Taxi are a
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
rock band, one of the most influential and biggest of all time in Portugal. The band originated it the '80s, influenced by
ska
Ska (; ) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. It combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. Ska is characterized by a walki ...
and the
new wave of Police. The band is originally from
Oporto
Porto or Oporto () is the second-largest city in Portugal, the capital of the Porto District, and one of the Iberian Peninsula's major urban areas. Porto city proper, which is the entire municipality of Porto, is small compared to its metropol ...
, and was formed in 1979 by João Grande, (a.k.a. Big John) (b.1954) (voice), Henrique Oliveira (b.1957) (guitar), Rodrigo Freitas (b. 1958) (drums), and Rui Taborda (a.k.a. The Rock!) (b. 1958) (bass).
Being strongly influenced by the London punk scene they initially composed and sang in English, but this would change after a concert in German School of Porto, when two elements of Polygram discovered them and invited them to record an album, the only condition being that they would have to sing in Portuguese. They released four albums via
PolyGram
PolyGram N.V. was a multinational entertainment company and major music record label formerly based in the Netherlands. It was founded in 1962 as the Grammophon-Philips Group by Dutch corporation Philips and German corporation Siemens, to be a ...
and made other contributions to the Portuguese music scene. To this day, their first hi
Chiclete(1981), its still one of the most played tunes on the radio, and one of the icons of the Portuguese '80s music scene.
They have been mostly inactive since 1998, but meet up occasionally for the odd gig.
References
Portuguese rock music groups
{{Europe-band-stub