Impossible to work

The other week I was listening to XRT’s The Eclectic Company. The special guest was Beck Hansen who brought along two songs from the Tropicália movement. The first one was Gilberto Gil’s Dois mil e um (2001 for the Portugese-impaired) which was followed by Os Mutantes‘ take on Bat Macumba (which was eventually changed to Bat Makumba to make it just a bit more Oswald De Andrade-like). This has had two important results: first, it made me go out and buy the Gilberto Gil album with the song Dois mil e um on it, and second it has made me kick myself for not being a bit more patient with waiting on people to evacuate the listening stations of the Tropicália exhibit that was at the MCA earlier this year.

There’s a third result out of all of this and that is the discovery of Dusty Groove’s Brazilian music section. A friend told me they have an impressive selection of Brazilian music a few weeks ago, so I thought it would be the best place to start looking for this Gil album. The record store had to be good as a former employee of the Hyde Park location of Dr. Wax supposedly works there (the HP Dr. Wax along with the Djangos a bit west of it on 53rd St. are great places to pick up music, particularly if you buy vinyl. The Djangos always seems to be full of great records for a dollar. The people there just don’t seem to realize what they have in the store, which means great deals for savvy shoppers). Anyway, I started flipping through the Brazilian section and found all of these albums that I knew a bit about and wanted to buy or had been recommended to me at some point but I was on a quest for the Gilberto Gil album including Dois mil e um. About 1 minute later I found what I was looking for: Gilberto Gil 1969. Gil released 3 eponymous albums in a row in the late 60s, and this one is supposed to be the most experimental of them. It works a bit like David Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy albums: Side 1 is more traditional pop tunes with side 2 being dedicated to more experimental cuts.

So I picked up the album and headed over to the Jazz section, which was pretty much a waste of time. An alright jazz selection but not really anything amazing. Slightly better than your average chain store selection of jazz records but spotty overall. A complete let down after flipping through an equally sized section filled with awesome Brazilian records. In the end I made a huge mistake and picked up DJ Shadow’s latest album as well (seriously, trust all of the critics, the album is disjointed and boring, filled with generic hip hop of the sort I now know is called “hyphy.” There’s a term I could have lived without learning).

So I went home and I basically put this crazy whacked out Acid Rock Samba entity on repeat. I’m told this is Gil’s most experimental album and that it reflects the influence of the British rockers he was hanging out with in the late 60s (Pink Floyd anyone?) during his exile from Brazil. It’s awesome. You should go buy it. You’ll feel much better once you’re listening to Gilberto Gil sing to the freed astronaut about how his life is overtaking him no matter which way he turns (OK, so the song was actually written by Tom Zé and Rita Lee and it appears on the Os Mutantes album Mutantes, but Gil’s take on it is way more psychedlic, way more interesting, and longer). Before long, you’ll have memorized the entire chorus and can annoy all of your friends by singing to yourself “Astronauto Libertado/minha vida me ultrapassa/em qualquer rota que eu faça/Dei um grito no escuro/Sou parceiro do futuro/Na reluzente galáxia”