THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,319) Os Mutantes — “A Minha Menina”/”My Girl”
Mutants from São Paulo indeed — “Bro, the elements of samba with rock… holy sh*t THAT IS crazy Brazilian rock.” (joaovitorreisdasilva9573,https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XIbJylD_c84&pp=ygUkT3MgTXV0YW50ZXMg4oCUIOKAnEEgTWluaGEgTWVuaW5h4oCd) “The fuzzy guitar riff that forms the backbone of [this] pop-riot . . . could come right out of an early Stones track, but it’s the festive hand-clapping and crazed party atmosphere that really sells the song.” (Adam Bunch, https://archive.ph/20090814015616/http://crawdaddy.wolfgangsvault.com/Article.aspx?id=5182)
Crazed adulation: “[Q]uite simply one of the greatest pop songs ever written. Lively percussion, a ridiculously-loud fuzz guitar and a sing-along chorus of epic proportions makes it hard to resist.” (Russ Slater, https://soundsandcolours.com/articles/brazil/os-mutantes-album-guide-7230/) “i love this tune more than life itself”. (chrisduggan3152, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XIbJylD_c84&pp=ygUkT3MgTXV0YW50ZXMg4oCUIOKAnEEgTWluaGEgTWVuaW5h4oCd) OK, I won’t go that far — but close!
John Bush:
The band’s debut album . . . is far and away their best — a wildly inventive trip that assimilates orchestral pop, whimsical psychedelia, musique concrète, found-sound environments — and that’s just the first song! Elsewhere there are nods to Carnaval, albeit with distinct hippie sensibilities, incorporating fuzztone guitars and go-go basslines. . . . Though not all of the experimentation succeeds . . . [it] is an astonishing listen. . . . [and] far more experimental than any of the albums produced by the era’s first-rate psychedelic bands of Britain or America.
Though rarely heard outside their Brazilian homeland . . . Os Mutantes were one of the most dynamic, talented, radical bands of the psychedelic era . . . . A trio of brash musical experimentalists, the group fiddled with distortion, feedback, musique concrète, and studio tricks of all kinds to create a lighthearted, playful version of extreme Brazilian pop. The band was formed by the two Baptista brothers, Arnaldo (bass, keyboards) and Sérgio (guitar), whose father was a celebrated São Paulo concert pianist. In 1964, the pair formed a teenage band named the Wooden Faces. After they met Rita Lee, the three played together in the Six Sided Rockers before graduation broke up the band. Yet another name change (to O Conjunto) preceded the formation of Os Mutantes in 1966, the final name coming from the science fiction novel O Planeta dos Mutantes. With a third Baptista brother (Cláudio ) helping out on electronics, the group played each week on the Brazilian TV show O Pequeno Mundo de Ronnie Von and became involved with the burgeoning Tropicalia movement. Os Mutantes backed the Tropicalista hero Gilberto Gil at the third annual Festival of Brazilian Music in 1967 . . . . By the end of 1968, Os Mutantes delivered their self-titled debut, a raucous, entertaining mess of a record featuring long passages of environmental sounds, tape music, and tortured guitar lines no self-respecting engineer would’ve allowed in the mix (especially at such a high volume). After time spent backing Veloso and recording a second LP of similarly crazed psychedelic pop, the band ventured to France and Europe for a few music conference shows. Upon returning to Brazil, they set up their own multimedia extravaganza . . . . Despite distractions of all kinds, the group also managed to record LPs in 1970 . . . and 1971 . . . both of which charted the band’s shifting interests from psychedelic to blues and hard rock. . . . [In 1972] . . . Rita Lee departed or was fired from the band (accounts vary) and resumed a solo career . . . . Except for a 1976 live record, 1974[ saw] the band’s final LP. Sérgio later moved to America, where he played with Phil Manzanera, among others. After recording a 1974 solo album, Arnoldo played with a new band (Space Patrol) during the late ’70s and spent time in a psychiatric hospital . . . .
https://www.allmusic.com/album/os-mutantes-mw0000664049, https://www.allmusic.com/artist/os-mutantes-mn0000488378#biography
Carlos Calado (translated by Béco Dranoff):
It was the perfect band name. . . . Besides the bizarre characters that Rita Lee and brothers Sérgio and Arnaldo Baptista would impersonate on TV programs, concerts and on their album covers, the Mutantes’ music sounded light-years ahead of any other pop band in Brazil. From the very beginning, the Mutantes were strange and provocative. . . . Rita Lee Jones and Arnaldo Baptista met when they were 16. The encounter happened in 1964 at a high school band contest in São Paulo, where they were both born and raised. Rita . . . was a member of the Teenage Singers, an all-female vocal group that covered Shirelles, and Peter, Paul and Mary songs along with several Beatles hits. Arnaldo was the bass player in the Wooden Faces, a band that started out cloning the instrumental rock of the Ventures, but which soon converted to Beatlesque pop. From then on Arnaldo and Rita would not be apart. Two years later, after stints in the Six Sided Rockers and O’Seis, they decided to form a new group with Arnaldo’s younger brother Sérgio, who was already a great guitar player for all of his 15 years of age. They still emulated the Beatles, but the trio started to write their own songs. The official Mutantes debut happened on October 15th, 1966, on a youth-oriented TV show hosted by singer Ronnie Von, the trio’s godfather. Meanwhile, the public at large would only meet the Mutantes a year later. Discovered by maestro Rogério Duprat . . . the trio was introduced to singer/songwriter Gilberto Gil, who was getting ready to present his new song “Domingo no Parque” at TV Records’ 2nd Festival of Brazilian Popular Music—a fiercely competitive song contest that brought together the country’s best singers and songwriters—in October of 1967. The impact was tremendous. Along with singer/songwriter Caetano Veloso (also in the race with his innovative song “Alegria, Alegria”), Gil and the Mutantes were the festival’s most polemical figures. The fact that both used electric guitars—a first at an event traditionally dedicated to Brazilian popular music—shocked and irritated the leftist university crowd. Booed and sworn at, the Mutantes, Gil and Caetano were labeled as “alienated” and accused of having sold themselves to North American imperialists. In a matter of weeks the three Mutantes, along with other musicians, poets, and artists, were taking part in lively meetings that quickly evolved into an art movement. With big doses of criticism, lots of humor, iconoclastic ideas and sprinkles of rock music, Tropicália was out to question not only the music being made in the country at the time, but Brazilian culture as a whole. . . . Together they changed Brazilian music. It was during Tropicália’s initial discussions that the Mutantes recorded their first self-titled album. Rogério Duprat’s transgressive arrangement of “Panis et Circenses” opened the record as a sonic “happening.” . . . The irony is that at that moment, students, police and the military were clashing in daily bloody riots in the streets of Brazil. . . . From their first album, the Mutantes had an edge on every other pop band of the period—the instruments and electronic effects created by Cláudio César, the eldest Baptista brother. The guitar lends some strange, distorted colors to the percussive “Bat Macumba” as well as the samba-rock “A Minha Menina,” thanks to the inventions and experiments of “the fourth Mutante” (as he was sometimes called). . . . By 1969, when the band’s third album . . . was recorded, Brazil’s political and cultural situation was already very different. The governmental measure known as AI 5 (Institutional Act 5) terrorized intellectuals and political activists, closing the congress and provoking countless arrests. The Tropicália movement was aborted, with little more than one year of activity. Caetano and Gil were arrested and exiled in London. Isolated, without the support and creative exchange of Tropicália’s heyday, the Mutantes renewed their bonds to Anglo-American rock . . . . After Rita Lee’s departure from the group in the end of 1972, the band immersed themselves in progressive rock. Through several lineups, the band recorded three more albums before finally dissolving in 1978. At that point, with only Sérgio remaining from the original group, the band was a mere shadow of its former self.
Rita Lee recalled:
When Caetano and Gil were exiled, Os Mutantes felt like orphans and the Baptista Bros. came out falling in love with progressive music. Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Yes, etc. I was asked (not very kindly, by the way!) to quit the group, even though I’d invested a lot in my own electronic instruments. I was always very intuitive as an instrumentalist, but not a virtuoso like Arnaldo or Sérgio. There was no place for me anymore in that kind of sound the boys had already chosen. They broke up not very long after my departure. I decided to continue the idea of mixing music with theater, circus and fashion. At that time there was a huge field to be explored which I called “roquenrou” made in Brazil, and that’s what I did with my next band, Tutti Frutti.
Jorge Ben’s version:
Live ’06:
The Bees from the Isle of Wight. Tim Carter, thanks for turning me on to this! —
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