Check out the best of Os Mutantes "Everything Is Possible!"
Influences
Verdi's Aida mixed with Ben Hur, Sly and the Family Stone, The Ventures, Shadows, the great Duane Eddy, The Beatles, Rita Pavone, Suzy Quatro, Jimi Hendrix
OS MUTANTES LIVE - RECORDED AT THE BARBICAN, LONDON 2006
Double CD/DVD
How did 60s Brazil produce the wildest, most psychedelic rock’n’roll group of them all? And why, three decades on, has the rest of the world gone crazy over them? As the Daily Telegraph put it ‘people talk about cult bands, but there should be a separate category for Os Mutantes, who have had a fanatical following among music lovers for years.’ Kurt Cobain, Beck, Super Furry Animals, Devendra Banhardt and David Byrne are just a few of the musicians that have flown the flag for Os Mutantes. Against all odds, in May 2006 the band reunited for the first time in over 30 years for a euphoric show at the Barbican’s Tropicalia Festival. The recording of this historic concert, with special guests Devendra Banhart and Noah Georgeson, is now to be released on CD and DVD by Luaka Bop and coincides with return dates in the UK.
Os Mutantes
In 1964, just as The Beatles were emerging to change the face of pop forever, Brazil came under the power of a military dictatorship. Making music became a political act and the student left aligned themselves to the Brazilian styles of samba, bossa nova and baiao. Meanwhile, the innovations of The Beatles were firing up three teenagers from Sao Paulo: Sergio Dias, his elder brother Arnaldo Dias Baptista, and Arnaldo’s girlfriend Rita Lee. Not knowing or caring about the political implications of playing rock’n’roll in front of student audiences that believed electric guitars were the tool of the imperialist devils, Os Mutantes was born.
“We always knew that music was an expression of the soul and not of politics,” says Mutantes’ guitarist Sergio Dias. “There is something political about being free under a dictatorship anyway — tell a teenager that they can’t do something and they’ll do it more.”
Necessity is the mother of invention. The guitars, amps and effects pedals that gave The Beatles their sound were not available in 60s Brazil. So Os Mutantes came up with a solution: to build their own. Sergio and Arnaldo’s brother Claudio studied the techniques of the great violin maker Antonio Stradivari and constructed guitars that could switch from electric to acoustic and had pick-ups on every string. For the warbling sound on “Batmacumba,” Claudio built an effects pedal powered by a sewing machine. And how did Mutantes recreate a hi-hat cymbals hiss for their version of Francoise Hardy’s “Le Premier Bonheur Du Jour?” By aiming a can of bug spray (the popular Flit brand) at the microphone and firing. Their producer Manoel Barenbein had to admit, it worked brilliantly.
Arnaldo Baptista and Sergio Dias come from a rich musical heritage. Their mother was the first woman to write a concerto for piano and their father was a poet, so by the time they discovered rock’n’roll as adolescents they already had grounding in classical music and literature. Arnaldo met Rita Lee Jones met when they were 16, in 1964 at a high school Battle Of The Bands. With Sergio on board as guitarist (he had left school aged 12 to turn pro), the band was formed. They quickly graduated to television shows, performing Beatles tunes with an orchestra and singing Bach fugues a capella on a show hosted by the singer Ronnie Von. Then along came Tropicalia.
Mutantes became Tropicalia’s house band, performing on the landmark album Tropicalia, Ou Panis Et Circenses (1968) and including many Tropicalia-era songs by Caetano, Gil and Tom Ze on their first and second albums from 1968 and 1969. They raided the wardrobe departments of the television shows they played on and dressed as aliens for one performance, witches for another. Then Tropicalia came to an abrupt end. In 1968 the Institutional Act Number Five was introduced and the military clamped down. Caetano and Gil were jailed then exiled to England from the end of 1968 until 1972. “It was a huge repression,” says Sergio. “We were getting threats all the time, but the kids who came to our shows just wanted to have fun and that was lovely to see.”
Os Mutantes fleshed out into a full rock band, with drummer Dinho and bassist Liminha added to the line-up. They relocated to Paris for three months in 1969 to perform at the Olympia Theatre and record Tecnicolor, an album of English language versions of their songs that did not get a release until 1999. On their return to Sao Paulo they recorded their masterpiece, A Divina Comedia Ou Ando Meio Desligado (A Divine Comedy, or I’m Feeling A Little Spaced Out). Featuring baroque odes to Lucifer, laments for broken fridges and the Deep Purple-influenced hit of the title, the album featured the sound of Os Mutantes coming into their own. But it also marked their loss of innocence.
Rita Lee and Arnaldo Baptista, sweethearts since they first met in 1964, broke up under the weight of increasingly hectic lifestyles. Rita Lee left the band in 1972 to pursue a solo career that continues to this day. Arnaldo left two years later and suffered a series of nervous breakdowns that culminated in an attempted escape from a psychiatric institute in 1981, leaving him in a coma for six weeks. The brothers’ relationship also collapsed, making any kind of reconciliation between them seemingly impossible… until the Barbican’s invitation to play together in 2006.
In January 2006, Sergio and Arnaldo Dias Baptista made music together, at Sergio’s studio in Sao Paulo, for the first time since 1976. Dinho came too, while Rita Lee politely declined their invitation. “Actually, she’s been very kind,” says Sergio. “She is pleased for us, because she knows that for Arnaldo and me to be together again is some kind of miracle. And we’re sounding great.” Sergio, Arnaldo and Dinho are back, with Zelia Duncan on vocals and Claudio’s arsenal of inventions, to unleash their mutant mania onto the world once more.
The Live album features the best-loved tracks of this legendary group:
DISC 1
1. DON QUIXOTE
2. CAMINHANTE NOTURNO
3. AVE GENGIS KHAN
4. TECNICOLOR
5. VIRGINIA
6. CANTOR DE MAMBO
7. EL JUSTICIERO
8. BABY
9. I'M SORRY BABY
10. TOP TOP
11. DIA 36
DISC 2
1. FUGA Nº II
2. LE PREMIER BONHEUR DU JOUR
3. DOIS MIL E UM
4. AVE LUCIFER
5. BALADA DO LOUCO
6. I FEEL A LITTLE SPACED OUT
7. A HORA E A VEZ DO CABELO NASCER
8. A MINHA MENINA
9. BAT MACUMBA
10. PANIS ET CIRCENSES
The full-length DVD will be available soon and includes the entire Barbican concert plus extras – documentary, backstage footage, video clips, photos and more.
A MINHA MENINA
I FEEL A LITTLE SPACED OUT
I edited my profile with Thomas Myspace Editor V4.4 (www.strikefile.com/myspace)
£leTriKa sounds completely different from any Metal band you have ever heard. The Brazilian rhythms and the Portuguese language added to the songs makes its style unique, giving birth to a new kind of Metal. If you are really looking for something new about Metal, you should check £leTriKa out!
Hugs from Brazil, Claudio David
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[BrazilianM£TAL]
Valeu demais a força! Quando rolaumtempinho, me fala o que achou da £leTriKa. Agente junta Metal com umasparada Brasileira. Tamutendumbom feed nas rádios gringas nos quatrocontos. Mantenha contato, blz?
Thanks a lot for the add ! £leŦriKa sounds completely different from any Metal band you have ever heard. The Brazilian rhythms and the Portuguese language added to the songs makes its style unique, giving birth to a new kind of Metal. If you are really looking for something new about Metal, you should check £leŦriKa out!
Hoje embarquei bem cedo num trem na velha estação.
Meu coração seguindo os trilhos em outra direção.
O maquinista toca o sino do tempo, a Locomotiva já vai saindo.
Vejo a cidade se despedindo.
Sobre o solo destas terras cansadas, uma antiga mata viva morava.
Um canavial tão amargo de se ver é o que sobrou.
Um Ribeirão toca para o infinito, num batuque constante indefinido,
numa melodia ancestral.
Surgindo da pureza das águas em cada grão dessa estrada. O novo dia que sempre amanhece, as cicatrizes que sempre esclarecem que tudo está onde devia sempre renascer, no ventre do povo.
Absurdamente o titulo choca-se, contradiz-se... O que uma coisa haverá de ter com a outra? Sendo a música de grande poder lúdico E a cocaína o entrelace das desgraças reais... Há quase setenta anos Sigmund Freud Receitava aos seus pacientes cocaína. E fora usuário, Charles Baudelaire O mais digno comedor de ópio Membro do clube haxixes descrevera Em seu livro, “Paraíso Artificiais” Os poderes alucinógenos Pelo o uso das tais substâncias... Ficar-se-ia nessa obra sua visão “católico-caótica” Sendo assim mais um relato de forma implícita de droga! Na inquisição não eram queimados ingênuos baseados Por jovens bronzeados, por jovens escandinavos Ou de olhinhos puxados... Eram jogados à fogueira grandes pensadores, gênios... Quem ousaria falar que a Terra era redonda? Galileu ousou... Ah, hoje sabemos o fim desse episódio. Rimbaud seria nesse século o expoente-mor Das loucuras astrais, seria a sensação do rock Não o rock abobalhado, não esse rock pobre, estúpido Meramente comercial, esse triste rock ‘n’ roll mundial Com refrões que nem a mais complacente Licença poética permite. No Brasil canta-se. “Ela com a boca dela, com a toalha dela.” “Ah! Pela última vez, ah! Pela última.” Que seja assim a última vez. Os grandes selos, gravadoras... Converteram-se ao protestantismo. Sabendo do público fiel consumidor Lancemos ao mercado fonográfico as testemunhas de Jeová. Saravá meu pai! Quanto apelo em busca de dinheiro. Prosseguem empurrando aos tímpanos do povo bregas-rômanticos De autêntico gosto ruim! De fato odeio as almas pequenas, não há nada de bom E quase nada de mal Confesso posso sentir ainda hoje o gosto do whisky E o aroma dos charutos do mestre Tom Jobim Admito que a pieguice impregnada da bossa Com sua batida e sua influência do jazz Satisfez-me, imagino-me caminhando ao lado Do Vinícius de Moraes nos dias de “balança-mais-não-cai...”. Não obstante, apenas imaginação fértil. Na crueldade dessa
Interview in English with the leader of the legendary Brazilian rock band
Bill Hinchberger (host)
Sérgio Dias recalls the early years of the legendary rock band, the groundbreaking Brazilian countercultural movement Tropicália, their battles with the censors of the military dictatorship, the recent revival of Os Mutantes, and more. Throughout the interview, Sérgio kept his guitar at hand, and he offers acoustic versions of some celebrated Mutantes songs, along a few surprises that give a nod to early influences like the Beatles and the Beach Boys.
![£leŦriKa {[|(NEW+TUNE=v3.1)|]} ╬BrazilianM£ŦAL](http://c2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/65/s_cadcd4a383f748d499e192d847812ca1.jpg)
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O Ministerio do Rock Adverte 
