One little piece of insight that came to me observing the backstage scene last week is how technology has changed the very essence of backstage behaviour. It used to be really cool and fun to hang out, smoke joints and occasionally do some other drugs, and “shoot the bull”, communicate human beung to human being sort of thing, face to face. Nowadays it’s all facebook to facebook, a bunch of nerds with their faces stuck in laptops, ipads, and iphones, off in their own little virtual realities, absolutely no interaction within 3 feet. I remember in São Paulo last year I was called in to be “production rep.”, a job that basically involves ironing out all the little problems that arise, for an REM show. Total panic because the lead singer Michael Stipe couldn’t get an internet connection in the dressing room. So while I was coordinating the 100 metre over the rooftop and under the basement cable run which proved necessary to solve the BIIIG problem, it occured to me it used to be so much easier to meet the needs of stardom, a runner over to the dealer, some good smoke, and voilá!! Did you know that Miley Cyrus’s mother is really cool?