Brazilian Music

i can't remember the last time i saw a poster for something. you would think living next to a huge university, someone might put up a poster occasionally but nope.

if i subscribed to an email list or checked brooklyn vegan i'd end up going to a lot more shows than i have time or money for. like every time someone who made a record i like decades ago rolls through i'd shell out the $40, which is totally the wrong approach. it's much more fun to just go see new artists for the price of a beer, or random free shows in the summer.

Going to shows, especially rock shows, after a certain age, is kind of a mixed proposition.

Think maybe I am taking this Brazilian thing too far, right now listening to Kid Abelha.

hahaha they have good songs! but then I guess it becomes more interesting if you're Brazillian

marisa monte played on NJ and me and my wife went to see. it was great. at some points it went full beatlemania with the level of screaming! her bass player played with Novos Baianos

titãs are a diff beast. cabeça dinossauro is the classic one, but it's more of a punk-ish sound. funnily enough, one of the titãs main songwriters and singers left the band and at one point, had a "supergroup" with marisa monte – they had a big hit in BR with a song that lifts a lot from Family Affair from Sly.

legião is the bigger band of all of this. they had such a huge following. songs so big they got covered by samba bands, selling million of records in a country that didn't even was fully of dictatorship nor had a lot going on economically, is kinda amazing. the following is also for the lyrics. they started more punk-ish, post punk - comsat angels, joy division. then it gets more folky, jangly as time goes by. love many songs by them, specially the first 3 (the 3rd record actually has the earliest songs they ever wrote). every now and then I just get obsessed by this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkM5e04vjzE por enquanto. since 94 prob.

80s bands there have so many microscenes and stuff to check outside of the big names you mentioned so far, you can really go deep!

(sorry for the bad syntax above)

I can also just post some youtube videos tomorrow of cool stuff

Cool, thanks!

I saw Marisa Monte in Maryland near Washington DC in 2022. Mostly good show plus she had impressive visuals on a screen behind her for nearly every song. I said "mostly" as some of her catalogue of songs don't wow me. She was just back in this area as well recently, but I didn't go this time

TIL that 1/3 of Tribalistas was in Titãs.

Some surprise Paralamas content here: https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?showall=true&bookmarkedmessageid=1675484&boardid=77&threadid=80292

Oh right, sorry

what's that link?

Private sub-borad.

Just talking about photographers taking pictures of some Brazilian celebs instead of Paralamas at summer stage.

I forgot to mention earlier this year I saw Djavan. Djavan emphasized all the Nascimento like aspects in his songs that I like and was pretty good at his suburban Washington DC show. An ilx search shows some skepticism of him over the years, but I think live he outweighed my concerns re jazz fusion cliches and too much schmaltz

Djavan wrote some great songs, which is mostly how I know him.

But I came to say, oh hey, partly as a result of this thread I did a Paralamas song at karaoke last night, which felt really good even though nobody was from Brazil so it was unfamiliar to them.

Also, just some good stuff from Nenhum de Nós on an 80s Brazilian Rock playlist which also has some of the usual suspects mentioned recently.

Listening to Legião Urbana now, “Que país é este.”

nenhum de nós is pretty bad, man, lay off the pipe.

that's the 3rd legião record. try the first and second one and fourth

loving your posts, fpsa

just getting around to hearing the arthur verocai s/t from '72 after, oh i'd say a decade of being aware of it.

i don't know if i would've like it so much back then. absolutely loving it this evening.

Celia's version of Na Boca Do Sol is excellent, too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3aIZWXHE84

thanks!

which is totally the wrong approach

by the way, i totally hear you, but it's okay to do a little bit of both!

ime seeing octogenarians in concert does not always reap dividends. especially rock shows, i'm not talking about Cecil Taylor.

I like the first track on the first Legião Urbana album, “Será,” so I guess I should listen to the rest of it.

Or I could just listen to that one track on repeat, which would suit me just fine.

Será is their biggest hit prob – that's the one I mentioned being covered (with success as well) by samba/pagode bands.

Assuming their second biggest was “Tempo Perdido,” is that correct?

And hey, TIL that in Portuguese the Duolingo Legendary Level is called Titãs.

LU's "Índios" seems to briefly melodically quote "Chantilly Lace."

You might be able to tell that I am listening to the Mais do Mesmo comp. Great title.

Also learned the other day that the lead singer of Legião Urbana, Renato Russo, died of AIDS-related complications, as did Cazuza, as did one of my favorites from Argentina who also had ties to Brazil, Federico Moura of Virus.

So I guess Herbert Vianna of Os Paralamas do Successo, who crashed his plane into the sea, thereby killing his wife, confining himself to a wheelchair and suffering serious brain damage, got off relatively easy.

Believe he was flying to visit his friend Dado Villa-Lobos, grand-nephew of Heitor and guitarist for Legião Urbana.

haha great posts so far.

tempo perdido was a big hit but I think it got bigger recently (15 years) as well. Indios is great as well.

paralamas has a big hit with 2 Argentinian versions: Fito Paez (Trac Trac BR / Track Track AR) and Los Pericos (Para e Repara BR / Parata Y Mira AR)

titãs has transformed Patches (Clarence Carter) and made one of their biggest hits with Marvin, a reggae-ish song

nenhum de nós biggest hit (or one of the biggest) is a Starman cover – called Astronauta de mármore (Marble Astronaut)

I realized that “Marvin” was a cover of “Patches” when I first heard it, although I thought it might be just a ripoff. I know about the Fito Paez cover but haven’t really listened to it. There was a recent Fito Paez series on Netflix but I heard it wasn’t so good so I haven’t watched it. Fito first became known to me when one of his songs was used in a Coke commercial that ran over and over during the 2002 World Cup, at least in the US.

Paralamas also did a cover of the most famous song of Latin American Rock en Español, Soda Stereo’s “De música ligera” which is the first thing I heard from them and is atypical and kind of bad. Think they ultimately did succeed in making some inroads in Argentina, which may have kept them afloat during some lean times in Brazil.

To my earlier point, looks like somebody even wrote a book comparing Cazuza and Federico Moura.

https://www.tiempoar.com.ar/espectaculos/adrian-melo-federico-moura-y-cazuza-le-pusieron-color-y-alegria-al-rock-como-una-resistencia-a-la-dictadura/

Of course there is also at least one book about Cazuza and Renato Russo.

nenhum de nós biggest hit (or one of the biggest) is a Starman cover – called Astronauta de mármore (Marble Astronaut)

Also it is my understanding and I have been told that there was basically little cross-pollination between Brazilian bands and those in the rest of Latin America due to a musical version of the Treaty of Tordesillas, as evidenced by the two different MTV Latin Americas.

“The VJs must have been drunk!”

lol ahahaah that's so funny. it's not all MTV's fault to be honest – there were attempts of showing stuff (like café tacvba, they got some cult following in Brazil). I think it's a longer, older cultural fault in a sense where some of it stems from radio programmers thinking spanish pop (outside of Julio Iglesias or other) was not gonna be a hit in Brazil.

btw I think the Soda Stereo cover is not Paralamas, is done by Capital Inicial – which is one of the truly worst bands ever, but unfortunately, huge in Brazil (especially after doing an MTV Unplugged 15 years after their heyday. MTV Unplugged also being a huge lifeline to most of these artists)

Good unplugged records from Brazil:
– Gilberto Gil one is godlike.
– Rita Lee is kinda cool as an overall view on her work, not the greatest...
– Legião has a good one as well.
– Another guy you haven't mentioned yet, Lulu Santos. A huge hitmaker, has really great songs. But I would suggest picking up a greatest hits from 88 first.

I have a soft spot for the Nenhum de Nós version tbh.

btw I think the Soda Stereo cover is not Paralamas, is done by Capital Inicial

I have a soft spot for the Nenhum de Nós version tbh.

Gilbert Gil MTV Unplugged (Ao Vivo) starts with a Paralamas song! Thanks for the rec!

Rita Lee’s “Lanza perfume” sounds like The Doobie Brothers or something.

Legião Urbana Acústico MTV doesn’t seem to be streaming but is in certain places on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdPt7m928NI